Norton, Andre - Dipple 02

by Night Of Masks (v5. 0)

  He chose the mirror ray and worked its curved edge into the door crack at the position of the locking mechanism. It was not a finger-heat seal, for which Nik was thankful, and his probing did meet obstruction. Carefully he began to pry, levering the mirror edge back and forth, so that it moved more freely.

  Nik applied more pressure. His position was awkward, and he could not bring much weight to bear. But at last there was a click, and the door moved. A locked door should mean an empty room, and it was dark. Swiftly, Nik grasped the goggles, not sure they would work.

  But they did, and he was able to see in an odd fashion, enough to make sure that the room was empty of all except its stark furnishing and the arms rack. He motioned Vandy in with him.

  Four blasters stood in the rack slots. Nik took the first and saw that the dial butt indicated a full charge. At least Orkhad's men kept their arms in order. He thrust the weapon into the front of his tunic. Vandy reached for the second in the rack. Nik was about to protest and then kept silent. Whether Vandy could use the arm or not, a second one would be worth taking. Nik slipped the two remaining out of the rack, set their beams on full, and laid them on the floor. With any luck, they would lie there undiscovered until their charges were completely exhausted. It would take time to recharge them.

  Luck again—he was beginning to think as Leeds did. And why was he so sure that the men here in the refuge were his enemies? Nik returned to the present problem, that of getting away from the quarters of Orkhad's force.

  Vandy was staring, fascinated, at the wall beginning to glow red from the force beams. What effect that disintegration might have Nik did not know, but he shouldered the pack and pushed the boy back to the corridor. Outside, he shut the door once again and inserted in the crack another of the belt "tools," twisting the narrow strip of metal well into the slot and then melting it with his new weapon to make sure. That was a new door lock that would take them some time to break.

  They came out on the balcony above the terminal of the tunnels. What if there was no way down? The expanse above that star-shaped convergence was big and shadowed. Nik could make out a matching balcony on the opposite side as he came to the edge to look over. There was nothing moving below, no sign that Orkhad's people had any use for that series of rock-hewn ways. Nik measured the drop with his eyes and then went to work.

  The contents of the bundle were spread out and two of the covers knotted together. Yes, that ought to reach.

  "We climb down?" Vandy whispered.

  "No, I'll lower you, then drop—" Nik tested the knots with hard jerks, listening all the while for any intimation that their escape had been discovered. Was the scent of suequ stronger? Had Orkhad gone back to the pipe? Nik fastened one blanket end to Vandy and helped the boy clamber over the rail.

  He played out the improvised line and saw the pale face turned up to him as Vandy signaled safe arrival. Now up with the rope again. A bag was made of it to lower the supply containers. The whole thing dropped. Not too far away there was a rise in the surface of the tunnel level, close to Orkhad's quarters. Nik measured that distance by eye. To approach that end of the balcony was an added risk, but it was his best chance. He waved to Vandy and saw the boy nod vigorously.

  Nik sped for that end of the balcony, Vandy matching him. Below the boy dropped the blankets in a heap as Nik climbed over the balustrade. As he had hoped, that tangle cushioned his fall. Jarred but unhurt, he got to his feet.

  "Which way do we go now?"

  Vandy's question was apt. Nik could see no difference in the radiating tunnels, no difference save direction. In that way, they should reach toward the outer world and the place where the LB had set down, which meant toward the spot where Leeds should come, in turn. But wouldn't Orkhad reason the same way? Nik hesitated as he faced the dark mouths in what seemed the right direction—left, middle, right—If the Veep did hunt in that direction, he would have to split his force in three. Success might depend upon how many men he commanded. Nik made his decision and took the tunnel to the right.

  "That way!"

  Blaster in hand, he started down the track to discover that, once into the passage, they did not need the goggles after all. At well-spaced intervals, there were plates set in the walls that glowed dully. Nik thought that those who had built these ways had certainly not shared his type of eyesight—perhaps to that forgotten and doomed race, those plates had presented a maximum of light. Had Dis always been a night world for Terran stock or had the sun flare altered more than its surface?

  "Where are we going now?" Vandy asked.

  "Wherever we can hide until Captain Leeds comes."

  "Who is he, Hacon, a Patrolman?"

  Nik grinned wryly. Strode Leeds was probably far from a Patrolman, but he was certainly their only hope of surviving this venture.

  "No—he's just the man who'll take us away from here." And Nik hoped that was the truth.

  "When is he coming?"

  When—that was the question! For the first in what might have been hours, Nik's left hand sought his face. Time—time to keep him what he now was or just to keep him and Vandy alive. The conflicting stories concerning the boy returned to plague Nik as they walked on along what seemed endless miles of tunnel, with no change in the walls, no sign there was any end to this burrow hollowed for an unknown purpose long before either of them had been born.

  "I don't know." Nik roused to answer that last question.

  "If we hide, how can we tell when he does come?" Vandy was practical.

  "We'll have to find a hiding place from which we can see the landing apron," Nik replied. "Only near there is where they will hunt us, too."

  "Go outside?" Vandy sounded doubtful, and Nik did not blame him.

  Stay in the burrows where Orkhad could eventually track them down—go outside into a nightmare world where only a pair of goggles would give them freedom of movement, perhaps mean the difference between life and death? But also—to go outside was the only way to be sure of Leeds' arrival. Nik had no assurance of the wisdom of his own decisions. He could only make them by choosing the lesser of two evils. And he clung stubbornly to the idea that in Leeds lay their only safety now.

  "Yes." His reply was curt. And then he began to wonder if they could reach the outside world—if this tunnel had any opening onto the surface of Dis.

  "Look!" Vandy's outheld hand was a vague blur in the gloom. What he indicated lay mid-point between two of the dim lights. It was a greenish glow, stronger toward the roof, tapering as it descended. Nik pulled up the goggles, startled by the sharp focus that leaped at him.

  Plants—or rather fleshy growths against the bare rock. They had no leaves Nik could identify but innumerable thin arms or branches that matted together, intertwining and twisting until they made a thick mass. And they grew through a break in the wall only a little below the room. A way outside?

  Nik could not bring himself to touch that mat of weird vegetation with his bare hands. The stuff had such an unhealthy, even evil, look that he thought of poison or fungoid contamination. Yet the chance of an unexpected bolt hole could not be missed.

  "What is it?" Vandy demanded, and Nik realized that to the boy's unaided eyes the growth was a hazy mystery.

  "Maybe a side door if we can open it." Nik dialed the low beam on the blaster and turned it on that twisted mass.

  There was a burst of flame licking across the whole growth in one consuming puff. The stench of that burning blew back at them, forcing a retreat. Then it was gone, and only stained rock remained. But the crack the plants had masked was open, and there was light from it, light well visible to Nik's goggled eyes. Since the cleared space was big enough to scramble through, he leaped and caught at the sides, pulling himself up for a look.

  Around him the concentrated stench made him gasp, and there was a whirl of thick and heavy smoke. It would seem that the fire started in the tunnel had ignited the vegetation here also.

  Nik, coughing, held to his vantage point long enough to
discover that the break was at the bottom of a wedgelike cut, the lips of which were far above. The fire puffed now up the walls of the cut, running with lightning speed along the trails of plants that must have originally choked most of that space.

  The walls looked climbable, and Nik thought they had found their way out. He dropped back to wait for the fire to clear the cut, taking advantage of that interval to share a tin of rations with Vandy. They had food; now they must find a place to hole up for rest. Vandy had made no complaint, but Nik judged by his own growing fatigue that to climb out of the cut might be all the youngster could do.

  He was right, Nik discovered, when they did climb. Vandy was slow, fumbling, and Nik used his belt as a safety device to link them. Vandy was not just tired; he was climbing that grade blind, making it necessary for Nik to guide his hands and feet. When they at last pulled out on top, Vandy sat panting, his head bowed on his knees.

  "I—I don't think I can go on, Hacon—" he said in a small voice. "My legs—they're too shaky—"

  Nik stood surveying the landscape about them with concentrated study. The ground was rough with many outcrops of rock among which grew lumpy plants, some inches high, others branching into the height of normal trees, but none of them wholesome-looking. The dank humidity of the outer world was a stifling blanket, weighing down their bodies almost as heavily as the fatigue. No, neither of them could go far now, and the rocks offered the best hope of shelter.

  The nearest was a cluster of squared blocks where patches of growth made lumpy excrescences. Whether those rises also contained any protecting crevices or niches he could not be sure, but he was certain Vandy could not go much farther. Somehow, Nik got the boy to his feet and half led, half supported him to the rocks. The cloying scents in the air made them both gasp. And once or twice during that journey Nik gagged at a smell alien enough to human nostrils to arouse nausea.

  A creature humped of spine, which moved by hops, broke from hiding almost under Nik's feet and took a soaring leap to the top of one of the blocks. There it slewed around. A tongue issued from a wide, gaping mouth to lash across a patch of fungi-encrusted stone and transfer a burden of harvested vegetation to that lipless stretch of warty skin.

  Nik sighted the shadowy space beneath that hopping thing's perch. A moment later he supported Vandy to the edge of a dark pocket, pausing only to use the blaster to clear its interior. Then they were in a slit passage running on between the blocks. Nik pushed Vandy along that narrow way. It was not a cave. The continued regularity of the walls made him sure that this was the remains of a structure.

  A rattle underfoot drew Nik's attention from the wall to the floor. He had kicked a grayish object. About as long as his forearm, it was formed of a series of rounded knobs linked together until his foot had disturbed them and several had rolled apart. Bones? Remains of what—and how recent the death that had left them there? Was this the lair of one of the killers of Dis?

  Still, the way before them was open, and Nik had the blaster. Now he saw light ahead—further proof that this was a passage rather than a cave. Three or four more strides and he was fronted by an opening well above the surface of the way, a window to look out upon an eerie landscape so dark that even the goggles did not help much in his inspection.

  Ruins—that was surely true. The block piles were regular in pattern. And they extended all along a shelf to his right. On the left was an abrupt drop, and then another, as if he were on the edge of a flight of steps intended for the use of giants.

  No use trying to go on now, stumbling into the ruins. The window opening was well above the surface of the pavement, and if they bedded down immediately beneath it, they would be well protected. Nik was shaking with fatigue, and Vandy had slid out of his hold to lie still, his eyes closed, his panting breath coming in a more even pattern. Vandy was finished for now, and Nik had no strength to carry him. This had to be their refuge. He managed to spread the blankets and roll the boy on them. Then he sat down, his back against the wall, the blaster resting on his knee, wondering how long he could hold out against the sleep his body demanded.

  Seven

  Nik awoke to darkness, a black so thick it was a match for the humid air about him. He was choking, gasping, blinded. For those few seconds, panic held him, and then he remembered where he was. But before he could move, there was an awesome roll of sound, and he thought he could detect an answer of vibration through the stone pavement on which he crouched.

  "Hacon—Hacon!" The appeal was half scream.

  Nik flung out an arm, but Vandy was not there. He pawed at his chest, hunting the goggles that had rested there when he had nodded off into slumber. They too were missing! Vandy and the goggles. Had the boy tried to return to the LB?

  "Hacon!" The call came from not too far away. Nik clawed up to the window facing the ruins. A thunderous roll shook the air and the earth under him. As it dwindled into silence, Nik heard other sounds, a growl, then a high-pitched scream. He clung to the edge of the window and tried to force sight where his eyes stubbornly refused to grant it.

  "Vandy!" He put all his power into that shout. "Vandy!"

  If there was an answer, the third peal of giant thunder swallowed it. A flash of dim radiance around the bowl of the horizon followed, while wind battered the scattered blocks. A storm was coming, and such a storm as was possible only on this nightmare world!

  Nik tried to remember how the stretch beyond had looked when he had worn the goggles. There had been a relatively open space—he was sure of that—before the next ruined structure.

  "Vandy!" Against hope, he bellowed again.

  Then there was a flare, blinding in intensity, that started a column of flame Nik could use as a beacon. Vandy must have fired his blaster at some of the highly combustible native vegetation. With that as his guide, Nik began to run.

  The wind caught at the ragged banners of the flames, tearing them into long, tattered ribbons, which ignited other growth beyond. Vandy—caught in that! A roar that was not thunder, but from some animal, sounded. Nik raced around broken column, a section of wall, and came into an arena where the fire lighted a wild scene.

  Vandy was there, standing on a block of masonry, his back to a pillar or stele. And he held the blaster at ready, though he was not firing at what moved below.

  Nik saw them clearly in the light of the fire, but how could you describe them? Each world having life on its surface had grotesques, things of beauty, things of horror, and how one classified them all depended upon one's own native range of comparison. These had beauty of a sort. Their elongated, furred bodies moved fluidly, wound in and out as if they were engaged in some formal dance. And their heads, with the double fur-fringed ears and the glowing eyes were raised and lowered in a kind of rhythm.

  "Vandy," Nik shouted from instinct alone. "Don't watch them!"

  Weaving patterns were produced by those lustrous fur bodies to draw the eyes and focus the attention. Nik looked above and behind the boy. His own blaster came up, its sights centered on twin pinpricks of light over Vandy's right shoulder. Nik fired. He had dialed the ray to needle beam, but even then he had had to aim high for fear of touching Vandy. That ray must have missed the attacker or attackers leading the sortie from above, but the eye gleams vanished, and the weaving pattern on the pavement ceased abruptly. The heads swung in Nik's direction as they stood still, eyeing him.

  Here in the hollow among the ruins, the wind did not reach, but the fire had already eaten away at the growth and was now dying, so that Nik's sight of the hunters was curtailed. Several of the flankers dropped low, their belly fur brushing the ground as they glided toward him, pausing at once when he looked directly at them. They were not large animals. The biggest in the pack was as long as Nik's arm, but size did not mean too much if they hunted as a unit, and Nik thought that they did.

  He began his circling, moving with his face toward the enemy, hoping to reach the point directly beneath Vandy's present perch. It was apparent that the creatur
es were cautious hunters. Perhaps somehow they had made a quick appraisal of the intruders' weapons in Vandy's use of the blaster.

  Thunder was answered by a wide flash of the semi-invisible lightning. Neither sound nor light appeared to make any impression on the hunters. Nik had reached the edge of the stele; two more short steps would bring him below Vandy.

  "Vandy!" He dared to hail the boy, and oddly enough his voice stopped the forward glide of the flankers and brought their heads up, swinging slightly from side to side as if the human mouthed word was far more disturbing than the approaching fury of the storm. "The goggles—" Nik held up his left hand without daring to see if the boy would obey him. "Give them here!"

  A moment later the strap holding those precious windows into the dark was in his grasp. Then he heard Vandy.

  "I'm covering—"

  With that assurance, Nik dared to put the cin strap about his head and take the chance of looking away from the hunters. He gave a half whistle of relief. To have sight again—that was better than a glimpse or two with the aid of the almost dead fire. His confidence rose.

  "Vandy"—he gave his orders slowly—"I'm going to move out from this block. You slide down behind me and take a grip on my tunic—now!"

  Whatever influence his voice had had in the beginning on the pack was now wearing off. They had made a half circle about him, but so far they had not advanced beyond an invisible line of their own choosing.

  He could not hear the sounds of Vandy's descent, for the thunder rolled deafeningly. A jerk on his tunic told him the boy had followed orders. Nik began to edge sideways, pulling Vandy with him, his body between the hunters and the boy, his blaster ready for the first sign of attack. Why the Disian creatures had not already pulled him down, Nik could not imagine. He reached the end of the block, and the full force of the storm-driven wind struck at him, bringing with it torrential rain.