As for his own path, he turned left and dodged in and out among rocks, keeping to the best cover he could and heading for the point he must pass. The supply pouch bumped his hip as he ran, and he had the blaster weighing down the carry hooks. By chance alone, he was coming out of this better than he had dared hope.
It was heavy going over the rain-sodden sea bottom. Pools from the drain streams linked here and there into lakes before they drained a second time to the lower level and the waiting "sea" there. Nik had to watch his footing to avoid both water and slick mud and stone. Once or twice a wind gust blew the drizzle so strongly against him that he experienced again the sensation of drowning in water-filled air.
Whether he could be marked by anyone now on the reef, Nik did not know. He went on with a curious tingling between his shoulder blades as if he expected to feel the ray of a blaster beam there. It seemed almost impossible that he would be able to get away without challenge. But he was certain it would not be without pursuit. Nik kept on doggedly, never once looking back, with the odd feeling that his refusal to look for danger in that direction gave him some form of protection.
The heat was rising as the rain slackened, following the pattern of the earlier storm when he and Vandy had seen the mists of steam curling from the ground. Now he smelled an unpleasant odor and moments later came out upon the edge of a great gouge extending from the shore straight across his track. Lightning had struck here and brought about a collapse of the first level of sea bottom. Between Nik and the road he must take to find the island hill was a slash of still-sliding earth and rock.
He went along its verge back to the cliff face, but there was no way to span it here. The rock was too sheer and slippery. Down the center of the gouge splashed a stream, which constantly ate at the stuff of its walls, bringing down more earth slips. He would have to follow it back to the second seaward shelf if he were to cross at all.
That was a nightmare journey, the worst Nik had attempted since he had climbed from the tunnel cut with the unconscious Vandy. Now he had only himself to worry about, but the loosened ground was as treacherous as a whirlpool, and every step started fresh movement.
Nik threw caution aside at last, determined that the only way was to choose his path and then go it with all the speed he could muster to keep ahead of a slide. The debris of the cut carried well out into the second level, and in the basin there the water collected, backing up to keep this disturbed earth fluid and shifting.
He took a deep breath and jumped from ground already moving under his boots to land on a relatively clear space, plunging into slimy soil halfway to his elbows, for he landed on hands and knees. Then he struggled up, rolled down to the verge of the lake, and splashed on with all the energy he could summon for a quick and powerful effort. There was no use trying to breast the other side of the cut. He had been unusually lucky in getting down, but to climb a constantly shifting surface was out of the question.
Nik dodged as a good section of wall gave way, thickening the stream water and sending up spray to fog his goggles. He clawed his way along in what he believed were the shallows, having to depend upon chance and unsure footing. Once he fell as a stone turned under his weight, but luckily the force of the stream was already slackening, and he was able to flounder out before he was carried into the depths of the lake.
Silvery streaks under the surface of the water converged on something floating not too far away. The surface roiled as those streaks fought and lashed. Where the fish had gathered from, Nik did not know, but their ferocious attack on the body of a dead furred hunter sent him splashing in turn as far and as fast from the dangerous proximity of the feast as he could get.
Rounding a point of the slide, he saw that the smaller pool into which the gash fed its water here joined the lake that had existed earlier, a lake that might, in years or centuries to come, form the sea the flare had steamed from Dis. To swim that, after seeing the carnivorous fish, was impossible. He would have to take the equally dangerous path along under the level rise, where there could be other slips to engulf the luckless.
The rain had almost ceased. The steam grew into a mist, which even the cin-goggles could not penetrate. Nik tightened the strap of the ration pouch and waded on. He had the cliff edge for his guide—and that he could not lose. Eventually, it was going to bring him back to the island hill.
With the waters ankle-high about his fungi-furred boots, he trudged along, wondering if he would ever feel dry again. The fresh dehumidified air of the refuge seemed a dream now. This had been going on for always—lifting a foot, setting it down into oozing sludge, trying to breathe through a water haze—this had been forever and ever, and to it there would be no end.
Fourteen
The steam cloaked but did not completely hide the island hill. It was now more truly island than hill, for the lake water had risen to lap about its base. Nik gazed eagerly up at the ledge where he had left Leeds and Vandy. He could see nothing there—they must be lying flat.
Water arose about him as he sloshed to the hill. He moved slowly, worn out by the hours-long push he had made from the reef, suspicious of the footing here. There were signs of the fury of the storm other than just the water. The body of a Disian had been washed between two rocks and floated there face down, rising and falling with the movements of the lake.
A Disian!
Nik splashed on, trying to move faster. If the natives had attacked! He crawled up the slope.
"Leeds! Vandy!" There was no answer to his call.
He had never thought of their not being there, never faced the possibility of coming back to an empty camp. Where had they gone? And why? Had Leeds tried to follow him? But as the captain had pointed out, he could not have made that journey and taken Vandy, too, and certainly the boy could not walk.
"Leeds!" The name came out as a harsh croak as Nik made it over the edge of the ledge.
And the ledge was bare. Bare!
Nik huddled there, too numbed by that discovery to try to think. The storm—! On this exposed position, the storm must have broken with blasting force. Had those two been swept away by wind and water or had the captain somehow made an escape? With that very faint hope moving him, Nik sat back on his heels to look to the next rise of land. The shore cliffs were the only possibility, near enough so that with a determined effort Leeds might have reached them. But what chance had they offered for a semiconscious boy and a man with an injured leg? No, both must have been swept away.
Only stubborn clinging to unrealistic hope made Nik start for the cliffs. There had been plenty of warning about the impending storm, and Leeds knew Dis far better than Nik. The captain must have done something! If the cliffs were the only answer, then Leeds had tried the cliffs.
A flock of the leather-winged creatures wheeled over the rocks and screamed as they landed to shamble up and down, eyeing Nik. He gathered they were out to clean up the storm debris. Moving abruptly, Nik was answered by their taking off again with even louder screeches. There were several flocks of them along the cliffs ahead, and some were luckier in their finds, for they settled down to feed.
Had the rugged coast been pounded by the sea that had once filled that basin, Nik could not have made the journey, but the rain lake was waveless, unless purposely disturbed, and shallow, save for a deeper pool now and then. He still walked with caution, but he was trying to move faster.
A glint of light—to his right—from the face of the cliff! Nik waded to that spot. A mass of fungoid brush had been driven into a rock cul-de-sac, and it was from that the wink came. He tore aside the slimy stuff to be faced by a weak torch beam. Perhaps the battering of the storm had affected the charge, for this was only a wan echo of the usual light, but there was no denying that the rod had been carefully wedged into a crevice to provide a guide.
They had reached here alive and with confidence enough to leave a sign for anyone following! Nik had not known how greatly he doubted their safety until relief flooded in to lighten his fear.
And the torch would not have been so carefully set without purpose. He began to search the wall for some other clue, tearing away the matted flotsam with both hands. The last mass of that came free like a released plug, and he was looking into the dark mouth of a cave.
But why—why would Leeds take to such a hole? With the water rising outside, a break in the cliff could be a trap, but Nik was sure this was the road.
He had to stoop to get in, and the torch he had freed from the crevice was very feeble. The light was still strong enough to disclose that this was not a cave, or if it were, the dimensions extended well back into the rock wall.
"Leeds!" he shouted. The name echoed with a hollow, intimidating sound, but there was no other reply.
However, there was another trace of those who had passed this way before him, the shining growing prints of feet that had tracked in crushed plant stuff to the dried floor of the cave. Two sets of those tracks, neither running straight. So Vandy had been on his feet and walking when they entered here! Nik wondered at that minor miracle.
The footprints vanished as their burden of growing slime was shed little by little. But there was only one way they could have gone—straight ahead where the walls closed in to form a passage.
An upslope to the flooring formed a vent in the cliff, angling toward the surface of the shore above. Nik wondered at Leeds' luck in finding it—the perfect bolt hole out of the storm. But with his injured leg, how had the captain made this climb? There were places that were an effort for Nik. He stopped at each and called, certain each time he would be answered—only he never was.
He emerged suddenly into a space he sensed was large but the walls of which he could not see. And standing there, Nik was puzzled. Which way now? To find a wall and work his way around, he decided, was the best answer. The feeble glow of the torch showed him the wall to the right, and he began the journey.
Nik was several feet along before the nature of the wall itself attracted him. This was not rough stone, as were the walls of the cave passage, but smoothly finished with the same coating given to the chambers of the refuge. Here within the sea cliff was another hollowing of the Disians. Another refuge?
There was no cool current of air, just the general dankness of the outside atmosphere, but perhaps not as heavily humid as on the surface. Whatever the purpose of this room, he came across no fixtures, none of the pallid light that had been in the refuge—or had that been added by the Guild?
The size of the chamber was awe-inspiring. Nik was still walking along one wall, the expanse on his left echoing emptily to the sound of his boots on stone. Was this a gallery running within the length of the cliff?
Nik was shivering a little in spite of the humidity. This place did not welcome his kind. For whatever purpose it had been fashioned, those hollowing it had been aliens, and he was not at home here—no off-worlder would be.
"Leeds!" Once more he paused and called. This time the echo came back from all sides until it rang in his head almost as that throbbing whistle had done.
But there had been an answer! A cry that was not a real word but that echoed in turn, so that he was certain he had heard it, if not what it was.
"Vandy!" Nik faced outward into that unknown space to his left and put the full force of his lungs into that shout.
This time no answer came. He tried to think where the earlier sound had come from, but the echoes made that impossible. To strike out from the wall was dangerous. He could only keep on exploring with that as his guide. But there was a need for hurry, and Nik began to trot.
A few moments brought him to a corner and the angle of another wall to follow. This was broken by slits, which had been filled in, perhaps at a later time, with rough stones wedged and mortared together. Windows walled up? Exits closed against some peril?
His torch caught and held in one that was a dark gap, not sealed. Nik hesitated. A way out—or the way out?
He listened. Now that the faint echo of his own footfalls had died, was there anything to hear? Just as he had been alerted to the Disian ambush by those lights, so now he was uneasy because of the very silence about him. His imagination pictured only to readily something lurking there—waiting. For what? For Nik Kolherne to come within attacking distance?
The dim torch flashed within the wall cavity, giving him nothing save the assurance that it was more than a niche, an entrance to either a passage or another room. He could not stay here forever—he must either take that door or continue his wall-hugging advance. And something he could not define urged him into the passage. After all, he could always return—
There was an oppression here that he connected with the humid air but that carried with it a dampening to more than just the physical senses—an oppression of spirits as well as of body. Why had he suddenly thought of it that way? Men—or at least intelligent entities—had made this place for a purpose, the desperate purpose of a refuge? Or had this existed before the time when the Disians had foreseen their world's end and tried to last out catastrophe and chaos?
Nik went one step at a time, pausing to listen for that odd cry, for sounds of movement that might mean he was being stalked. His imagination could provide more than one answer, but still he crept on.
This was not another room but a lengthening passage, so narrow his shoulders brushed the walls. Nik began to count the paces, ten, twelve—Now the outline of another door was visible.
More than an outline, there was light ahead—the outer day? But Nik came out into another chamber where the alien quality of his surroundings reached a peak.
Reptilian life! He almost drew his blaster—until he saw that those rounded lengths were not legless bodies but roots—or branches—of plants. They stretched across the floor, tangled and intertwined, but they all reached for a crack in the middle through which flowed a stream of water. The roots were outsize, the plants they nourished relatively small, forming a line of white fleshy growths along the walls. And from them arose a musty odor, adding to the heaviness of the air.
"Welcome back!"
Nik started. He had been so intent upon that loathsome growth that he had not seen the man within the arch of roots until Leeds spoke.
"How—" Nik stepped over a hump of root, somehow shrinking from any contact with the growth. "Vandy?" he demanded before he completed his first question.
"All right. You're alone? You didn't get the rations?"
Leeds' eyes were deep in his head; his face was fined down until the bony ridges of cheekbones and chin were too clearly defined. He did not move as Nik came up.
Leeds' eyes—his goggles were gone! The light from the unearthly plants must give him a measure of sight, but what had happened to his cins? Nik bestrode another root tangle and was at Leeds' side.
The captain's injured leg was stretched stiffly out, tightly bound to a length of thick plant stem, the end of which protruded beyond his boot sole and was splintered and worn.
"I take it the storm's over," he said wearily.
"Yes." Nik looked for Vandy, but the boy was nowhere in sight.
He shifted the strap of the ration bag from his shoulder and dumped the pouch beside Leeds. "Here're the rations. Where's Vandy?"
Leeds grimaced. "An answer I wish I could give you—"
Nik stooped to catch the other's shoulder. "What do you mean?"
"Just that. No, you fool, I didn't leave him behind or knock him out or do any of those things you're thinking! Why should I? He's our only pass out of here. That's why you have to find him."
"Find him! But what happened?"
"I had a packet of Sustain tablets." Leeds' voice was very tired. "Thought about them later and gave them to him—they brought him around all right. Then, we saw the storm coming and knew we had to move. He didn't want to go—had a tussle with him—but without goggles he didn't want to stay alone either. We went along the cliffs and found this hole. But it was a long trip in this far with my leg bad. By the time we reached here, I was pretty tired. The
n the boy took over."
"Took over—how?"
Leeds' mirthless grin was a wider stretch of tight skin and thin lips. "By knocking me out, taking the goggles, and going on his own. There's no way of telling how long he's had to set distance between us. But he's gone—somewhere. And you're the only one who can track him—unless you did bring the Patrol. And that wouldn't be good for us under the circumstances. He has both blasters, too—at least mine's gone!"
"But why—" Part of this Nik thought he could understand—the taking of Leeds' goggles, yes. To be eternally in the dark on this hostile world would have led an older man to make such an attempt much sooner, but to strike out alone—Vandy, though, had once before played just such a trick on him back in the ruined city.
"He's conditioned," Leeds said flatly. "He'd stay with you but not with me. I thought he would be easy to handle—as soon as he got energy enough, he made a run for it. And I needn't remind you, Kolherne, that if the Patrol does catch up with us and he isn't here—This bag—did you go all the way to the refuge?"
"No, they found me. I was with them coming here when the storm hit." Nik remembered Commander i'Inad. Yes, Leeds was entirely right. If the Patrol caught up with them now and Vandy was missing, they would suffer for it. There was no evidence that they ever had the boy at all. They had to find Vandy with the cins and maybe two blasters, urged by his conditioning to put as much distance between Leeds and himself as he could—where would he go?
"You were here when he jumped you?" he demanded.
"Yes. A good thing for me. These plant things give off some light. If he'd left me in the dark with this leg—"
"And you don't know how long ago?"
"All I know is that I sat down to ease my leg. The next thing I remember, I was lying on my back with a big ache behind my eyes. And I'm not even sure how long ago that was."
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