There was nothing to do now but to go ahead with the game on Vandy's terms and try to win back to the Hacon-leader pattern, which the boy had earlier allowed. Nik gave the cord a twist about his wrist and the slightest of tugs to make sure his guess was right—that Vandy intended to lead him now. The cord held.
"There is only one way to go," Nik remarked. "They must be ahead of us—perhaps waiting all through these burrows. We'll have to go back. The Patrol will come in that way." Nik hastened to pile up arguments that might influence the boy. "They were with me until we were caught in a storm, and I lost touch—"
He stared into the dark. Vandy was watching him—he must be! And Nik's tone of voice and his expression were the only ways he had to influence the other.
There was a small sound, not quite a laugh, but it held a note of derision. Again Nik was disconcerted. Vandy was a boy, a small boy, someone to be led, protected, guided. The Vandy he met here in the dark was far too mature and able.
"So we go back? I thought you said they had traps there?" The amusement in that was not childlike.
Nik kept to the exact truth. "They do—I broke through one. But you have two blasters—"
"No, I used one up."
Was that the truth? Nik swallowed and began again. "There is still one—and the Disians give themselves away."
"How?"
"With the lures." Nik explained about the swinging lights and the aura given off by Disian bodies.
"Then you don't mean the worm things?" For the first time, Vandy sounded less assured and really puzzled.
"Worm things?"
"They light up when you step near their holes. There were a lot of them in one of the passages. That's where I used up the blaster. But I never saw these other things. This is for true?"
Again he was separating the real from the fantasy, and at the risk of losing contact, Nik kept to the truth.
"This is for real—just as your worm things were for real."
"All right. But to go back there—"
"To go on," Nik pointed out patiently, "is maybe to tangle with something even a blaster can't handle, Vandy. And the Patrol are behind." He took a bigger chance. "This is your story, Vandy, but it has to work out to the right end, doesn't it? Give me my goggles—"
The rope suddenly went lax, and Nik knew he had erred.
"No!" Vandy's response was emphatic. "I keep the goggles. I keep this blaster. If you want to come along, all right—but this is my story, and we're going my way."
The cord tightened once again, pulling Nik forward. For the moment he had lost. He accepted that—but only for the moment.
Seventeen
It was one of the most difficult things Nik had ever done to allow Vandy to tow him along through the dark. As he followed the tugs of the cord linking them, he tried to plan, to think of some way of regaining Vandy's cooperation.
"Vandy, are you hungry?" Nik made his first attempt on the level he thought might be easiest.
"I ate—while you slept back there!" Again that oddly adult amusement in the reply.
"Good." Nik felt that he must keep talking, that words could unite them better than the cord. "Vandy, you have the goggles. What do you see now?"
The boy seemed to consider that deserving of an answer.
"Just walls lighted up a little—not as much as back there, though."
"No openings in them?" Nik persisted. The possibility of another ambush was always in his mind.
"No—" Vandy began and then corrected himself as the twitch on the cord became a jerk. "There's a door—up there. And—"
But Nik saw this, too. His eyes, so long accustomed to the dark, made out a faint glow. He stopped short, pulling back on the cord.
"No! Wait!"
"Why? What is it, Hacon?"
To his vast relief, Nik heard the compliance in that query. The pull on the cord loosed. Vandy must have halted.
"I don't know yet. What do you see, Vandy—tell me!" That was an order.
"Shine—but just at one place," the boy reported. "It isn't a lure, I think. More like something big and tall just standing there waiting—" With each word a little of the confidence in his tone ebbed.
Then Nik heard a half whisper closer at hand, as if Vandy were shrinking back to him. "Not a story—"
"No, this is not a story, Vandy." He answered that straight.
"It—it wants us to come—so—so it can get us!" Vandy's whisper was a rapid slur of words.
And Nik felt that, also. Just as he had known earlier that sensation of a lurking watcher, so now he was caught—or struck—for that contact was as tangible in its way as a physical blow. Was it hatred, blind, unreasoning malice—that emotion beating at him? He was not sure of what had reached him like a spear point probing into shrinking flesh. He only knew that they were now fronting some danger quite removed from the animal furred hunters, from the Disians and their clawed hounds. This was greater, stronger, and more to be feared than all three of those native perils combined.
The blaster Vandy carried? The rayer in his own belt? Nik watched that gleam. Now he could see that it was as the boy reported—not a twinkling, dancing lure light but an upright narrow bar, unmoving as yet. Did it merely stand there to bar their way or was it gathering force for attack?
"It's—it's calling—!"
Vandy's body pressed against Nik. Perhaps that contact enabled him to feel it also. His arm went about the boy, holding him tight, while with the other hand he stripped off the second pair of goggles Vandy had hung about his neck. To put those on meant freeing the boy now threshing in Nik's grip, crying out with weird high-pitched sounds, almost as if he were trying to mimic the whistles of the Disians.
"Must—go—" The words in Basic broke through those squeals. "It wants—"
Nik knew that already, the pull, the insistent, growing demand. He swung around, dragging the struggling Vandy with him so that his body was now a barrier for the boy. The goggles—he had to have sight again. He must get them on!
So, he took the chance of freeing his hold on Vandy. Struggling with fingers made awkward by haste, Nik slipped the straps over his head and adjusted the fastening. Vandy pushed against him, striking out madly with small fists to beat Nik out of his path.
Sight again. Nik blinked at that sudden transition and whirled about. Vandy was already well down the passage toward that pillar of cold light. Cold light? Nik wondered. Yet that was true. The cold radiating from that alien thing was eternal—alien as the rest of Dis, in spite of its weird life, was not. The hunters, the Disians, and their hounds were strange to off-world eyes, but this thing of the burrows did not share blood, bones, and flesh with any species remotely akin to life as Nik knew it.
Vandy was running, his head up, his eyes fastened on the thing. And once he reached it—!
The rayer! It might not act against that creature, but wearing goggles as he was, Vandy would be blinded by the ray, momentarily out of action. It was the only answer Nik could think of in those few seconds. He clawed his own goggles down as he fired.
Light flared above and ahead of Vandy as Nik had hoped. The boy cried out and reeled against the wall, his hands to his eyes. That swirling mist of light, strong as fire flames for Nik, must have been scorching for Vandy. Nik hurried forward, caught at the moaning boy, and pulled him back.
The attraction from the thing was shut off as if some knife had snipped a tug cord. They were free! Nik did not halt to put on his own goggles again. The light in the corridor made diamond-bright particles, giving him a start on the backward road. Vandy did not fight him now but lay, a heavy weight, on Nik's shoulder.
Then, it struck at him! Not with the drag to bring him back but with an invisible whip of cold rage so potent that Nik cried out as if a lash had truly been laid across his quivering skin. He had no experience with which to compare this torment, which was not of body at all. A curling thong of sensation first used to punish, then to wrap about him, to pull him in—
He fo
ught that, holding Vandy's dead weight to him, fought the demand to turn, to march back, to deliver himself and the boy into deadly peril. Nik leaned, panting, against the wall. Vandy flung out an arm, his fist striking Nik's face, tangling in the dangling goggles. He was threshing for freedom again but more feebly. A last wriggle brought him out of Nik's weakening grasp—to fall to the pavement.
Nik turned slowly, his teeth set. How much of a charge did that rayer hold? Would it fail him this time? It took infinite effort to bring the weapon up and point it in the general direction of the sparkling mist that still marked his first shot.
Once more that burst of light, bearable, just bearable this time, to his ungoggled eyes. And once again the abrupt cessation of communication freed him. Vandy was on hands and knees, crawling, moaning. Nik caught him by the back of his tunic and pulled him to his feet. He could not carry the boy any farther, but perhaps he could support him along. Nik started them both at the best pace he could muster back toward the terminal chamber.
The second dose of raying must have reactivated some of the remaining sparks from the first, for the light behind them lingered, and Nik did not pause to reset his goggles. He waited for another sign that the thing would pressure them to its will. The blaster—could the blaster stop it more effectively? Vandy had a blaster—but even to stop to find it now might be greater risk than straightforward flight.
They reeled out of the passage into the terminal chamber. Here the glow was only the faintest of glimmers. Nik allowed Vandy to slip to the floor again as he fumbled for the goggles. He was aware of an increasing cold, not in the atmosphere about him but within himself, as if in those two brushes with the alien's will he had been chilled, frozen. He could not still the shaking of his hands.
"Vandy." Nik leaned over the boy. "Come on—" He could not carry him. Vandy would have to help himself in part. Nik's hands brought him to his feet. But the boy's head hung down on his chest, and his body was racked with even greater shudders than shook Nik.
"This way—"
At least he kept on his feet and moving, as Nik steered him toward the passage that would retrace their journey. As they went, Vandy seemed to regain more conscious will, and the farther they moved from that weird battleground, the firmer his steps became. At last he looked up at Nik.
"What was—that?" His voice shook.
"I don't know."
"Will it—come after—us?"
"I don't know."
They were still in the lighted portion of the passage, but beyond was the dark strip in which the Disian ambush had been. Nik fingered the grip of the rayer. He had to save it for extreme emergencies.
"The blaster," he asked Vandy. "Where is it?"
"It's—it's not much use. I tried it after I used the other up on the worm things." Vandy pulled the off-world weapon from the front of his tunic. "It flickers some—"
Flickering, the sign of power exhaustion! They had not known how long the charges would last, and Vandy had exhausted one and nearly finished the other.
"But it still worked then?" Nik persisted.
"Yes."
A few moments of firing power must remain. That would have to be saved for most dire need—which left the rayer, and how close that was to extinction Nik did not know.
They had reached the end of the lighted sector. Ahead was the dark and all it might contain. Nik looked back. Nothing behind, no glimmer of greater light, none of that menacing wave of broadcast fear. Perhaps whatever they had fronted had been bested by the second use of the ray or was confined for some reason to that special territory in the burrows.
"No!" Vandy's sudden cry startled Nik. The boy was staring ahead as if he sighted some trouble.
"What is it?"
"I don't want to go—not back there!"
"We have to!" Nik's patience and control had worn very thin. He wanted to get back to where he had left Leeds. That desire was an ache throughout his shaking body. Somehow that was a small island of security in this threatening underground world.
"I don't want to!" Vandy repeated, his voice rising. "It may be waiting there—to get us!"
"We left it behind," Nik pointed out, though he was dismayed by the tone of certainty in the boy's voice.
"It's—it's all wrong." Vandy spoke more quietly now. "It's not like all the others—the animals, the worms, the men you told me about. This—this can do things they can't!"
Like slide through solid rock walls? Nik forced his imagination under bonds. He could believe that, but allowing the idea to stop them on the mere suggestion that such action was possible was the rankest stupidity. They could not stay here forever, and he held to the thought of the Patrol's pursuit. To see even Commander i'Inad would give Nik a feeling of relief just now.
"We can't stay here, Vandy." Nik schooled his tone to an evenness and once more took firm hold of his patience. "And we know what is along this corridor. You don't—don't feel the thing ahead right now, do you?"
"No—" The admission was reluctant, but it was the one Nik wanted.
Vandy started on slowly, Nik's hand on his shoulder to steady him. The dark swallowed them up. There was the sound of their own heavy breathing, the click of their boot plates on the rock under them, but Nik could hear nothing else. And there was no light ahead.
"Hurry!" His hold on Vandy tightened as he pushed the boy along.
"I can't!" Vandy's protest was half sob. Since their meeting with the thing, he had lost much of his self-assurance. "Hacon—the Patrol is coming?"
"Yes." Nik did not doubt that at all. He wanted to pick up Vandy and run—the feeling of urgency was a goading pain—but he knew he did not have the strength.
Then it came with a jolt—the throbbing whistle—and he could not tell if it broke from ahead or behind them. Nik only knew that the hunt was up, that he and Vandy were the prey.
"Hacon—" That was a gasped whisper.
There was no need to keep the truth from the boy.
"The Disians," Nik said. But had that call been behind or ahead? They could only keep on going. "Watch—for—any—lights—" he told Vandy between panting breaths. "Especially any that move—"
But the way before them remained safely dark. Nik tried to remember how long that dark sector had been. Surely soon they would sight the shrine of the next lighted portion near where the break in the wall gave on the outside.
"Hacon!"
Just as the whistle had been one alert, so this was another, this stroke of fear as sharp as physical pain. Nik paused to look back. No glimmer yet, but he was certain the thing had left its station and was on the prowl behind them.
"Keep going!" he ordered between set teeth. "Keep going!" They must make it back to Leeds.
Vandy, Nik thought, was crying silently now, but he was going on, and they had not yet been trapped in the net of the thing's compelling will. Each glance behind told him the enemy had not yet appeared, not in person, but only in that black blanket of fear, which was one of its weapons.
The whistling began again, not in a single sharp throb but as a low, continuous bleat that filled the ears and became one with the blood of the listener. But, Nik realized, it did not become one with the fear projected by the thing. In fact, it warred with it so that the worst of that other depression lifted. Hunters who were natural enemies—who had not joined forces? Dared he hope that they might clash and so give their prey a fighting chance?
"Hacon, that noise—what's happening now?"
"That's the Disians' call. And I don't think the other thing is pleased—"
"Will they fight?"
"I don't know."
"There's a light—now!"
Vandy was right. There was a light ahead. But a second later Nik was filled with a vast relief. It was the end of the dark sector—not an attack signal. Once in the lighted passage, it was not too far back to Leeds.
"Just the passage light!" Relief made that almost a shout. "Keep going, Vandy, keep going!"
The whistling was loud
er, becoming a din, and under that lurked the fear. It was as if all the life that sulked in these burrows had been stirred into action. Could they, even if they reached Leeds, hold out against such a concentrated attack? But one thing at a time. Leeds knew more of Dis. He might have some answer to such danger. And there was the Patrol. Nik pinned his last hopes on the Patrol.
Vandy was weaving from side to side. Only Nik's grip kept him on his feet, but still he moved to that beacon of light. The pain had returned under Nik's ribs. It was sharp with every breath he drew. They must keep going—they must!
As suddenly as it had burst on their ears, the whistling stopped. Then the silence was worse than the din because Nik was sure it was prelude to action. And yet he did not know whether danger lay ahead or behind. He paused once again to look back and saw—
Lure lights! More than one, not only waving in the middle of the passage, but also from above and the sides, as if the Disian hounds clung to the walls and roof.
Nik and Vandy burst out of the dark and stumbled on. The boy looked back and gave a choked cry. Nik needed no alert against the nightmare boiling up there—the hounds coming at a scuttle.
"Vandy—give me the blaster!"
Nik jerked the weapon away from him. The charge might be almost gone, but perhaps enough remained to take care of the first attack wave. Only he must not use it until he was sure that no other party waited ahead to box them in.
Jointed clawed legs, round armored bodies—five—six—more coming through the dark. No sign of their Disian masters, if that was the relationship between the two so dissimilar species. They were slacking where the full light began. Nik thrust Vandy on with a powerful shove. The boy broke into a tottering run.
Nik was thankful that the creatures were not yet pressing the attack he feared. Then he wondered at that forbearance. Their rate of advance did not press the fugitives—why? He and Vandy were past the break in the wall. Just let them reach Leeds, and they would be able to hold off this pack with the second blaster the captain had.
Norton, Andre - Dipple 02 Page 16
