Chane looked without any emotion as Garcia examined these. He had seen too many men die to be much affected by their remains. Vreya looked tensely on, beside him.
Again, Garcia shook his head. "Two more terrestrial types, but not Ashton or McGoun."
The lock door of the ship yawned wide. It looked dark inside the craft but Dilullo led the way unhesitatingly in.
There was light enough to see the mess. It was a real mess, not just the fact that there were more broken bones in here. The whole interior of the ship was broken up.
Every instrument, every control, seemed to have been shattered or twisted. It was as though a tornado of destruction had raged through the ship, smashing all but its heaviest components.
Chane looked down at the floor where he stood. There was a brown smear there where blood had dried. And there was a print in the smear ... the print of a toeless foot. He remembered very clearly where he had seen such a toeless foot, only the night before.
Vreya looked down too, and shivered.
"So that was it," she said. "The Nanes."
XI
"Go back and get two lasers," Dilullo said sharply to Chane. "And tell Janssen to taxi the skitter-flier here."
He did not need to tell Chane to hurry. Chane went at a fast lope back through the deepening dusk. He glanced this way and that as he ran, half expecting to see a white shape slip from behind one of the mighty trunks, but there was nothing. Chane had had a good many fights on more starworlds than he could remember, but he had never fought anything so frightful and repulsive as the white man-things he had met the night before.
He got two of the smaller portable lasers and gave Janssen Dilullo's message. Then Chane ran back, keeping just as wary an eye as before.
Dilullo took one of the lasers and gave Milner the other. "Stand guard outside the lock," he told Milner. "I want the flier covered at all times when Janssen brings it up."
He swung around. "The rest of you get the bones and wreckage out of the ship, so we can spend the night there. You can use hand-lamps inside, but no lights outside the ship."
They got the lamps and went inside. Dilullo angled his light around and then started picking his way over the debris in the corridor that led forward.
"I'm going to look for the ship's log,"he said. "Garcia, you come with me."
Chane and Bollard, and Janssen, after he had brought the flier up, started clearing up the mess. Vreya found and cleared a gimballed chair that had escaped damage, and sat gloomily watching them.
They got the bones and wreckage out of this main compartment and worked back through a couple of the tiny cabins. In one of them, Janssen uttered an exclamation.
"Hey, look at this."
He picked up a bottle of brandy that had miraculously escaped breaking when the contents of a cabinet had been pulled out. He happily opened it, but Bollard interrupted.
"What? Drinking on the job? Hand over that bottle."
Janssen handed it over. "Aw ..." he began.
"Could be anything in this liquor," said Bollard. "As subleader, it's my responsibility to test it."
He up-ended the bottle and took a mighty drink. "It's okay," he said, wiping his lips. "Have one."
Janssen and Chane each had one, and then they finished clearing the cabin. When Chane went back into the main compartment it was dark, but he could see Vreya sitting with her back to him, looking tensely at the open lock-door.
He slipped noiselessly up behind her and suddenly grabbed her from behind the chair.
Vreya let out a screech and jumped up, and then turned around and spoke with rapidity and fury. In her passion she forgot, and used her own language.
Chane listened in admiration, and when she paused for breath, he said in galacto, "All wasted. I can't speak Arkuun, remember."
"I can give you a translation," she began, but he shook his head. "Don't bother. My sensitive feelings might be hurt."
She told him what he could do about his sensitive feelings, and he went laughing out through the lock to where Milner stood guard in the darkness.
Milner said there was nothing stirring, and Chane went back in to find Dilullo and Garcia coming back from the bridge, their hand-lamps cutting through the gloom.
"What's going on back here?" said Dilullo. "I heard a yell."
"Vreya's a little nervous," said Chane. "You can hardly blame the girl."
Vreya told Chane angrily, "Talk galacto when you're talking about me."
"Might as well," said Dilullo, switching to the lingua-franca. "It'll save repeating to her later. What's that you've got there?"
The latter words were addressed to Janssen, who with Bollard had come from aft.
"Bottle of brandy I salvaged," said Janssen. "I was bringing it to you."
"I'll bet," grunted Dilullo. He took the bottle and offered it to Garcia, who refused, then took a drink from it and set it down on the floor beside him.
"I found the log," he said, and Chane saw that he held a thick book whose plastic cover had been ripped apart and whose leaves were falling out. "It doesn't help us much. This ship got here the first night, they butted it back under the trees for concealment, and next day, Ashton, Raul, Sattargh and McGoun started out in the small skitter-flier they had stored in the hold. Captain and crew were to wait here for them."
"What I figured," said Bollard. "And the Nanes took the crew by surprise and tore them apart."
"Raul would have warned them about the Nanes," Vreya said sharply.
Dilullo nodded. "Probably he did. But if so, they took the warning too lightly. How many of these nasty creatures are there, anyway?"
"Nobody knows, really," said Vreya. "But there are, more here in the north than anywhere else on Arkuu. There's a dead city west of here that was one of the great science centers in the ancient days, and more of the Nanes were created there than anywhere else. They were supposed to be programmed for absolute obedience, but as time went on, slow chemical changes in their bodies apparently destroyed their programming. They broke out."
"And your people just let them go?" said Bollard incredulously. "They didn't even try to hunt down those creepy horrors?"
"Efforts to do so were made," said Vreya. "But the Nanes are utterly elusive in the forest. And by then the city was dying, and few people were left; Arkuu was in decay." She added bitterly, "As it has continued to decay, ever since our worlds were closed."
"Which brings us to the main point," said Dilullo. "You and this chap Raul belong to the Open- World party. You two were chosen to contact Ashton's group because you could speak galacto?"
"That is so," said Vreya.
"Did you and Raul tell Ashton you could lead him to this Free-Faring?"
"No!" said Vreya. "We helped him escape, so he could search for it. We only knew the general area where the legends said it was. It was the man McGoun who said he had a way of finding its exact location."
Dilullo looked at Garcia. "How could McGoun find this thing when even the Arkuuns don't know where it is?"
Garcia explained. "McGoun came to Arkuu a year ago, to trade. Actually, he was trying to find out the secret of the Closed Worlds. He pretended his ship was disabled, and hung around. Finally he contacted an Arkuun who had an old record about the Free-Faring. It "didn't tell where the thing was, but it told a good bit about its principle. The Free-Faring was described as a force that could detach the electro-encephalographic pattern of the mind from the body, and then send the mind—still conscious and observant—anywhere it wished to go, with incredible speed."
"Oh, for God's sake," snorted Bollard, and reached for the brandy bottle.
Garcia said stubbornly, "I know it sounds wild. But McGoun bought that record secretly for a big price, and then brought it to Randall Ashton. Ashton consulted physicists and psychologists. They said the principle, as described in scientific terms, was sound enough."
"That still doesn't explain how McGoun was going to find the thing," Dilullo pointed out.
Garc
ia said, "Raul and Vreya had told us the general area where legend put the thing. Ashton intended to find it by a sort of radio-compass. One sensitive to radiation within the wavelengths described by the old Arkuun record."
Dilullo frowned. "A pretty long chance, to bring Ashton all the way here."
"You know what?" said Bollard. "I don't think much of this Ashton. He tolls four people along with him on a harebrained trip to the Closed Worlds, he leaves one of them dying in Yarr while he goes off to chase alegend,and he leaves a crew of eight men here to get slaughtered while he follows his will-of-the-wisp further."
"We're not being paid to like Ashton, but to find him," Dilullo reminded him.
"And how do we do that?" asked Bollard.
"By doing what he did—detecting the radiation of the Free-Faring and going in that direction. You've got a radiation-detector."
Bollard asked Garcia, "What was the wave-length of this radiation?"
Garcia looked guilty. "Idon'tknow. I'm sorry, but that stuff is out of my field. Sattargh set up the instrument. I remember he said this described radiation was a little shorter in wavelength than even gamma rays."
Bollard grunted. "That's a fine precise scientific datum to work on."
"Can't you broaden the sensitivity-band of our detector downward?" demanded Dilullo.
"I can try. But I sure can't do it right now. I'm blown."
Dilullo stood up, stretching wearily. "We all are. This has been a day. Janssen, you relieve Milner for the second watch."
Chane awoke in the middle of the night, where he slept on the floor of the main compartment. It was quite dark, but he could hear breathing and a careful movement.
Then he smiled. They had given Vreya one of the small cabins, but she had come out and was lying down beside him. He couldn't blame her for being scared in there alone.
Next morning, Bollard tinkered for hours with the detector in the control-panel. There was nothing for the others to do but wait. Milner said loudly that this was the devil of a place and he would be glad to get away from it. The others did not bother answering. They sat, with the lasers across their knees, and watched the trees.
Finally Bollard said, "It's hooked up again."
Dilullo went to sit in the pilot's seat beside him, and the others peered over his shoulders. Chane saw the smooth bright lines flowing steadily across the graduated detector-grid.
They waited while Bollard used the sensor-control to rotate the little sensor outside the flier hull, for a full circle around the landscape.
The bright lines remained level and untroubled.
"Nothing," said Bollard.
"If the radiation source is beyond those mountains, we couldn't get it down here. We'll have to go up high."
Bollard nodded. "I was afraid you'd say that. Still, I'd as lief take a chance with Helmer's fliers as with the creepy critters in this forest."
Janssen took the pilot-chair. There was no way they could first scan the sky, for the towering trees all around the clearing barred off the view except directly overhead. They would just have to run their chances.
Janssen taxied the flier out into the clearing. Then he took them up out of the forest on the VTO drive. With strained eyes and with the questing radar they scanned the sky, but saw no fliers.
They went higher, until they were well above the altitude of even the highest mountains. Then, as they circled, Bollard tried his detector again. It showed no response.
"Ah, I told you this was too vague," he muttered, as he started rotating the sensor. "Probably Ashton himself found that out, and ..."
He was suddenly silent. Chane, looking over his shoulder, saw that the flowing level lines of light were level no longer. They had flung themselves upward in a sharp loop, quivering wildly, as though they strained toward a mighty heartbeat far away.
"By Heaven. I think we've got it!" said Dilullo.
"We've got something else," said Milner. "We've got company. Lots of company."
And he pointed back through the window, at the fliers coming after them fast.
XII
Chane looked back at the light Arkuun fliers coming after them. There were five of them.
"Helmer's radar may not be as good as ours, but it seems to work," he said.
"Crack on speed, Janssen," said Dilullo. "The direction the sensor was pointing—ten o'clock."
The flier leaped forward. They began to draw away from the pursuers.
Chane looked at Dilulto. "You know, if this is the way to Ashton and the others, that means we're leading Helmer right to them."
"What else are we going to do?" demanded Dilullo. "We can make deceptive maneuvers all over the sky but their radar will find us. Landing and hiding again will get us nowhere. We might as well go on and see if this is the way to Ashton, and worry about the rest later."
Dilullo spoke for the benefit of all of them, and there were no dissenters. Chane laughed, and almost said, You're beginning to think like a Starwolf! but he didn't say it.
The mountains came toward them rapidly. High as the • flier was, it was not too high above the summits. There was no vegetation at all on the higher slopes, just stone and scree. Under the topaz sun the ranges looked infinitely inhospitable, and the deep valleys between them that were filled with forest were not much more inviting.
The flier bucked and kicked as Janssen fought tremendous drafts. He went higher and things quieted down a bit as they rushed on over the rumpled, tumbled landscape.
The fliers pursuing them were falling behind; the skitter-flier had more speed, though not too much more. That Helmer would follow them as long as he had them on his radar, Chane had not the slightest doubt.
The mountains got worse instead of better as they went on. Chane thought that they made the harsh ranges of Varna look small. Varna was a heavy planet and its gravity held down the effects of diastrophism. But here, long ago, the processes of mountain-building had functioned on a gigantic scale.
What was worse, these ranges did not run in nice parallel lines, but were jumbled helter-skelter, crisscross, every which way. It looked as though this part of Arkuu had been the playground of colossal children and that they had left the place pretty messed up.
"I can see why something could be hidden up here for a long time," said Chane.
Vreya nodded. "Even the Nanes do not come into these mountains."
The pursuers had dropped back out of sight and they were over what seemed the worst of the mountain-jumble, when
Bollard spoke sharply.
"John, take a look at this grid. I don't like it."
Chane could see that the loops on the radiation-detector were now practically throwing themselves off the grid, twitching wildly.
"We don't know what's ahead but whatever it is we're getting bloody close to it—and it's almighty strong."
Dilullo nodded. "Sheer off a bit, Janssen. Thirty degrees."
The flier banked off in a curve. Bollard kept watching the detector. Presently the loops began to diminish in size. He rotated the sensor unit. When it pointed off northwestward instead of north, the loops came on strong again.
"Ah-huh," said Dilullo. "We'll make a wide curve around till we get a closer fix on this thing."
Janssen kept the flier swinging in a wide curve. Bollard kept changing the angle of the detector-sensor. Finally, when they had made a circle of a score of miles across, Bollard pointed.
"Somewhere over in that region," he said, pointing toward a lofty, dark mountain shaped like a flattened cone. "I can't pinpoint it more than that."
"All right, we'll edge over in that direction and see what the scope tells us," Dilullo said.
"I don't think," said Chane, "that we're going to have much time for fancy reconnoitering."
He pointed southward, where five gleaming fliers were coming over the mountains toward them.
Dilullo muttered an oath. But Chane admired the way he then went cold and calculating. Dilullo looked again at the fliers, estimating di
stance, and then he went to the scope and swung it, peering toward the conical mountain.
Janssen glanced uneasily back at him. "I can't maneuver out of this one, John—not against five fliers."
"Head fast for the base of that mountain," said Dilullo. "The whole area around there is covered with rocks and talus. Helmer's fliers can't land near there but you can put us down with the VTO."
"Your faith in my ability is touching, but it's going to kill us all one of these days," said Janssen. "All right."
He sent the flier into a long oblique rush. The Arkuun fliers were coming up fast now. Apparently the range was too long for their missiles as yet, but Chane felt that they were going to be in range awfully soon.
Janssen slowed their rush and then went into the vertical descent. The conical mountain now loomed up over them like a thundercloud and the drafts around it made the flier kick and shudder as it went down. Below, Chane saw a mass of detritus studded with huge boulders, with only a few possible landing-places. He hoped that Janssen was as good as Dilullo thought he was.
He was that good. He touched them down beside a towering boulder, on a flat area of bare rock no bigger than a house.
"Outside fast, and take the lasers and the emergency packs," said Dilullo. "They'll be over us in a minute!"
They grabbed the weapons and the packs and tumbled out of the flier. There was a screaming in the sky as the Mercs ran like the devil. Dilullo was leading them toward an even bigger boulder a hundred yards away.
"We could have stayed behind the first boulder and had as much cover!" panted Bollard, who hated running.
"I want to draw their fire away from the flier," Dilullo answered shortly. "We're going to need it."
Chane, running easily, took Vreya's arm to help her along. She shook herself loose, angrily.
"I don't need help!"
"No more you do," said Chane, admiring her flashing golden legs.
Then they dived behind the bigger boulder, just as the missiles began going off around them. "Rock-dust and chips of stone blew into their faces, and the explosions seemed deafening.
Starwolf (Omnibus) Page 21
