by Andre Norton
A moment or two later, at the very edge of the clearing Ross had made during his search, Travis saw something else. There was another tree trunk lying there, the remains of a true forest giant. And it had not been brought down by the landing of the ship, but had lain there long enough for soil and fallen leaves to build up about it, to grow a skin or red-capped moss or fungi.
Across that moss there were now two dark marks, ragged scars, suggesting that someone or something had clawed for a desperate hold against irresistible force. Ashe? But how had he been captured without Ross’s seeing or hearing his struggles?
Travis vaulted the tree trunk. There was his confirmation— another footprint deep in the mold. But beyond it-nothing—absolutely nothingl And no living creature could have continued along that stretch of soft earth without leaving a trace. From this point it did appear that Ashe had vanished into thin air.
Airl Not on the ground but above it was where they would have to search. Travis called to Ross. There were tall trees about them now, trees with twenty feet or more of smooth bole before their first fem branches broke from the trunks. The wind rustled there, but they could sight no movement that was not normal, hear no sounds aloft.
Then one of the blue flyers came along, hovering over Travis, watching him with all four of its stalked eyes. The flyers—had they taken Ashe? He couldn’t believe that. A man of Ashe’s weight and strength, undoubtedly struggling hard into the bargain—at least the scrapping on the moss suggested that—could not have been airborne unless by a large flock of the blue creatures working together. But the Apache believed as completely as if he had witnessed it, that Ashe had been taken away either through the air or along a road of treetops.
“How did they get him up?” Ross puzzled. He appeared willing to accept Travis’ idea, but the Apache, in turn, was forced to agree such a maneuver would be difficult. “And getting up,” the time agent continued, “where in the world did they take him?”
“This lies in the opposite direction from the three nearest buildings,” Travis pointed out. “To transport a prisoner might force them to travel in a direct line to their own quarters-speed would matter more than concealment.”
“Which means a direct strike out into, the jungle.” Ross eyed the wilderness of trees, vines and brush with disfavor. “Well, there’s one little trick—let me have your belt. This was something they showed us in basic training—good old basic.” He took Travis’ belt, made it fast to his own, increasing its expansion to the last hole before he measured it about the tree. But the girth of the bole was too great. Ross untied his cord connection with the ship, slashed off a length to incorporate in the circle of belts. This time it served, uniting him to the bole. With the belt to support him, he hitched up the trunk which overhung the signs of struggle.
The fronds shook as he forced his way between them. “Here’s your clue,” he called down. “There’s been a rope strung about this limb—worn a groove in the bark. And— Well, well, well—they’re not so bright, after all—or they don’t think we are. Here’s a way to travel, all right—and by the upper reaches. Come up and see!”
A line made of cord and belts slapped down the trunk and Travis caught at it, making the climb with less agility than Ross had shown, to join the other at his perch among the fronds. He found the agent folding up between his hands another rope, but a supple green one which aped the vines native to this aeriel place.
“You do a Tarzan act.” Ross flipped the rope end for emphasis. “Swing over to that tree, probably find another rope end there—and so on. I still don’t see how they boosted Ashe along. Though”—his eyes narrowed—"maybe they waited to go until I went back to the ship for you.”
Travis eyed the rope. “Leaving that here means one thing—”
“That they intend to return?” Ross nodded. “They may have some bright plans about scooping us up one by one. But who are ‘they’? Not those blue flyers….”
“Those might act as their hounds.” Travis tried not to glance at the ground, for his present perch inspired little confidence in him.
“And that fruit present was bait for a trap,” Ross agreed. “It fits. The fruit to get us out of the ship, the flyers to report when we came. Then—pounce!—one of us is snaffled! Only Ashe isn’t going to stay a prisoner.”
“This could be a trap, too,” Travis reminded him as he gave the rope a jerk and discovered Ross had been right, the line was very firmly attached to its tree anchorage.
“True enough. But we’ll find some way.”
“At night?” The sun was close to setting. Travis wanted to be on the trail just as much as Ross, but common sense would pay off better than a reckless dash to the rescue.
“Night—” Ross squinted at the patches of sunlight. “These things move around in the daytime. And they’re used to heights.”
“Which suggests there may be good reasons for not traveling on the ground or in the dark.” Travis was growing a little tired of talking. “Our friend in the red house may be one of those reasons. What is your solution?”
“We go back to the domed place—up to the top. There is a balcony around the dome itself, and we can take our bearings from there.”
Travis could agree with that. But they had to argue down the protests of Renfry. The technician’s demands to accompany them Ross was able to overcome by pointing out crisply that alone of their party Renfry possessed the knowledge, or fraction of knowledge, which might mean their eventual control of the ship, and so of their future. And the need for a scouting party before dark urged the necessity for speed in their try to locate landmarks which might guide them on a hunt for Ashe.
They threaded the path they had cut that morning. Travis glanced now and then-at the sky when they crossed small glades. He had half expected to find the blue flyers on the lookout. But none appeared.
Ross took the inner ramp under the dome at a rapid trot. His pace, however, slowed as they wound their way up past five levels, then six, seven, eight, nine and finally ten. There was no sound in the building, nothing to break the echoing emptiness of the fantastically beautiful shell.
They reached the balcony, a narrow walk curving completely around the bulk of the dome, protected by a breast-high parapet of the carved lace. The wind, now rising in intensity, pulled at their hair, sang weirdly through the openwork. Ross took the lead. He hurried to the vantage point from which they could obtain an unrestricted view in the direction they thought Ashe’s captors had headed.
There were other buildings, or the remains of buildings, rising out of the jungle. Some of them were smaller than the dome, three or four—at a greater distance—taller. And the taller ones had a certain similarity of oudine which suggested that they must have had a common architectural origin.
It was one of those which Ross indicated now. “If they were headed for the nearest building across the treetops—that must be it.” He sighted along his pointed finger as he might have along a rifle barrel.
Travis was listing all possible landmarks—though from ground level perhaps three-quarters of them would not be of much use. “To the right of that funnel-shaped capping, and the left of the pile of blocks. It may be several miles from here.”
To cut a trail along the ground was possible—using their blasters. But such action would certainly advertise their coming. If they wanted to located/the enemy—always providing, of course, that the enemy was roosting in the structure Ross had just chosen—the process must entail a longer and more complicated bit of trail craft. And such a scout could not be made at night.
“There’s one way of checking,” Ross said, as if he were thinking aloud. “If we stay here until dark, we’d know.”
“How?”
“Lights. If we see any fights out there—they would be proof.”
“Slim chance. They’d be fools to use lights.”
“Could be trap-setting again,” Ross demurred. “More bait to pull us in.”
“That’s just guessing. How can we tell w
hat makes their minds tick? We don’t even know what they are. You didn’t like the type who first wore this uniform.” Travis plucked at the blue fabric crossing his chest. “If this was their home planet, wouldn’t they be able to play games with us the way they did with you—by mental control?”
“Look out there!” Ross’s sweep of hand included half the landscape, the sea of untroubled jungle, the buildings rising in isolated islands out of it. - “Whatever they had— it’s dead now—long dead. And maybe they’re dead, too—or back at the primitive stage. If they’re primitives, Ashe can handle them to a point; he’s been taught to do just that. I’ve seen him in action. Give me an hour up here past sundown. Then if we see no lights—I’ll go….”
Travis drew his blaster. Dark, or even heavy dusk, here might unleash things to lurk in the shadows along their trail. But he could understand Ross’s point, and they had a well-marked path to the ship.
“All right.”
They walked slowly around the dome waiting for the murk of evening to gather. And so they counted at least fifty more buildings, fantastic, unlike, some even appearing to defy the laws of gravity. Beyond them were those others, tall, thin, of a common mold. Were those the native structures and these others embassies, examples of trans-galactic architecture as Ashe had suggested? If not all of them were stripped, what a wealth of knowledge lay-Travis was jerked out of speculation by a cry from Ross. There was still a reflection of sunlight in the sky at their backs. But—Murdock’s hunch had paid off. A wink of light flashed across the green from the first of the distant tall towers. Flashed on—off—on.
Was it meant to be an enticing signal?
14
They held a council of war in the ship, the outer hatch closed against the night, that simple precaution taught them by the desert world.
“It’ll be difficult to go straight through the tangle in that direction,” Renfry observed. “They’d be waiting for you to try it.”
“Sometimes the fastest way is around, not straight,” Ross agreed. He had a map drawn on a sheet of material from the aliens’ stores, the crosses and squares on it marking the various buildings they had sighted. “See here—they bunch, those tall towers. But here, and here, and here, are other buildings. Suppose we head for this one which looks like an outsized oil can, then beyond that there’s the pile of blocks. The one we want is between them. So—move to the funnel top, then start beyond to the block pile—and cut back. If we can make them believe we’re just searching everything in that direction, it’ll buy us time. Reach a point about here”—his forefinger dug into the surface of the improvised map— “and then do a right-about-face and go at top speed.” He looked up challengingly. “Anybody got a better idea?”
Renfry shrugged. “This is your party, you’ve had the training for this type of thing. But I’ll go along.”
“And let some joker take the ship behind our backs?” Ross wanted to know. “They’ve a line on us—they must have or they wouldn’t have scooped up the chief so neatly. He’s no recruit at this type of fun and games, remember. I’ve seen him in action.”
“Through the treetops,” Travis mused. “If that’s their regular mode of travel, then maybe we have another point in our favor. Once we’re really into the jungle, there’s a lot of cover which will give us protection. They can’t watch us from above all the time.”
“You’re both set on this then?” Renfry still studied the map.
Ross stood up. “I don’t propose to let them nobble the chief and get away with it. And the quicker we are on the move—the better!”
But even Ross had to admit that they must wait until dawn to put their plan to the test. They rummaged the ship for supplies and assembled a small pack apiece. Each wore a belt supporting alien blasters. In addition a coil of the supple cord-rope was wound from shoulder to hip about their bodies, and they had retained the flint knives from their hunter disguise. Brittle though the flint might be, the finely chipped blades could still serve a deadly purpose in close combat. They slung packsacks with food and the froth containers:
Renfry disputed his staying with the ship. But he was forced to admit that there was not way to lock the port behind them and so a guard must remain. However, he insisted upon triggering the armament of the spacer. So when they descended the ladder to the ground in the first dull rose of the early morning, the black mouths of those sinister tubes were thrust from the shell of the globe.
They took turns cutting a path. And, where they could, they pushed through the underbrush, saving the power of the blasters. It was Travis who led when they thrust completely through a fern wall into a green tunnel.
The ground here had been worn into a shallow trough and beaten hard. Travis needed only one look to know that slot for what it was—a game trail, leading either to water or to some favorite grazing ground. It had been well traveled, and for some length of time.
There were tracks here, pads with the pinprick indentations of claws well beyond them, a clover hoof with so deep a cleavage that the hoof must be almost split in two, and some smaller tracings too alien to be identified.
“This goes in the right direction. Do we follow it?” Travis was in two minds about such an action, himself. On one hand they could greatly increase their speed and speed might be important. But a well-used game trail not only provided a road for animals—it was as well a lure for those creatures that preyed upon such travelers.
Ross moved out on the narrow path. It had twists and turns, but the way did run in the direction of the funnel top which was their first goal.
“We do,” he decided.
Travis dropped into a loose trot which fitted his feet into the slot of the track. He caught small sounds in the vegetation about them—twitters, squeaks, sometimes a harsh, croaking call. But he saw nothing of the creatures that voiced them.
The trail took a dip into a shallow ravine. At the bottom a stream trickled lazily over brown-green gravel and above them the sky was open. There they disturbed a fisher.
Travis’ hand went to the grip of his blaster, dropped away again. Like the blue flyers, this strange inhabitant of the unknown world gave no impression of hostility. The beast was about the size of a wild cat, and somewhat similar to a cat in appearance. At least, it possessed a round Jiead with eyes set slighdy aslant. But the ears very very long and sharply pointed with heavy tufts of—feathers at their tips. Feathersl The blue flyer had been furred, provided with insect wings. The fisher, plainly a ground dweller, was fluffily clothed in soft feathers of the same blue-green shade as the foliage about. Had it not been crouched on the rock in the open, it would have passed unseen.
Its haunches and hind legs were heavy and it squatted back upon them. Two pairs of far more slender and longer front limbs held a limp, scaled thing which it had been methodically denuding of a series of fringe legs by the aid of teeth and claws. Interrupted, the animal watched Travis with round-eyed interest, displaying neither alarm nor anger at his sudden appearance.
As the Terran edged forward, the creature freed one front leg, still clasping its prey in the other three, and flicked a fringe leg or two from its feather-clad paunch in absent-minded tidiness. Then folding its breakfast to its middle with the intermediary pair of arms or forepaws, it leaped spectacularly from a sitting position, to be hidden in the brush.
“Rabbit—cat—owl—whatsis,” Ross commented. “Wasn’t afraid though.”
“Means that it either hasn’t any enemies—or none resembling us.” Travis studied the curtain into which the fisher had plunged. “Yes, it’s still watching—from over there,” he added in a half whisper.
But the presence of the feather-clad feaster was in a way a promise of security along this road. Travis found the opening of the trail on the other side of the stream. And he was now better pleased to follow it, Even though once more the tree fems closed in overhead and he and Ross were swallowed in what was a tight tunnel of green.
The indications of a busy, hidden life about t
hem continued to come in sounds. Twice they stumbled on evidence of some hunter or hunters working the trail. Once they found a fluff of plush-like gray fur still bedaubed with light pinkish blood, then a clot of cream-yellow feathers and draggled skin.
There was an open apron about the funnel building. A fan of stone, dappled with red moss but not yet claimed in entirity by the jungle and the game trail, skirted this, running on past the building. If they were to continue to follow Ross’ plan, they must strike back now into the jungle again and bull their way through its resilient mass. But first, for the benefit of any watchers, they crossed that moss-spattered apron to the building as if about to search its interior. Only there was no easy entrance here. A grill, of the same imperishable material as that which formed the fan area before the door, forbade their entry. Through its bars they could see parts of the inside. Plainly this particular structure had been left furnished after a fashion, for objects, muffled in disintegrating coverings, crowded the floor.
Ross, his face pressed close to the bars, whistled. “I’d say they were getting ready for movers, only the vans never arrived. The chief’ll want to break in here, might be some of his kind of pickings about.”
“Better collect him first.” Travis stood at the top of those four wide steps leading to the barred door. He could sight the tower which was their ultimate goal, though the fern trees shielded it for about three stories up. To his survey there were no signs of life about it, nothing moved at any of the window holes. Yet there had been that light at yesterday’s dusk.
“All right—we’ll get to it!” Ross came away from the grill. He swung his arm wide in an extravagant gesture to mark not the goal of their choice but the block building beyond it.
They had to cut their way now, using blasters and their hands to pull and break a path between the small, isolated glades where the fall of some giant tree in the past had cleared a passable strip for them. Panting and floundering, they came to the fifth such clearing.
