Frontier of the Dark

by A Bertram Chandler

  The plates, with their almost untouched contents, were taken away. A meat course followed. It was not steak, although it could have been. It had not been ruined by overcooking.

  Carlin said, “I hope that you do not mind. The stewardesses know that this is how I like my meat. I acquired the taste while I was on Earth, doing an engineering course at your Antarctic Academy. She must have assumed that you, being Earthpeople, would also like your meat rare and almost unseasoned.”

  “What is it?” asked Falsen, chewing happily.

  “It is from our tissue-culture vats. The animal itself is not unlike the Terran horse. It is both a work animal and a food animal. Perhaps I should not have told you that. There is some odd prejudice, or culinary taboo regarding horseflesh among the English-speaking peoples on Earth … .”

  “One that doesn’t worry me,” said Falsen.

  “And you, Linda?” asked Carlin.

  “I … I’m just not very hungry … .”

  And it’s not a matter of taboo or prejudice, thought Falsen.

  “Then pass me your plate,” said Carlin.

  The meal was terminated with thin crackers and a rubbery, strong-flavored cheese. Carlin and Falsen finished what Linda left.

  CHAPTER 5

  After the meal there was social activity.

  Carlin took Linda and Falsen down to a recreation room which was common to all ranks. The compartment was dominated by a huge playmaster, of Terran design but modified, on the screen of which a ballet was being danced to high-pitched, wailing music. All the performers seemed to be female, although two of them were wearing huge codpieces. These, Falsen decided, were the clowns, the clumsy ones who tripped over their own feet, who were tripped and buffeted by the other dancers, those in women’s costumes. It was all very funny to the Doralans, and Linda allowed herself an occasional chuckle. Falsen was not amused.

  It was over at last and the huge screen faded into darkness.

  Then a junior officer, with only one small star on each side of her tunic collar, seated herself at the console of a synthesizer while two crewwomen stood on either side of her, facing the audience. They sang while the officer played. The music was so excruciatingly painful that Falsen felt like squatting on his haunches, lifting his head and howling. It was like a cat fight.

  At last the evening’s entertainment was over. Falsen and Linda joined those helping themselves to wine and little cakes from a buffet table beside which room was made for them a little too pointedly. Did he stink? Falsen wondered. Surely any body odor that he might be emitting would be drowned by the waves of perfume that eddied from the Doralans. It was a cloying scent, one that both attracted and repelled. Leave the aniseed component and take away the rest, he thought, and …

  “I will take you to your cabins,” said Carlin.

  She led them back up to their accommodations, left them there.

  “Goodnight,” said Linda.

  “I thought that you might be coming in with me,” said Falsen.

  “I want to be alone,” she told him.

  “We should talk things over … .”

  “We will sort things out in our own minds first, and then we will compare notes.”

  He had to be content with that.

  Inside his room he stripped and then curled up on the short bunk. He fell almost immediately into a dreamless sleep.

  • • •

  He awoke the next morning greatly refreshed. He did not need to be called. For him, when he was on a planetary surface, the first light of day was alarm clock enough, even when he was in a metal box with no outward-looking ports or windows. He threw back the thin blanket under which he had been sleeping, swung his feet to the deck.

  Before he could stand up, his door opened. A junior officer stood there, staring with unconcealed disgust at his hairy nudity.

  Her command of English was not as good as Carlin’s, but it was adequate. “Mister, the Lady Mother you would see. At once.” Then, as a hasty afterthought, “But first you will dress.”

  “Then, leave me to it,” said Falsen. “Wait outside, please.”

  He made a hasty toilet. (Captains, he knew full well, did not like to be kept waiting.) He dressed. He regretted that he had not washed his uniform before retiring, but it was too late to worry about it now. He went out into the alleyway. The young Doralan was there, looking like a little girl beside Linda.

  “What’s all the flap about?” Falsen asked.

  Linda replied while her companion tried to work out the meaning of the idiom. “It seems,” she said, “that something attacked and killed the sentries outside the ship last night. Not only killed them but devoured parts of the bodies … .”

  He looked at her suspiciously. She had wanted to be alone, hadn’t she? But …

  “Come,” said the officer.

  She escorted them to the elevator, up to the captain’s day cabin. The Lady Mother was waiting for them, seated behind her big desk, on the surface of which sat Pondor. The animal spat a curse at them as they entered. Carlin was there, and two other officers of two-star grade.

  “Miss Veerhausen,” said the captain, “Mr. Falsen. Be seated, please.” They lowered themselves to very low chairs. “I hope that you will be able to help us.”

  “In what way, Gracious Lady?” asked Falsen.

  “The initial landing on this world was made by your Survey Service. Their reports were passed over to us by the Federation when it was agreed that we were free to colonize it. But in those reports there is no mention of dangerous animals. First surveys, I know, are often far too sketchy. But you have spent some time on this planet. You had no machines with you to scare away indigenous life forms, no bright lights at night. Did you see anything, hear anything?”

  While Falsen hesitated, pondering his reply, Linda spoke up.

  “Some nights,” she said, “we heard something howling. And just once, early one morning, we saw something big and gray slinking away from outside our cave. After that we made sure that we kept our fire going … .”

  The cat said, in his mewling voice, “I have explored all around the ship and I have not seen or smelled anything. Until this morning. And now the stink hangs heavy, even in here.”

  “That animal of yours has a strong imagination, Gracious Lady,” said Carlin.

  “Imagination or not,” snapped the Lady Mother, “there was something. Something big and horridly vicious. I have seen the bodies. You have seen them, Lady Carlin. How they were mutilated. Partly eaten … .”

  “Eaten … .” echoed Falsen.

  “Yes, Mr. Falsen. Teeth must have been its main weapon, perhaps its only weapon. But the really frightening part of it is that it must have been immune to the fire of my people’s lasers. We have checked the power cells; some of them were almost exhausted. Any normal animal would have been incinerated. Was this thing that you saw armored?”

  “It seemed to have a scaly hide,” said Linda.

  The Doralan captain addressed Falsen. “I ask your advice,” she said. “On Earth there are still large tracts of wild forest, of jungle, where men and women go to hunt, to kill large, dangerous beasts. We have nothing of that kind on Dorala. Our world was thoroughly tamed generations ago. The only surviving predators are no bigger than Pondor. We have no experience of the hunt. Perhaps you have.”

  “I have,” said Falsen. On one long leave he had been persuaded to take part in a tiger hunt in Bengal. His sympathies had been with the tiger.

  “What do you advise?” asked the captain.

  “What steps have you taken so far?” he inquired.

  “I have sent the airship out to search the area. Should anything be sighted, I shall be informed at once.”

  “That might help,” said Falsen. Then, an idea germinating in his mind, “But the best way to track any kind of game is on foot. Aircraft just drive them to cover.”

  “Would you be willing to lead a tracking party, Mr. Falsen?”

  “Yes,” he said.

 
; “How big a team will you require?”

  “Six,” he said. “Preferably English-speakers. Armed, of course.”

  “But what with, Mr. Falsen? The things seem to be immune to laser fire. Stunguns might be more effective … ”

  “Laser pistols and stunguns, perhaps,” said Falsen. “And even a heavily armored beast has some weak points. The open mouth, the eyes, the soft skin at the joints of the armor … ”

  “You are the expert. I hope. Lady Carl in, please take Mr. Falsen and Miss Veerhausen down to the officers’ mess so that they may break their fast before they leave the ship. And then assemble five suitable persons to accompany you and our … Terran experts.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Breakfast, in the almost deserted officers’ mess, was an unsatisfying meal, a sweetish mush accompanied by aniseed-flavored tea. After it Linda and Falsen went to their quarters to discuss their course of action.

  He said, “We’ll try that range of hills. There are bound to be caves there. And where there are caves you might find … anything.”

  She laughed. “Yes,” she said. “They found us in a cave, didn’t they?”

  He went to the door of his cabin, opened it, looked up and down the alleyway. There were no signs of life. He returned inside and shut the door.

  He demanded, “What do you know?”

  “Nothing,” she said innocently.

  “You slept alone last night,” he said.

  “So did you.”

  “I slept.”

  “You weren’t the only one.”

  He said, “We must be careful. All right. We want this ship. We need this ship. As long as there are no engine breakdowns we can take her anywhere, just the two of us. But get this straight: I want to take her with the minimum of bloodshed. These people are human, even though they aren’t our sort of human. They aren’t animals, like that cat.”

  “Aren’t they?”

  “They’re people,“ he insisted.

  “There’s somebody outside,” she said.

  It was Carlin. She was dressed for extravehicular activity, with a scarlet, hooded cloak over her tunic. The cloak fell open as she moved and revealed a shiny black belt with two shiny black holsters from which protruded the butts of weapons. She was carrying two other belts with holsters attached.

  She said, “The guns you asked for.”

  She handed one belt to Linda, the other to Falsen.

  Linda said, “These are no use to me. I can’t use them. I was never trained.”

  “Just point at what you want to kill or stun and pull the trigger. The pistol with the red butt is the laser, the one with the black butt is the stungun.”

  Falsen buckled on his belt, then pulled the weapons out of their holsters and examined them. He held a reserve officer’s commission in the Federation Survey Service and had taken small-arms training courses. Both laser pistol and stungun, he discovered, were of Terran manufacture, types with which he was familiar. He reholstered them. Linda disdainfully threw her belt onto Falsen’s bunk, left it there.

  “As you please,” said Carlin coldly. “Come.”

  The man and the girl followed her into the alleyway, to the axial shaft and the elevator which carried them swiftly down to the after air lock. The Lady Mother was awaiting them there. At the bottom of the ramp were the other five members of the hunting party, timid-looking little girls in their scarlet cloaks and hoods. Two were junior officers with very small silver stars on their collars. The others, with no badges of rank, appeared to be enlisted women. There were other officers who, like the Doralan captain, were wearing only their tunics.

  The Lady Mother asked, “What first, Mr. Falsen?”

  “I’d like to examine the scene of the … killings,” he said. He had almost referred to it as “the scene of the crime.”

  The Doralan captain stood aside so that they were first down the ramp. So the old rule held good even aboard this alien ship, Falsen thought. The commanding officer first aboard, last ashore. Damn it, he told himself, these people are spacemen — or spacepersons. They’re my breed of cat. It’s all very well for Linda to think as she does, but she’s only a tabby, not a real officer … .

  He stepped from the foot of the ramp onto the spongy, mosslike ground cover, waited with Carlin and Linda for the Lady Mother to join them. She descended slowly and gracefully.

  She said, “They came as far as this. Perhaps they wanted to get into the ship, but they must have been unwilling to set their paws onto the cold metal. But you can see where they rolled on the ground, the scuff marks and the smears of blood that must have rubbed off their bodies. Doralan blood, my surgeon assures me. Their victims’ blood.”

  “Why do you say ‘they’?” asked Falsen.

  “There were at least two of them. There are, of course, the marks of teeth on the bodies of my people — and one of the things had smaller jaws than its mate, or mates.” She walked slowly away from the ship. “Here,” she said, “is where we found the bodies. They have been taken into the ship, of course, for autopsy, although the cause of death is obvious enough. As you see, there was considerable bleeding, also a struggle. Look where the … the … moss, would you call it? has been torn up.”

  Falsen looked around.

  He said, “They must have attacked from that clump of shrubs. Have you looked there?”

  “Of course.”

  A mewling voice broke into the conversation. Falsen looked down, saw that it came from Pondor. The big cat was addressing the Lady Mother in her own language. She replied to the animal briefly.

  She said to the man, “He wants to know if anybody has seen Kristit — one of his two … wives.” She smiled briefly and ruefully. “I am afraid that I was rather short with him.”

  “I feel sorry for Pondor,” said Linda. “He must feel the loss as deeply as any of us would feel the loss of a mate.”

  “The loss?” asked Carlin sharply. “This is a big ship — or hadn’t you noticed? A small animal, such as a cat, could be sleeping anywhere, out of sight.”

  “I just assumed,” said Linda, “that whatever killed the sentries also killed the cat. After all, she’d have been little more than one mouthful, bones and all … .”

  Falsen recalled the crunching sounds that he had heard when the body of Kristit was being disposed of.

  Meanwhile, squatting on her haunches, Linda was examining the low shrubs, the clump of drab vegetation with its thin branches and broad, leathery leaves. She seemed almost to be sniffing the ground around the bushes.

  She straightened up and pointed toward the low range of distant hills, crying, “They went that way!”

  The Lady Mother asked, “How do you know?”

  “See,” said Linda, “how the tendrils of this mossy stuff have been disturbed … .”

  Falsen looked, not really expecting to see anything. He did not. The Lady Mother looked, then said doubtfully that she thought that she saw the trail indicated by the girl. Carlin looked and remarked superciliously that, of course, Terrans were much closer to the animal than were Doralans. Falsen, lying, said that the trail was as easy to read as a tridi chart.

  So they followed this doubtful trail, Linda in the lead, then Carlin and Falsen, then the other five members of the party. The Lady Mother, standing at the foot of the ramp, watched them go. She would still be there, thought Falsen, when they returned, anxious to learn that vengeance had overtaken the thing or things that had murdered her people.

  But animals didn’t murder. Not ordinary animals.

  Overhead sailed the airship, its propellers throbbing.

  “Tell that bloody thing to go away,” Falsen said to Carlin. “If the things are lurking anywhere around, it will scare them off.”

  Carlin raised her left wrist — the one with the transceiver strapped to it — to her mouth, gave curt orders. The reply was faint but audible. The airship turned slowly, headed back toward the space vessel.

  Linda was squatting again, was actually down on her h
ands and knees. She lifted her head and announced, “They traveled in a straight line. And fast.”

  “I don’t know how you can tell all that,” said Carlin in a tone of mock admiration.

  The sun, a vague, ruddy ball of light in the thinly overcast sky, rose higher, drawing a steamy moisture, a stench of decay, from the shallow stagnant pools that filled every depression in the terrain. A diversion was caused by something that splashed loudly over to the left of the party. Three of the Doralans ran to investigate. There was a flash and an eruption of dirty steam as a laser pistol opened fire. But the target was only one of the crustaceans, a huge beast, its body almost a metre in diameter. It had been cooked as well as killed. Falsen called a halt for lunch.

  With the exception of Carlin, the Doralans nibbled little sweet cakes that they brought out from their packs. The engineer helped Falsen and Linda dispose of the crayfish. The flesh was stringy but quite flavorsome.

  After they had eaten, the party pressed on. The ground rose gradually, became drier. Even the air seemed drier. Here and there bare rock, veined with glittering seams, showed through the gray, spongy, mosslike growth. Once something small and lizardlike scurried from one stunted bush to another. Carlin fired her stungun at it, but missed.

  “A pity,” said Falsen. “It might be a small relation of the big things that did the killings.”

  “It might be,” said the Doralan.

  The party pressed on. Now and again they had to climb from ledge to rocky ledge. The Doralans, Falsen thought, had to be hot inside those cloaks of theirs. The faces of most of them were shiny with perspiration. Carlin’s was not. She was sweating no more than were Linda and Falsen, in their light shorts and shirts.

  Then — “There!” cried Linda. “They went in there!”

  • • •

  There was a narrow opening between two boulders, an opening that, by its very darkness, gave promise of depths beyond and below.

  He said to Carlin, “You brought lights, I suppose?”

  She said, “You’re the self-appointed expert. You never said that we would need them.”