Lord of Thunder Part 14

"Find-find!" He projected a mental picture of Dean, urged it upon Surra with all the clarity and force he could muster.

Hosteen felt as well as heard the deep growl that vibrated through her as might the purr of a more contented moment. He did not know whether her feline hunting sense would bring them any nearer this quarry. Luck-or "medicine"-could still play a part in this blind hunt. Over Surra's body he looked at Najar in an appeal that was also part order.

"Can you guide us to any main pa.s.sage from here?"

"Most of 'em are main pa.s.sages as far as I know." The other did not sound optimistic, but he took the lead, and they started on into the heart of the mountain.

Here Surra showed no desire to roam ahead; instead, she matched her pace to Hosteen's as well as four feet could match two. He was alert to her always, relying more upon the cat than upon Najar's ability to bring them into a section where they might hope to encounter Dean, so he knew instantly when the cat paused, even before she swung half across his path to halt him.

Quade, knowing of old how Surra operated, stopped, and Najar looked around, puzzled, and then impatient.

"What's the-?" He had out only half the question when Hosteen signaled him to silence.

Surra's actions were the same as the time when Dean had vanished in that other tunnel. And the Amerindian was certain that this must be another of the mysterious transfer points.

The cat's head was c.o.c.ked slightly to one side, and her whole stance pictured the act of listening-listening to something their dull human ears could not pick up. Without moving more than his hands, Hosteen switched his torch on to full beam, played that bank of light in a careful sweep over the floor under them and the right wall. But there were no spiral markings such as he had more than half hoped to sight. The beam went to his left and again revealed unmarked surface.

Yet Surra was still listening. Then the cat arose on her hind feet, her muzzle pointed up-as if she scented what she had heard.

Overhead! Not under foot as it had been in the valley, but overhead! Hosteen flashed his torch straight up. But how could that pattern he had come to know be followed upside down?

"That it?" Quade asked.

"Yes. Only I don't see-" Hosteen began, and then suddenly he did. Just as he had been pushed by a compulsion he did not understand to walk the spiral in the valley wedge, so here an order outside of his consciousness brought his hand up over his head to touch the open end of the spiral. Only this time he fought that pull, fought it enough to keep his awareness of those with him.

"I think-" It was hard to speak, to be able to keep his mind off the tracing of that pattern with his finger tips. The urgency to do so was like pain, racing from finger tips to flood his whole body. "We must do this," he said at last.

A furred body pressed against his. Surra! Surra who had no hand to trace for her. To go would be deserting Surra.

His other hand groped along that furred back after he pa.s.sed the torch to Quade. He could no longer turn his eyes away from that pattern, which glowed in his mind as well as on the stone overhead.

Hosteen thought of the pattern and took a grip on the loose skin at the back of the cat's neck, beginning to walk around and around with the fingers of his other hand tracing the roof spiral he had to go on tiptoe to touch. Surra was following his pull without complaint, around-around-Now! His finger tip was on the dot- Dark-and the terror of that journey through the dark, the red spark that was Surra and a white-yellow one that was Hosteen Storm in company still- Light around him. Hosteen put out a hand to steady his body and felt the sleek chill of metal. He was back on the dais of the hall platform while Surra pulled free of his hold and faced down the nearest aisle, her mouth wrinkled in a soundless snarl of menace.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

Hosteen drew his stunner. From the cat came knowledge that his less acute human senses could not supply. Down those rows of machines there was a hunt in progress, and the hunted was friend, not enemy. Gorgol-successful in obtaining allies-penetrating to this center of taboo territory? Or-the Terran's grip on the stunner tightened-Logan at last?

Surra leaped from the platform in a distance-covering bound. Then she glided into cover between two installations as Hosteen followed.

Above the hum of the encased machinery Hosteen thought he heard something else-a ticking, more metallic than the drumbeats of the Norbie tambours. He caught up with Surra where she crouched low, intent upon what lay around a corner. The hair along the big cat's spine was roughened; her big ears were folded against her skull. She spat, and one paw rose as if to lash out.

The thing she stalked was unnatural-not alive by her definition of life. Shadow thing-? No! Hosteen caught sound of that scuttle. Something flashed with super speed, very close to the ground, from one machine base to the next! No-no shadows this time.

He edged past the cat and then side-stepped just in time to avoid the headlong rush of someone alive-alive and human.

"Logan!" Hosteen caught at the other, and an unkempt head turned. Lips were pressed tight to teeth in a snarl akin to Surra's. A spark of recognition broke in the depths of those too bright eyes, a hand pawed at Hosteen's, and Logan swayed forward, for a moment resting his body against his brother's, his heavy breathing close to a sob. Only for a moment, then his head lifted, his eyes widened, and he gasped: "Hosteen! Behind you!"

Surra squalled, struck out at the thing whipping across the pavement, and recoiled as if flung back. It was a glittering silver ribbon with an almost intelligent aura of malignancy about it, from which a tapering end rose and pointed at the men.

"Get it-quick!" Logan cried.

Hosteen pressed stunner firing b.u.t.ton. An eye-searing burst of light came from the snake thing as the beam caught it full on.

"You did it!" The younger man's voice held the ragged edge of hysteria.

"What?"

"A live machine-one of the crawlers-"

Logan loosed his grip on Hosteen and tottered to the metal ribbon. A thin tendril of smoke arose as it battered its length senselessly against the floor. Logan stamped once, grinding his boot heel into the thing.

"I've wanted to do that for hours," he informed Hosteen. "There're more of 'em, though-we'll have to watch out. And"-his gaze shifted to the weapon in Hosteen's fist-"where in the name of the Seven Suns did you get that?"

"We've reinforcements." For the first time Hosteen wondered about that. Would Najar and Quade be able to follow him, or was this another time when one of the baffling spiral paths would deposit travelers at different destinations?

"Listen." He pulled Logan away from the feebly quivering "snake." "Back there in the valley-did you walk the spiral path the same way I did?"

"Sure. You just vanished into air-I had to follow."

"Where did you land?"

"In a place I wouldn't have believed existed-after seeing the rest of this demon-inspired hole. All the time we were muckin' around there was a place in here with regular living-quarters. But I ran into someone there-an off-worlder who has the run of this whole holdin'. For days-seems like days anyway-he's been runnin' me!" Logan was grimly bitter. "Turned those clockwork snakes loose and left me to it. I slowed up one of 'em with rocks in another cavern like the pen one and pushed one into a river. You took out this one, but there's a pack of 'em-"

"Thief!"

The word boomed out of the air right over their heads, freezing both.

"Hide if you wish." There was condescension in that. "You cannot escape, you know. The crawlers will deliver you to me just as I order. Have you not had enough of running?"

Surra had given no warning. Did Dean have some form of video watching them?

"You waste time in skulking. And a rock-if you have one left-is a poor weapon against this which can deal with a mountain if I so will it."

A bolt of fire flashed over their heads well above the level of the machines.

A rock for a weapon! Then Dean did not know Hosteen had joined Logan! He was not watching them; he was only sure Logan had been hunted into the hall and was hiding out there.

"You would be better advised not to keep me waiting. Either you will come to me now or my pets will be given a full charge and turned loose to use it. You will be given to the count of five to consider the disadvantages of being a dead hero, and then you will come to the platform in this hall. One-two-"

Logan's fingers made sign talk. "I'll go and keep him busy."

"Right. Surra will take the left aisle, I the right. We'll flank you in."

"-three-four-"

Logan walked out into full view of the platform. Two fingers of the hand hanging by his side twitched. Dean was up there waiting.

Hosteen started forward at a pace slightly slower than Logan's. All they had to fear for the present was a sudden appearance of another "snake."

Dean stood with his back to the board, over which rainbow lights ran in tubes. He was plainly pleased with himself. And Hosteen did not doubt he was equipped with a sta.s.s bulb or some other alien weapon.

"So the thief does not escape."

"As I told you before., I'm no thief!" Logan retorted with genuine heat. "I was lost here, and I don't know how I got into that room where you found me-"

"Maybe not yet a thief in practice, but in intent, yes. Don't you suppose that I know any man would give years of life to master these secrets. Few ever conceive of such power as this hall holds. I am Lord of Thunder, Master of Lightning in the eyes of the natives-and they are right! This world is mine. It took the combined forces of all twenty solar systems in the Confederacy ten years to put down the Xiks. I was one of the techs sent to study and dismantle their headquarters on Raybo. And, we thought we had uncovered secrets then. But they had nothing to compare with the knowledge waiting here. I was chosen to use the teaching tapes stored here, the cramming machines-they were waiting for me, me alone, not for stupid little men, ignorant thieves. This is all mine-"

Hosteen quickened pace and checked with Surra by mind touch.

"Why didn't you finish me off with your crawlers or your tame lightnin'-if that's the way you feel about it?" Logan was keeping Dean talking. The tech, alone so long, must relish an audience of one of his own race.

"There is plenty of time to finish you off, as you say. I wanted you occupied for a s.p.a.ce, kept away from places where you might get into mischief. You could not be allowed to interfere with the plan."

"This plan of yours"-Logan was only a few steps from the platform-"is to take over Arzro and then branch out. Beat the Xiks at their old game."

"Those who built this place"- Dean was fingering a small ball, another sta.s.s broadcaster Hosteen believed; otherwise, the Terran could not see that the other was armed- "had an empire into which all the Xik worlds and the Confederacy could both have been fitted and forgotten. All their knowledge-it is here. They foresaw some blasting end-made this into a storehouse-" He flung out his hand.

Hosteen fired the stunner. That ray should have clipped Dean alongside the head, a tricky shot, and it failed. A breath of the beam must have cut close enough to confuse him momentarily but not enough to put him out. Logan launched himself at the man who was staggering, only to crash heavily, completely helpless in sta.s.s, as Dean thumbed his control globe.

The tech was standing directly before the board, and Hosteen dared not try a second shot. A ray touching those sensitive bulbs might create havoc. The Terran signaled Surra.

Out of hiding the cat made a great arching leap that brought her up on the platform, facing Dean. Then she struck some invisible barrier and screamed aloud in anger and fear, as she was flattened to the floor.

Pressed back against the board, Dean reached for a lever, and Hosteen made his own move. Surra, striving still to reach her quarry, was aiming forepaw blows at nothing, and her raging actions held the tech's attention as Hosteen jumped to the platform in turn. But he did not advance on Dean.

Instead, his own hand went out to a bank of those small bulbs that studded the board in bands.

"Try that"-his warning crackled as if his words held the voltage born in the installations about them-"and I move too!"

Dean's head whipped about. He stared with feral eyes at the Amerindian. Hosteen knew that his threat could be an empty one; now he must depend upon what some men termed luck and his own breed knew as "medicine."

"You fool! There's death there!"

"I do not doubt it," Hosteen a.s.sured him. "Better dead men here than raiders loosed on the plains and a dead world to follow." Bold words-a part of him hoped he would not have to prove them.

"Release the sta.s.s!" Hosteen ordered. If he could only keep Dean alarmed for just a few seconds!

But the tech did not obey. Hosteen moved his hand closer to the row of bulbs. He thought he felt warmth there, perhaps a promise of fire to come. Then Dean hurled the ball out into the aisle.

"Fool! Get away from that-you'll have the mountain down upon us!"

Hosteen dropped his hand to the b.u.t.t of the stunner. Now he could ray the other into unconsciousness, and their job would be over.

A breath of air, a sound came from behind him. He jerked his head. Two figures appeared out of nowhere on the dais. Hosteen heard Logan call out and felt a lash of burning heat about his upper arms and chest so that the stunner dropped from helpless fingers.

Dean was away, running, dodging behind one of the cased machines, Surra a tawny streak at his back. Hosteen swayed, then recovered his balance on the very edge of the platform. He saw Surra drop, roll helplessly-Dean must have picked up the sta.s.s.

Quade pa.s.sed Hosteen, running toward the spot where the cat lay. But before him was Logan, scrambling on hands and knees. The younger man paused, and then he threw-with the practised wrist snap of a veteran knife man. There was a cry from beyond.

Hosteen was only half aware of the struggle there. The pain in his arm and shoulder was like a living thing eating his quivering flesh. He dropped down and watched Logan and his father drag a wildly struggling Dean into view. And in Logan's hand was the weapon that had brought the tech down, the now blood-stained horn he had taken from the skull found in the pens..

As they returned, the tubing on the board came to life. The waving line of lavender, which had always showed steady color from the first time Hosteen had seen the hall, was deepening in hue, its added flow of energy clearly visible.

Dean stopped struggling abruptly. A new kind of concentration molded his features. In an instant he had dropped his frenzied fight for freedom and become an alert tech faced by a problem in his own field.

"What is it?" Brad Quade demanded.

Dean shrugged impatiently, as if to throw off both question and the hold that kept him from the platform. "I don't know-"

Najar was beside Hosteen, giving the Amerindian a hand up. No, he had not been wrong, for Surra had caught it too-the warning that was a part of the brilliance in that band of light, as well as a part of man and beast who shared another kind of awareness.

"We must get out of here." Hosteen lurched toward the dais.

Logan, Quade, Najar-three pairs of eyes were on him. Surra was already by his side.

"What is it?" This time Brad Quade asked his stepson and not the tech.

"I don't know!" Hosteen made the same answer. "But we have to get out of here and fast." His inner tension was swelling into panic-such as had dogged him in the valley of hunting shadows. Logan moved first.

"All right."

"You call it," Brad Quade added. He jerked Dean along and in a second again had a raving, fighting madman in his hold.

Najar struck, a Commando in-fighting blow, and the tech went limp. On the board that pulsing light was now an angry purple. And more bulbs glowed here and there, taking on a winking life. The yellow of the lightning tree was bubbling, frothing.

They crowded together on the dais, the unconscious Dean held upright between Quade and Najar. Hosteen strove to raise his hands to give the signal that would transport them out of there-and found his right arm stiff, pain holding it in a steel band to his side.

The hum of the running machines, which had always formed a purring undercurrent of sound in the hall, was a hum no longer. More of them must be coming alive.

"Your hands-hold them apart over that line of bulbs." Hosteen croaked out instructions to Logan. "Then bring them together in a fast clap-"

Logan's hands, tinted purple in that awesome light, came together. Then they were spinning out and out- Before them once more was a patch of day. Hosteen was conscious of Logan's arm about him, of stumbling into the light, of the shuffle of feet behind.

Sound-it was not the rising hum of the alien machines but drums, a steady beat-beat of them in chorus. And over all lay the terrible need to be in the open.

They came out on that ledge where Hosteen had lain to watch Dean harangue the Norbie tribesmen. Hosteen pulled ahead, following Surra, for in the cat as well as in him was that bursting need to be away from the cave entrance.

There was no sun, and Hosteen, coming more to himself as he led the way downslope, saw now the clouds gathering in purple-black lines around an irregular s.p.a.ce of sky. Had it been five months earlier or later, he would have said one of the terrible cloudbursts of the Wet Time was about to break.

Logan came to a halt. Surra was just a pace or so in advance, crouched belly to earth, her tail swishing, her head pointing at the line of Drummers.

They were there, every one of those who had followed their clan and tribal chieftains into the Blue-strung out in a curving line facing upslope, equidistant from each other, and each pounding out that emphatic beat that was one in a queer way with the billowing clouds. Directly before the party from the cave was Ukurti. And drawn up several yards behind the medicine men were the warriors, serried ranks of them, with here and there a truce pole still showing.