Stalking the Nightmare Part 25

Occasionally a claw-scratch would stand out brightly in the glare of Claybourne's headlamp beam.

The hours slid by tediously, and though he forced himself to stop twice more to rest, the light gravity caused him little fatigue for all his labors.

Once, as before, he thought he caught a splinter-fast movement of striped body, up on the cliffs, but as before, he could not be certain.

The faint starshine cast odd shadows, little blobs of black and silver, across the mountains. From a distance it had looked as though millions of diamonds were lying on the black surfaces. As though the mountain were riddled with holes, through which a giant sun inside the rock was sending pinpoints of light. It was weird and beautiful.

A fitting place for me to bow off the Periphery. he thought; thoughts returning to Earth--and Garden. He thought of Earth.

His world.

When he skimmed the hood-beam across the rocks twenty feet above him on the cliff wall, Claybourne saw the cave.

A small incline rose up into the deeper blackness of the cave's mouth. That had to be it. The only place within a mile of the last claw-scratch that the fetl could have used to disappear. The scratches had been clear for a time, leading him up the mountain, but then they had vanished.

His tracking had been quiet--sound didn't carry far on Selangg. His tracking had been stealthy--it was always dark on Selangg. Now his efforts would payoff. His hunt was over. Back to Earth--to finish that other hunt.

He was banking the other hallucination he had seen was the real thing.

Claybourne stopped under a rock lip overhang and flat-handed the compression chamber of the mola.s.ses-gun open, peering inside. His hood light shone down on the steeled-blue plastic of the weapon. It was full, all the little gelatin capsules ranged row on row behind the airtight transparent seal, filling the chamber to the seams.

He flipped it shut, and looked once more toward the summit, and the cave.

A star gleamed directly over the ragged peaks, directly above him. He hefted the rifle once more, blew a thin stream of breath through his pursed lips, and started up the incline.

The tiny rock bits tumbled away under his boots, the crunch of pebbles carrying up through the insulated suiting. He kept a wary watch as he climbed, not expecting the beast to appear, but still taking no chances.

He was certain the fetl did not know he had followed it here to its lair. Else it would have turned back in a circle, kept running across the gra.s.slands. His tracking had been subtle and cautious. Claybourne had learned on thePeriphery how to be invisible on a hostile world, if the need arose. This hunt would end as all the others had ended: successfully.

The hunt for Garden, too, he mused tightly.

The ragged cave mouth gaped before him.

He surveyed it closely, inclining his beam not directly into the opening, but tilting it onto the rock wall just inside, so light spilled over the rockway and he could check for ledged rises over the entrance, inside. Nothing but a huge pile of rocks wedged tightly in place by some miscue of the volcanic action.

He flipped a toggle on the chest-console, and the beam became brighter still, spraying out in a wider, still sharply-defined circle.

He stepped in.

The cave was empty.

No, not empty.

He was three steps into the high-ceilinged cave before he saw the fetl. It was crouched small as its huge bulk would allow into a corner, dim in the back of the cave. Hunched as far as it could go into a niche in the wall.

In as far as its ten-foot hulk permitted, still the beast was huge. Its monstrous ring of weed-green eyes all staring at him malevolently.

Claybourne felt a sudden shock as he stared into those eyes. They so much reminded him of Garden's eyes at the auction. Hungry.

He shook off the feeling, took a step forward. The fetl was limned clearly in the beam of the helmet torch. It was an impressive animal, tightly coiled at the rear of the cave.

The beast twitched slightly.

Its flanks quivered in the glare of the lamp. Muscles all over its body rippled, and Claybourne drew back a step to fire. The beast twitched again.

He felt the tiny stones in the pile over the entrance clatter to the cave floor. He could barely hear them tinkle, but the vibrations in the stone came to him.

He turned his head for a moment, to see what was happening. His eyes opened wide in terror as he saw the supporting rubble drop away, leaving the huge rock tottering in its place. The great stone slid gratingly out of its niche and crashed to the floor of the cave, sending clouds of rock-dust roiling, completely blocking off the mouth of the cave. Sealing it permanently.

Claybourne could only stand and watch, horror and a constriction in his throat.

His light remained fixed on the cave-in, reflecting back glints of gold as the dust from the slide swirled itself into small pillars, rising into the thin air.

Then he heard the rumble.

The sound struck him like a million trumpets, all screaming at once. He turned, stumbling, his torch flicking back toward the fetl.

The fetl sat up on its four back legs, contentedly washing a front paw with. a long red tongue that flicked in and out between twelve-inch incisors. The lighter black of a small hole behind him gave an odd illusion of depth to the waiting beast.

Claybourne watched transfixed as the animal slowly got to its feet and pad-pad-padded toward him, the tongue slipping quickly in and out, in and out...

Suddenly coming to his senses, Claybourne stepped back a pace and levelled the mola.s.ses-gun, pulled the trigger. The stream of webbing emerged with a vibrant hiss, sped toward the monstrous fetl.

A foot short of the beast the speeding webbing lost all drive, fluttered in the still cave for a moment, then fell like a flaccid length of rope. On the floor it quickly contracted itself, Worm-like, into a tight, small ball.

The fetl licked its chops, the tongue swirling down and across and up and in again.

Before he could pull the trigger again, Claybourne felt the gun tremble in his hands. At the same moment he saw the beast's flanks quiver again.

An instant later the gun ripped itself from his grasp and sent itself crashing into the wall. Parts spattered the cave floor as the seams split, and capsules tumbled out. The mola.s.ses-gun's power compartment emitted a sharp, blue spark, and the machine was gone.

He was defenseless.

He heard the roar again. Telekinetic! After he had done what he wished, the animal would leave by the hole in the rear of the cave. Why bother untumbling the rocks!

The fetl began moving again. Claybourne stumbled back, tripped on a jutting rock, fell heavily to the floor.

The man backed away across the floor of the cave, the seat of his suit sc.r.a.ping the rock floor. His back flattened against the wedged rock in the cave mouth. He was backed as far as he could go.

He was screaming, the sound echoing back and forth in his hood, in the cave, in the night.

All he could see, all there was in the universe, was the fetl. advancing on him, slowly, slowly, taking all the time it needed. Savoring every instant.

Then, abruptly, at the precise instant he gazed deep into that ring of hate-filled green eyes coming toward him, he realized that even as he had tracked the fetl, even as he had been tracking Garden--so the fetl had been tracking him!

The fetl licked his lips again, slowly.

He had all the time in the world... His world.

Tiny Alley

When we first saw him, he came stumbling across the snow, almost beneath our feet" For a moment I thought it was a snow-swirl, or a shadow. At 18,000 feet, that often happens.

Deszlow stopped and cupped his hands to his mouth, having pulled up his oxygen mask, and screamed to the rest of us on the line. "For G.o.d's sake! Come here and see this!"

His voice was almost lost beneath the howl of the wind, but we pulled along the rope to see what he had discovered. Rutledge and Ferraday and I slid back down the slope, digging our crampons into the tightly-packed crust, leaving spike-marks in jagged rows. We cl.u.s.tered around Deszlow, the deranged wind of the summit bullying us. We stared with great confusion at the tiny mountain-climber Deszlow had discovered.

Note this: at 500 yards short of the 18,000 foot mark on Annapurna--we were following in the tracks of the French expedition that had defeated the peak--on a geophysical survey, we discovered a minuscule climber. He was no more than three inches high, with a tightly-belted anorak jacket, a pike, tiny crampons. and a face quite red from exertion. I did not realize it then, but there were even more physically startling things about him. But one thing did shock me: He had a knife in the small, small, small of his back.

A chill that was deeper and sharper than the chill of the wind--roaring down from the unseen peaks above--touched my spine.

Even as I stood staring at the tiny panting figure, Ferraday's sudden movement penetrated my frozen consciousness. As it did, I yelled hoa.r.s.ely through my mask, "No, you fool! Don't--"

But it was already too late. Ferraday had picked up the tiny man, was holding him tightly by the collar of his jacket, and was reaching for the knife with his free hand. I still cannot tell how I knew, but I was suddenly absolutely certain that it was the worst thing Ferraday could do.

Slipping and staggering on the treacherous surface, I rushed forward. Blindly, I plunged into Ferraday, arms outthrust to stop him.

There was a brilliant, blinding flash that sprayed the snow with bloodred shadows.

I felt myself lifted, hurled, smashed to the ground. From the edge of my vision I saw Ferraday lifted, and thrown down the mountain. I don't know what snapped the rope... perhaps it was the cutting edge of my pike that ripped it through as Ferraday went past... but I thank G.o.d he did not drag the rest of us with him.

Even as Ferraday crashed face-first into the ice, I heard the black-bearded Austrian bellow. Ferraday disappeared down the slope, the rope thrashing behind, the snow billowing out from him in a fine wedge of white. His scream was m.u.f.fled, quickly buried beneath a ton of ice and snow as he helplessly plunged across a snow-bridge. The bridge collapsed, and he plummeted three thousand feet, vanishing immediately into a rocky fault.

Deszlow and Rutledge stood transfixed, their pikes held at awkward angles, their faces--beneath the beards, glare-gla.s.ses and masks--whiter than normal. Their eyes were large, and I was certain their mouths were open in horror.

I dragged myself stiffly to elbows and knees, spat a mouthful of blood and snow across the ice-pack, and tottered to my feet.

The little man was gone.

I sagged back against my pike, leaning, breathing, drawing breath from a suddenly-insufficient supply.

"Ferra... Ferraday...he--he's gone...?"

Deszlow's huge square head bobbled confirmation, and Rutledge stared off across the jaggedly split snow-bridge, where a gaping, sliding creva.s.se still poured snow atop the mangled body of our companion--three thousand feet below.

"We'd--we'd better go," Deszlow gasped. "The wind is rising. The ma.s.sif will be h.e.l.l in an hour."

We started out again, up the face of Annapurna, suddenly frightened of this expedition. We had known that death climbed with us, but not this way... not with this shroud of strangeness that hung over us.

Who... or what... had the little man been?

In the next hour Deszlow's words came true. The ma.s.sif. It was a h.e.l.l; but not of the kind we had imagined.

Unquestionably, it had been the presence of the little man--whose snow-filled tracks we occasionally observed coming down, as we climbed steadily up--that sharpened our senses enough to see it.

We had climbed for the hour, hoping to find a sheltering ledge before the storm broke on the mountain; we were just pa.s.sing a series of small caves, intaglios in the face of the cliffs, when Rutledge signaled by dragging on the line.

We stopped; he was pointing; we looked.

Wedged in the rocks, shoved into a breach that was little more than a fissure, was a bright, shining sliver of metal, perhaps ten feet long; no question arose in our minds... the shape was totally familiar, from popularizations in newspapers and magazines. It was a s.p.a.ceship.

There, 18,000 feet up on one of the highest mountains on Earth, we had come upon a s.p.a.ceship. We had no more than a moment to stare, for as we advanced toward it, sliding across the roll of the slope, a port opened, and a group of five figures, identical to the little man we had seen before, emerged.

They carried weapons. The equipment was so small, and so intricate, we had only a brief glimpse of delicate machinework and involved mechanisms before they opened fire on us. Had we been unprepared, had we not been setalert by the presence of the first little man, we would have been dead at once.

But even as the same bloodred shadows illuminated the snow, and the beams of what had to be raw energy sizzled from their rifles, we were leaping aside. I jumped forward and to the right, clawing in the snow with hands and feet for some purchase. I caught the incredible heat of one beam over my left shoulder, and behind me I heard Rutledge scream as it tore through his face.

Then I felt a tug on the line, and knew he was down, he was dead. I was hauling a dead man behind me. There wasn't time to think about it; with an insane fury born of fear, I struggled to my knees, and brought my pike up over my head.

Deszlow was to my left, cowering in the snow as the bolts of energy smashed over him.

I brought down the pike.

It flattened two of the little men at once, and the other three ran, slipping, back to the ship.

I screamed something--I have no idea what--at Deszlow, and he flopped forward, grabbed at one end of the ship... and with all our strength we wrenched the ship free of the fissure.

I struggled forward again, losing my grip, then regaining it. I could see jet tubes of some strange sort, protruding from the rear, and from within I heard the beginning of what must have been a generator whine.

Together we lifted the ship, b.u.mbled erect, and with a monstrous effort threw the ship as hard as we could, down the side of the mountain.

They tried to get the engines started; we saw a blast of flame leap from the aft section of the ship, but in a second it went out as the ship struck an outcropping of rock, and twisted grotesquely. Their drive was useless, and as we stared wildly, the ship bounced, crashed, careened down the slope. Before it plunged into the snow-mists ten thousand feet below, we saw the little sliver of metal shine much more brightly, and then with a flash and a roar, erupt in flame and a scatter of metal and flesh.

How bright it was against the killer snow.

Somehow, we got down, carrying Rutledge's body. His face was entirely gone, charred completely off. We never found enough of the ship to reconstruct even a small portion of it.

We do not know why they were there. I don't think we'll ever know. Whether they were invaders from another planet, or just visitors... is something we will never know. But we know this: the little man who first accosted us had been trying to warn us away, had been trying to get to us to tell us about his ship and his companions. And if they were not malevolent, if they were not here to try conquest of some sort, why had they knifed him? Why did they destroy him when he was so close to speaking to us? Why did they fire on us?

I don't suppose it will outlast the first real slide or storm up there. Deszlow and I climbed back up to the 18,000 foot mark; later. No one will ever see it, but we had to put up a cross for that tiniest of allies.

The G.o.ddess In The Ice

Just before nightfall the storm caught them, thirty-five hundred feet up the ma.s.sif of the glacier, far above the timberline but still four days' climb below the summit. As the wind rose, and below them they could hear the shock-crack of ice-formations shattering away from the glacier wall, they came upon the woman frozen in the ice.

Rennels was the first over the creva.s.se, and as he turned sidewise, bracing himself to make the towline taut, he looked across the ledge to the niche in the snow.

She was milky-white through the ice-block, but he had no doubt from the first that it was a woman, her eyes closed, hands at her sides, frozen solid into a silver-blue block of glacial ice.

He found himself unable to turn away. Even as he stared dumbfounded at an impossibility, he was accepting it--because it was undeniably before him--and racing through theories of quick-freezing, glacial upheavals, historical precedent that would account for this incredible find.