The Zero Stone Part 8

But when we reached the crossway Eet had mentioned, he suddenly hissed and spat, his whip tail shooting up, his back arching, until he was a weird caricature of a cat.

What he had sighted was a shining trace along the wall. It was a little higher than my ankle at first; but ascended until it striped that surface at about shoulder height. I did not touch it. There was that about it which was so disgusting that I wanted no close contact. It was as if the slime which had ringed the dying lakes and ponds had here been used to draw a marker, fresh, as a warning.

"What is it?" So much had I come to depend upon Eet that I now asked that almost automatically.

"I do not know - except that it is nothing to be meddled with. And darkness is its choice of abode." I thought he seemed shaken as I had never seen him before.

"You must have been along here before, for you knew about this side pa.s.sage. Was it here then?"

"No!" His denial was sharp. "I do not like it."

Nor did I. And the more I surveyed that sticky trail with its suggestion of utter foulness, the way it climbed the wall so that whatever made it might hang overhead - waiting- My imagination began to work. And in that moment I knew that only desperation worse than any I had faced so far would ever drive me to take that road deeper into a dark where such horrors might lurk.

I turned back, nor did it matter to me that Eet could read my mind and knew just what fears rode me. But I wondered if he cared, for he was streaking back along the pa.s.sage as if some terror lashed also at his flanks.

ELEVEN.

Our precipitous retreat was in itself so unnatural as to startle me when, back at the door rent, I paused to think. That the sight of a mere trail could so unnerve one was a disturbing thing. Eet caught my thought and answered: "Perhaps that leaver of trails uses fear for a weapon. Or else it is so utterly alien to us that we are repelled. There are things on many worlds which cannot be contacted by another species, no matter how willing one is. However, I do not want to walk ways in which that prowls."

I edged forward on my belly, pushing before me, though my nose revolted, a small screen of debris. The air outside was bright with sunlight. I stared out longingly. For my kind were meant for the open day and not dark burrows and night's dusk. We were, a quick glance from side to side told me, close to the ground, and that was covered with patches of s.h.a.ggy, yellowish gra.s.s. Between those were expanses of gla.s.sy surface which might mark ancient rocket blasts, as if this had been a port site.

For one or two heart-lifting moments I could believe that we were free, that no sentries lingered. Then I heard a shrilling, such as had been voiced the night before. But this was infinitely louder, since there was no storm. It hurt my ears with the pitch of its note. And it came from almost directly below me, so that I jerked back from the rent.

Eet's report reached me. "They are beneath, along the side. They wait for hunger, or perhaps what lurks in the depths of this wreck to drive us out to them."

"Perhaps they will lose patience." My hope was a forlorn one but I knew that the powers of concentration varied to a great degree, and intelligence had something to do with it. Intelligent purpose could teach patience which was unknown to those of lesser brain capacity.

"I think they have played this game, or heard of it played, before, with success." Eet refused to feed my hope. "There are too many factors of which we are not aware. For example-"

"For example - what?" I demanded when he hesitated.

"The stone led you here, did it not? But is it alive now?"

I freed the zero stone and held it out into the daylight. The gem was dead and murky. I turned it this way and that, hoping to awaken some response. Certainly it did not beckon us any deeper into the wreck. But as I inclined it outward, in the general direction of the rush of water along the other side of the ship, its condition suddenly altered. There was no bright flash, not even a glow to outshine the corridor plants, but there had been a small spark. Only now the width of the ship lay between us and the direction in which it pointed.

"There is one way." Eet set his hand-paws on my knee and stood with his nose almost touching the stone, as if it gave forth some scent he could trace. "I can get out of this hole, cross the ship above with that. I could perhaps trace it to its source."

I thought that he spoke the truth. Being small and wary, using the growths on the hull for cover, he could well do it. Though of what benefit such knowledge would be to us- "All knowledge is of benefit;" he countered.

I laughed without humor. "I sit waiting to be gathered up and put in some native's cooking pot and you speak of gaining knowledge! What good will it do a dead man?"

My thoughts probably did me no credit. It was true that a trap holding me was not one for Eet. He could leave at any moment he chose, with a good chance for freedom. In fact I did not know why he had remained as long as he had. But the zero stone - there was that in me which could not lightly surrender it, even for a s.p.a.ce. I did not covet it, as one might covet some gem of beauty. It was rather that I was, in a manner I could not describe, tied to it, and had been ever since my father had first shown it to us. The more so since I had taken it from the hiding place he had devised for it.

To give it to Eet would be a breaking of ties I could not quite face. I turned the ring around and around, slipping its large circlet on and off my fingers, my thoughts disjointed, but mainly occupied with the fact that more than all else I did not want to remain here alone.

Eet said nothing more. I did not even sense that faint mind touch he maintained most of the time. It was as if he had deliberately withdrawn now to allow me some decision which I alone could make, and which was of great importance.

"There is also the matter of food-" Eet finally broke that utter silence.

I still turned the ring around and stared almost unseeingly at the stone. "Do you think this will gain that?" I half sneered.

"No more than you do," he replied. "But neither do I propose to sit here and starve."

Which I thought was the truth, since he seemed well able to provide for himself. And there was something in that realization which held a sour taste for me.

"Take it!" I pulled from the rotting vegetable stuff a long string of fiber, made it into a necklet supporting the ring, and slipped it over Eet's head. He sat up on his haunches when I dropped it around his neck, folding his hand-paws over it for an instant, his eyes closing. I had the feeling he was seeking - though how and where, and for what, I did not know.

"You have chosen well." He fell to four feet and crept to the doorway. "Better than you know-"

With no more than that he was gone, climbing to the top of the rent where plants still stirred in a ragged curtain, pushing through them.

"They are still here," he reported. "Not only under the ship, but along the wall. I think they do not like the sunlight, for they keep to the shadow. Ah- on this side - there is the river! And- another wall - it once fell to make a dam. But now it is broken in two places. Across the water - there lies what the stone seeks!"

He had gone successfully up over the top of the ship. Could I make the same climb? I touched my bruised leg, winced from the pain that followed. I tried to flex it, but it was too stiff. Eet might run easily along that path, but I would have to move slowly. I would have no hope of eluding the watchers, or even of climbing well enough to transverse that slippery surface.

"What lies across the river?"

"Cliffs with holes in them, more tumbled walls," Eet told me. "Now-"

He ceased to communicate. Instead I had from mind to mind as one might pick up a scent, a sharp emanation of violence.

"Eet!" I tried to get to my feet, bringing down upon my head and shoulders more of the plant life, so that I choked and coughed, and I beat the air, trying to brush aside the foul stuff and get a clean breath again.

"Eet!" Again I sent out that mind call in alarm. There was no answer.

I scrambled to the rent. Had some thrown club knocked him down?

"Eet!" The silence seemed greater than a silence which was only for the ears. For I could hear well enough wind, water, and other sounds of life outside.

And - something else!

No one who has ever heard the sound of a ship cutting atmosphere, coming in on deter rockets for a landing, can mistake it. The rumbling - the roar. About me the wreck quivered and vibrated in answer to it. A ship under control was about to set down, and not too far away. I slipped back from the rent. The roar was too loud; it sounded as if the ancient ship might be caught in the wash of rocket fire. As the corridor shook about me, I slid down it, striving to break my descent with my hands, around me the foul mess from the rent cascading to blind and choke me. There was a blast and even through the walls I could feel a wave of heat. Whatever had been exposed to that must have been instantly crisped. I wondered about the sniffers. Now would be my chance to escape.

But - who had landed? Some First-in Scout of Survey on a preliminary check of a newly discovered world? Or had there been landings here before for some mysterious reason? At any rate there was a ship down, and from the sound, a small one of a design made for such touchdowns, nothing larger than a Free Trader.

I clawed the debris away and crawled on hands and knees back to the rent. There was a stifling smell of burning. Eet - if he had still been alive on the outer sh.e.l.l when that ship- "Eet!" My mental call this time must have held the force of a scream. No answer.

A thick steam rose outside, enough to veil most of the landscape. The heat made me cower back for the second time. No one would be going out there until it had had a chance to cool a little. Perhaps some of the rockets' fire had struck into the river, boiling its flow. I shifted impatiently, eager to be out, to see the ship. A very faint chance had come true, as I had never really thought it would. We would not be marooned here for the rest of our lives- We? It seemed I was alone now. If Eet had not died in that burst of violence, then certainly he had at the landing of the ship.

The time which pa.s.sed while the ground cooled and the steam mist cleared was as long to me as those dragging hours when I had been pent in the sanctuary of Tanth. Every impulse pushed me to the rent, to go to claim aid from my own kind. For by one of the most ancient laws of the star lanes any wayfarer marooned as I had been could claim pa.s.sage on the first ship finding him and be taken off without question.

At last, though the heat was still that of the Arzorian dry lands in midsummer, I pulled myself through the rent and dropped to the charred ground, favoring my bruised leg as best I could. There was a huddled form some distance away, one of the sniffers who had been caught in the backwash of rocket fire. I limped in the opposite direction.

The sound and the heat had made me believe the newcomers had finned down very close to the wreck, but that was not so. However, the rocket wash had cleared that ancient ship of the growth on it. It was not, I saw now, as large as the s.p.a.ce derelict, but more the general bulk of a Free Trader. Perhaps it had been left upright on its fins, just as the recently arrived ship was standing a goodly distance away, and the pa.s.sing of time or some disaster had thrown it over.

I came slowly around to the erose, pitted fins, to look across a firebared s.p.a.ce at the new ship. It was about the size of the Vestris. But no Free Trader's insignia was etched on its side. Nor did it have the blaze of Survey, nor of the Patrol. Yet why would any private vessel land on such a planet as this? There are wealthy Veeps, with a taste for hunting, who crack laws by searching out uncharted worlds where they may indulge their bloodthirsty tastes without falling afoul of the Patrol. If such a hunter had landed here before, that would explain the hostility of the sniffers. But- I drew back into the fin shadow - it would also mean trouble for me. Witnesses to illegal actions are accident p.r.o.ne, and there would be none to ask questions about me.

Only - a Veep's star yacht would have a set of code numbers. There was only one type of ship which would deliberately remain anonymous. I had never seen one, but there were tales in plenty heard in ports. And Vondar's connections had reason to gossip about such matters. The Thieves' Guild maintained ships. Some, under the cover of false papers, made legitimate trading voyages, with only now and then a reason to touch the other side of the law. I suspected the Vestris might have been such a ship. But there were other swift cruisers, often fitted with equipment which was experimental, stolen, or bought up before it was generally known.

These were raiders. They did not prey as pirates in s.p.a.ce, because that was a very chancy business, to be tried only if a cargo was of such value that one dared a costly gamble. Instead, they looted on planets. Waystar was their legendary base, a satellite or small planet, fortified, hidden, save from those who satisfied its rulers they had no connection with the Patrol or any other law. There had been so many stories, wild tales of Waystar and the shark fleet which operated out of it, that one did not believe in them much. Yet Eet had insisted that I had been unwittingly bound for that place before he had taken steps to separate me from the Vestris.

A raiding ship would carry no markings, or else ones which could be changed at will. But a Guild raider here? It was entirely past the bounds of credibility that it was seeking me. My back trail was now so tangled they could not believe me alive, let alone that chance would land me here.

Therefore they had some other mission. And the last thing I must do - until I was sure of that ship - was to contact its crew or pa.s.sengers. Though it was closed now, I could not be sure that I had not already been sighted on some visa screen. I began to edge back, keeping under the curving side of the wreck, retreating as eagerly as I had earlier advanced.

There was a sharp clang and the hatch opened, the landing ramp protruding like a tongue out over the smoking ground, hunting anchorage on the untouched land. It angled away from the wreck, so those using it could not clearly see it or me- I hoped.

I retreated further; I longed to dart back, away now from the wreckage, which could only draw curious explorers. There was a brush screen still standing, but I could not be sure that some of the sniffers were not lurking there.

The men who came out on the ramp had no protective suiting, proving that they were aware of the nature of this world, ready to be about their purpose here. They wore side arms, and even from this distance, I saw the short barrels of the lasers, not the long ones of the more ordinary stunners. So they were prepared to kill.

Though they wore the conventional planetside dress of any crewmen, coveralls and boots, those had no insignia on breast or collar. Nor was there any choice of color to suggest a uniform. The first two were human or humanoid, but behind them came a shorter figure with four upper limbs which hung at his sides in a way to suggest an unusual flaccidity. His head, which was round, lacked hair and appeared to rest directly on his shoulders, with no support of neck. Where a human skull would show ears, he wore tall feathery appendages which moved constantly back and forth, as Eet's head had moved when he tested for signs of life around him. And of the three I saw, I feared him the most. For as Eet had said, who knows what extra talents an X-Tee might possess. And any among a human crew would be there for no other reason than that he had attributes they found highly useful.

To re-enter the wreck was to be trapped. I must make up my mind to leave the dubious protection of its overhang and try to reach the bush or the river. And it seemed to me that the river offered the lesser menace.

For as long as I could I watched the three from the ship. They reached the end of the ramp, fanned out. The two humans on either side flanked the X-Tee in the middle. His feathery appendages were no longer whirling about; instead they now pointed their tips straight before him, and I could see more of his face. His features were not as far removed from the human norm as were the sniffers'. He had a short nose, two eyes, and if they were set far to the sides of his head and lacked brows, and if his mouth was wider than seemed symmetrical, he was still not too unlike his crewmates.

Suddenly he halted and in lightning draws two of his upper arms caught at the double set of weapons he wore. The brilliant splash of laser fire pencil-beamed from their tips, blackening the brush. His attack was followed by a scream and a thrashing, which marked the pa.s.sing of either a sniffer or something of similar bulk. The two humans went into a half crouch, their weapons out and ready. But they had not fired, and it would seem they depended upon the X-Tee for leadership in attack.

I crawled back. Now the ship was between me and those killers. When I came to the river, I saw that blocks had been uprooted from the ruined wall and tumbled by the force of the water. At one time some structure on the other side of the stream had fallen, its masonry joining to the walls on this side to provide a dam. Perhaps that had caused, until the water had broken through again, the flooding of the country.

Now there was a crazy jumble of rocks and stones washed and ringed by the water, forming a broken bridge across that ribbon of river. On the other side was the cliff, some distance away, and as Eet had reported, that was holed with dark openings. Between the water and its face were the remains of buildings.

On this side of the ship the clinging vegetation had not been burned away so thoroughly. Perhaps the river spray gave more moisture, for in some places it grew into long trailing vines.

"Eet?" I tried that call, the life here leading me to hope that he might have survived after all. Or had he fallen to a club? I looked along the rocks, down to the water-washed stones, half expecting to see there a small body lying twisted and broken.

"Eet-?"

The answer I hoped against hope to hear did not come. But what did was an awareness of another kind, a strange groping which could not touch minds as Eet did, but which noted my call. Not that it could trace it back to its source. Only it was alerted.

The X-Tee - could he have "heard" me somehow? My folly struck home as I teetered on the edge of a block, looking down for a possible bridge over the river. To attempt the drop with my dragging leg was more than I dared. I could be caught out there, helpless, vulnerable to any laser beam.

And so I betrayed myself. For as I hesitated I heard from behind: "Hold it - right there!"

Basic, spoken with a human intonation. I turned slowly, holding on to a block for support, to face one of the humans from the ship. He was like any other crewman, save that in his hand was a laser pointing directly at me.

I knew then that I had thrown away one small advantage. Had I come out to greet the ship's people in wild joy, as they would expect from one marooned, made up a plausible story, they might not have been suspicious. Of course, it would have been dangerous for me if they wanted to cover up their presence on this world. But I would have gained time. Now my own actions made me suspect. I still had a small trick I could play - I could accentuate my lameness, allow my captors to believe that I was far more handicapped than I really was.

So I waited for the other to approach, making a display of holding to my support as if to loose it for a moment would allow me to collapse. And I hoped my general disreputable appearance would add to my claim of injury. Perhaps I could even build upon those patches of new skin so apparent on my body, using a story of being set adrift in an LB when plague was feared. It would not be the first time such an incident had happened.

My captor did not come too close, though he could see both of my hands in plain sight on the stone and that I had no weapons. And his laser never wavered from its sighting on my chest.

"Who are you?" he demanded in Basic.

In those few moments I had determined on the role which might save me. I cowered away from him and shrieked, in the wildest and least sane voice I could counterfeit.

"No-no! Do not kill me! I am well, I tell you! The fever is gone - I am well-"

He halted and I thought I saw his eyes narrow as he studied my face intently. I trusted those pink patches were very visible.

"Where did you come from?" Was there a subtle alteration in his tone? Could I make him believe that I was a deportee from a plague ship, and that I expected to be burned down on sight for no other reason than that I had been cast adrift?

"A ship- Do not kill me! I tell you I am clean now - the fever is gone! Let me go - I will not come near you - your ship - just let me go!"

"Stand where you are!" His order was sharp. Now he cupped his free hand before his mouth and spoke into a com mike. The words he used were not Basic and I could not understand, save that he must be reporting to a superior. This was a dangerous game I played; a hair's difference could mean life or death.

"You-" He motioned with the laser. "Walk ahead-"

"No- I will go - I will not infect-"

"Walk!" A beam, cut to a finger's breadth in diameter, clipped the stone not far from my left hand. Its heat was searing. I cried out as he expected me to do.

I saw him grin. "Touched you? Want another - closer this time? I said - walk! The Captain's interested in you.

Walk I did, making a clumsy business of pulling myself along as if my bruised leg were hardly more than a dead weight.

"Got hurt?" my captor asked, viewing my very slow progress with impatience.

"There are natives- with clubs- they hunted me-' I mumbled.

"So? They have a liking for meat, and you would be that, as far as they are concerned. Not good - meeting with them." He might have been remembering some earlier experience of his own.

I lurched along as slowly as I could, magnifying my limp. Once more I rounded the end of the wreck and now both the other human and the X-Tee came toward us. The X-Tee had holstered his lasers, but both those feather fronds inclined in my direction.

Whether my communication with Eet had sharpened any esper talent I might have had, though I was sure I was not talented at all, I could not tell. But I was aware of an impact from the alien which was not physical, but mental. Only, if he was trying to batter his way into my mind, he was not successful. There was no smooth meeting as I had known with Eet. And I hoped I could completely bar his probe. It was necessary that I remain what I seemed to be- "So you flushed him," the other human observed. "What was he trying to do - scramble?"

"Not with that leg. And be may have more wrong with him - take a good look at that face."

So bidden, he did, with a searching stare. And his expression suggested be was not in favor of what be saw. I wondered just how bad my sloughing skin and the shiny new patching looked. It was no longer so noticeable on my hands or so I thought. But then I was used to seeing it and any fading from those violent purple splotches was an improvement as far as I was concerned.

"Perhaps you had better keep him well away," was the newcomer's verdict. "Tell the Captain about him."

"Captain's waiting - up there. March, you!"

There was someone standing on the ramp. A jerk of the laser sent me on. I stumbled along, hoping I was indeed a miserable object for anyone's eyes to rest upon.