But now there was something in Tan Ayana shrank from, refused to face. The Tan who had come out of the grueling training had a hardness which she secretly feared. He could look upon that wounded body dragging painfully along, and all he thought of was the struggle which had caused those hurts. It was as if he actually wanted to watch such a battle. And that Tan—no, she would not believe that that Tan was the ruler of the mind and body she loved.
“But there is not”—Massa, frowning, paid no attention to Tan’s comment “a single life-reading for our own kind! Yet this is a city built by man. We have landed on a site such as our fathers made on Elhorn, save that they did not ring it about there with a city—a city so vast that Tan’s record”—she shook her head—“is more than we expected—“
“Expected?” Tan challenged that. “We can expect anything here! This is the world which sent the First Ships into space, where secrets, all the secrets we need, lie waiting!”
“And from which,” Jacel pointed out dryly, “our own kind seems to have gone. We had better keep that in mind when we go prying about for secrets, lest some of those we find are other than we care to own or discover. Do not forget that this city has inhabitants—such as these—“ He pointed to the reader. “And do not forget either. Tan, that those men of mighty secrets, our parents of the First Ships, fled in such fear that they tried to keep hidden the very existence of this world.”
Tan looked impatient. “We have protection that those animals do not know of—“
“Animals who carry lasers?” Jacel was not to be shaken. “And if this is indeed a storehouse of waiting secrets, perhaps some of them are already in the paws—or hands—of those who intend to keep them.
“We walk softly, slowly, and with all care now. Or it may be, in spite of caution, we will cease to walk at all.”
He did not put any undue emphasis on those words. Yet they carried the force of an order. Ayana hoped that the conditioning they had all accepted—that the will of Jacel was to hold in any final decision—would continue to control Tan. Let him work off his restlessness, his energy, in his sky exploration of the city.
It would seem that her hopes held the next day. The storm died before midnight, and sunrise brought a fair day. The light caught the windows in the buildings, some of which did not seem windows at all but clear bands running in levels around the towers. And those blazed as the sun struck them fairly.
Tan took off in the flitter, this time to trace the uter boundaries of the city. Again.he carried equipment to feed back to their computer all the data he gained. The others did not lift ramp at once, but set out sensors to pick up any approach at ground level. Jacel supervised that, being very careful about the linkage. When he had finished he stood up.
“Nothing can pass that. A blade of grass blown by the wind would cause an alarm,” he said with conviction.
Ayana had climbed part way up the ramp. She shaded her eyes against the steadily warming blaze of the sun, tried to view the flitter. But Tan must have streaked straight away, wasting no time hovering as he had yesterday.
That furred creature, the hurt one—it must have long since reached the tower. She wished she could re-member why it seemed so familiar. The records of the First Ships, because of that destruction, often with-held just the details one needed most.
Oddly enough it came to her back in her own cabin, and from the strangest source. She had been led by that feeling of nostalgia to open her small packet of allowed personal items. They were, perhaps to a stranger, a queer collection. There was a flower pre-served between two inch-wide squares of permaplast, its violet-blue as richly vivid as it had been when she had encased it. And a water-worn pebble that came from the stream outside her home at Veeve Station. She had kept it because the crystalline half was so oddly joined to the black stone. And then there was Putti—
Ayana stared now at Putti wide-eyed. There had always been Puttis—round and soft, made for children. They were traditional and common. She had kept hers because it was the last thing her mother had made before she died of the one illness on Elhorn they had found no remedy for. Puttis were four-legged and tailed. Their heads were round, with shining eyes made of buttons or beads, upstanding pointed ears, whiskers above the small mouth. Puttis were loved, played with, adored in the child world; their origin was those brought by children on the First Ships.
She had seen one of those original Puttis, also preserved in permaplast. And that one had been covered with fur.
Putti! She could not be right, to compare the soft toy with that muscular furred creature on the bridge. But Putti could have been made by someone trying to represent just such a creature in softer materials than flesh, blood, and bone. She was about to start up, to hunt Jacel and Massa with news of her discovery, when second thoughts argued against that. The resemblance, now that she studied Putti closely, grew less and less. She might make the connection in her own mind, but that was not proof. Putti, a toy—and a weapon-bearing primitive (if not an animal) skulking through buildings long deserted by her kind— No, it was foolish to expect the others to accept that suspicion.
Furtig held the platter of meat on his knee and tried to show proper manners by not stuffing his mouth or chewing too loudly. He was hungry, but there was Liliha, smoothing her tail as she rested on a thick cushion, now and then fastidiously flicking some small suggestion of dust from her fur. He could hear. Just, her very muted throat purr, as if she were lost in some pleasant dream. But he did not doubt she was aware of every move he made. So he curbed his appetite and tried to copy the restraint of the Inborn.
“The flyer”—she broke her self-absorption—“is in the air again. It does not hang above us but has head-ed toward the west. Dolar and two scouts saw it rise. There was a Demon in it.”
“It is not like the servants here then, able to go on its own?” Furtig wanted to keep her talking. Just to have Liliha sitting there while he ate, relaxed in the thought that he had won to safety through such adventures as most warriors never dreamed of, and that he had rested well and was ready to follow the outer trails again, was pleasing.
“So it would seem. They made it of pieces they brought in the sky-ship.”
Furtig marveled at her patience. He should have remembered that; Gammage had spoken of it the night before. But at that time Furtig had not been thinking too clearly. Now he glanced up hastily, but Liliha was not eyeing him with scorn.
“If they made it,” she continued, “then within these lairs may lie that which can also be used for the same purpose. Gammage has set those who watched the making into search for such.”
Privately Furtig did not doubt that, given the time and the means, the Ancestor and his followers would be able to duplicate the flyer. But then to find some- one to fly in it—that was a different matter. Though he could imagine Gammage ready to make the at- tempt if offered the chance. He, himself, preferred to do his traveling—and any fighting—on the solid and dependable ground. But there were advantages to such craft. They could take a scout higher than any spy tree. Just as the Demon was now viewing the lairs from above.
On the other hand, unless the Demon had some un-heard-of way of looking through solid roofs and walls, he would see only the lairs and not what or who moved in them under cover. Only in the open country could such servants be used to advantage..
Furtig swallowed the last mouthful of meat. Now he raised the bowl and lapped as mannerly as he could at the residue of good juices gathered in the bottom. The lair people lived well. They had fish, found in small inner lakes (made it would seem for no other purpose than to hold them in readiness to be eaten). And there were other places where birds and rabbits were preserved in runs, fed and kept safe until they were needed. ;
The cave people might well think of that. Suppose they kept alive some of the creatures they hunted or netted, fed them in pens. Then when game became scarce and the weather ill for hunters, there would be food at hand. Yes, there were more things than Demon knowledge to be learned here in the lairs.