“Tan—Ayana!” Massa’s voice over the corn and the excitement in it made Ayana reach for the blaster on her discarded belt. “Look at the screen!”
Windows were alight! The dark ringing the ship was not complete. Apparently Massa had set the pickup on the move again to give them the changing view. There was one lighted tower and then another.
Not all were alight. Ayana managed to be objective after her first startled reaction. There were blocks of lights, then again scattered single ones. Some buildings were altogether dark. Such uneven lighting hinted of inhabitants. There were people there—there had to be!
“Tan—do you see?” Ayana’s question was a kind of plea against his plans for tomorrow. He must not take off alone, cross that grim, watching place, in the light flitter. That had a shield, of course, every protect device they could give it. But above that giant, and she was sure hostile, pile—
Those lights, surely Tan would accept them as evidence of life. They could lift ship, find one of those all-dark cities they had marked from space. That was only sensible. But she knew she would not have a chance to argue that when Tan answered:
“Doesn’t mean a thing! Do not worry. Big Eyes. Those are probably automatic and some circuits have long gone. Anyway, I have the force shield.”
Even his use of the private name he had for her (which she cherished because of the sweet intimacy it stood for)—even that hurt. It was as if he deliberately used it to scoff at her concern. Ayana closed her eyes to those lights, tried to find sleep and perhaps dream of the safety of Elhorn before this wild venture became her life.
The sudden clamor outside this new corridor was one Furtig had heard before, which set fur erect along his spine, flattened his ears to his skull, parted his lips to hiss. He caught an echo of that hiss from Ku-La. Yet in a second or two both realized that this was not the hunting cry of a Barker pack.
No, it held pain and fear rather than the hot triumph of the hunter upon his quarry. Furtig, belly down on the floor of the corridor, wriggled forward to peer through the transparent outer wall.
There was the Barker, threshing wildly on one foot—no, a foot and tail caught in something. He was in such a frenzy that he snapped with his well-fanged jaws, striving to cut what held him. Then his head was caught! His flailing body fell, or was jerked, to the ground. Seconds later he was so trapped in the substance which had entangled him that he could not move save in spasmodic jerks, each of which worsened his plight. His baying came in muffled snorts. They came running from concealment where even Furtig’s sharp sight had not detected them. Rattons —a gray-brown wave of them. They piled on the Barker, seeming to have no fear of what had felled him, and began to drag the captive away.
Toward this building! Furtig hissed again. He had not smelled Ratton, seen Ratton, heard Ratton, since they had come through that break in the wall into these corridors. But if the Rattons were towing their catch into this structure, it was time to be gone.
He crept back to Ku-La, reporting what he had witnessed.
“A stick-in trap. They coat the ground with something you cannot see or scent, but it entangles you speedily,” the other said.
“Yet they went to the Barker, handled him without getting stuck—“
“True. We do not know how they are able to do that. Perhaps they put something on themselves to repel the trap. We only know—to our sorrow—how it works on us!”
“A Barker in the lairs—“ Furtig picked up the bag of tapes, was ready to help Ku-La on. “A scout?”
“Perhaps. Or they may also seek knowledge.” Ku-La gave an involuntary cry as he pulled himself up. He was limping very badly, moving along by will alone, Furtig knew.
His admiration for the other’s determination and fight against pain had grown. No longer did he wonder why he had endangered his mission to rescue Ku-La; he accepted him as a comrade like Foskatt.
“If they bring the Barker here,” he began warningly. It seemed cruel to keep urging Ku-La on, but Furtig had lately picked up the homing signal in his mind, knew their goal, and also that they dared waste no time in these dangerous corridors.
“True. Though Rattons seem to have little liking for going aloft,” Ku-La commented, drawing small breaths between words. “They keep mainly to the lower ways.”
They rounded a curve in the wall. Furtig stayed close to the inner wall; that long expanse of almost in-visible surface on the outer made him uneasy. Today that feeling was worse as the wind and rain beat hard in gusts which vibrated in the walls about them.
But—as they rounded that curve, looked out upon a new expanse of open, Furtig came to a halt— Light —a moving light!
It rose from the ground, soaring high as if a flying thing carried a huge hand lamp. Now it danced back and forth erratically in the sky, swooping out and away. And through the curtain of the rain Furtig could not follow it far.
Ku-La made a sharp sound. “A sky-ship—a sky-ship of the Demons!”
Furtig did not want to accept that. In fact at that moment he discovered he had never really believed in Demon return. But there was such conviction in Ku-La’s identification that belief was now forced on him.
The return of the Demons! Even in the caves of the People such a foreboding had been used as a horrible warning for the young. But as one grew older, one no longer could be frightened so. Only enough remained of the early chill of such tales to make one’s blood run faster at such a time as this.
One ship—a scout? Just as the People sent one warrior, two, three, ahead to test the strength of the enemy, the lay of the land, how it might be used for offense or defense before a clan moved into hunt?
Such a scout could be cut off. And, with small clans, the loss of a warrior was warning enough. They fell back, sought another trail. No tribe was large enough to take the loss of seasoned warriors as less than a major calamity.
Only, in the old tales the Demons had been count-less. Cutting off a single scout would not discourage a migrating tribe with many warriors. Gammage might have an answer; he was the only one among the People now who would.
“We must hurry—“ Furtig said, though he still watched for that light marking the Demon ship.
Furtig leaped back toward the inner wall. No light, yet something had almost brushed the rain-wet outer wall—something far larger than any flying thing he had ever seen. Luckily there were no wall lights here, nothing except the wan daylight. Perhaps they were lucky, and the flying thing in its swift passage had not seen them. For Furtig had the dire feeling that it might possess the power to smash through the trans-parent wall, scoop them out, were such action desired.
“Move!” He shoved Ku-La with his free hand. The other needed no urging; he was already hobbling at the best pace he had shown during their long, painful journey. As if the sight of that Demon thing had spurred him to transcend the wounds he bore.
They reached a second curve in the corridor, and this time Furtig gave a sigh of relief. For that trans-parent wall which made him feel so vulnerable vanished, there were solid barriers on either side. That relief was very short, for they came soon to one of those bridges in the air. Furtig crouched, peering into the outer storm, his hands cupped over his eyes. What made his disappointment the greater was that they were now close to their goal. For he recognized the tower at the other end of the bridge as the building in which he and Foskatt had tested the communication box. They need only cross this span and they would be in their, or Furtig’s, home territory.
Only, to cross, they must go along that narrow and slippery way, under not only the beating of the wind and rain, but perhaps also the threat of the flying thing. He thought he could do it—the People were surefooted. But Ku-La—
The other might be reading his thought. “What lies there?” His throaty voice was near a growl.
“The lair where my people hold.”
“Safety of a kind then. Well, we can do no less than try to reach it.”
“You are willing to try?” Surely the other could see his danger. But if he chose to go, then Furtig would do what he could to aid him.
He pulled out that cord which had served them so well, was preparing to loop them together belt to belt. But the other pushed his hands aside.