Troy’s lips shaped a mirthless smile. Too many hunting parties might just foul each other. He would not speculate on chances that might not exist. One move at a time was all anyone could make.
The flitter sped on into the night, northeast. Before daylight caught them and he would have to set down, they should be well into the wilderness. And, remembering the mountain chains Rerne had lifted them above, he set the flyer to climbing, though the automatic alarm system was on and the autopilot would avoid any crash against an unseen peak.
He became conscious of warmth against his thigh and side, the soft touch of a small paw on his nervously rigid arm. The kinkajou was pressed against him, and the rest of that odd crew had climbed into the other half of the driver’s seat. Troy began to talk, not knowing how much of what he said reached their minds, but driven by the impulse to put his nebulous plans into words.
“There is the Wild ahead—and only the rangers and the native animals in it. Such a place should hold many hiding places for such as we—“
“And good hunting.” From one of them had come that quick reply. He sensed a rising excitement that was born not of fear or the need for defense but of anticipation—an emotion that all five of them shared;
“Good hunting.” He confirmed that. “Trees, and plains, mountains, rivers, rocks—“
“It is good to run free.” Out of the general aura of satisfaction those definite words arose.
“It is good to run free!” Troy echoed. Free of the Dipple, of Tikil—of the ways of men, which he had endured only because of his own stubborn determination not to be broken.
Overhead the stars made a clear, cold pattern, and the green round of the moon, rising above the mountains, showed snow caps like clear jade. The fugitives were across the first rim of the Larsh—into the Wild—and still no hint that the chase was up behind. Troy knew again the heady exultation of one who is pulling off an odds-against mission. He had no map, no points of reference, but he was certain that to simply continue northeast would bring him out along the fringe of the plains.
He set the controls on complete autopilot, stretched his arms wide. His shoulders ached from the rigid tension that had held him during the first hours of flight.
“By dawn,” he told his companions, “we shall be down—in a big country where there are no trails.”
The kinkajou had crowded into his lap, was curling up against him. And now the black cat was at his side, sitting upright, watching the night sky outside the bubble of the flitter, as if it had now accepted Troy as one of its own kind.
He must have drowsed, for the red snap of light on the control panel brought him awake with the stupid dullness of a too quickly aroused sleeper.
“Warn off! Warn off!”
Troy had heard just that same metallic voice before, but he could not remember when or why.
His hands went to the controls. He thumbed the autopilot release, but it did not give. As he hammered at it with his fist, that blink of light became steady and he remembered—Ruh—karv!
“Warn off”
Troy reached for the mike, to say the words that would end their escape attempt. But that move came too late. The red light was now a beam. Out of the night blossomed a huge burst of eye-searing white. The flitter lurched, lost speed, started down.
Eleven
Afterwards Troy could recall little of that crazy falling-leaf descent that threw them from one side of the pilot’s seat to the other. They were not quite helpless before the force that had shaken them off course and out of the sky, for the accident-safety ray had flashed on automatically, bringing them down to ground level at a speed under that of a direct crash. Troy fought the controls, beat at the lock with the full force of his wrists and arms. Something gave and for an instant or so the flitter was his again. He tried to put the nose up and the flyer gave a giant hop.
If that action did not win them the sky again, it did carry the flyer—with the effect of bursting through a taut curtain—beyond the influence of the thing that had grabbed them out of the air. Troy felt the flitter wheels strike, bouncing them up. They flattened off in a second crash, and it was dark—moon and stars blotted out.
His chest hurt and his head ached. In his mouth was the unforgettable flat sweet taste of blood. Before him was darkness, but from behind came a measure of light that he could sight as he tried to turn his head.
“Out—out—“ That was a plea rising to a kind of frenzy. Troy could feel movement beside him, back and forth across his bruised body until he grunted with pain.
Somehow he forced up his left arm, worked at the catch of the cabin door, lunging against that stubborn barrier with the strength of his shoulder. The panel gave, tumbling him out, and small paws thudded on him as their owners raced into the open.
Troy pulled himself up and tried to see where they had come to earth. Under him the surface of the ground seemed singularly smooth. His hand, questing over it, scraped up the grit of sand that lay in a drifted skim on stone or rock, very level stone or rock. As he twisted fully around, he could see the shaft of moonlight better. Behind—yes—the flitter had in some incredible way fitted itself nose first into a crevice where an arch of roof shut off the sky.
Troy worked his way around the wreckage to the light. But it was after he had crawled those few feet that he realized what had happened and how chance, the protective device of the Clans, and his own last- moment attempt to control the flitter had landed them in an unusual hiding place. Those rounded domes and crumbling walls, blind of any window or door opening were set deep in the sand of a desert waste. He had crashed straight into the heart of Ruhkarv itself!
“Where—?” He tried to summon the animals—and since he had no names to call, he pictured them mentally. The cats, black and gray-blue, the foxes, russet and cream, the kinkajou, where were they? Hurt? Still about?
“Come—come back!” He called softly aloud, heard odd echoes reply from the ruins about. Outside now, he could look around, see how the flyer had nosed into a dome that had a crumbled opening in one side.
A shadow leaped from one of the broken arches, pattered to him. The kinkajou had answered his call. It leaped to his shoulder, coiling its flexible tail about his upper arm in a grip tight enough to pinch. Troy reached up his other hand, caressed the round head butting against his cheek.
Then the foxes returned in a swift lope, stopping before him, their pointed noses up, testing the wind, their eyes agleam.
“Come,” Troy coaxed the cats. When there was no answer, he detached the kinkajou, started back into the dome cave to explore the wreck. In the pocket of the door he had wrenched open he found an atom torch and thumbed its button. The cone of light made clear the nose of the flyer embedded in the space of the dome as a too thick thread might have been forced into the eye of a needle.
Troy flashed the light into the machine and then stood very still as he saw a swiall limp body. Blue eyes wide with pain were raised 10 his. The gray-blue cat lay flat, its mouth open, panting. Now and again it licked a foreleg that was clamped tight between two buckled pieces of metal. Above it crouched its black mate, who, upon seeing Troy, uttered a series of sharp, demanding cries.
Setting down the torch, Troy went to work to free the delicate leg. Then he carried the cat into the open, placing it on the ground until he could salvage the aid kit of the flyer.
By the time the first thin streaks of false dawn were in the sky, he had done what he could. The leg had been set and treated. He had dragged out of the flitter the food bag, the stunner, and some of the kit tools, which he festooned from his own belt. As time had passed and no one had invaded the forbidden area of the ruins to gather them up prisoners. Troy began to believe that they had been brought down by some automatic guard device and that on foot they still had a chance to escape capture. But whether the Clans had set other guards about Ruhkarv, which might now keep them inside, he did not know.