The black cat ceased its toilet, sat upright, the tip of its tail folded neatly over its paws, its blue eyes regarding Troy. And the man stirred uneasily under that unwinking stare.
“You wish a way out?”
“Yes.” Troy answered that simply. With this new humbleness he was willing to accept what the other would give.
“This place—not man’s—not ours—“ Troy nodded. “Before man—something like man but different.”
“There is danger—old danger here.” There was a new touch of thought like a new voice. The gray-blue cat had finished its meal and was looking over the good paw, raised to its mouth for a tonguing, at Troy. “There was a bad thing happened here to men—some years ago.”
Both cats appeared to consider; that. Perhaps their minds linked in a thread of communication he could not reach.
“You are not of those we know.” That was the black cat. Troy discovered that he could now distinguish one’s thought touch from another’s. The animals had come to be definite and separate personalities to him and closer in companionship because of that very fact. Sometimes he was so certain of a comrade at hand that it was a shock to realize that the mind he could touch was outwardly clothed in fur and was borne by four feet, not two.
“No.”
“Few men know our speech—and those must use the caller. Yet from the first you could contact us without that. You are a different kind of man.” That was the gray-blue cat.
“I do not know. You mean that you cannot ‘talk’ to everyone?”
“True. To the big man we talked—because that was set upon us—just as we had to obey the caller when he used it. But it was not set upon us to talk to you—yet you heard. And you are not one-who-is-to-be-obeyed.”
Set upon them—did they mean that they had been conditioned to obey orders and “talk” with certain humans?
“No,” Troy agreed. “I do not know why I hear your ‘talk,’ but I do.”
“Now that the big man is gone, we are hunted.”
“That is so.”
“It is as was told us. We should be hunted if we tried to be free.”
“We are free,” the black cat interrupted. “We might leave you, man, and you could not find us here unless we willed it so.”
“That is true.”
Again the pause, those unblinking stares. The black cat moved. It came to him, its tail erect. Then it sat upon its hind legs. Horan put out his hand diffidently, felt the quick rasp of a rough tongue for an instant on his thumb.
“There will be a way out.”
The cat’s head turned toward the fungus town. It stared as intently in that direction as it had toward Troy a moment earlier. And the man was not surprised when out of that unwholesome maze trotted the fox pair, followed by the kinkajou. They came to stand before Troy, the black cat a little to one side, and the man caught little flickers of their unheard speech.
“Not one-to-be-obeyed—hunts in our paths—will let us walk free—“
It was the black cat who continued as spokesman. “We shall hunt your way for you now, man. But we are free to go.”
“You are free to go. I share my path; I do not order you to walk upon it also.” He searched for phrases to express his acceptance of the bargain they offered and his willingness to be bound by their conditions.
“A way out—“ The cat turned to the others. The foxes lapped at the pool and then loped away. The kinkajou dabbled its front paws in the water. Troy offered it a pressed-food biscuit and it ate with noisy crunchings. Then it turned to the cavern wall at their back and frisked away along its foot.
“We shall go this way.” The cat nodded to the right of the pool, along that clean strip of ground between the fungoid growth and the cavern wall.
Troy emptied two of the containers of dry food, rinsed them, and filled them with water as a reserve supply.
Both cats drank slowly. Then Troy picked up the injured one, who settled comfortably in the crook of his arm. The black darted away.
Horan walked at a reasonable pace, studying his surroundings as he went. To the glance there was no alteration in either the fungus walls or the rock barrier to his right. But as he drew farther away from the splotch of sunlight, he switched on his atom torch.
The cat stirred in his hold, its head—with ears sharply pointed—swung to face the fungus.
“There is .something there—alive?” Troy’s hand went to the stunner in a belt loop.
“Old thing—not alive,” the thought answer came readily. “Sargon finds—“
“Sargon?”
The wavering picture of the male fox crossed his mind. “You are named?” he asked eagerly. Somehow names made them seem less aloof and untouchable, closer to his own kind.
“Man’s names!” There was disdain in that, hinting that there were other forms of identification more subtle and intelligent, beyond the reach of a mere human. And Troy, reading that into the cat’s reply, smiled.
“But I am a man. May I not use man’s names?”
The logic of that appealed to the dafnty lady he carried. “Sargon and Sheba.” Fleeing fox faces flashed into his mind. “Shang”—that was the kinkajou. “Simba, Sahiba,” her mate and herself.
‘Troy Horan,” he answered gravely aloud, to complete the round of introduction. Then he came back to her report. “This old thing—it was made—or did it once live?”
“It once lived.” Sahiba relayed the fox’s report promptly. “It was not man—not we—different.”
Troy’s curiosity was aroused, not enough, however, to draw him into the paths threading the forbidding fungoid town. But as they passed that point he wondered if the remains of one of the original inhabitants of Ruhkarv could lie there.
“An opening—“ Sahiba relayed a new message. “Shang has discovered an opening—up—“ She pointed with her good paw to the cavern wall.
Troy altered course, came up a slight slope, and found the kinkajou chattering excitedly and clinging head down to a knob that overhung a crevice in the wall. Troy flashed the torch into that dark pocket. There was no rear barrier; it was a narrow passage. Yet it did not have any facing of worked stone as had the other corridor entrances, and it might not lead far.
The foxes and Simba came from different directions and stood sniffing the air in the rocky slit. Troy was conscious of that too—a faint, fresh current, stirring the fetid breath of the fungus, hinting of another and cleaner place. This must be a way out.
Yet the waiting animals did not seem in any hurry to take that path.
“Danger?” asked Troy, willing to accept their hesitation as a warning.
Simba advanced to the overhang of the opening, his head held high, his whiskers quivering a little, as he investigated by scent.
“Something waiting—for a long time waiting—“
“Man? Animal?”
But Simba appeared baffled. “A long time waiting,” he repeated. “Maybe no longer alive—but still waiting.”
Troy tried to sift some coherent meaning out of that. The kinkajou made him start as it leaped from the rock perch to his shoulder.
“It is quiet.” Shang broke in over Simba’s caution. “We go outside—this way outside—“
But Troy asked Simba for the final verdict. “Do we go?”
The cat glanced up at him, and there was a flash of something warm upon the meeting of their eyes, as if Troy in his deference to the other’s judgment had advanced another step on the narrow road of under- standing between them.
“We go—taking care. This thing I do not understand.”
The foxes were apparently content to follow Simba’s lead. And the three trotted into the crevice, while Troy came behind, the atom torch showing that this way was indeed a slit in the rock wall and no worked passage.
Though the break was higher than his head by several feet, it was none too wide, and Troy hoped that it would not narrow past his using. Now that he was well inside and away from the cavern, the freshness of the air current blowing softly against his face was all-the more noticeable. He was sure that in that breeze was the scent of natural growing things and not just the mustiness of the Ruhkarv paths.
They had not gone far before the pathway began to slope upward, confirming his belief that it connected somehow with the outside world. At first, that slope was easy, and then it became steeper, until at last Troy was forced to transfer Sahiba to the ration bag on his back and use both hands to climb some sections. His less sensitive nose registered more than just fresh air now. There was an unusual fragrance, which was certainly not normal in this slit of rock, more appropriate to a garden under a sun hot enough to draw perfume from aromatic plants and flowers. Yet beneath that almost cloying scent lay a hint of another odor, a far less pleasant one—the flowers of his imagining might be rooted in a slime of decay.