Then Troy half fell through a mass of foliage, as a tough vine gave way, and was once more in the open— facing a nightmare scene.
There was an opening in the wall here, with a well-cleared, paved space before it. And in the center of that, facing, the opening, was a small machine, a machine akin to his own time and culture. A cone of meta-plast was pointed with its large end toward the wall opening, and, as Troy stepped onto the pavement, he was immediately conscious of the fact that a faint vibration came from that machine. It was not only in working order—it was running!
Cat, foxes, kinkajou—the animals were lined up well to the left of the machine, facing the opening— waiting—
Troy’s cry was half choked in his throat as he looked beyond the machine, along the line of that pointed cone. It must—surely it must have once been human, that thing trembling a little, spread-eagled on just’ such a webbing as had choked the passage from the fungus cavern. Yet this was a dried rag-fashioned creature from which not only life but much of the bulk of body had vanished. The head, which still showed a thatch of dust-stiffened hair, lolled forward on the rack of bones that was the chest, and Troy was glad he could not see the features.
He surveyed the webbing, seeing not only that it covered the opening and held its long-dead prisoner upright, frail as that structure of skin and bones was, but that the cords also ran along the walls to form a pattern of stripes, some as fine as thread, others as thick as one of his fingers. And the thing that had woven the web could not have been one of the orange- red lily hearts. It must have been larger than the Terran animals.
Had been—must have been? What was there to prove that the weaver was now gone? The captive was dead. Troy thought he could guess how long he had been there—just as he knew what machine stood before them, its powers dampened out, mercifully, but still in operation. This was part of the horror that had put Ruhkarv out of bounds for his kind. The recaller had been set here, a point Fauklow had selected because his knowledge of nonhuman remains had indicated there might be a response. And there had been a response—too concrete a one.
Elsewhere the recaller had summoned only the pal- lid tatters of ghostly memories. Here some freak of time, space, or unknown nature had given body to a ghost and the power to use it! Out of a far and devious past and the corridors of Ruhkarv had come a creature, intelligent or not, ruler of those ways once, or a prowler in them, as great an enemy to the builders as it was to the Fauklow men, which had had the energy to revive and attack its arousers.
And perhaps the maker of that web had been only one of a number of monsters that had crawled out of the caverns of Ruhkarv. Most of the bodies of the explorers had been found aboveground with indications that they had, toward the end of their suffering, battled insanely against each other. Horrors driving them in a mad flight to the surface.
To the surface! That registered in Troy’s mind now as he strove desperately to keep his imagination under control, to observe without trying to reconstruct what had happened here. Fauklow’s men had set up the recaller, and they had fled from this point. So there was an exit to the surface somewhere from this chamber—did it lead through that opening before him?
He thought not. There would be no reason to aim the recaller on the back trail of the passage that had brought explorers here. No, that opening had had some significance for the dead archaeologist, but not as a door of escape. The old story of the treasure of Ruhkarv—had Fauklow found some clue that had led him to believe he could summon a whisper from the past to reveal the hiding place of the treasure?
Troy only knew that nothing would have led him to explore that dark tunnel mouth behind the spread and wasted body of a man who might have tried just that. He glanced at the animals. They were intent upon the scene, but not hostile.
“Dead only?” he asked.
Sahiba,pushed back against his shoulder, her good foreleg rigid on his arm.
“Dead here—“ But there remained an odd note of puzzlement in that reply.
“Here?” he echoed.
“It is here—yet it is not here.” She shook her head.
Troy could not be sure of what she was trying to tell him. “The man is dead.”
“Yes.”
“And that which made the net?”
“It is”—the gray-blue head moved, soft fur rubbing his shoulder—“dead here—but waiting.”
“The recaller!” Troy thought he knew now. Blanketed by the quencher beam from the rangers’ installation, the machine could no longer materialize the uncanny thing from the past. But under that blanket the recaller still ran. Let anything again lift the quencher and the weaver of those webs would return!
Troy stared at the array of dials and buttons on the small control board set into the back of the machine. There was no way of his knowing which of those would close down the dangerous ray, and he had no intention of experimenting.
Simba crept slowly toward the web and the captive there. He might have been a hunter stalking prey. One black foreleg stretched, a paw with claws extended patted the drift of dust that lay at the foot of the webbing. Something bright spun from that dust and Simba followed it, keeping it rolling away from the opening, back, until it struck against Troy’s boot.
The man stooped to pick it up. By the slick, cold feel he knew he held a ring of metal, a deep crimson-red. But as his fingers closed on it, there was a change in that plain blood-colored band. Sparks flashed on it, single and in pinpointed clusters, just as they had appeared on the walls of the water tunnel. And Troy believed that on his palm now rested no memento from the body of the unknown dead captive, but something that was native to these chambers and halls from the beginning, perhaps the only piece of the lost treasure of Ruhkarv that men of his own time would ever see. Had that, too, been summoned out of the past, given substance by some chance of the recaller? Or had it been found in the tunnel by the web captive, who had fled carrying it—only to be taken just as he was within sight of freedom?
On the band the sparks winked faster. Also—Troy frowned, completely puzzled. He had picked up a ring only a size too large for any of his fingers; now he was holding a much larger loop. Sahiba sniffed, then put out a paw, touched the hoop. It spanned his palm. Troy pushed his fingers together, inserted them. The band moved down, closed about his wrist, tightened there.
Startled, he jerked and tugged at it, only to find the bracelet now immovable, noi, tight enough to pinch the flesh, but resting as if it had been fashioned exactly to the measure of his arm. Yet under his exploring fingers the metal was solid surface, with no discernible joints or stretching bands to account for the alteration in size.
Sahiba patted it, apparently attracted by the winks of light still flickering on and off around it. Was it only a piece of personal ornamentation—or some out landish weapon defensive or offensive?
“Good or bad?” he asked aloud, wondering if the acute senses of the animals could give him a reply to that.
“Old thing.” Sahiba yawned.
“A way out?” Troy returned to the main problem. Perhaps some kind of trail would be marked in the earth of the garden away from this point. He walked along the edge of the pavement on which the recaller had been set, searching for any trace of the route taken coming or going by those who had brought the machine here and then must have fled or been driven back to the surface.
Simba and the foxes accompanied him, then darted ahead, while Shang swung into the bushes again. They reached the end of that rectangle of pavement, and there Troy had eyes keen enough to pick out old scars of lopped branches, once again woven with a cloak of thick growth but still to be seen. He swung his knife, cutting a new way by those guides.
The light from overhead had dimmed into what was more night than dusk when he came out facing the foot of one of those ramps such as had led them down into this strange territory hours—or was it days?— earlier. He had lost all sense of time.
They made camp in a pocket of bare earth with the slope of the ramp at their backs. Troy eyed the now dark jungle distrustfully. So far only the lily hearts had been sighted as living things. But that did not mean that there were no other, just-as-vicious unknowns. And perhaps, as on the upper surface of Korwar, nocturnal hunters were more to be feared than those who stalked by day. Now more than ever he was dependent upon the senses of his companions. And that balance had shifted again—here man might be a liability to the Terrans.