“Driving us—” Arskane panted. “They herd us like deer—”
Fors tried to struggle free of the other’s prisoning hand.
“Lura—ahead—” In spite of the blow which had rocked him he caught the cat’s message. “There the way lies clear—”
Arskane did not seem disposed to leave cover but Fors tore free and wriggled through an opening in the churned earth and broken machines. It seemed to last hours, that crawling, twisting race with death. But in the end they came out on the edge of that odd scar in the earth which they had sighted from the tower. And there Lura crouched, her lips lifted in a snarl, her tail sweeping steadily to signify her rage.
“Down that gully—quick—” Arskane was into the notch before he had finished speaking.
The strange earth crunched under Fors’ boots. He took the only way left to freedom. And Lura, still giving low voice to her dismay, swept by him.
Here there was not even moss and the rocky outcrops had a glassy glaze. Fors shrank from touching anything with his bare flesh. The sounds of pursuit were gone though. It was too quiet here. He realized suddenly that what his ears missed was the ever-present sound of insects which had been with them in the vegetation of the healthy world.
This country they had entered blindly was alien, with no familiar green and brown to meet the eye, no homely sounds for the reassurance of the ear. Arskane had paused and as Fors caught up he asked the question which was on his tongue tip.
“What is this place?”
But the southerner countered with a question of his own. “What have you been told of the Blow-Up Lands?”
“Blow-Up Lands?” Fors tried to remember the few scanty references to such in the records of the Eyrie. Blow-Up Lands—where nuclear bombs had struck to bite into the earth’s crust, where death had entered so deeply that generations must pass before man could go that way again—
His mouth opened and then shut quickly. He did not have to ask his question again. He knew—and the chill horror of that knowing was worse than a Beast Thing dart striking into his flesh. No wonder there had been no pursuit. Even the mutant Beast Things knew better than to venture here!
“We must go back—” he half whispered, already knowing that they could not.
“Go back to certain death? No, brother, and already it is too late. If the old tales be true we are even now walking dead men with the seeds of the burning sickness in us. Instead—if we go on—there is a chance of getting through—”
“Perhaps more than a chance.” Fors’ first horror faded as he recalled an old argument long ago worn to rags by the men of the Eyrie. “Tell me, Arskane, in the early years after the Blow-Up did the people of your tribe suffer from the radiation sickness?”
The big man’s straight brows drew together. “Yes. There was a death year. All but ten of the clan died within three months. And the rest sickened and were ever weakly. It was not until a generation later that we grew strong again.”
“So was it also with those of the Eyrie. Men of my clan who have studied the ancient books say that because of this sickness we are now different from the Old Ones who gave us birth. And perhaps because of that difference we may venture unharmed where death would have struck them down.”
“But this reasoning has not yet been put to the proof?”
Fors shrugged. “Now it is. And we shall see if it is correct. I know that I am mutant.”
“While I am like the others of my tribe. But that is not saying that they are the same as the Old Ones. Well, whether it be what we hope or not, we are set on this path. And there is truly death, and an unpleasant one, behind us. In the meantime—that is a storm coming. We had best find shelter, this is no land to blunder across in the dark!”
It was hard to keep one’s footing on the greasy surface and Fors guessed that if it were wet it would be worse than sand to plow through. They held to the sides of the narrow valleys which laced the country, looking for a cave or overhang that would afford the slightest hint of shelter.
The dark clouds made a sullen gray mass and a premature twilight. A bad night to go without a fire—in the open of the contaminated land under a dripping sky.
A jagged flash of purple lightning cracked across the heavens and both of them shielded their eyes as it struck not far from where they stood. The rumble of the thunder which followed almost split their ear drums. Then the rain came in a heavy smothering curtain to close them in. They huddled together, miserable, the three of them against the side of a narrow valley, cowering as the lightning struck again and again and the water rose in a stream down the center of the gully, washing the soil from the glassy rocks. Only once did Fors move. He unhooked his canteen and pulled at Arskane’s belt flask until the big man gave it to him. These he set out in the steady downpour. The water which ran by his feet was contaminated but the rain which had not yet touched soil or rock might be drinkable later.
Lura, Fors decided, must be the most unhappy of the three. The rain ran from their smooth skin and was not much held by their rags of clothing. But her fur was matted by it and it would take hours of licking with her tongue before it was in order again. However, she did not voice her disapproval of life as she usually did. Since they had crossed into the atom-blasted land she had not given tongue at all. On impulse Fors tried now to catch her thoughts. He had been able to do that in the past—just enough times to be sure that she could communicate when she wished. But now he met only a blank. Lura’s wet fur pressed against him now, but Lura herself had gone.
And then he realized with a start that she was listening, listening so intently that her body was now only one big organ for the trapping of sound. Why?
He rested his forehead on his arms where he had crossed them on his hunched knees. Deliberately he set about shutting out the sounds around him—the drum of the rain, Arskane’s breathing, the gurgle of the water threading by just beyond their toes. Luckily the thunder had stopped. He was conscious of the pounding of his own blood in his ears, of the hiss of his own breath. He shut them out, slowly, as thoroughly as he could. This was a trick he had tried before but never with such compulsion on him. It was very necessary now that he hear—and that warning might have come either from Lura or some depth within him. He concentrated to shut out even the drive of that urgency—for it too was a danger.
There was a faint plopping sound. His mind considered it briefly and rejected it for what it was—the toppling of earth undercut by the storm-born stream. He pushed the boundaries of his hearing farther away. Then, even as a strange dizziness began to close in, he heard it—a sound which was not born of the wind and the rain. Lura moved, rising to her feet. Now she turned and looked at him as he raised his head to meet her eyes.
“What—?” Arskane stirred uneasily, staring from one to the other.
Fors almost laughed at the blank bewilderment in the big man’s eyes.
The dizziness which had come from his concentration was receding fast. His eyes adjusted to the night and the shadows. He got to his feet and put aside bow and quiver, keeping only the belt with his sword and knife. Arskane put out a protesting hand which he eluded.
“There is something back there. It is important that I see it. Wait here—”
But Arskane was struggling up too. Fors saw his mouth twist with pain as he inadvertently put weight upon his left arm. The rain must have got to the healing wound. And seeing that, the mountaineer shook his head.
“Listen—I am mutant—you have never asked in what manner I differ. But it is this, I can see in the dark—even this night is little different from the twilight for me. And my ears are close to Lura’s in keenness. Now is the hour when my difference will serve us. Lura!” He swung around and looked for a second time deep into those startlingly blue eyes. “Here will you stay—with our brother. Him will you guard—as you would me!”
She shifted her weight from one front paw to another, standing up against his will in the recesses of her devious mind, refusing him. But he persisted. He knew her stubborn freedom and the will for it which was born into her kind. They called no man master and they went their own way always. But Lura had chosen him, and because he had no friends among his own breed they had been very close, perhaps closer than any of the Eyrie had been with the furred hunters before. Fors did not know how much she would yield to his will but this was a time when he must set himself against her. To leave Arskane here alone, handicapped by his wound and his lack of night sight, would be worse than folly. And the big man could not go with him. And the sound—that must be investigated!