“Not sure. I knew already that this sun is none of the charted ones, and the only constellations I can spot, from central co-ordinates, are all skewed to the left. I suspect we’re right out of the Spiral Arm of the Galaxy–note how few stars there are, compared even to Earth, let alone any centrally located colony planet! Oh, we’re a good long way from where we were supposed to be going!” Her voice sounded taut and drawn, and as he moved closer he saw in the darkness that there were tears on her cheeks.
He felt a painful urge to comfort her. “Well, at least when we’re on our way again, we’ll have discovered a new habitable planet. Maybe you’ll even get part of the finder’s fee.”
“But it’s so far–” she broke off. “Can we signal the ship?,.
“We can try. We’re at least eight thousand feet higher than they are; maybe we’re in a line-of-sight. Here, take the glasses, see if you can find any sign of a flash. But of course they could be behind some fold of the hills.”
He put his arm around her, steadying the glasses. She did not draw away. She said, “Do you have the bearing for the ship?”
He gave it to her; she moved the glasses slightly, compass in hand.
“I see a light–no, I think it’s lightning. Oh, what difference does it make?” Impatiently she put the glasses aside. He could feel her trembling. “You like these wide open spaces, don’t you?”
“Why, yes,” he said, slowly, “I’ve always loved the mountains. Don’t you?”
In the darkness she shook her head. Above them the pale violet light of one of the four small moons gave a faint tremulous quality to the dimness. She said, faintly, “No. I’m afraid of them.”
“Afraid?”
“I’ve been either on a satellite or training ship since I was picked for space at fifteen. “You” her voice wavered, “you get kind of agoraphobic.”
“And you volunteered to come on this trip!” MacAran said, but she mistook his surprise and admiration for criticism. “Who else was there?” she said harshly, turned away and went into the tiny tent.
Once again, after they had swallowed their food–hot tonight, since there was no rain to put out their fire–MacAran lay awake long after the girl slept. Usually at eight there was only the sound of blowing rain and creak lag, lashing branches: tonight the forest seemed alive with strange sounds and noises, as if, on the rare snowless night, all its unknown life came alive. Once there wan a faraway howling that sounded like a tape he had heard, once, on Earth, of the extinct timber wolf; once an almost feline snarl, low and hoarse, and the terrified cry of some small animal, and then silence. And then, toward midnight, there was a high, eerie scream, a long wailing cry that seemed to freeze the very marrow of his bones. It sounded so uncannily like the scream Marco had given when attacked by the scorpion-ants that for a dreaming moment MacAran, shocked awake, started to leap to his feet; then as Camilla, roused by his movement, sat up is fright, it came again, and he realized nothing human could possibly have made it. It was a shrill, ululating cry that went on, higher and higher, into what seemed like ultrasonic; he seemed to hear it long after it had died away.
“What is it?” Camilla whispered, shaking.
“God knows. Some kind of bird or animal, I suppose.”
They listened in silence to the ear-shattering scream again. She moved a little closer to him, and murmured, “It sounds as if it were in agony.”
“Don’t be imaginative. That may be its normal voice, for all we know.”
“Nothing has a normal voice like that,” she said firmly.
“How can we possibly know that?”
“How can you be so matter of fact? Oooh–” she flinched as the long shrilling sound came again. “It seems to freeze the marrow of my bones’!’
“Maybe it uses that sound to paralyze its prey,” MacAran said. “It scares me too, damn it! If I were on Earth–well, my people were Irish, and I’d imagine the old Arran banshee had come to carry me off!”