There was no sound but the wind, the rattling of the branches overhead, and the squeak of their feet in the snow.
He estimated their remaining time before the arrival of the troops at a little more than five minutes. He tried counting seconds as they ran, but he lost track so often that he gave it up and concentrated on moving just a few feet per minute faster than they already were.
For a time, it seemed as if they were the only living beings in all the world, two figures in a landscape without purpose and without meaning. All other things were inanimate: cold, snow, sky, earth, stark trees, strangely stilled wind . . .
It was a tomb planet, a dead world, and they were rodents scurrying through its corridors and chambers in search of some exit that would lead them into life.
The thing which made them run so fast was the knowledge that they might soon cease to be rodents and become two more corpses to inhabit the cells of the tomb.
Then, with the swiftness of a sleepwalker stepping on a nail, the world came awake with a thundering explosion of sound. The sky was filled with the chatter of the blades of an aircraft whose flight pattern was too high for grav plates to be of any use—a staccato barrage like machine guns from some ancient period of man’s history. The forest took up the sharp call and threw the clatter of the big engines back at the low clouds.
“Hurry,” Davis said as they reached the edge of the mountain flatland and began to descend another treacherous slope toward the long bowl of the valley through which they would be walking for the next four or five hours, if Leah was not confused about the way to the Tooth.
“Let me have the suitcase,” she said.
“Never mind that.”
“You can’t brace yourself with two rucksacks and the suitcase on uneven ground. You know that as well as I do. Now quit arguing and hurry it!”
He set the case down without stopping, merely slowing his pace for a moment, heard her grapple with it, heft it and bring it after him. He worked from tree to tree down the sheet-white land beneath the bare trees, his eyes on the skies that could be seen through the Crosshatch of limbs more often than they were focused on the terrain ahead. She followed.
When they were halfway down, the police copter rushed by overhead, oblivious of them as it sped toward the spot the Sherlock had last pinpointed them. Under its belly was the “A” of the Alliance, ringed with the circle of green worlds that was the government symbol. Then it was gone, and its hoarse voice diminished as it put distance between itself and the very fugitives it was seeking.
“How long until they know?” she asked when they reached the floor of the valley.
“Not long.”
“I thought so.”
“Well,” he said, “we’re on the level for a good while. We can make time easy enough.”
“But if they discover we’ve struck for the valley and decide we’re still in it, it’ll be no trouble for them to pen us in and use a search party to net us from all sides.”
He leaned against a jutting tower of granite which was encased in ice, took some snow in his mouth and allowed it to melt before swallowing. “That’s true enough. But this is the only route, isn’t it?”
“The only one we could possibly stand up to.”
“We could give up the fortress idea.”
“And go where?”
He shrugged.
“You take the suitcase a while,” she said. “We’re on the level again, and it won’t be too hard for you. My arms ache.”
He took the luggage without comment, turned back to the trail and started forward at a very brisk walk. Several hours away, at the other end of the lowland, he could see the pass through which they must go to eventually reach Tooth and the fortress—if there was a fortress. If the Alliance had been too sure of itself to send more Sherlocks along with those police, then he and Leah might make that pass and, perhaps, even Tooth Mountain. If the government was, on the other hand, hedging all corners of their bet, this was the place in which both of them would die. . . .