“I managed to keep the muzzle up,” she told me.
“Well, hurrah for you,” I said.
“That’s the first rule, always,” she told me. “Keep the uzzle up so it doesn’t clog. If I hadn’t, the barrel would be full of sand.”
George still was wailing and now his wailing took the form of words “What happened, Tuck?” he screamed “Where are e? What happened to my friend? He has gone away. I don’t hear him anymore.”
“For the love of Christ,” I said to Tuck, disgusted, “get him on his feet and dust him off and wipe his nose and tell him what has happened.”
“I can’t explain,” growled Tuck, “until someone tells me what is going on.”
“I can tell you that,” I said. “We got took. We’ve been had, my friend.”
“They’ll come back,” howled George. “They’ll come back or us. They won’t leave us here.”
“No, of course they won’t,” said Tuck, hauling him to his feet. “They’ll come back when the sun is up.”
“The sun ain’t up now, Tuck?”
“No,” said Tuck. “The moon. And a-lot of stars.”
And I was stuck with this, I thought. Heaved into a place where I had no idea where I was and loaded down with a couple of nincompoops and a white Diana who could only think about how she had kept he muzzle up.
I took a look around. We had been dumped on the lower slope of a dune and on either side of us the dunes heaved up to meet the night-time sky. The sky itself was empty of everything but the moon and stars. There was not a cloud in sight. And the land was empty of anything but sand. There were no trees or bushes, not a blade of vegetation. There was a slight chill in the air, but that, I figured, would be dissipated as soon as the sun came up. More than likely we had a long, hot day ahead and we hadn’t any water.
Long furrows in the sand showed where our bodies had plowed through it, pushing up little mounds of sand ahead of us. We had been thrown from the direction of the other dune, and knowing exactly from where we had been thrown, it occurred to me, might have some importance. I walked out a ways and with the butt of my gun drew a long line in the sand and made some rough arrows pointing from it.
Sara watched me closely. “You think we can get back?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” I told her, shortly.
“There was a doorway of some sort,” she said, “and the hobbies bucked us through it and when we landed here there wasn’t any doorway.”
“They had us pegged,” I said, “from the minute we set down. They gave us the business, from the very start. We never had a prayer.”
“But we are here,” she said, “and we have to start to think how we can get out.”
“If you can keep an eye on those two clowns,” I said, “and see they cause no trouble, I’ll go out for a look.”
She regarded me gravely. “Have you anything in mind, captain? Anything in particular?”
I shook my head. “Just a look around. There could be a chance I might stumble on some water. We’ll need water badly before the day is over.” “But if you lost your way…”
“I’ll have my tracks to follow,” I told her, “if a wind doesn’t come up suddenly and wipe them out. If anything goes wrong, I’ll fire a beam up into the sky and you loose off a shot or two to guide me back.”
“You don’t think the hobbies will come back to get us?”
“Do you think so?”
“I suppose not,” she said. “But what’s the point of it? What did they gain by it? Our luggage couldn’t be worth that much to them.”
“They got rid of us,” I said.
“But they guided us in. If it hadn’t been for that beam…” “There was the ship,” I said. “It could have been the ship that they were after. They had a lot of ships out on the field. They must have lured a lot of other people.”
“And all of them on this planet? Or on other planets?”
“Could be,” I said. “Our job right now is to see if there’s any place better than this desert we can go.. We haven’t any food and we have no water.”
I settled the strap of my rifle on my shoulder and started to plod up the dune.
“Anything else I can do?’ asked Sara.
“You might keep those two from tracking up that line I made. If a wind comes up and starts to blot it out, try to mark it somehow.”
“You have a lot of faith in that line.”
“Just that it’s a good idea to know where we are.”
“It mightn’t mean a thing,” she said. “We must have been thrown through some sort of space-time null-point and where we wound up wouldn’t mean…”
“I agree,” I said, “but it’s all we have to go on.”
I plodded up the dune and it was heavy going. My feet sank deep into the sand and I kept sliding back I could make no time. And it was hard work. Just short of its crest I stopped to rest a moment and looked back down the slope.
The three of them stood there, looking up at me. And for some reason I couldn’t explain, I found myself loving them-all three of them, that creepy, soft fool of a Smith and that phony Tuck, and Sara, bless her, with her falling lock of hair and that ridiculous oldtime rifle. No matter what they were, they were human beings and somehow or other I’d have to get them out of here. For they were counting on me. To them I was the guy who had barnstormed space and rode out all sorts of trouble. I was the rough, tough character who technically headed up the expedition. I was the captain and when the chips were down it was the captain who was expected to come through. The poor, damn, trusting fools, I thought-I didn’t have the least idea of what was going on and I had no plans and was as puzzled and beaten and hopeless as any one of them. But I couldn’t let them know it. I had to keep on acting as if at any moment I’d come up with a trick that would get us all home free.
I lifted a hand and waved to them and I tried to keep it jaunty, but I failed. Then I clambered up the dune and over the top of it and the desert stretched before me. In every direction that I looked, it was all the same-waves of dunes as far as I could see, each dune like the other and no break at all-no trees that might hint water, absolutely nothing but a sweep of sand.
I went plunging down the dune and climbed another and from its crest the desert looked the same as ever. I could go on; I admitted to myself, climbing dunes forever and there might never be a difference. The whole damn planet might be desert, without a single break. The hobbies, when, they’d bucked us through the gate or door or whatever it might be, had known what they were doing, and if they wanted to get rid of us, they could not have done a more efficient job of it. For they, or the world of which they were a part, hadn’t missed a lick. We had been tolled in by the beam and hustled off the ship and the ship been sealed and then, without the time to think, with no chance to protest, we had been heaved into this world. A bum’s rush, I thought, all worked out beforehand.
I climbed another dune. There always was the chance, I kept on telling myself, that in one of those little valleys which lay between the dunes there might be something worth the finding. Water, perhaps, for water would be the thing that we would need the most. Or a path that might lead us to better country or to natives who might be able to give us some sort of help, although why anyone would want to live in a place like this was more than I could figure.
Actually, of course, I expected nothing. There was nothing in this sweep of desert upon which a man could build much hope. But when I neared the top of the dune-near enough so that I could see over the top of it-I spotted something on the crest of the dune beyond.
A birdcage sort of contraption was half buried in the crest, with its metallic ribs shimmering in the moon and starlight, like the ribcage of some great prehistoric beast that had been trapped atop the dune, bawling out its fright until death had finally quieted it.