The screen now showed again those remnants of ancient buildings which ringed the basin. They were even more noticeable on this portion of the rim than they had been where I came in. Truly this must have been a city of such size that Kars or Es would have been swallowed up in one small district.
We followed a weaving path, keeping to what lower and clearer ground was visible. Our pace could not be any faster than a man’s swift walk. I thought we might make a better escape if we trusted to our own feet and not to this stinking box which swayed and rumbled over the blasted ground.
Them, suddenly, we ground to a stop. And a moment later I saw what must have alerted my father, movement on the top of a crumbled wall. Not a man, no, but a black tube which now centered its open core upon us. My father stood on his seat, his boots planted firmly, his head and shoulders disappearing into an opening directly above. What he did there I could not guess, until fire crackled across the screen, struck full upon that tube. Under that lash of flame the tube was no longer black; it began to glow, first dull red, then brighter and brighter.
After that our weapon began a wide sweep over the ground from side to side as far as we could see on the screen. And it was several long minutes before my father settled back at the controls.
“Automatic weapon,” he said. “No hallucination can confuse that. It was set, I think, to fire at any moving thing which did not answer some code.”
In the world in which he was born my father had known such weapons, and it would seem that in this nightmare country he was fitted to conduct such an alien type of war.
“There are more?” asked my mother.
I heard my father laugh grimly. “Were there any around here we would know it by now. But that there are more between us and open land I do not doubt in the least.”
On we crawled and now I watched the screen for the least hint of movement which would mark the alerting of another metal sentry. Two more we found and destroyed in a like manner, or rather my father so destroyed them. Then we left behind the traces of that forgotten city and crawled into the open country he sought, where that ashy ground was broken only here and there by the withered vegetation which seemed either dead or filled with loathsome life.
Our journey appeared to continue forever. And the cloudy sky began to darken. Also, I was hungry and thirsty, and the supplies which I had drawn upon in the caverns had been left behind in our dash for freedom.
At length we stopped and my mother shared out some sips of water and a dried meat with a bad smell. One could chew and swallow it, and hope it would mean strength and nourishment. My father leaned back in his seat, his hands resting on the edge of the control board, a gray tiredness in his face. Still he watched the screen as if there were never to be any relief from vigilance.
My mother spoke to Hilarion. “We seek your gate,” she said straightly. “Can it be found?”
He had raised a water container to his lips; now he made a lengthy business of swallowing, as if he needed that extra time for thought or to make some decision. When he spoke he did not answer her but voiced a question of his own:
“You are a Wise Woman?”
“Once, before I chose to take another path.” She had turned as far as she could in her seat that she might see him the better.
“But you did not so lose what you had had.” This time it was no question but a statement of fact.
“I gained more!” My mother’s voice held pride and a kind of triumph.
“Being who you are,” Hilarion continued deliberately, “you understand the nature of the gates.”
“Yes—and I also know that you created the one we seek. Indeed, we have long been hunting you, having some small hint you were where you were. But they kept you lapped in something hostile to our seeking so we could not speak with you—until Kaththea reached you and so opened a channel of mind seeking between us. Having created the gate you can control it.”
“Can I? That I shall not know until I try. Once I would have said yes, but I have been warped by that which is alien to my own learning. Perhaps it has twisted me so askew that I cannot again summon the true Power to answer me.”
“That rests on one side of the scales,” agreed Jaelithe. “But we do not know what lies upon the other until we set to the weighing. You were truly adept or you would not have made the gate. That you have been a prisoner to other purposes is your bane; it need not be your end. Can you take us to your gate?”
His eyes dropped from hers to the wand, and he turned it about with the fingers of both hands, looking upon it as if he now held some new and totally strange thing he did not recognize.
“Even that,” he said in a low voice, “I cannot be sure of now. But I know this much, that I cannot have a guide to follow if I remain in this machine: the taint of the other is too strong and able to warp what I would try.”
“Yet if we leave it”—my father for the first tune took part in that exchange—“we go out as men naked to a storm. This has defenses enough to provide us with a moving fortress.”
“You asked me,” Hilarion returned in sharp impatience, “and I have told you the truth. If you want your gate we must be away from this box and all it stands for!”
“Can you go forth a little,” I began, “and do what must be done to find the direction, then return?”
Both my father and mother looked at Hilarion. He continued to slip the wand back and forth for a long moment of silence but at length he answered.
“There can be but a trial to see . . .” There was such hesitation in his voice, such weariness there, that I thought that any seeking of that nature would be a task he must force himself to. Yet a moment later he asked, this time speaking directly to my father, “If you name this country safe as you can see it, there is no better time for my efforts. We cannot wait and hope and let Zandur loose his might on our tail. Also, those of the tower have their own brand of terror when dealing with aught walking the surface here. And since you travel in this thing which is of Zandur’s people, their air scouts will be ready to use lightning against us if they sight it.”
So it was that we came forth from the crawler into the darkening night and stood looking about us at the desolation which was the countryside here.
* * *
* * *
XV
The bare bones of this land, which was all that was left, were stark under a night sky. And the moon, so bright and full when I had come into the basin, was now on the wane. Yet it gave enough light for us to see what was immediately about us. My father waved an order to stay where we were for the time being while he flitted—I can find no words to really describe his swift movements—blended with the landscape, spiraling away from the halted vehicle. And I realized that he now put into use the training of a border scout. He had disappeared when my mother spoke.
“There is no danger close by. Which way?” This she asked of Hilarion.
He lifted his head; I thought I almost saw his nostrils expand as might a hound’s testing scent. Then he raised the wand, setting its tip to his forehead midpoint between his eyes, which were closed, as if he must see the better inwardly instead of outwardly.
The wand swung, pointing to the right from where we stood. When he opened his eyes again there was a spark of new life in them.
“That way!” So certain was his pronouncement that we did not doubt he had managed to find us a guide through this ash-strewn wilderness.
When my father returned, which he did shortly (I think in answer to some mind search call from my mother, not within my range), he studied the direction Hilarion’s wand had indicated and then, within the crawler, made adjustments to the board of controls.
But we did not set out at once, taking rather a rest period, with one of us, turn about, on guard. I slept dreamlessly. When I awoke the moon had vanished, but so clouded was the sky that the light was that of dusk. Once more we ate and drank sparingly from our scanty stores. And my father said that he was sure that we had not been seen in any way, especially as the mechanical sentries of the crawler machine also registered naught.