“You were lost?”
“Not lost! Come with Harath—come!”
His excitement was wild and now he struggled in her grasp.
“Must come—he dies!”
“Who dies?” Ogan? Had the parapsychologist met with disaster on his attempt to reach the L-B?
“He!” Harath seemed to be utterly unable to understand that Ziantha did not know. As if the person he meant was of such importance in the world that there was no question of his identity.
“Come!”
She had never seen Harath so excited before. The alien would not answer her questions, but fought for release with the same vigor as he had greeted her. That he wanted her attention for only one thing, to obey his command, was plain. And she could not control him.
He had already struggled out of her hold. Ziantha could not restrain him without applying force, and that she was not prepared to do.
“Come!” He scuttled away as swiftly as he had arrived.
Ziantha got carefully to her feet. That she must not let Harath escape her again was plain. But also she had not his sight and could not trust the path ahead.
“Harath!” Had she made that call as emphatic as she must? “Harath—you must wait—I cannot see you!”
“Come!” She caught a glimpse of movement at the foot of the slope, as if Harath lingered there, bobbing about in his impatience and desire to be gone. Recklessly she half slid, half jumped down to that level. Now he reached with an upper tentacle, took hold of her suit, tugged with all his limited strength.
“Come!”
At least Harath offered a guide. As Ziantha obeyed that tug, the girl discovered she did not have to fear such rough footing, that her companion was picking the smoothest way. There was light in the sky now, as a moon rose. A small pale moon whose radiance was greenish, making her own flesh look strange and unhealthy.
Harath turned east. Ziantha thought she recognized one of the oddly shaped peaks in that wan moonlight. Surely they were not far from the Jack ship.
Yasa? But Harath had insisted on “he,” and the alien had never displayed any great liking for the Salarika in the past. No—she did not think he led her to the veep. Now he was showing wariness as he angled back and forth among strange outcrops of rock which arose in clusters like the petrified trunks of long dead trees.
“The Jack ship—“ Ziantha ventured.
Harath did not reply; only his grasp on her suit tightened, and he gave a sharp pull as if forbidding communication here. They wound a way beyond those rocks and came to a place where pinnacles were joined at the foot to form a wall. Harath loosed his hold on her, scrambled at a speed wherein his feet were aided by all four tentacles, climbing the curve of that wall at a space between two spires.
“Come!”
Where Harath might go she was not sure she could follow. The space between those prongs of stone looked very narrow. But Ziantha had to try it or lose him entirely. Dragging herself up, she wedged between the outcrops, an action which nearly scraped the suit from her back.
Below was a depression like the one in which Ogan had earlier camped. And that pocket was full of shadow. But she could make out dimly that someone lay on the ground here, and Harath was beside the body.
Harath—and a stranger—the sensitive! But if Harath wanted her—then that other was not dead after all! Ziantha’s heart beat so fast that it seemed to shake her. She went on her knees beside the body she could not see.
Now she explored with her hands. He wore the bulk of a planet suit, the heavy boots of an explorer. But his head was uncovered and he lay face up. His skin was very cold, but when she held her hand palm down over his lips she could feel a breath puff against her skin. Entranced? It might well be. If so, to bring him out would be a matter requiring more skill than she possessed. Ogan should be here.
“No—Ogan kill!”
Harath’s thought was like a blow, sharp enough to make her start back.
“You—Harath—reach—reach—“ The alien’s communication was in her mind. The emotion of fear which her suggestion of Ogan had raised in him had upset him to the point where he could not mind-send coherently. What lay behind that fear, Ziantha could not guess, but its reality she did not doubt in the least. If Harath said Ogan was a danger, she was willing to accept his verdict.
“Harath—“ she sent the thought in as calm a fashion as she could summon. “How do we reach — ?”
He appeared able now to control himself.
“Send—with Harath—send—“
Did he mean reverse the process that one generally used with Harath—lend her energy to the alien, rather than draw upon his as she had in the past?
“Yes, yes!” He was eager in affirmation of that.
“I will send,” she agreed without further question.
With one hand she unsealed her suit, brought out the focus-stones. Whether those might lend any force to this quest she could not tell, but that they needed all the energy they could call upon now she firmly believed.
Then she leaned forward again over the limp body, touched her fingers to the cold forehead. Around her wrist closed, in a grip as tight as a punishing bond, one of Harath’s tentacles. They were now linked physically as they must be linked mentally if this was to succeed.
There was a dizzy sensation of great speed, as if she—or that part of Ziantha that was her innermost self—was being swung out and out and out into a place where all was chaos and there was no stability except that tie with Harath. Farther and farther they quested. The focus-stones grew warm in her hand; she was aware of those and that from them was flowing now a steady push of energy. It passed through her body, down her arms, to those fingers, to the tentacle, where their three bodies met in touch.
Swing, swing, out and out and out—until Ziantha wanted to cry Enough! That if they ventured farther their tie with reality would snap and they would be as lost as he whom they sought and could not find.
16
The flaw in the pattern was that she could not build up any mind picture on which to focus the energy. Turan could have been such a goal, but this man she crouched over now she had never seen, could not picture as his head lay in the shadows and she had only touch to guide her. One must have such a focus—
Did Harath see humans as they were? Could he build such a mind picture as it should be built in order to search? Ziantha doubted it. For their swing was failing now, falling back in waning sweeps.
“Hunt!” Harath’s urging was sharp.
“We must have a picture.” She forced upon him in return her own conclusion for the reason of their failure. “Build a picture, Harath!”
Only what wavered then into her mind was so distorted that she nearly broke contact, so shocked was she by that weird figure Harath projected, a mixture, unbelievable, of his own species and Ziantha’s, something which manifestly did not exist.
“We must have a true picture.” They were back in the hollow, still united by touch, but warring in mind.
The alien’s frustration was fast turning to rage, perhaps aimed at her because of his own inadequacies. Ziantha summoned patience.
“This is a man of my kind,” she told Harath. “But if it is he who followed me into that other time, I do not know him as himself. I cannot build the picture that we need. I must see him as he really is—“
Because Harath was so aroused by their failure, which he appeared to blame on her, she feared he would withdraw altogether. Their mind-touch was snapped by his will, and his tentacle dropped from her wrist.
The moon’s greenish light was on the lip of the hollow in which they crouched. If she could somehow pull the inert man at her feet up into that—
It seemed to her that there was no other way to learn what she must. Putting the Eyes into safekeeping once more, she caught the man’s body, labored to pull it up to the light. But it was a struggle even though he was smaller, lighter than Ogan or one of the crewmen. Finally she brought him to where the moon touched his face.
It was hard to judge in the weird green glow, but she thought his skin as dark as that of a veteran crewman. His hair was cropped close, also, as if to make the wearing of a helmet comfortable, and it was very tightly curled against his skull.