The stream bed offered smooth footing but the current was fast, pushing against them. They were not long in the water, but climbed to a ledge to crawl on hands and knees along a wet surface. As they drew away from the entrance, even their night sight did not serve them well and Naill marveled that the others had ever found this path.
The ledge brought them at last well above the waterline, and finally Torry drew Naill to his feet, keeping one hand on his shoulder to steady and guide him. Then they were out in a wide space where there was a dim gray light. Two sides of that area were coated with the slick crystal; the rest of the walling was rough stone, wrenched and broken as by some explosion or settling of the earth in a quake.
Light filtered through from well above their heads where on one of the crystalline walls was a narrow slit, coated with transparent material. To reach that slit a ledge had been chipped along the nearest stretch of rock wall. But still a space remained to be bridged between that ledge and the slit.
Sissions climbed with the ease of one who had done it many times before. At the highest point of the ledge he slipped a fiber band about his waist, dropped loops of cording over points of rock, and leaned back against that frail support. His aim was to the left and out, at a height above his own shoulder, an awkward angle at which to work. His tool was one of the swords. With swing curtailed by his position, he aimed the point of the sword into the lower end of the slit, picking time and time again at the same portion of sealing material. Four swings . . . five . . . a full dozen and he rested.
“Any luck?” Monro called. “Want one of us to spell you?”
“There was a give on that last punch. Let me try just once more.”
His muscles moved visibly under the rags of the forest jerkin. The sword point thudded home with an effort Naill himself could somehow feel. And—went through!
The crackle of the breaking was loud. They could see a net of cracks spread across the surface. Someone gave a cry of triumph. Sissions struck again and there was no more resistance. A rain of splinters cascaded down, and wind—clear wind—whistled through the opened window.
“Rope!” Sissions’ demand was curt. Derek was already climbing with a heavy coil of vine fiber wreathed about his shoulder.
They were a long time making that fast, testing its securing over and over again. Then Sissions unlinked his support belt, to resnap it to the rope. He gave a small jump, and his hands closed on the lower rim of the slit. In a moment he was up in it, perched on the edge looking out.
“How is it?” Monro called.
“As far as I can see clear—and”—Sissions’ head turned as he looked straight down at Naill—”your ship’s waiting out there, Renfro.”
He dropped forward, out of their sight while the rope was payed out between Derek and Monro. The former astronavigator followed, then Torry—Ashla—Naill—with Derek steadying the rope and seeing them all through the slit before him.
The rock wall through which the window broke was part of a ridge for another valley. But the land below was not crowded with crystal growths—it was bare sand and rock. In that sand a ship rested, straight and tall. Whoever had piloted her in for that landing had made it a perfect three-point one, and she had stood undisturbed ever since, by all outward signs.
Her hatch was open and the entrance ramp was run out. There was a tall drift of sand about the foot of that ramp, and the scorch of her set-down was no longer visible on the ground about her fins.
They advanced on the old ship cautiously. Naill gathered that they had spied upon her from the window slits over a period of several work nights. She was a Class-C Rover Five. Rover Five! That made her at least a hundred years old. She might have passed through many ownerships and, while she might have been considered too old to work on the inner lanes, she was still spaceworthy for the frontier. Perhaps she had been a Free Trader. There was no service insignia symbol on her hull, and she was too small for a transport or regular freighter.
“Dead.” Monro stood at the foot of the ramp.
“Maybe so,” Sissions agreed. “But was she stripped? If not—”
If not, more suits—supplies of a kind that would take them across the waste, weapons better than the swords and spears. Monro was on his way up the ladder, the others strung out behind him. Did it hit them all at once—or were some more immune than others?
Ashla cried out and stopped, clinging to the handrail with a grip that made her knuckles into pale knobs. She wavered, almost fell. A moment later Sissions echoed her wordless protest with a spoken “No!”
It beat against them all. The revulsion Naill had known at Kosburg’s was here a hundredfold the stronger. To advance was to fight against his churning insides for every inch. Distaste—no; this was a horror of disgust!
They swayed, held to the rail. Ashla went down, edging past Derek, past Torry, on her hands and knees. Monro kept his feet but he was swaying as he turned to descend. Sissions stumbled behind. Naill gripped the support so tightly with his good hand that the metal bit into his flesh. He was first in line now and he held there, facing the open door of the space lock.
His body fighting his will, he began to pull himself along—not down but up!
EIGHTEEN
JUDGMENT DELIVERED
He was Naill Renfro. There was no Ayyar, no Iftin, in him! He was Naill Renfro, and this was only a spaceship—like his father’s.
Suit racks—empty. Naill steadied himself against the corridor wall with one hand. Dust was soft under his skin boots. The smell of age—of emptiness. . . . He was Naill Renfro exploring an old ship. So—no suits. But there could be other things here adapted to their needs. He pulled himself on, keeping his thoughts rigidly fixed on those needs and his human off-world past.
Arms cabinet—also empty. A second disappointment. This spacer appeared to be stripped of everything that could serve survivors. Perhaps the landing had been an emergency one and the crew had departed with their equipment, never to return.
No weapons—no suits. Naill leaned his head against the wall and tried to think clearly, to remember the stores on the Lydian Lady and where they had been. It was a struggle to do that with the awful horror of this place tearing at his mind, churning in his stomach, rising in a sour taste at the back of his throat.
Where now? He shuffled on. There was one more—just one more place to check. Naill was sure he did not have the strength to venture any farther into the spacecraft, to climb to another level. Here! He lunged and his good hand pressed on the panel of the compartment he sought. Here were the tools, the supplies of outer-skin repairs. The inner layout of the ships had not changed so much over the years that they were not arranged in the same general pattern. He forced the panel open.
His cry of triumph echoed hollowly down the passageway. Then he had them in his hand, the protective goggles to be worn while using a welding beam. Their key to freedom? Holding those tight to his chest, Naill wavered down the passage, came into the open and descended the ramp.
“What—?” Sissions met him.
“Listen . . .” Naill had the dim beginnings of a plan. He waved the goggles at the former Survey man. “With these on, the sun can’t be too bad.”
“One pair only—there are six of us.” Torry joined them.
“One man leading, wearing these,” Naill explained. “The rest of us blindfolded, linked together, by rope if need be. We could take turns with the goggles.”
Sissions had those now. “It might work! How about it, Ladim?”
The former medico took them in turn, snapped the protective lenses over his eyes and looked about him.
“Can’t be sure, of course, until we try. Used at short intervals, taking turns as Renfro suggests . . . well, we may never have a better chance. Though how far we have to travel west before we find any decent cover—”
“Not west!” That was so emphatic that they all turned to face the girl. She had been sitting on the ground at the foot of the ramp, but now she stood erect.
“Westward That will be watching . . . waiting. . . . Once It knows we have escaped—”
“South to the river, then?” Derek asked uncertainly. The girl appeared so sure of what she was saying that it impressed all of them.