The Terran knew of old that particular type of airlessness, that dead feeling-It was found in the passages of the Sealed Caves, long closed to man, perhaps always intended to be closed to his species. This was certainly a relic of the Sealed Cave civilization.
Breathing shallowly, he lay still and tried to think.
“One of the old caves,” Logan broke silence first. “It smells like one anyway-“
“Yes.”
“Any chance of getting loose?”
Hosteen, moving his arms, was rewarded by a slight give of his bonds.
“Might be.” He continued his efforts.
“Ha!” That was an exclamation of triumph from Logan. “That does it! Here-where are you?”
A hand, moving through the thick blanket of no light, clutched at Hosteen’s shoulder and moved swiftly down to the coils of rope about him.
“They weren’t very clever with their knots.” Logan’s fingers were now busy behind Hosteen’s back.
“I don’t think”-the Terran sat up, massaged his right wrist with the fingers of his left hand-“we were meant to stay tied or they would have left the nets on us. Now-let’s just see-“
He had no idea how big the cave was or how far they were from the outer door. Nor was he too sure in which direction that door lay. The odd quality of this dark and the lifeless feel of the air did weird things to alter a man’s sense of direction-even, Hosteen, suspected, influenced his clarity of thought. He stood for a long second or two, trying to orientate himself before he moved in a shuffle, half crouched, to sweep the floor with one hand, while the other was out before him as insurance against coming up short against another wall.
“Stay right where you are,” he ordered Logan.
“What’s the game?”
“They threw our belts in after us, broke our weapons, but I’ve an atom torch on that belt. And they didn’t damage that, at least not while I was watching-“
Sweep-sweep-finger tips scraping on stone, nails gritting-then the smoothness of hide worked into leather! The Terran squatted, drew his find to him, knew by touch it was Logan’s, and looped the belt around his shoulder for safe keeping.
“Got yours,” he reported. “Mine can’t be too far away.”
Once more sweep-sweep. His fingers were growing tender. Then they rapped against an object, and there was a metallic sound. He was holding a ruined stunner. Only a few inches beyond that-his belt!
Hosteen slipped it hurriedly through his hands, locating radar compass, a pouch of sustenance tablets, the small emergency medical kit, to find in the last loop next to the empty knife sheath the pencil-slim eight-inch tube he was looking for. He pushed its wide fan button and blinked at a blinding answer of light.
“Whew!” Logan’s exclamation was tinged with awe.
They were in a cave right enough, and the interior walls and roof had been coated with that same dull black substance they had seen in the passages to the caverns of the gardens, the building material of the unknown star travelers.
In a tangle by the door, now closed so that even the seam of its opening was invisible, were objects that certainly did not date back to the period of the Sealed Caves. Hosteen went to examine the exhibits. Their own broken bladed hunting knives and Logan’s smashed stunner lay there, but there were other things-another stunner, another belt, this one heavily weighted with a third again as much equipment as the one he had worn into the Peaks.
Hosteen picked that out of the dust.
“Widders!” He got to his feet and held up the torch so its glow covered as much of the cave as possible. But there was no sign of the civ-if he had preceded them into captivity here.
“Maybe there’s another passage here-“ Logan drew his half-brother’s attention to a jutting of wall at the left where a shadow might mask an opening. And it did-there was a dark hole there.
Logan gathered up the rope of their bonds and coiled it belt-wise about his waist. They had no weapons-or did they? Hosteen hefted the belt that had belonged to Widders. Knife and stunner were gone from their sheaths, but he remembered the off-world weapon that had subdued them when the civ had started on his mad quest into the Blue. And there was a chance some similar surprise might be part of this equipment.
“Do we go?” Logan stood at the mouth of the tunnel.
Hosteen had located a pouch envelope on Widders’ belt. He shook from it into his hand a ball an inch and a half in diameter, with a small knob projecting from its smooth surface. It had the appearance of a small antiperso grenade. He looked from it to the sealed door in speculation. A full-sized antiperso grenade was a key to unlock a piece of field armor, planted in the right way at the right time, and Hosteen had planted them so. What effect would a grenade one third the regular size have on the cave door?
“Find somethin’ interestin’?” Logan asked.
“Might just be.” Hosteen outlined in a terse sentence or two what he thought he held and its uses.
“Get the door down with that?”
Hosteen shrugged. “I don’t know-might be chancy. We don’t know the properties of this alien cave-sealing material. Remember what happened that other time?”
Months before, the back lash of an Xik weapon used miles away had reacted violently on the alien coating of just such a cave, locking them into what, except for chance, might have been a living tomb. They had escaped then, but one could not depend on personal “medicine” too long or too hard.
“I say, try the back door first.” Logan indicated the passage.
And that made good sense. Widders was not in the cave, and if he had been a prisoner here, he might have taken that way before them. There had been many indications that the Unknowns had been fond of under-mountain ways and were adept at boring them.
They sorted over the equipment, dividing up the grenades, ration tablets, supplies, water-they had no water save that in the canteens, but at least they were not exposed to the baking sun.
No passage ran beyond that wall. They found instead a steeply sloping, downward ramp where there was no dust to cushion the black flooring. They advanced slowly, Hosteen ahead, the torch in one hand, a sweat-sticky grenade in the other.
The Terran heard Logan sniff as one might scent danger.
“Water-somewhere ahead.”
For a moment Hosteen’s imagination painted for him the picture of another pocket paradise like the Cavern of the Hundred Gardens. But where there had been the aromatic odors of clean and spicy things to tantalize them then, here was a dank breath not only of dampness but also of other and even less pleasant smells.
Along the walls the torch picked up beads of moisture. which gave back prismatic flickers of color. Logan ran his finger along to wipe out a cluster, then rubbed it vigorously on the edge of his yoris-hide corselet with an exclamation of disgust.
“Slime!” He held the finger to his nose. “Stinks, too. I’d say we might be on our way straight down into a drain-“
The drops on the wall coalesced into oily runlets, and the nephritic odor grew stronger. Yet the air was not still. There was a draft rising, bringing with it a fog of corruption.
All the way down they had seen no indication that anyone had come before them. But now they reached a point where there was a huge blotch across the slope of the wall, where the runlets had been smeared together, through which new trickles were now cutting paths. The damp had prevented the drying of the splotch.
“That wasn’t done too long ago,” Logan observed. He put out his own hand, though he did not touch finger to the wall, to show that the top of the smear was at shoulder height. “Someone or something could have fallen and slipped down there-“
Hosteen swung the torch closer to floor level. Logan’s deduction was borne out by still undried marks.
“And that”-Logan pounced upon one of the damp spots-“was the toe of a boot!”
Again his tracker’s eye was right. Only the toe of an off-world boot could have left that well-defined curve. Widders? Or some survivor from the LB holding up in this mountain maze against the danger of the natives waiting outside?
“He went down-he did not come back-whoever he was,” Logan observed.
“Meaning that he might not have been able to retreat? Well, we either go on or try to break that door down with a grenade. Have any second thoughts on the matter?”
“Go on.” Logan’s answer was prompt. “We have stingers in these.” He tossed a grenade into the air and caught it deftly.
They went on, watching floor and wall for any further traces of the one or ones who had taken that passage before them, but sighted none. Only the damp increased until the air was half-foggy moisture. And where, in the upper regions, that moisture had been chill, here it was increasingly warm, warm and odorous. There was a musky taint, which set Hosteen to sniffing, hinting of life ahead.