Hosteen made adjustments, resealed the shield panel, and then went to explore the rest of the craft in the fault hope of discovering a weapon. But the stores’ compartment was open and empty. Save for the plasta foam pads on the bunks, there was nothing left.
He was standing directly under the escape hatch, preparing to leave, when a roll of thunder startled him. Only reflex action saved his life as he slammed his hand on the seal button of the port.
Thunder again, but now muted into a distant mutter by the protection of the hull. The LB trembled under a blow. Hosteen scrambled for the pilot’s seat, thumbed on the visa-screen-to view a roaring holocaust. If the fire that had lashed the mountain before had spared the LB, it did so no longer. The craft shook and reeled under streams of flame.
Would the insulation intended for the protection of space flight hold against this fierce concentration of energy? The force of that attack was twisting the ship around, might push it on down the slope.
Had the broadcast from the com alerted the stranger in the mountain, the message been picked up by some device of that other civilization? Hosteen was sure that this attack came from the Sealed Cave armory.
Surra! Hosteen braced himself in the shuddering cabin as he strove to reach the cat. But once more he met only the solid barrier he had found that night when he had been prisoner in the Norbie village. Perhaps the fire cut off contact. A reasonable explanation if not a comforting one.
The LB was no longer on an even keel. Hosteen caught one of the stanchions supporting the nearest bunk. The visa-screen told him the whole craft was encased in wildly raging flame. He was trapped with no defense but the walls of the ship.
He stretched out on a bunk and snapped the acceleration webbing to hold his body in place. If that bath of energy did roll the LB over a cliff, he could have that small protection.
The nose of the craft tilted down and the whole hull quivered as the dive picked up speed. Then there was a bone-wrenching crash as the ship met some obstruction head on. The visa-screen went blank. And the com-he thought that the com had not survived either. How many broadcasts had it made before the end? Enough for one full message to reach beyond the Peaks?
Hosteen lay sweating on the bunk, the LB now more vertical than horizontal. The cabin lights flickered, dimmed, then brightened again in a crazy dance of light and dark. Though the LB no longer moved, would a shifting of his own weight send it into another slide?
Freeing himself from the webbing, the Terran gingerly swung his feet to the floor, keeping a grip on the stanchion. The steeply sloping deck did not move as he clawed his way to the pilot compartment to discover chaos behind a buckled wall. The com was dead. Well, if this attack had been to silence the warning, the enemy had won the first skirmish. That didn’t mean he would also win the war.
Without the visa-screen, Hosteen was blind. Did the fire still bathe the ship? He wedged into one of the tilted bunks again, rested his forehead on his crooked arm, and bent all the energy left in his mind and body into a concentration aimed at Surra.
“Here-“ The word she could not form aloud was a whisper in his brain.
“The man?”
“Here-“ A repetition of her first answer or an assurance that she still had her quarry under observation?
“In the mountain?”
“So-“
“Then stay-follow-“ he ordered.
Maybe his ability to reach the dune cat meant that the fire no longer ringed the LB. But to get to the hatch now required some acrobatic maneuvering. And when his first attempt to open the port did not succeed, Hosteen knew the starkness of dread. Had the flames sealed his escape hole?
Then, though with protest, the hatch moved as he beat on it with one frantic fist, holding to his support with the other. Smoke whirled in a choking blue fog, burning his eyes, strangling him with coughing until the air filter of the cabin thinned it.
Smoke, heat, but no sign of active flames. Hosteen retreated to rip and pry at the plasta-foam covering of the bunks, removing the stuff in tattered strips. Half of these he draped over the rim of the hatch opening, pushing the material through to lie across the heated shell of the LB. The rest he took with him as he climbed out on the temporarily protected area.
The side of the LB bore the lick marks of the fire, and around it the ground was charred black. Upslope, small blazes still crackled in bushes.
Hosteen worked fast, tying lengths of the plasta foam about his feet and legs above knee level. The tough synthetic fabric would be a shield against the heat. With more scraps mittening his hands and covering his arms, he crawled up the tail of the LB, leaped for the top of a fire-blackened rock, and started the climb back to the tunnel ledge.
Back in the mountain Surra would be his eyes, a part of himself projected. He could track the stranger, perhaps find Logan. Logan!
All he could do to warn the plains had been done. The holding would have to take their chances while he faced the heart of the trouble here and now.
Tap-tap-tap-
The Terran was an animal, startled, snarling in defiance, his teeth showing white between tightened lips as Surra’s could upon occasion. He stood still, watching that figure come out of a copse that had escaped the lick of the fire.
A cloak spread like huge wings of a mantling bird-a Drummer! And there was no knife in Hosteen’s belt, no stunner. He had only his two hands-
However, the other had no more. By tradition, the Norbie would be unarmed-depending upon his power for his protection. And no native would raise hand against a Drummer, even one of an enemy tribe. The vengeance taken by “medicine” was swift, sure, and frightful.
But if this one depended upon that custom now, he would have a rude, perhaps fatal awakening. Hosteen had to get his hands on the tambour the native carried, silence it before the Drummer could use it to arouse the warriors.
The Terran tensed for another leap. His body arched up; his bandaged hands caught up burned and fire-scorched wood. He moved with the sure speed of a trained fighting man.
Tap-tap-
There had been no acceleration in that soft patter, no deepening of the beat. No settler understood drum talk, but Hosteen wondered. He had expected an outburst of alarm when he was sighted. What he heard as he charged was a calm sequence of small sounds-like a friendly greeting. Instead of throwing his body forward in a tackle, he halted to face the enemy squarely.
“Ukurti!”
Fingers lifted from the tight drumhead-moved in talk.
“Where do you go?”
Sharp, to the point. Hosteen tugged at the wrappings on his hands, freed his fingers to reply:
“To the mountain.”
He dared not risk evasion, not with this Drummer whom he knew to be not the witch doctor of scoffing off-worlders but a real power.
“You have been to the mountain once.”
“I have been once,” Hosteen assented. “I go again-for in this mountain walks evil.”
.”That is so:” The quick agreement surprised Hosteen.
“He who drums for the Zamle totem says that?”
“One who drums, drums true, or else the power departs from him. In the mountain is one who says that thunder answers his drum, that he brings lightning to bis service.”
“It has been heard, so has it been seen.” Again Hosteen kept to the strict truth.
“Fire has answered; that is truth. And because of this warriors bind arrowheads to war shaft, chant songs of trophies to be smoked in the Thunder Houses.”
“Yet this is not good.”
“It is not good!” Ukurti’s head pushed forward; his paint-ringed eyed on either side of his boldly arched nose were those of Baku sighting prey before she was quite poised for the killing swoop. “This one who wears the name of Ukurti has been to the place of sky ships’ landing and has seen the powers of those who ride from star to star. They, too, drum thunder and raise lightning of a kind-but it is not born of the true power of Arzor.” His booted foot stamped the black ground, and a tiny puff of ash arose.
“Before them, others walked the same trails-even here on Arzor. To the strangers their power, to us ours. This is an old trail, newly opened once again. And in it lie many traps for the heedless and those who want to’ believe because it serves their false dreams. I who bear the name of Ukurti in this life and who have the right to speak of this power and that”-again he stroked the drumhead gently, bringing a muted purr of sound from its surface-“say that no good comes of a trail that leads to blood running free on the ground, the blood of those who have shared water, hunted, eaten meat with us, and welcomed in their tents my people.”