“I could crush you flat, nature boy, just as flat as an insect under a boot sole. Only-that would be a stupid waste. My friends below-they like amusement. They’ll have you to play with.”
The stranger touched a circlet fitting in a tight band about his throat. Then he called aloud, and his shout was the twittering whistle of a Norbie.
Hosteen watched the tunnel entrance behind Dean. “Now!” He thought that order.
A flash of yellow out of the dark and the full force of Surra’s weight struck true on Dean’s shoulders. His whistle ended in a shriek as he fell. The stass sphere rolled out of his hand, but before the now free Hosteen could seize it, it hit against a rock and bowled over the rim of the ledge to vanish below.
“Do not kill!” Hosteen gave his command as man and cat rolled back and forth across the stone. He moved in on the melee, his limbs stiff, numb, almost as numb as his hand had been after his experience with the alien door lock.
Surra spat, squalled, broke her hold, pawing at her eyes. Dean, yammering still in the Norbie voice, made another throwing motion, and the cat retreated. He looked up at Hosteen, and his face was a devil’s mask of open insane rage. With a last cry he headed for the tunnel as Hosteen tackled him. The Amerindian’s cramped limbs brought him down too short-his fingers closed about a leg, but with a vicious kick Dean freed himself and vanished into the passage, the pound of his boots sounding back as he ran.
Surra was still pawing at her eyes. Hosteen grasped a handful of loose hair and skin on her shoulders and pulled her to him. The Norbies Dean had summoned could not be far away. There was only one retreat from this ledge-back into the mountain after Dean. He hoped that some taboo would keep the natives from nosing after.
A head crowned with black horns rose into sight. The Norbie attacked in a scuttling rush, knife in hand. Then Hosteen was fighting for his life just within the passage entrance. He forced heavy feet and hands into the tricks of unarmed combat that had been a part of his Commando training, rolling farther into the dark, his opponent following.
Pain scored a hot slash along Hosteen’s side as the heart thrust the other had aimed missed. He pulled loose and brought down his hand on the native’s neck just above the collar bone. As the Norbie fell back with a choking gasp, Hosteen pried the knife hilt out of his hand.
There was a whir in the air, and an arrow cut the frawn fabric of the torn shut at the Terran’s shoulder. On his hands and knees, Hosteen scrambled back, hearing Surra’s whining complaint as she went ahead. There was more than one archer taking aim now into the tunnel. He could see the arcs of their bows against the daylight. But the odd dark that blanketed the Sealed Cave workings was his protection. Keeping low, he escaped the arrows flying overhead, and none of the natives ventured in-he had been right about the taboo.
When he judged that a turn in the passage cloaked him from feathered death, Hosteen paused, snapped on his torch, and called Surra to him. What Dean had done to the cat Hosteen did not know. Her eyes were watering and she was in distress, but Hosteen’s simple tests confirmed the fact that her sight was not affected and that she was already beginning to recover.
But Surra’s ire was fully aroused, and she was determined to trail Dean-which agreed with Hosteen’s desire. He wanted to catch up with the renegade tech. And with a knife now in his belt sheath and a better understanding of the man he hunted, the odds were no longer all in the other’s favor, though reason told the Terran that a length of metal, well wrought and deadly as it was, was no defense against the bag of tricks the tech might have ready.
The dune cat padded on with confidence. She knew where she was going. Only that did not last. In a stretch of tunnel where there was no break in the wall, Surra stopped short, then circled slowly about, sniffing at the flooring, before, completely baffled, she vented her disappointment in a squall such as she would give upon missing an easy kill.
Hosteen beamed the torch at the floor, more than half expecting to see one of the spiral and dot inlays there. But there was no such path here, no band of bulbs on the wall to open one of those weird other-dimension doors. This was simply another secret of the passages that Dean knew-to the bafflement of his enemies.
Could the tech come and go from any part of the caverns at his will? Or were there “stations” from which one could make such journeys? Hosteen wished now that he had investigated more closely the place into which he had dropped when he had used Dean’s door on the platform.
There was nothing to do now but wander through the passages in hope of finding such a door or return to the surface, where he did not doubt he would find the Norbies waiting. How had Surra come into the mountain-by another tunnel?
The Terran squatted down and called the cat to him. With his hand on her head, he strove to have her recall her entrance into the passages.
Those very attributes that made her so effectively a part of the team worked against him now. Surra had been thoroughly aroused by Dean’s counter to her attack. She had put out of mind everything but her desire to run him down. And now she was interested only in that and not in what seemed to her to be meaningless inquiries about the passages. The patience Hosteen had always used in dealing with the team held, in spite of his wish for action.
Dean-free in these burrows to use the knowledge of the installations. And Logan- When Hosteen thought of Logan, it was like the burn of a blaster ray across his flesh. The one small hope the Terran clung to was the tube on the board that had lighted. Even if Logan had not arrived in the big hall, he might have escaped the death of the Dry day and be wandering elsewhere in this maze.
“Baku-Gorgol.” Since Surra would not respond to Hosteen’s first questions, he tried a more oblique approach. And now her concentration on Dean was shaken.
“High-up.” As always the answers were not clear. Human mind groped to find a better touch with feline.
“Up-where?” the Beast Master urged.
There was a moment of withdrawal. Was Surra refusing, as she could do upon occasion? Then the cat’s head moved under Hosteen’s hand, and her muzzle raised as if drawing from the air some message he could not hope to read.
“That one is gone for now-but we shall hunt him,” Hosteen promised. “But to so hunt, the team is needed. Where is Baku?”
That had made the right impression. Too long they had been tied together; they both needed the security of that relationship.
Surra made no answer but pulled out of his touch and started down the passage with some of the same determination she had displayed in the trailing of Dean.
No man could ever have traced his way through the labyrinth where Surra now played guide. They went from passage to passage, bypassed caves and chambers where evidence of the aliens was present in installations, fittings, and objects whose purpose Hosteen could not grasp in a glance or two and which interested Surra not at all. However, the cat appeared to know just where she was going and why.
Their way had led down and up again so many times that Hosteen was bewildered, though he came to believe that they were no longer under the same mountain. Finally, Surra cut out on one of the worked runnels where the walls were black coated and came into a cleft of bare, untooled rock. Here man had to take cat’s path on his hands and knees.
There was a last narrow crevice through which Hosteen crawled to light, air, and the fresh scent of growing things-a small valley into which the Big Dry had not ventured any more than it did into that of the native village. Hosteen sat down wearily to look about.
Now that he had a chance to study the vegetation, he saw a difference. This was a green-green world-not yellow-green, nor red-green, nor brown-green-as the vegetation of Arzor was elsewhere. And where had he ever seen foliage such as that of a small bush a hand’s distance away?
A thunderbolt swooped down on black wings from the sky! Baku settled on the ground and came toward the Beast Master, her wings half spread, uttering a series of piercing cries. And the warmth of her greeting was part of their belonging.