Baku settled on Hosteen’s shoulder once they reached the passage, her eyes like harsh sparks in the light of the torch. Surra took the lead, setting a gliding pace that brought the men to a fast walk.
The cat was retracing the way by which she had brought Hosteen in, but long before they reached the place where Dean had vanished into thin air, Najar uttered an exclamation and caught at the Beast Master’s arm.
“Here!” He was looking alertly about him with the air of a man who had come across some landmark. “This is the way-“
Hosteen recalled Surra, and the party turned into a side tunnel. Najar was now leading. To Hosteen, one of these unmarked passages was much like another, but he knew that just as he had been trained and conditioned to be the leader of a team, so had the Reconnaissance scouts been selected, trained, and psycho-indoctrinated for their service as pathfinders and “first-in” men.
Najar displayed no hesitation as he threaded from one way to another and crossed several small caverns with the certainty of one treading a well-defined trail. Then they stood in a hollow space and saw near its roof a slit of light. Najar pointed to that.
“Opening made by a landslide. This place is a natural cave and opens on the mountainside.”
Hosteen had his hand on the first hold to climb to that door when he heard an odd cry from Najar. He half turned and saw the other’s face illuminated in the torch Gorgol held. The scout was glaring at Hosteen, his eyes pure hate as he flung himself at the Beast Master, the momentum of his body jamming Storm against the cave wall.
The Amerindian strove to roll his head and his shoulders to avoid blows he knew were meant to kill. Then the torchlight snapped off, and they were in the dark.
“You dirty Xik liar!” Najar spat almost in Hosteen’s face. “Liar-!”
He was choked off in mid-breath, his body jerked away from Hosteen’s. Gasping, holding his arm where one of those nerve deadening blows had landed, the Beast Master leaned limply against the rock. A furred body pressed against his leg. He reached down, took the torch from Surra’s mouth, and snapped it on.
Gorgol stood, his arm crooked about Najar’s throat, the Terran castaway hugged back to the native’s chest, his struggles growing weaker as the Norbie exerted pressure on his windpipe.
“Don’t kill him!” Hosteen ordered.
Gorgol’s grip loosened. He let the off-worlder collapse against him. He transferred his hold to the other’s arms, keeping him upright to confront the man he had attacked.
“Why?” Hosteen asked, rubbing feeling back into his arm.
“You said-settler world-no Xik-war over here-“ Najar might be helpless in Gorgol’s prisoning hands, but bis spirit-and his hate-were unbeaten. “There’s a recon-broadcaster out there!”
Hosteen stared at him blankly-not that he doubted Najar’s word or now wondered at the other’s reaction. A Recon scout had an induced sensitivity to certain beamed waves, a homing device that was implanted in him through surgery and hypnotic conditioning. If Najar had caught a recon-beam, he would not be mistaken. But to Hosteen’s knowledge the nearest recon-broadcaster was at Galwadi or the Port. Unless-unless Kelson or some other authority was moving into the Blue!
“I told you the truth,” he said. “But-maybe-maybe we’re already too late. The Patrol could have been called in.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“To the West-there-“ Najar’s right hand was a compass direction, pointing southwest.
Baku-Hosteen thought the command that sent the eagle up and out into the sky. She soared past the point of their sighting, exulting in the freedom she had not been able to find in the invisibly roofed valley. And from her came the report he wanted.
There was a party of men, encamped in a hollow, doubtless digging in for protection against the heat of the day. Now Hosteen depended upon Gorgol for advice.
“Can we reach them before the sun is too high?”
The Norbie was uncertain. And Hosteen could give him little help as to distance, though Najar insisted from the strength of the recon-beam the camp could not be farther than five miles. Only, five miles in this broken country for men on foot might be equal to half a day’s journey in the plains.
“If these others come into the Blue,” Gorgol warned, “then will all of my people unite against them, and there will be no hope of breaking truce between tribe and tribe.”
“That is so. But if you go to the clans and I and this one who knows much concerning the evil one go to the settlers, then with our talk we may hold them apart until the war arrows can be hidden and wise heads stand up in council.”
Gorgol climbed to the top of the rocky pile hiding the cave entrance, studying a southern route. His fingers moved.
“For me the way is not hard; for you it may be impossible. The choice is yours.”
“What about it?” Hosteen asked Najar. “They’ll have to hole up during the day. But they’ll be moving on. And they have scouts out in this territory or you wouldn’t have picked up that beam. And once they enter the big valley, there’ll be a fight for sure-one that Dean will win under the present circumstances and that will begin his war.”
“What will you do?” Najar counterquestioned.
“Try to reach them before night when they’ll move on-“
Perhaps that was the wrong decision; perhaps his place was here, pursuing Dean through the interior burrows. But even if some miracle of luck would put the renegade tech into his hands, there would still be war when the off-world force crossed the line into the Blue.
“You’ll never find them unless you follow the beam.” Najar rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth.
“I have Baku and Surra,” Hosteen replied, though in one way Najar was right. With the Recon scout they could take the quickest and easiest route to that camp, following the broadcast.
Najar hitched the cord of a canteen around his bony shoulder. “We’d better blast if we’re going.” He circled the rocks and started on.
Hosteen waved a hand at Gorgol, and the Norbie slid down the other side of the rock pile, heading into the valley to find the clansmen who might listen to him if they were not provoked by an invasion.
It was still early enough so that the heat was no more than that of midmorning of the milder season. Hosteen, eying the sun’s angle, thought they might squeeze in two or two and a half hours of travel before they would have to lay up. Then they might have another hour-if they were lucky-in the early evening. But the best way was to think only of what lay immediately ahead-first of the next ridge or crevice, then, as the sun burnt higher and patches of shade were few, of the next ten steps, five steps, ahead.
Surra, ranging wider than the men, disappeared, only keeping mental contact with Hosteen. The time came when he asked of her the location of a hiding hole, for the time between their rests grew shorter and the land beyond was as barren and sun-seared as that he had seen through the “window” in the sealed valley wall.
Najar took a quick step farther right.
“The beam-it has doubled its strength! We’re either practically on top of them or there’s an emergency recall.” From their careful, slow plod he broke into a trot, topping a small ravine and dropping into it in a cascade of rocks and earth. At the same time Surra’s alert came-she had sighted the camp.
The ravine fed them into a larger break, and there they came upon a half station such as Norbies and hunters used in the Peaks-a collection of stones heaped over a pit in the earth-in which men could rest during the day in a livable atmosphere. Surra prowled about its circumference and raised her voice in a growl of feline exasperation.
Hosteen hurried on and clawed at the frawn-skin robe wet down with seal seam to close the entrance. A moment later the head and shoulders of a man pushed that aside-Kelson!
“Storm! We knew you were on the way-Baku came in a few minutes ago. Come in, man, come in. And you, Logan-“ Then the Peace Officer took a closer look at Hosteen’s companion.
“That isn’t Logan-“
“No.” Hosteen shoved Najar ahead of him through the hole as Kelson retreated to give them passage. Then Surra and finally he dropped in. He stood there allowing his eyes to adjust to the gloom.
The quarters had been chosen well, the scooped-out pit leading back into a cave of sorts. Only Hosteen had little time to assess his surroundings, for he was facing Brad Quade.
“Logan-?”
The question Hosteen had been asking himself for what seemed now to be days of time was put into words-and by the one he most dreaded hearing it from. All he had beside the bare fact of their parting on that strange transport device of the caves was Najar’s story of the other man who had taken that route but had not come to the installation hall. If Logan were still alive, he was lost somewhere in the tunnels.