“I don’t know-“
“You were with him?”
“Yes-for a while-“
“Storm”- Kelson’s hand on his shoulder brought him partly around to face the other-“we picked up that com cast from in there, the one you sent.”
All Hosteen’s frustration, fears, and fatigue boiled over into rage.
“Then why in the name of the Dang Devil are you heading in? Take one step into that valley and the rocket goes up for sure!” He was shaking. The anger in him, against this country, against the odds of ever puffing down Dean, against the tricks of the cave passages he could not hope to master, was eating at him until he wanted to scream out as loudly as Surra did upon occasion. And now the cat snarled from the shadows and Baku voiced a cry, both of them sensitive to his loss of control.
Two hands on his shoulders now forced him down, steadily but gently. He tried to twist out of that grip and discovered that his tired body would not obey him. Then there was a cup at his cracked lips, and he drank thirstily until it was removed.
“Listen, boy, no one is trying to run this through blind. We’ve scouts in the heights, but they have orders not to go into that valley. Can you give us some idea of what is going on?” Quade spoke quietly as he settled Hosteen on the floor of their sunhide, moistened a cloth in a milky liquid he had poured from a small container, and with it patted Hosteen’s face, throat, and chest. The aromatic scent of the stuff brought with it soothing if fleeting memories of relaxing at the day’s end back at the holding.
The younger man was sobered as if in the heat of his anger he had plunged into an icy stream. And in terse sentences he told them what little he knew, then waved Najar forward to add his part of the tale.
“You’re right,” Kelson commented when they were done. “Dean is the answer. An unstable tech with a genius-level brain turned loose in a Sealed Cave storehouse- Lord, that could finish Arzor just as quickly as a continental Tri-X bomb!”
“You’ve called the Patrol in?” Hosteen asked.
“Not officially yet. We’ve borrowed some trained personnel. Maybe now”-he stood up in the dugout, his hands on his hips, his face flushed with more than the heat of their shelter-“the Council will listen to a little common sense. This country should have been adequately patrolled five, ten years ago.”
“Intrusion of treaty rights,” Quade reminded.
“Treaty rights! Nobody’s suggesting we curtail Norbie treaty rights-at least I’m not, though you’d have a different answer from some of those in the Peaks. No! I want-just as I have always wanted-a local force of Norbie-cum-settler to police the outback. That’s what we needed from the first-could have had it last year if you taxpayers had pushed for it. Such a corps would have routed out that Xik gang before they dug in-and they could have stopped this before it even started. You say now this Ukurti is against Dean’s war talk and he can carry his clan Chief with him. Well, we could get the good will of natives of that type and their backing. That’s not breaking any treaty rights I know of-but no, that’s too simple for those soft-sitting Galwadi pets. Now it may be too late. If we are forced to call in the Patrol to handle Dean-“
He did not have to continue. They all knew what that would mean-a loss of settler and Norbie independence, a setting up of off-world control for an indefinite period, the end to native growth, which was their hope for the future.
“How long do we have before the authorities will move?” Hosteen asked.
“How long will Dean hold off on his raids?” Kelson barked. “If our scouts report any parties of warriors leaving the Blue and we don’t have the power to stop them-“
“Power,” repeated Hosteen softly. “Dean’s control in there rests on the fact the natives believe it’s true medicine. I think there was a residue of some alien knowledge among the Norbies of the Blue-some of those machines must have been left running. There is certainly weather control in the village valley and the smaller one where Najar hid out. Perhaps the Norbies were able to make use of other devices-we saw the village Drummer pull a trick that certainly never originated on Arzor-without understanding them. Then Dean has activated more, so he’s a part of the medicine, which makes him taboo and a man of power-“
“And the answer is-remove Dean?” Kelson speculated.
“Not remove him,” Quade cut in, and Hosteen nodded agreement. “That would merely add to the medicine-were he to disappear. And if he is removed bodily and that action discovered, it would be a declaration of war. He has to be removed by those who set him up.”
“No chance of that that I can see,” Kelson exploded.
“Ukurti’s attitude is in our favor,” Quade pointed out. “And Dean is unstable. We have to get at him on a ground he believes is safe-“
Hosteen stirred. “In the mountain!”
“That’s right-in the mountain.”
“It’s a tangle of passages. To find him in there, when he knows those interdimension transports and we don’t-“ Hosteen could see the futility of such a chase, and yet that was their only chance. If they could actually capture Dean, hold him prisoner in the taboo mountain where his native allies would not venture they would have time to work out a method of unmasking him.
“Najar.” Quade spoke to the castaway. “You can find that installation hall?”
“I can try. But as Storm says, that’s a mighty big mountain or mountains, and there’re a lot of passages. It’s easy to get lost-“
“We can take off as soon as it cools this evening,” Kelson began briskly.
“We take off-you stay here and contact the rest of the force,” Quade corrected. “No, don’t try to finger me down over this, Jon. You’re official, and you can swing weight with those rocket boys back in the lowlands. How much do you think they’d listen to me? I’m just another rider scrabbling up a frawn herd as far as they’re concerned. Najar,” he asked, “are you willing to give us a trail leading back in there?”
The castaway looked down at the ground. As well as if he had said it aloud, Hosteen could guess what the other wanted to reply, that he had finally won free of the nightmare in which he had been encased since the crash landing in the Blue. Najar had a good chance now of completing that interrupted voyage, of getting home. But he was Terran-for him, too, no home world was waiting. Was it that loss that tipped the scales in their favor?
“All right.” He wiped his hands across the tatters that served him as a shirt. “Only I make no promises about finding your man.”
“That’s understood. Anyway-we can fit you out.”
Kelson energetically tackled the packs stored at the back of the sunhide, rummaging through supplies meant to equip a scout post. There were arms to be had, stunners, belt knives, fresh clothing, supplies of energy tablets.
Hosteen slept away most of that day. Since his initial inquiry, Quade had not spoken of Logan, but the thought of him was there, and Logan himself walked through Hosteen’s troubled dreams. At nightfall he awoke, sweating, from a vivid return to the transport wedge in the valley-from which, in that nightmare, he had seen Logan vanish, knowing that he had no way of following after, the reversal of what had actually happened. And now the Amerindian could not understand his earlier action. When he had had that compulsion to walk the spiral, why had he not called Logan, made the other do likewise? Why had he been so buried in concentrated effort that he had ignored his half-brother? He could find no excuse-none at all.
Baku was left with Kelson, with orders to keep liaison between the scout post and the mountainside. The eagle hated the tunnels, and her particular gifts were useless there. But Surra sped with the party, backtracking the route that had brought them there that morning.
Once again within the cave, Hosteen put his arm about the cat. In his hold he could feel the play of her powerful shoulder muscles. Just as she had known his frustrated anger back in the hide-up, so did she now react to the job ahead. They had a mission and one in which time itself was drawing the war arrow against them.
“Find-find!” He projected a mental picture of Dean, urged it upon Surra with all the clarity and force he could muster.
Hosteen felt as well as heard the deep growl that vibrated through her as might the purr of a more contented moment. He did not know whether her feline hunting sense would bring them any nearer this quarry. Luck-or “medicine”-could still play a part in this blind hunt. Over Surra’s body he looked at Najar in an appeal that was also part order.