“Can you guide us to any main passage from here?”
“Most of ‘em are main passages as far as I know.” The other did not sound optimistic, but he took the lead, and they started on into the heart of the mountain.
Here Surra showed no desire to roam ahead; instead, she matched her pace to Hosteen’s as well as four feet could match two. He was alert to her always, relying more upon the cat than upon Najar’s ability to bring them into a section where they might hope to encounter Dean, so he knew instantly when the cat paused, even before she swung half across his path to halt him.
Quade, knowing of old how Surra operated, stopped, and Najar looked around, puzzled, and then impatient.
“What’s the-?” He had out only half the question when Hosteen signaled him to silence.
Surra’s actions were the same as the time when Dean had vanished in that other tunnel. And the Amerindian was certain that this must be another of the mysterious transfer points.
The cat’s head was cocked slightly to one side, and her whole stance pictured the act of listening-listening to something their dull human ears could not pick up. Without moving more than his hands, Hosteen switched his torch on to full beam, played that bank of light in a careful sweep over the floor under them and the right wall. But there were no spiral markings such as he had more than half hoped to sight. The beam went to his left and again revealed unmarked surface.
Yet Surra was still listening. Then the cat arose on her hind feet, her muzzle pointed up-as if she scented what she had heard.
Overhead! Not under foot as it had been in the valley, but overhead! Hosteen flashed his torch straight up. But how could that pattern he had come to know be followed upside down?
“That it?” Quade asked.
“Yes. Only I don’t see-“ Hosteen began, and then suddenly he did. Just as he had been pushed by a compulsion he did not understand to walk the spiral in the valley wedge, so here an order outside of his consciousness brought his hand up over his head to touch the open end of the spiral. Only this time he fought that pull, fought it enough to keep his awareness of those with him.
“I think-“ It was hard to speak, to be able to keep his mind off the tracing of that pattern with his finger tips. The urgency to do so was like pain, racing from finger tips to flood his whole body. “We must do this,” he said at last.
A furred body pressed against his. Surra! Surra who had no hand to trace for her. To go would be deserting Surra.
His other hand groped along that furred back after he passed the torch to Quade. He could no longer turn his eyes away from that pattern, which glowed in his mind as well as on the stone overhead.
Hosteen thought of the pattern and took a grip on the loose skin at the back of the cat’s neck, beginning to walk around and around with the fingers of his other hand tracing the roof spiral he had to go on tiptoe to touch. Surra was following his pull without complaint, around-around-Now! His finger tip was on the dot-
Dark-and the terror of that journey through the dark, the red spark that was Surra and a white-yellow one that was Hosteen Storm in company still-
Light around him. Hosteen put out a hand to steady his body and felt the sleek chill of metal. He was back on the dais of the hall platform while Surra pulled free of his hold and faced down the nearest aisle, her mouth wrinkled in a soundless snarl of menace.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Hosteen drew his stunner. From the cat came knowledge that his less acute human senses could not supply. Down those rows of machines there was a hunt in progress, and the hunted was friend, not enemy. Gorgol-successful in obtaining allies-penetrating to this center of taboo territory? Or-the Terran’s grip on the stunner tightened-Logan at last?
Surra leaped from the platform in a distance-covering bound. Then she glided into cover between two installations as Hosteen followed.
Above the hum of the encased machinery Hosteen thought he heard something else-a ticking, more metallic than the drumbeats of the Norbie tambours. He caught up with Surra where she crouched low, intent upon what lay around a corner. The hair along the big cat’s spine was roughened; her big ears were folded against her skull. She spat, and one paw rose as if to lash out.
The thing she stalked was unnatural-not alive by her definition of life. Shadow thing-? No! Hosteen caught sound of that scuttle. Something flashed with super speed, very close to the ground, from one machine base to the next! No-no shadows this time.
He edged past the cat and then side-stepped just in time to avoid the headlong rush of someone alive-alive and human.
“Logan!” Hosteen caught at the other, and an unkempt head turned. Lips were pressed tight to teeth in a snarl akin to Surra’s. A spark of recognition broke in the depths of those too bright eyes, a hand pawed at Hosteen’s, and Logan swayed forward, for a moment resting his body against his brother’s, his heavy breathing close to a sob. Only for a moment, then his head lifted, his eyes widened, and he gasped:
“Hosteen! Behind you!”
Surra squalled, struck out at the thing whipping across the pavement, and recoiled as if flung back. It was a glittering silver ribbon with an almost intelligent aura of malignancy about it, from which a tapering end rose and pointed at the men.
“Get it-quick!” Logan cried.
Hosteen pressed stunner firing button. An eye-searing burst of light came from the snake thing as the beam caught it full on.
“You did it!” The younger man’s voice held the ragged edge of hysteria.
“What?”
“A live machine-one of the crawlers-“
Logan loosed his grip on Hosteen and tottered to the metal ribbon. A thin tendril of smoke arose as it battered its length senselessly against the floor. Logan stamped once, grinding his boot heel into the thing.
“I’ve wanted to do that for hours,” he informed Hosteen. “There’re more of ‘em, though-we’ll have to watch out. And”-his gaze shifted to the weapon in Hosteen’s fist-“where in the name of the Seven Suns did you get that?”
“We’ve reinforcements.” For the first time Hosteen wondered about that. Would Najar and Quade be able to follow him, or was this another time when one of the baffling spiral paths would deposit travelers at different destinations?
“Listen.” He pulled Logan away from the feebly quivering “snake.” “Back there in the valley-did you walk the spiral path the same way I did?”
“Sure. You just vanished into air-I had to follow.”
“Where did you land?”
“In a place I wouldn’t have believed existed-after seeing the rest of this demon-inspired hole. All the time we were muckin’ around there was a place in here with regular living-quarters. But I ran into someone there-an off-worlder who has the run of this whole holdin’. For days-seems like days anyway-he’s been runnin’ me!” Logan was grimly bitter. “Turned those clockwork snakes loose and left me to it. I slowed up one of ‘em with rocks in another cavern like the pen one and pushed one into a river. You took out this one, but there’s a pack of ‘em-“
“Thief!”
The word boomed out of the air right over their heads, freezing both.
“Hide if you wish.” There was condescension in that. “You cannot escape, you know. The crawlers will deliver you to me just as I order. Have you not had enough of running?”
Surra had given no warning. Did Dean have some form of video watching them?
“You waste time in skulking. And a rock-if you have one left-is a poor weapon against this which can deal with a mountain if I so will it.”
A bolt of fire flashed over their heads well above the level of the machines.
A rock for a weapon! Then Dean did not know Hosteen had joined Logan! He was not watching them; he was only sure Logan had been hunted into the hall and was hiding out there.
“You would be better advised not to keep me waiting. Either you will come to me now or my pets will be given a full charge and turned loose to use it. You will be given to the count of five to consider the disadvantages of being a dead hero, and then you will come to the platform in this hall. One-two-“
Logan’s fingers made sign talk. “I’ll go and keep him busy.”
“Right. Surra will take the left aisle, I the right. We’ll flank you in.”
“-three-four-“
Logan walked out into full view of the platform. Two fingers of the hand hanging by his side twitched. Dean was up there waiting.