Hosteen started forward at a pace slightly slower than Logan’s. All they had to fear for the present was a sudden appearance of another “snake.”
Dean stood with his back to the board, over which rainbow lights ran in tubes. He was plainly pleased with himself. And Hosteen did not doubt he was equipped with a stass bulb or some other alien weapon.
“So the thief does not escape.”
“As I told you before., I’m no thief!” Logan retorted with genuine heat. “I was lost here, and I don’t know how I got into that room where you found me-“
“Maybe not yet a thief in practice, but in intent, yes. Don’t you suppose that I know any man would give years of life to master these secrets. Few ever conceive of such power as this hall holds. I am Lord of Thunder, Master of Lightning in the eyes of the natives-and they are right! This world is mine. It took the combined forces of all twenty solar systems in the Confederacy ten years to put down the Xiks. I was one of the techs sent to study and dismantle their headquarters on Raybo. And, we thought we had uncovered secrets then. But they had nothing to compare with the knowledge waiting here. I was chosen to use the teaching tapes stored here, the cramming machines-they were waiting for me, me alone, not for stupid little men, ignorant thieves. This is all mine-“
Hosteen quickened pace and checked with Surra by mind touch.
“Why didn’t you finish me off with your crawlers or your tame lightnin’-if that’s the way you feel about it?” Logan was keeping Dean talking. The tech, alone so long, must relish an audience of one of his own race.
“There is plenty of time to finish you off, as you say. I wanted you occupied for a space, kept away from places where you might get into mischief. You could not be allowed to interfere with the plan.”
“This plan of yours”-Logan was only a few steps from the platform-“is to take over Arzro and then branch out. Beat the Xiks at their old game.”
“Those who built this place”- Dean was fingering a small ball, another stass broadcaster Hosteen believed; otherwise, the Terran could not see that the other was armed- “had an empire into which all the Xik worlds and the Confederacy could both have been fitted and forgotten. All their knowledge-it is here. They foresaw some blasting end-made this into a storehouse-“ He flung out his hand.
Hosteen fired the stunner. That ray should have clipped Dean alongside the head, a tricky shot, and it failed. A breath of the beam must have cut close enough to confuse him momentarily but not enough to put him out. Logan launched himself at the man who was staggering, only to crash heavily, completely helpless in stass, as Dean thumbed his control globe.
The tech was standing directly before the board, and Hosteen dared not try a second shot. A ray touching those sensitive bulbs might create havoc. The Terran signaled Surra.
Out of hiding the cat made a great arching leap that brought her up on the platform, facing Dean. Then she struck some invisible barrier and screamed aloud in anger and fear, as she was flattened to the floor.
Pressed back against the board, Dean reached for a lever, and Hosteen made his own move. Surra, striving still to reach her quarry, was aiming forepaw blows at nothing, and her raging actions held the tech’s attention as Hosteen jumped to the platform in turn. But he did not advance on Dean.
Instead, his own hand went out to a bank of those small bulbs that studded the board in bands.
“Try that”-his warning crackled as if his words held the voltage born in the installations about them-“and I move too!”
Dean’s head whipped about. He stared with feral eyes at the Amerindian. Hosteen knew that his threat could be an empty one; now he must depend upon what some men termed luck and his own breed knew as “medicine.”
“You fool! There’s death there!”
“I do not doubt it,” Hosteen assured him. “Better dead men here than raiders loosed on the plains and a dead world to follow.” Bold words-a part of him hoped he would not have to prove them.
“Release the stass!” Hosteen ordered. If he could only keep Dean alarmed for just a few seconds!
But the tech did not obey. Hosteen moved his hand closer to the row of bulbs. He thought he felt warmth there, perhaps a promise of fire to come. Then Dean hurled the ball out into the aisle.
“Fool! Get away from that-you’ll have the mountain down upon us!”
Hosteen dropped his hand to the butt of the stunner. Now he could ray the other into unconsciousness, and their job would be over.
A breath of air, a sound came from behind him. He jerked his head. Two figures appeared out of nowhere on the dais. Hosteen heard Logan call out and felt a lash of burning heat about his upper arms and chest so that the stunner dropped from helpless fingers.
Dean was away, running, dodging behind one of the cased machines, Surra a tawny streak at his back. Hosteen swayed, then recovered his balance on the very edge of the platform. He saw Surra drop, roll helplessly-Dean must have picked up the stass.
Quade passed Hosteen, running toward the spot where the cat lay. But before him was Logan, scrambling on hands and knees. The younger man paused, and then he threw-with the practised wrist snap of a veteran knife man. There was a cry from beyond.
Hosteen was only half aware of the struggle there. The pain in his arm and shoulder was like a living thing eating his quivering flesh. He dropped down and watched Logan and his father drag a wildly struggling Dean into view. And in Logan’s hand was the weapon that had brought the tech down, the now blood-stained horn he had taken from the skull found in the pens..
As they returned, the tubing on the board came to life. The waving line of lavender, which had always showed steady color from the first time Hosteen had seen the hall, was deepening in hue, its added flow of energy clearly visible.
Dean stopped struggling abruptly. A new kind of concentration molded his features. In an instant he had dropped his frenzied fight for freedom and become an alert tech faced by a problem in his own field.
“What is it?” Brad Quade demanded.
Dean shrugged impatiently, as if to throw off both question and the hold that kept him from the platform. “I don’t know-“
Najar was beside Hosteen, giving the Amerindian a hand up. No, he had not been wrong, for Surra had caught it too-the warning that was a part of the brilliance in that band of light, as well as a part of man and beast who shared another kind of awareness.
“We must get out of here.” Hosteen lurched toward the dais.
Logan, Quade, Najar-three pairs of eyes were on him. Surra was already by his side.
“What is it?” This time Brad Quade asked his stepson and not the tech.
“I don’t know!” Hosteen made the same answer. “But we have to get out of here and fast.” His inner tension was swelling into panic-such as had dogged him in the valley of hunting shadows. Logan moved first.
“All right.”
“You call it,” Brad Quade added. He jerked Dean along and in a second again had a raving, fighting madman in his hold.
Najar struck, a Commando in-fighting blow, and the tech went limp. On the board that pulsing light was now an angry purple. And more bulbs glowed here and there, taking on a winking life. The yellow of the lightning tree was bubbling, frothing.
They crowded together on the dais, the unconscious Dean held upright between Quade and Najar. Hosteen strove to raise his hands to give the signal that would transport them out of there-and found his right arm stiff, pain holding it in a steel band to his side.
The hum of the running machines, which had always formed a purring undercurrent of sound in the hall, was a hum no longer. More of them must be coming alive.
“Your hands-hold them apart over that line of bulbs.” Hosteen croaked out instructions to Logan. “Then bring them together in a fast clap-“
Logan’s hands, tinted purple in that awesome light, came together. Then they were spinning out and out-
Before them once more was a patch of day. Hosteen was conscious of Logan’s arm about him, of stumbling into the light, of the shuffle of feet behind.
Sound-it was not the rising hum of the alien machines but drums, a steady beat-beat of them in chorus. And over all lay the terrible need to be in the open.
They came out on that ledge where Hosteen had lain to watch Dean harangue the Norbie tribesmen. Hosteen pulled ahead, following Surra, for in the cat as well as in him was that bursting need to be away from the cave entrance.