“I don’t know.” Nik roused to answer that last question.
“If we hide, how can we tell when he does come?” Vandy was practical.
“Well have to find a hiding place from which we can see the landing apron,” Nik replied. “Only near there is where they will hunt us, too.”
“Go outside?” Vandy sounded doubtful, and Nik did not blame him.
Stay in the burrows where Orkhad could eventually track them down – go outside into a nightmare world where only a pair of goggles would give them freedom of movement, perhaps mean the difference between life and death? But also – to go outside was the only way to be sure of Leeds’ arrival. Nik had no assurance of the wisdom of his own decisions. He could only make them, by choosing the lesser of two evils. And he clung stubbornly to the idea that in Leeds lay their only safety now.
“Yes.” His reply was curt. And then he began to wonder if they could reach the outside world – if this tunnel had any opening onto the surface of Dis.
“Look!” Vandy’s outheld hand was a vague blur in the gloom. What he indicated lay mid-point between two of the dim lights. It was a greenish glow, stronger toward the roof, tapering as it descended. Nik pulled up the goggles, startled by the sharp focus that leaped at him.
Plants – or rather fleshy growths against the bare rock. They had no leaves Nik could identify but innumerable thin arms or branches that matted together, intertwining and twisting until they made a thick mass. And they grew through a break in the wall only a little below the room. A way outside?
Nik could not bring himself to touch that mat of weird vegetation with his bare hands. The stuff had such an unhealthy, even evil, look that he thought of poison or fungoid contamination. Yet the chance of an unexpected bolt hole could not be missed.
“What is it?” Vandy demanded, and Nik realized that to the boy’s unaided eyes the growth was a hazy mystery.
“Maybe a side door if we can open it.” Nik dialled the low beam on the blaster and turned it on that twisted mass.
There was a burst of flame licking across the whole growth in one consuming puff. The stench of that burning blew back at them, forcing a retreat. Then it was gone, and only stained rock remained. But the crack the plants had masked was open, and there was light from it, light well visible to Nik’s goggled eyes. Since the cleared space was big enough to scramble through, he leaped and caught at the sides, pulling himself up for a look.
Around him the concentrated stench made him gasp, and there was a whirl of thick and heavy smoke. It would seem that the fire started in the tunnel had ignited the vegetation here also.
Nik, coughing, held to his vantage point long enough to discover that the break was at the bottom of a wedgelike cut, the lips of which were far above. The fire puffed now up the walls of the cut, running with lightning speed along the trails of plants that must have originally choked most of that space.
The walls looked climbable, and Nik thought they had found their way out. He dropped back to wait for the fire to clear the cut, taking advantage of that interval to share a tin of rations with Vandy. They had food; now they must find a place to hole up for rest. Vandy had made no complaint, but Nik judged by his own growing fatigue that to climb out of the cut might be all the youngster could do.
He was right, Nik discovered, when they did climb. Vandy was slow, fumbling, and Nik used his belt as a safety device to link them. Vandy was not just tired; he was climbing that grade blind, making it necessary for Nik to guide his hands and feet. When they at last pulled out on top, Vandy sat panting, his head bowed on his knees.
“I – I don’t think I can go on, Hacon.” he said in a small voice. “My legs – they’re too shaky.”
Nik stood surveying the landscape about them with concentrated study, The ground was rough with many outcrops of rock among which grew lumpy plants, some inches high, others branching into the height of normal trees, but none of them wholesome-looking. The dank humidity of the outer world was a stifling blanket, weighing down their bodies almost as heavily as the fatigue. No, neither of them could go far now, and the rocks offered the best hope of shelter.
The nearest was a cluster of squared blocks where patches of growth made lumpy excrescences. Whether those rises also contained any protecting crevices or niches he could not be sure, but he was certain Vandy could not go much farther. Somehow, Nik got the boy to his feet and half led, half supported him to the rocks. The cloying scents in the air made them both gasp. And once or twice during that journey Nik gagged at a smell alien enough to human nostrils to arouse nausea.
A creature humped of spine, which moved by hops, broke from hiding almost under Nik’s feet and took a soaring leap to the top of one of the blocks. There it slewed around. A tongue issued from a wide, gaping mouth to lash across a patch of fungi-encrusted stone and transfer a burden of harvested vegetation to that lipless stretch of warty skin.
Nik sighted the shadowy space beneath that hopping thing’s perch. A moment later he supported Vandy to the edge of a dark pocket, pausing only to use the blaster to clear its interior. Then they were in a slit passage running on between the blocks. Nik pushed Vandy along that narrow way.
It was not a cave. The continued regularity of the walls made him sure that this was the remains of a structure.
A rattle underfoot drew Nik’s attention from the wall to the floor. He had kicked a grayish object. About as long as his forearm, it was formed of a series of rounded knobs linked together until his foot had disturbed them and several had rolled apart. Bones? Remains of what – and how recent the death that had left them there? Was this the lair of one of the killers of Dis?
Still, the way before them was open, and Nik had the blaster. Now he saw light ahead – further proof that this was a passage rather than a cave. Three or four more strides and he was fronted by an opening well above the surface of the way, a window to look out upon an eerie landscape so dark that even the goggles did not help much in his inspection.
Ruins – that was surely true. The block piles were regular in pattern. And they extended all along a shelf to his right. On the left was an abrupt drop, and then another, as if he were on the edge of a flight of steps intended for the use of giants.
No use trying to go on now, stumbling into the ruins. The window opening was well above the surface of the pavement, and if they bedded down immediately beneath it, they would be well protected. Nik was shaking with fatigue, and Vandy had slid out of his hold to lie still, his eyes closed, his panting breath coming in a more even pattern. Vandy was finished for now, and Nik had no strength to carry him. This had to be their refuge. He managed to spread the blankets and roll the boy on them. Then he sat down, his back against the wall, the blaster resting on his knee, wondering how long he could hold out against the sleep his body demanded.
Chapter VII
NIK AWOKE to darkness, a black so thick it was a match for the humid air about him. He was choking, gasping, blinded. For those few seconds, panic held him, and then he remembered where he was. But before he could move, there was an awesome roll of sound, and he thought he could detect an answer of vibration through the stone pavement on which he crouched.
“Hacon – Hacon!” The appeal was half scream. Nik flung out an arm, but Vandy was not there. He pawed at his chest, hunting the goggles that had rested there when he had nodded off into slumber. They too were missing! Vandy and the goggles. Had the boy tried to return to the LB?
“Hacon!” The call came from not too far away. Nik clawed up to the window facing the ruins. A thunderous roll shook the air and the earth under him. As it dwindled into silence, Nik heard other sounds, a growl, then a high-pitched scream. He clung to the edge of the window and tried to force sight where his eyes stubbornly refused to grant it.