“Vandy!” He put all his power into that shout. “Vandy!” If there was an answer, the third peal of giant thunder swallowed it. A flash of dim radiance around the bowl of the horizon followed, while wind battered the scattered blocks. A storm was coming, and such a storm as was possible only on this nightmare world!
Nik tried to remember how the stretch beyond had looked when he had worn the goggles. There had been a relatively open space – he was sure of that – before the next ruined structure.
“Vandy!” Against hope, he bellowed again.
Then there was a flare, blinding in intensity, that started a column of flame Nik could use as a beacon. Vandy must have fired his blaster at some of the highly combustible native vegetation. With that as his guide, Nik began to run.
The wind caught at the ragged banners of the flames, tearing them into long, tattered ribbons, which ignited other growth beyond. Vandy – caught in that! A roar that was not thunder, but from some animal, sounded. Nik raced around broken column, a section of wall, and came into an arena where the fire lighted a wild scene.
Vandy was there, standing on a block of masonry, his back to a pillar or stele. And he held the blaster at ready, though he was not firing at what moved below.
Nik saw them clearly in the light of the fire, but how could you describe them? Each world having life on its surface had grotesques, things of beauty, things of horror, and how one classified them all depended upon one’s own native range of comparison. These had beauty of a sort. Their elongated, furred bodies moved fluidly, wound in and out as if they were engaged in some formal dance. And their heads, with the double fur-fringed ears and the glowing eyes were raised and lowered in a kind of rhythm.
“Vandy,” Nik shouted from instinct alone. “Don’t watch them!”
Weaving patterns were produced by those lustrous fur bodies to draw the eyes and focus the attention. Nik looked above and behind the boy. His own blaster came up, its sights centered on twin pinpricks of light over Vandy’s right shoulder. Nik fired. He had dialled the ray to needle beam, but even then he had had to aim high for fear of touching Vandy. That ray must have missed the attacker or attackers leading the sortie from above, but the eye gleams vanished, and the weaving pattern on the pavement ceased abruptly. The heads swung in Nik’s direction as they stood still, eying him.
Here in the hollow among the ruins, the wind did not reach, but the fire had already eaten away at the growth and was now dying, so that Nik’s sight of the hunters was curtailed. Several of the flankers dropped low, their belly fur brushing the ground as they glided toward him, pausing at once when he looked directly at them. They were not large animals. The biggest in the pack was as long as Nik’s arm, but size did not mean too much if they hunted as a unit, and Nik thought that they did.
He began his circling, moving with his face toward the enemy, hoping to reach the point directly beneath Vandy’s present perch. It was apparent that the creatures were cautious hunters. Perhaps somehow they had made a quick appraisal of the intruders’ weapons in Vandy’s use of the blaster.
Thunder was answered by a wide flash of the semi-invisible lightning. Neither sound nor light appeared to make any impression on the hunters. Nik had reached the edge of the stele; two more short steps would bring him below Vandy.
“Vandy!” He dared to hail the boy, and oddly enough his voice stopped the forward glide of the flankers and brought their heads up, swinging slightly from side to side as if the human mouthed word was far more disturbing than the approaching fury of the storm. “The goggles.” Nik held up his left hand without daring to see if the boy would obey him. “Give them here!”
A moment later the strap holding those precious windows into the dark was in his grasp. Then he heard Vandy. “I’m covering.” With that assurance, Nik dared to put the cin strap about his head and take the chance of looking away from the hunters. He gave a half whistle of relief. To have sight again – that was better than a glimpse or two with the aid of the almost dead fire. His confidence rose.
“Vandy” – he gave his orders slowly.”I’m going to move out from this block. You slide down behind me and take a grip on my tunic – now!”
Whatever influence his voice had had in the beginning on the pack was now wearing off. They had made a half circle about him, but so far they had not advanced beyond an invisible line of their own choosing.
He could not hear the sounds of Vandy’s descent, for the thunder rolled deafeningly. A jerk on his tunic told him the boy had followed orders. Nik began to edge sideways, pulling Vandy with him, his body between the hunters and the boy, his blaster ready for the first sign of attack. Why the Disian creatures had not already pulled him down, Nik could not imagine. He reached the end of the block, and the full force of the storm-driven wind struck at him, bringing with it torrential rain.
Instantly the hunting pack vanished, leaving Nik to blink unbelievingly as he threw out his left arm and clawed for anchorage against the buffeting of wind and rain. It was as if they had simply disappeared into the slanting lines of the falling water itself!
Shelter – Nik did not think they could make it back to the window corridor across the open space where the storm hit with hammering strength. A flash – and through the cin-goggles the brilliance of the dark world’s lightning was blinding. That must have hit close by.
Nik was aware of Vandy’s pulling at him, urging him to the right. He looked over his shoulder. The boy had kept his hold on Nik with one hand; the fingers of the other had fastened in the edge of an opening between two blocks.
To venture into such a hideout might be walking into one of the hunters’ dens, but they could not remain in the open. Already the force of the wind was driving through the air pieces of vegetation and other debris. There was one precaution he could take. Nik threw an arm about Vandy, holding him well anchored against his own body as he beamed the blaster into the opening. Then he stooped to enter.
Here even the cin-goggles were not much use. The pavement sloped down and inward from the door, and small rivers of rain poured about their boots. Nik halted. No use going on to a basin where the storm waters might gather. He could see walls faintly, near to hand at his right, farther away on his left. And there was a ledge or projection on the right.
“Ledge here.” He guided Vandy’s hand to that and swept the boy’s palm back and forth across the slimed stone. “We’ll stay there; too much water running down here.”
Nik boosted the boy onto the projection and then settled beside him. The water was now flooding down the ramp. It was hard to believe it was merely storm overflow and not some stream diverted into this path. How far down did it run?
Even though sounds were muffled here, the fury of wind and rain and the assaults of thunder and lightning made a grumble that vibrated through the wall against which they huddled. Vandy’s body pressed closer to Nik’s with every boom from the outer world, and Nik kept his arm about the small shoulders, feeling the shudders that tacked the boy’s frame.
“Just a storm, Vandy.” Nik sought to reassure the other.
But on Dis a storm might well be catastrophe of the worst land. If he only knew more about this black world, about the Guild refuge and those in it, about Leeds –
For that matter, about Vandy, too. Why had the boy taken the goggles and gone into the ruins on his own? If he tried that trick again, it could well lead to disaster for both of them. Nik must make Vandy understand that.
“Why did you take the cins and go out?” Nik raised his voice above the gurgle of the rushing water, the more distant wind and rain, to ask.
Vandy squirmed in his hold. “I wanted to see if I could find the ship.” His voice had a sullen note.
So, he had been heading for the LB.
“Vandy, I’m telling you the truth.” Nik spoke slowly, trying to throw into his words every accent of conviction. “Even if we were right in the LB now, we couldn’t rise off-world. It’s locked on a homing device to this port, and I can’t reset that.”