“Time to go.”
Chapter VIII
NIK TESTED the current of the flood on the downward slope by lowering himself to stand with it washing about his boots while he held to the ledge. The water was glassy; its dark surface rippled now and then. Sometimes those ripples ran against the current as if life fought a passage upward. But the wash came no higher than Nik’s ankles, and the force of it was not enough to impede wading.
At his assurance, Vandy dropped down, keeping a hold on Nik as he had when they had faced the hunters. Then they splashed toward the outside.
There it was still raining steadily, but the wildness of the wind had abated. The rain flowed by every depression to the edge of the drop the ruins lined, cascading over in countless small falls. There was something about that abrupt drop – could this city once have been a port on a long-vanished river or sea? But the mystery of the ruins was not their problem. To get back to the tunnel was.
“Keep hold,” Nik ordered Vandy as he pushed into the open under the pelt of the rain.
Now – that was the window through which he had climbed! He boosted Vandy up and scrambled after. They were in the dry again, and Nik looked for the supplies. He triggered the heat-and-open button on one of the containers, holding it with care lest some of the precious contents spill. When the lid sprang up and the steam made his mouth water, he gave it to Vandy.
“Eat it all, but slowly,” Nik ordered and took up another tin for himself. Rationing might be more sensible, but it had been a long time since their last meal. Nik felt they needed full stomachs for the job ahead. Once back in the refuge, there would be chances to get more supplies.
The humidity, which had been so choking before the storm, seemed even worse in the narrow passage. The smallest effort left Nik gasping. His clothes, soaked in the rain, had no chance of drying, but he made Vandy strip and wipe down with one of the blankets, doing the same himself, before huddling into their soggy clothes once more.
“My boots – they’re shining,” Vandy observed suddenly. Nik glanced down. There was an odd luminescence outlining the boy’s footgear – his own, too. He examined them more closely. A furred substance was there. Nik had a dislike of investigating by finger touch. With a blanket edge he wiped Vandy’s boot toe. There was a slimy feel to the smear, and the blanket came, away phosphorescent as had their tracks upon first entrance to the refuge. Their boots were growing some form of vegetation!
Quickly Nik surveyed the rest of their clothing. His belt – yes, that had the same warning glow, and so had parts of the ornamental harness Vandy had dreamed up for Hacon’s uniform. But, save for the boots, Vandy appeared free. Neither of them dared to discard those boots and venture bare-skinned across Disian earth. Whether they were now carrying some deadly danger with them, Nik did not know. He could only hope that the weird growth would not root on their skins.
There had been vegetation in the tunnel, but where the roof break had admitted it, and it had not spread far from that point. Perhaps the cool current of air always flowing through the refuge was a discouraging factor. All the more reason for getting back there.
With their remaining supplies repacked, Nik steered Vandy down the passage. They had reached the other door of that way and were near to the cut where the tunnel entrance lay when Vandy cried out. But Nik saw it, too, and there was no mistaking that kind of fire. A small ship was riding tail flames down for a landing, probably on the same field where the LB had finned in. That must be Leeds! “There’s another!” Vandy cried. “And.” Two ships – a third! Leeds couldn’t be leading a fleet! Was Vandy right? Were those his father’s ships, a father who was not dead but lured here with Vandy for the bait? But if that was true, where did Leeds stand? Nik halted the run that had brought him to the edge of the cut.
The rain was pouring into the bottom of that hollow. It must be curling in turn into the tunnel. Their back door might not even be practical – if they still wanted to use it. That it was important, and its answer could only come by learning the identity of the planeting ships.
There was noise – not one of the great thunderclaps of the Disian storm, but a shock through the ground under them. Vandy screamed and tumbled forward into the cut. Nik tried to grasp him. One hand caught a hold, and then the two of them were sliding down. Nik brought up against a rock with painful force, but that anchored them against a farther tumble. There was a second shock in the ground, and out of the tunnel break air exploded, carrying with it bits of rock and soil.
Down in the refuge, there had been an explosion. Had Orkhad taken some drug-twisted way out of trouble by blowing up his own stronghold? Or had the refuge been forced from without and was it now under attack? At any rate, to drop into those depths at present was asking for worse trouble than they had faced so far.
“Got – to – get – away.” Nik panted. “Whole thing might collapse under us here.”
One of his arms and one side were pinned to the ground by Vandy’s weight, and the boy had neither spoken nor moved since they had landed there. “Vandy!” Nik edged his head around.
Closed eyes, a trickle of blood across the forehead – Vandy must be unconscious. Nik strove to wriggle free. His movements brought an answering throb of pain. That slam against the rock had not been the easiest landing in the world. But Vandy, the boy might be seriously injured –
Their anchoring rock had seemed to give a little when Nik moved. He began to claw at the soil under him, loosening enough so that he could squirm around and put his head and shoulders upslope. The trails of rain were still flooding down. Splashes from one struck them. Vandy moaned and tried to move, but Nik was quick to pin him down. Another wriggle and they both might be on their way to the bottom. Luckily, there had been no more quakes or explosions or whatever had stirred up the earth hereabouts.
With Vandy a dead weight, Nik was defeated when it came to climbing, and he feared to descend. That explosion of air and rock must have blown a larger hole in the tunnel. To fall into whatever might be in progress down there was more danger than he cared to face.
A sidewise progress upslope – yes, he could make that – but not carrying Vandy. Could he leave the boy there, wedged in behind the rock, while he went to the top and devised some method of raising Vandy in turn? The boy was half conscious now but not alert enough to understand their predicament and cooperate by remaining quiet. Left, he could well fall into the tunnel hole.
The wet slope was a slippery way at best, but Nik still had the small pack of blankets and supplies. The blankets themselves? Nik tried to think coherently and purposefully.
He moved with infinite caution, dragging Vandy across his thighs so that the boy lay face up behind the rock. Then Nik unfastened the blanket roll and pulled it around.
Somehow, he managed the next move. One of the blankets was wrapped around Vandy, confining his arms and legs, the belt made fast, and the other blanket used again as a rope. From this point, the climb seemed mountain high, but Nik knew from their first journey out of the cut that it was not. If he could make the effort, they would win.
He chose to tackle the slope between two water streams where the earth was relatively dry, if any stretch of ground on this bedeviled world could be deemed that. Now he straightened cautiously and drove two of the supply containers into the yielding surface with all the strength he could muster, hanging his weight on each as a test.
Anchorage for a gain, now use the last two above those! Nik crawled face down against the slimed earth. It was time to loosen the lower containers – but only one would come free as he leaned at an almost impossible angle to struggle with it. Well, that one would have to serve. Drive it in above – crawl –
Then his clawing hand was over the edge where a portion of the cut wall had earlier collapsed. Nik strained with the effort to rise and rolled over into a puddle of rain.