Perched up there, they would have defense against anything that would climb to attack.
Another glance showed him that a second hunter had joined the first at the feast. Unlike the fliers, the first did not attempt to drive off or attack his fellow but moved a little to one side, allowing the newcomer a chance at the food. This was odd enough to make Nik wonder. Cooperation in feeding, as well as hunting, suggested a higher form of consciousness than the fliers, who tore each other for the prey. The hunters were smaller editions of those three magnificent watchers on the headland. They had been esteemed by the original natives of Dis to the point that infinite care had been taken to establish highly artistic representations of their species on a prominent place before the city. Animals that had been sacred to the one-time rulers of this world? Pets – protection?
“I can’t go – so – fast.” Vandy stammered. He stumbled and nearly fell.
Nik, eaten by the need for some form of shelter before the coming of what was a double dark, caught him up and kept on. They were directly below the island hill. He struggled up and on, finally pulling out on an expanse of rock ledge below a sharp crest. He pushed Vandy back against that crest and looked back.
There were the furred hunters, still eating, and still only the two of them in sight. If they were scouts for a pack, the rest had not yet caught up. Now, Nik got to his feet and turned slowly to get a good look at what lay about them. To his right was the rain lake, to his left a dip and then the cliff of the old shore.
Anything trying to reach their present perch must either swim the lake and then win up an almost sheer drop or come up the same way he and Vandy had used, to be met by blaster fire. They had their refuge for the night, as safe a one as he could devise.
Nik sat down and unhooked the fish from his belt. Methodically, he cleaned it and cut the whole into portions. They would now try the provender of Dis.
Chapter X
“VANDY! VANDY!”
Nik held the boy, wondering whether that violent retching would ever stop, whether the convulsions that shook the small body could be endured for long, his feeling of guilt rising like an answering sickness within him. He had never witnessed such a terrible attack of nausea before. It was as if the few bites of fish Vandy had taken had been virulent poison; yet they had had no similar effect on Nik.
Vandy lay limp now, moaning a little, and Nik hesitated. Should he try to get him to drink some water or would that bring on another attack? He feared another such violent upheaval might be truly dangerous. There was nothing he could do for Vandy – no medicine he could offer. Back at the refuge – back at the refuge – to return there – If Vandy’s people had led the attack, or the Patrol – But suppose the other possibility was the truth, that the struggle had been some inter-Guild dispute? Or was Nik clinging to that merely because it was what he wanted to believe for his own safety? Vandy’s head rolled on Nik’s shoulder; the boy’s breathing was heavy, labored.
In spite of the night, with the cin-goggles, he could start now, carry Vandy, retrace their journey, and find the hunters waiting out there while he was too burdened with the boy to make a fighting stand. Nik bit his lip and tried to think clearly. This could be only a passing illness for Vandy; the boy could have an allergy to the strange food. And to be caught by the hunters –
Perhaps to wait right here until any trailers from the refuge came would be the wise move. Nik could remain with Vandy until he saw them coming, then leave the boy to be found, always providing those trackers were friendly to Vandy. And he honestly doubted he could get far carrying the boy.
How long had that sound been reaching his ears without his being conscious of it? Nik shifted Vandy’s body to free his right hand for the blaster. It came from the down side of their island hill where the rain lake washed – a splashing, not just the normal rippling of wind-ruffled water lapping the shoreline.
Nik inched along the ledge, hoping to see what lay below. And it was not too difficult to make out a bulk floundering there, not swimming, but wading through shallows, staggering now and then, once going to its knees and rising with an exclamation.
A man!
Nik stiffened, watched. By all he could discover, the wader was alone. Coming in that direction, he could well be from the flitter that had fled the refuge in the last moments of battle.
The man reached the shore of the rain lake and steadied himself with one outflung hand against a rock. He looked up as if searching the island hill for hand holds. Cin-goggles made a mask to conceal his face, but this was not Orkhad or any of his race.
Plainly, the stranger decided the rise before him unclimbable. He began to move along it, still supporting himself with one hand against the rock wall. Now that he was free of the water, Nik saw he was limping, pausing now and again as if the effort to keep moving was a heavy one.
He neared the place where Nik and Vandy had climbed. Would that tempt him also? Vandy was quiet. Carefully, Nik laid him down against the crest that crowned the hill. He waited in silence for the stranger’s next move.
“Hacon?”
Startled, Nik glanced, at Vandy, but that had not come from the boy. The low hail sounded from below! And only one person other than Vandy would have called him by that name. Eagerly Nik leaned over the edge of the ledge and stared down at that goggle-masked, upturned face.
“Captain Leeds!”
“In person. But not quite undamaged. In fact, I don’t believe I can make that perch of yours without a hand up – and we may all need a perch soon!”
“They’re after you?”
“Oh, not the Patrol, if that’s what you mean. No, this mis-made hell world has its own hunters, and a couple of them have been sniffing up my trail for longer than I care to remember.”
Nik scrambled down the slope. The captain’s hand fell on his arm, and he gave support to the other’s weight.
“You’re hurt badly?”
“Wrenched my leg when I took a tumble some distance back there. Couldn’t favor it much after I fought off that night lizard. Knew the rest of its clutch would be coming. And they were – at least two of them! You have any arms at all?”
“Two blasters. Don’t know how much charge they have left.”
“Two blasters – that’s about the most comforting news I’ve had since I lifted off Korwar. Talk about luck – we’ve got a lot of it now – mostly all bad.
“First, that Patrol snoop ray picked me up on the big orbit in; then they were able to slam three ships after me before my rocket tubes had cooled. Feel as if I’ve been doing nothing but running for days now. Give us a hand up.”
Somehow, they made it up, but Nik sensed that Leeds must be close to the end of his strength. The captain gave a grunt as Nik settled him on their perch, but a moment later he crawled back to the edge and examined the terrain below.
“Couldn’t have picked it better myself, boy. Any crawler trying to claw us out of here can only come up this way, and we’ll burn out his engine before he gets within clawing distance. What’s wrong with the boy here?” He looked back at Vandy.
Nik explained about the disastrous meal of Disian fish.
“No off-world supplies, eh?” Leeds asked.
“No. I left the containers I had back at the tunnel break.” Hurriedly, Nike outlined the main points of their flight for Leeds.
“That’s going to complicate matters,” the captain said. “Vandy’s conditioned.”
“Conditioned?” Nik repeated uncomprehendingly.
“I told you, he is conditioned all the way – against going with strangers, against everything that would make it easy to lift him out of HS.”
“But he ate what was in those rations without trouble.”
“Those are LB supplies – emergency food. No one of Terran ancestry can be conditioned against those. It’s an elementary precaution rigidly kept. Suppose Vandy’s spacer had been wrecked on the way to Korwar – there would be a chance of escape by LB. So he could eat LB rations. Now, he can’t eat anything else – on this world.”
“But.” Nik realized the futility of his protest. Without LB rations, Vandy would starve. And the LB rations, the cans he had driven into the wall of that cut to serve as a stairway and then abandoned thoughtlessly, were far behind. Those containers meant Vandy’s life – unless there were other supplies he could tap.