There was the blaster. He could here and now burn that nearest bush and its inhabitant into charred powder, but to attack heedlessly was no answer either. He held the weapon ready as he started along the cliff rim.
It was then that Nik heard the whistle, a piping call that was like a throb of pain beginning in his head and running along his nerves to make his flesh tingle. Three times that shattering call came. Now the lights in the bushes were steady; all faced him. Nik knew the menace of a before – attack. Were these the furred hunters? He did not believe so. But what?
To keep on along the edge of the drop now was to expose himself to a rush. But how else dared he advance?
It was coming – now! How Nik knew that, he could not have told. But he leaped into an open space where any attackers would be exposed to blaster fire.
The bushes shook, spilling the lurkers into sight. They came scuttling, at first on hands and knees. Then, from a crouch, they launched themselves at him – or two of them did, while three remained in reserve. Nik had expected animals, but these – these were men!
“No!” He heard his own involuntary cry, but the others ran mute.
And he saw that he was not confronting new refugees from the Guild base or Patrol scouts. These were naked, thin ghostly creatures. The foremost carried a club in the head of which had been set a row of ugly projections. His companion held a stone as big as his own head.
They sped toward the off-worlder, their eyes agleam with a terrible insanity. Nik fired, almost without consciously willing that push of the finger. The club carrier went down, and at the same time that throb of a whistle beat in Nik’s brain and made his hands quiver and shake.
The second attacker stopped short when his companion fell. He retreated a step or two to stand over his body. His head swung from side to side, his nostrils expanding visibly as if to soak up some necessary scent.
On his bare body the glowing skin was stretched over a rack of bones. And there was no trace of hair on face, head, or body. The features on the face now swinging back toward Nik were roughly human, though the nose was very wide and flat, the nostrils large pits. The mouth was also wide; the lips were thin, rolled back in a snarl to display large, sharp teeth, while the eyes were sunk back into the skull, difficult to see in their twin caverns.
The stranger dropped his stone weapon, tossing it carelessly aside, where it was speedily pounced upon by one of the smaller lurkers. He wrested the club from the flaccid fingers of the dead one and swung it once or twice, as if testing its balance.
Nik tensed, waiting for a second rush, but the other made no move to renew hostilities. He backed away toward the bushes, keeping a wary eye on Nik, his three companions going to ground more quickly. Then as suddenly as they had appeared, they were gone, leaving the dead behind.
Who – or what? Nik knew of the prisoners who had been driven out of the refuge. But surely, humanoid though these creatures appeared, they were not of off-world stock! He marked their going in the bush glow, but they did not retreat far. Those betraying patches of light squatted, each in a hiding place, along the path he must take. Whatever the purpose of that attack, it had not been abandoned as far as the Disians were concerned. But they would not try a second rush into blaster fire.
Should he detour down to the second level of the sea bottom and climb again when he reached the old seaport? There was no reason to fear the outcome, even if all four rushed him; yet Nik shrank from a second battle. Whatever or whoever the strangers were, they were human enough to seem remotely of his kind. And to meet a club and a stone with a blaster was sheer butchery in Nik’s mind. At the same time, he did not doubt that the Disians had no parallel qualms. Did they know that a body light revealed them to him, or were they unaware of that disadvantage?
Nik studied the ground ahead. The growth of vegetation that favored the concealment of the strangers did not extend too far. If he could keep on along the cliff edge and so come in to the open, he might avoid another encounter.
He broke into a trot, covering that area of inherent peril with what speed he could. Such exertion in this humidity left him gasping, staggering a little, as he burst into the welcome open. With one hand pressed against his laboring chest, he looked behind. The lights – they were moving again, not directly after him but for the cliff face of the old shoreline.
He stood watching those now distant figures break from the brush cover and begin to climb the wall with the agility of those who had performed that particular maneuver before. Had they abandoned the chase?
No goggles on their faces – they must be native to this world! Were they degenerate remnants of the race that had fashioned the refuge, survivors of the catastrophe that had wrecked Dis? Goggles – Nik’s hand went up to touch the ones he wore. Those were a very fragile hold on life. Just suppose he were to break or lose the cins – he would be easy prey for even a club man then. He drew a ragged breath and tried to quiet the pounding of his labored heart.
There ahead was where the winged fighters had battled over their prey, and that far the furred hunters had come. Nik examined the ground carefully. There was no cover he could detect large enough to screen one of the furred beasts, but he kept the blaster in his hand. As he turned to set out, he caught a last glimpse of the Disians. The club man was near the top of the cliff, and he, in turn, was looking down at Nik, watching the off-worlder with intent interest. Then his glowing body was up and over that last rise, and he was gone. But Nik had a strong feeling he was not abandoning the chase.
A pile of well-cleaned bones marked the place where the furred hunters had feasted, but there was no other sign of them. Nik forged ahead. He was in comparatively clear territory here, and his next landmark was the reef, though that was yet a good journey beyond. From there the climb into the city ruins – The city ruins! If there ever was a perfect place to lay an ambush, it was there – right there.
Nik tried to remember what he had seen of the ruins, to think whether there was some other way around them to reach the tunnel break of the refuge. But he was afraid that if he avoided the obvious landmarks, he might become hopelessly lost. There was something frightening about launching out into the open sea bottom away from the old shoreline. With those cliffs at hand, the reef ahead, he had a sense of security, of knowing in part what he could expect. He decided that he would retrace the path he and Vandy had taken earlier.
The coarse, gravelly soil slipped and slid under his boots as it had not earlier. He guessed that the moisture had drained out of it, leaving it the texture of sand, making walking just that much harder. His lungs still labored to separate air from the dankness, and he cut his pace.
There was no more commotion in the rain lake below. There were no winged fishers, no signs of turmoil in the waters, which had receded a goodly distance from where they had been at the end of the storm. In the midst of one such dry part, a glint caught Nik’s attention, and he wavered to a stop. This was tangled wreckage, not a rock outcrop. It was something fashioned long ago by intelligence – a ship, surface or air transportation of some kind. Metal had gone into its making and gave back now that sullen glint of light.
It was still in sight when Nik knocked over a small creature with a thrown stone. He found himself holding a limp body with rudimentary leather wings flaps stretching between its front and rear legs, and that body was scaled. Trying not to think of its alien form, he skinned and cleaned it. Then he choked down mouthfuls of the rank-tasting flesh. Food was fuel, and fuel his body needed; he could not be dainty in his eating.
On again – the reef was ahead, and in the reef he would shelter by nightfall, preferring it to the ruins. He could not do without sleep forever. It was getting harder to think clearly. Nik halted, his hand going to his head. That throb! It was like something – the whistle call of the Disians!