Slowly, staggering a little, he turned about to view the cliff top to his left. Rock – that was all, just rock. No club wielder was climbing down again. But the muddle in his head – that throb which was more pain than sound –
The reef – he would get to the reef and hole up there. It was darkening; it must be close to the day’s end. He could see the reef, a black streak across the dull sea bottom. Nik wavered on, the gritty soil slipping under his feet so that once he fell to one knee and found it difficult to scramble up again.
He feared a return of that throb in his head, shrinking from the very thought of it. His hand shook so that he had to belt hook the blaster. Was he sick from that food he had forced into him as Vandy had been sick the night before? There was something wrong – very wrong. Once Nik swung around to go back, back to the island hill and Leeds and Vandy. But then he knew that he could not make it. It would be better to reach the reef and rest there. The crevice in which he and Vandy had sheltered beckoned him. Just get there and rest – rest. His hand wiped back and forth across his face. Once that movement pushed aside the goggles, and he cried out in fear as his sight was distorted. He was no longer truly conscious of what was happening to him, only that apprehension was clouding his mind and that the thought of the hiding hole in the reef kept him moving.
The rest of that day was a haze for Nik. But he roused when he lurched up against a rock and looked a little stupidly at a wall of them. He had reached the reef, he thought foggily. The reef – safety – rest. If he could only crawl a little farther!
There were bright glints of light – or eyes, eyes watching – waiting – assessing his fatigue, his bemused mind? Was it that additional prick of fear that pulled Nik farther out of the fog? Something gave him power enough to drag himself up, along the rocks, heading for the pocket he remembered.
He kicked away something that rattled against the stone and saw a claw-tipped bone flip up and away from his stumbling feet – the remains of the crawler he had blasted before their crevice camp. So, he was almost there now.
The glint of eyes – they were still at a distance. His sobbing breaths beat in his own ears, so that he could not hear anything that might be creeping up for the kill.
Just a little farther. Now – hold on to this rock, pull up to the next, an irregular stairway to the crevice. He reeled back against the very boulder where he had kept sentry two days earlier.
Once more he drew blaster fumblingly and laid it on the rock. His hands still shook, but he could use both of them to bring that weapon into play against the eyes.
A small part of Nik’s mind was aroused enough now to wonder at his present half collapse. There was no real reason for him to be so exhausted, so dazed. Ever since that whistling when he had encountered the Disians – Nik rubbed his hand across his forehead, pressing the goggles painfully against his skin. No, he must not disturb those! He jerked his fingers away.
He was so tired that he could not keep his feet – yet those waiting eyes. Sobbing a little, Nik wedged himself erect, dimly thinking that any attack would be limited to a narrow front he could defend. But how long could he continue to keep watch?
His head fell forward; he was floating – floating on a shifting mist that enfolded, engulfed him, spun him out and out –
Pain throbbed from his head down into his back and arms. Nik’s head snapped up and back and struck against stone with shock enough to bring him out of that mist. The throb – but he was alert enough to see the thing working its way among the rocks, a shadow advancing from deeper shadows. He clutched the blaster and tried to press the firing button.
The ray shot across the top of the barrier dock. It missed the creeper but sent it into retreat. Nik dragged himself forward. He had to meet what was coming in the open. He had to!
His forward effort succeeded. Eyes – yes, there were the eyes again – one pair, two, more – He could not count them now – they spun, danced, jerked about in a crazy pattern when he tried to watch.
Nik cried out as another throb burst in his head. All those eyes – they were uniting into one! No! He was wrong – not eyes but a light! An honest light – not of Dis – He had only to follow that to safety.
He pushed away from the rock and crept around, angry that his body obeyed his will so sluggishly. He must hurry, must run to the light that meant an end to nightmares – only let him reach the light!
Chapter XII
THE LIGHT WAS RECEDING!
“Wait!” Nik got that out in a cry close to a scream.
And it appeared that the light did steady. He was far past wondering about its source. He believed only that it spelled safety. But his feet would not obey his will. He fell heavily, then tried to force his body up again, his attention all for the light.
Shouting – Through the fog in his head, he thought he could hear words, understandable words – yet they were too far away, too confused to count as did the light. Nik began to crawl.
He was close, too close, when the enchantment of the light failed, when he fronted the horror behind that mask. A Disian! Nik had a momentary glimpse of a naked body rising from behind another form, a dense, hairy blot from which wavered and sparkled the light. A memory, so vague that Nik could not hold it, came and went in a second – a fisher that used light for bait? When and where?
Then he was overborne by the attack, smelled the reek of alien body scent, and was pinned flat to the ground under the full weight of the other’s spring. Nik struggled feebly against that hold, but there was no escape. And always the throb in his head and body grew stronger until he shook and quivered with its beat.
The weight on his back and shoulders was suddenly still, so still that one of Nik’s squirms detached its hold. He made a greater effort and tried to pull free. The Disian collapsed in a limp tangle of limbs, still half pinning Nik, but from under which he was able to crawl. He sat up and strove to find the blaster, but his groping hand encountered only empty hooks. Had he had it when he left the rocks? He could not remember.
He jerked his feet from under the flaccid sprawl of the Disian. Why the other had gone down was beyond Nik’s reasoning now. But that he had another chance, small as it might be, penetrated enough to send him scrabbling, still on hands and knees, back from that spot.
Things flowed up from the reef rocks, seeming to grow out of the ground about – creatures that could not have life, that were out of off-world nightmares or of Vandy’s fantasies with which they had clogged his brain! Nik was the focus of a weird, menacing ring, and the ring was drawing in.
Nik gave a shriek of pure terror, pushed for a second almost over the border of sanity. He screamed again, but he also threw himself at the nearest of those monsters, driven to meet it rather than to wait for its spring. Raking claws in his face – pain. How far can one retreat from horror into oneself? Was it exhausted sleep that held Nik or a kind of withdrawal from what he could not face? He came out of that suspension little by little, with a reluctance of which he was quite aware.
And because of that reluctance, he did not dare to move, to try to use his mind or his senses, lest he find himself back again in that circle of monstrous life.
How soon did that first small hint of reason awake? When did he note that the air he was drawing into his lungs was not water-soaked so that he must labor to get a full breath? How long had it been since he had breathed so effortlessly – and felt this cool and dry?
Or was this all part of some dream that would make the waking that much the worse for him? But perhaps it was the air that was clearing his mind as well as his lungs.