“Caster!” Leeds identified. “They probably have had a fix on this all the time. Any supply pouch taken would lead them right to us. The obviously foresaw a jump try on your part.”
“So, the Patrol could be on the way even now, coming up the passage, and with Vandy gone.”
The goggles must not have masked his face too much for Leeds to read his expression, for the captain nodded again.
“Just so – they will be coming. And our answer is Vandy. So we’d better find him – and quick!”
Chapter XV
NIK FINGERED the supply bag, staring down at the telltale rod. The Patrol would have a fix on that all right. Maybe Barketh had deliberately set him up this way, allowing an escape at the first opportunity so they could trace him and then claim the bargain off – but they were not here yet. Methodically, he began to twist and wad the pouch into as small a compass as possible. Now he and Leeds needed time. Finding this had changed his plan for trailing Vandy. He could not leave the captain here alone to be picked up by the Patrol with no Vandy. Commander i’Inad might just burn him out of hand.
“What are you doing?” Leeds wanted to know.
“Giving them something to follow.” Nik went back to the stream exit from the root chamber. He was certain now Vandy had not gone that way, but something smaller and more dangerous to them could. Nik thrust the supply bag between two of the curling roots into the water, where the current of the stream, weak though it was, tugged the container out of sight. The Patrol fix was on the move again, and Nik thought that any tracker might have a rather difficult time following it along its present path.
“That makes sense.” Leeds applauded his action. “But they’ll come this far.” He pulled himself up a little as if to test his ability to get to his feet.
“Yes, so we’ll be gone,” Nik answered. “Only we have to pick the right road.” He went back to his survey of the chamber walls. Vandy had left here, and Leeds seemed very sure the boy had not backtracked on the way in. Then there was another way out, and, taking it, he must have left some trace for Nik to find.
“I’m not exactly up to a clean lift out of here,” the captain commented. He was standing, or rather leaning, braced among the roots. “You can’t blast off at a good rate with me slowing the rockets, and back there I’m lost without goggles.” He spoke levelly, not as if he were trying to ask for assistance but as one merely pointing out the disadvantages of some proposed plan. Neither did he offer any suggestions.
“Vandy got out of here some way!” Nik’s frustration at not finding any trail was rising to something stronger than irritation. By all he could discover, Vandy had simply vanished into thin air – unless Leeds was wrong and Vandy had backtracked.
“He must have gone back!” he added, but the captain shook his head.
“You don’t know how hard it was to get him through there the first time. I had to drag him. He kept saying there was something there waiting to get us.”
“He has the goggles now.” Nik was beginning, but the memory of that sensation he himself had felt, that there was something he could not see or hear lurking, ready and waiting for him to step beyond some intangible barrier of safety, came back to him.
“Even the goggles aren’t much use without a torch there. I know they weren’t for me. We were really lucky to get this far.”
Nik moved on along the wall. There was another exit here then, somewhere. And it was the susceptibility of the roots to touch that finally revealed it. A blackened, withering length caught his eye, and he hurried to it. Vandy must have set foot there to climb to the opening above. Nik regarded the hole with a measuring eye. It was small but not too small, he thought, for both of them to squeeze through. Yet what if they found the going on the other side rough – with Leeds crippled. On the other hand, could he leave the captain behind now with the Patrol following the fix?
“So that’s the way!” Leeds hobbled across to join Nik, his step a sidewise lurch and recover, which drew lines about his mouth and tightened his lips.
“Can you make it up there?”
“It’s a matter of have to now, isn’t it?” the captain returned. “We never know just what we can do until we have to. Give us a hand now.”
Somehow with Leeds’ straining to lift himself and Nik’s boosting, the captain made it up to the hole. He clung there to look down.
“Better get those supplies.” He nodded at the tins beside the stream. “If we do catch up with that brat, we’ll need them.”
Nik shed his damp tunic, bundled the containers into it, and so fashioned a pack. How long could Vandy keep going on the Sustain pills? It might be that they would find him exhausted not too far ahead. He scrambled up to join Leeds.
“You’ll have to be eyes for both of us from now on.” The captain hooked his fingers in Nik’s belt. “And I’m not up to either a fast run or an easy climb. But let’s take off.”
Nik had to keep the dying torch for emergencies and depend upon the goggles. But in this crack, as they drew away from the ghostly glimmer of the root room, he was almost as blind as Leeds. And they must go so slowly, a crippled fumbling, when he was goaded by the need for haste.
Luckily, the footing here was even, so regular that Nik thought it had been purposely smoothed. This was no natural fissure in the rock but an established passage. Also, there was a distinct current of air, not quite as humid as that of the outer surface. Could they be heading into another refuge?
There were tenuous traces of Vandy here. The footprints where he had left some vegetable deposits from the roots made faint marks on the flooring, but these dwindled, to vanish entirely.
“Listen!”
Nik did not need that alert from Leeds. Far away or else distorted by the walls of the winding passage – there was no mistaking that whistle that hurt the ears and was a throb within the skull. Nik took a longer stride forward, and Leeds went off balance, stumbling into him and bringing them both up against the supporting wall.
“Keep on course!” the captain snapped. “What is it?”
“The Disians! They hunted me on the way back; now they must be after Vandy!”
“What Disians?” Leeds demanded. When Nik told him, he whistled in turn, but not the throbbing call of the natives.
“We never saw any of them! Men here – natives?”
“Not much like men now.” Nik corrected grimly. “They’re hunters and they hunt for food.”
Vandy in the dark, being hunted as Nik had been – watched, driven, finally lured into the open. There, at the last, in spite of Nik’s off-world weapon and determination to stand up to danger, the primitives had brought him out as an easy kill. And if they could do that to him, forewarned and armed, what would they do to Vandy!
“We have to get to him!” Nik burst out. He caught at Leeds’ arm, pulled the captain close enough to support him, and then pushed them both on. Leeds made no complaint, but Nik could hear the panting breaths the other drew and guessed that the captain was straining his powers to the limit. Yet they still kept to a short-paced shuffle.
Just that one whistle. They did not hear another, although Nik listened not only with his ears, it seemed, but also with every nerve in his tiring body. Had that been the signal to begin a hunt, not to urge attack? Suppose they came up from the rear and caught the Disians from behind? Vandy was armed. After his experience in the ruins and on the reef, the boy would be alert against dangers native to Dis and the dark. Whether that would give him a small measure of safety now, Nik did not know. He could not do more than hope.
“Light.” Leeds got the word out between two gasping m breaths.
It was very faint that light, but it was there. They headed for it and came out in another large chamber.
“Refuge!” Leeds cried.
The walls had a glow that did not extend far down the passage. It was as if some invisible curtain hung there.
“It’s bright.”
“Not to me. That’s what the goggles do for you,” Leeds commented. “But it is like refuge light all right. We stepped this up back at the base after we took over.”