Reluctantly Nik took out a container and triggered its heat and open button. He ate the contents slowly, making each mouthful last as long as he could. As with all emergency supplies, this had a portion of sustainer included. The warmth and savor of the concentrated food settled into him, and he relaxed in spite of the need for vigilance. Food –rest – he dared the former but not the latter!
Five doorways before him, five chances of finding Vandy, and he had hardly time to take one – one – one –
It was dark and he was running through the dark, while behind him padded a hunting pack, the furred creatures from the ruins, the bare-skinned Disians and their insectival hounds – after him – after him!
Nik gave a stifled cry and strove to throw himself forward, out from under the grasping hands, the claws, the bared fangs.
His head, it hurt – he opened his eyes – into dark!
Dark! His Viands went to his goggles, but there were no goggles! Frantically he felt for the cord at his neck – he must have fallen asleep and scraped them off somehow. But they were not there, hanging on his chest! He felt about him in the dark – carefully at first and then more wildly – but they were totally gone.
“I have them!”
Nik stiffened. “Vandy?” he asked, though he had to wet his lips to make them frame that name. “Vandy?” he repeated with rising inflection when there came no answer. He had thought a measure of subdued light might linger here as it had in the chamber where he had left Leeds, but perhaps this glow was different, for without the goggles he was in a dusk so thick that he might as well have been blind. He thought he could hear hurried breathing to his right.
“Vandy!” That was a demand for an answer.
“You aren’t Hacon. There never was a real Hacon.”
Nik tried to think clearly. Hacon – what had that to do with the here and now? No, this was not one of Vandy’s heroic adventures; this was very real and dangerous.
“You aren’t real,” that voice out of the dark continued. “You’re one of them!” That was accusation rather than identification.
It was so hard to think. Nik must have been asleep when Vandy found him and took the goggles. How was he going to argue with the boy? He still felt dazed from that sudden awakening.
What had Leeds said back there? That the change in his face had already begun. No wonder, when he had taken the goggles, that Vandy had decided Nik was not Hacon. Nik’s hand went to his face in the old masking gesture.
“You’re one of them,” Vandy repeated. “I can just leave you here in the dark. Like that captain – he was one of them, too!”
“One of whom, Vandy?” Somehow Nik was able to ask that.
“One of those who want my father to give up the stronghold. I’m going now”
“Vandy!” All Nik’s panic was in that. He fought back to a measure of self-control and asked. “Where are you going?”
“Out. I know that the Patrol are here. They’ll find me – I can call them. Now I have supplies and blasters and goggles.” His voice was growing fainter. Nik caught a scrape of boot on rock – to the left this time.
His control broke. “Vandy!” He threw himself after the sound of those withdrawing footsteps and crashed against a wall. There was the patter of running. Vandy must have entered one of the tunnels. Nik sucked in his breath, steadied himself, and fought a terrible battle with insane panic. He was alone, without goggles, and Vandy had taken the supply bundle also.
He had two choices – to go back, to try and reach the chamber where he had left Leeds, which meant passing through the section where the Disian had laid the trap, or to trace Vandy on through the maze where he was a blind man. Which?
Nik was certain that Vandy had taken the passage farthest to his left. Trying to recall the terminal as he had seen it last, he believed he could find that opening. And the boy could not run far in this humid air. Sooner or later he would have to rest. Nik must follow him. To return through the Disian trap was more than he could force himself to try. He stretched out his arms and began to feel his way along the wall against which he had crashed. Seconds later, his right hand went into open space, and he knew he had found his doorway.
The weapon against fear was concentration, concentration upon what he was doing, upon sounds. Nik’s senses of hearing and touch had to serve him now in place of sight. Fingers running along the rock surface to his left were his guides, leaving his right hand free for the rayer. And he tried to make his own footfalls as quiet as possible, so that he could listen with all his might.
Footfalls, far less cautious than his own, were ahead! Nik knew a sudden rush of excitement, so that he had to will himself to keep his own cautious rate of advance. He had been right. The run that had taken Vandy away from him had slowed quickly to a walk, which was hardly faster than his own creep. But – the boy could see! Let Vandy turn his head and he would sight Nik, and he had the blasters! An alarm could make Vandy use one of those almost as a reflex action. So much depended upon chance now – the chance that Vandy would not look behind him – the greater chance that Nik must take in trying to reason with the scared boy.
Vandy had thrown aside Hacon and the fantasy that had let him accept Nik, and he was conditioned against strangers. This meant that conditioning would now act against Nik and any contact he might try to make.
But every inch Nik covered with those footfalls still steady before him strengthened his belief in himself, stilled his first panic. It almost sounded as if Vandy knew where he was going and had some clue as to what lay ahead – not that that could be true!
Then the footfalls ceased. Nik backed against the wall. He was a small target in that position but one that could not escape blaster fire. He waited as weakness flooded through his body. Not to be able to see – no sound, no sound at all. Vandy must be watching him – getting ready to fire? Nik ached with the effort to make his ears serve him as eyes.
Perhaps it was that very intensity of effort that sharpened Nik’s thinking. He had been wrong in his handling of Vandy back there; he was certain of that now. At least he could try to repair the damage.
“Vandy!” He made that into a demand for attention, not an appeal. “Have the Fannards taken you over?”
Again he strained to hear. Because he had known that he was not Hacon, he had tamely accepted Vandy’s recognition of that fact. But he had been thinking then as himself, Nik Kolherne, and not as Vandy. To Vandy, the fantasy world that had been Hacon’s had been so real that he had accepted the appearance of its major inhabitant in the flesh as a perfectly normal happening. He could doubt Hacon’s identity now, but there should be some residue of belief to make him doubt that doubt in turn. And if Nik could push him back into the fantasy, even for a short space, he could re-establish contact.
“Have they, Vandy?” He raised his voice and heard the faint echo of it. His face – had it been the change in his face that had set Vandy off? Again his searching fingers advised him of a slight roughness, but not the spongy softness he had feared to touch – not yet.
“There’re no Fannards here.” The reply was sullen, suspicious.
“How do you know, Vandy?” Nik pressed that slight advantage. At least the boy had answered him. “They can’t be seen, even with goggles – you know that.”
The Fannards – those invisible entities Vandy had produced for menace in one of the Hacon adventures. In this place, one could believe in them. Nik could.
He heard the click of boot plates, not away this time but toward him. Once more that sound stopped, but he was sure Vandy stood not too far away watching him. Nik spoke again.
“There are hunters here.” He kept his voice casual, as much what Hacon’s should be as he could. Hacon was Vandy’s superman. Nik must reproduce a Hacon now or complete the boy’s disillusionment and probably doom the both of them. “They set a trap back there, but I got through.”