“There aren’t any Fannards!” Vandy proclaimed loudly,. “You aren’t Hacon either!”
“Are you sure, Vandy?” Nik made himself keep calm and held his voice level. He was sure of only one thing. Vandy had come closer; he had not withdrawn yet. “We are being hunted, Vandy. And I am Hacon!” In a way he was – perhaps not the superman Vandy had created, but he was a companion in danger, devoted now to bring the boy out of that same danger. And so he was Hacon, no matter what his ravaged face might argue.
“No Fannards.” Vandy repeated stubbornly. But again the boot plates tapped out an encouraging message for Nik’s ears. “This isn’t the Gorge of Tath either!”
“No, these are the Burrows of Dis, but still we are hunted. Vandy, do you know the way out of here?”
There was a long moment of silence, and then the boy answered in a low voice. “No.”
“Neither do I,” Nik told him. “But we have to find one – before we’re found. And the hunt is up behind.”
“I know.” But Vandy came no closer. Nik did not know how much acceptance he had won, but he plunged. “Why did you take this passage?”
“It was the nearest. Two of the others just end in rooms – no way out.”
“What about it – do we go together?”
“Here.” Something flipped through the dark, struck against Nik’s chest, and was gone before he could raise his hand to grasp it.
“On the floor, by your right foot.” Vandy’s direction came with cool assurance.
It was difficult to remember that what was dark to him was light for the begoggled boy. Nik went down on one knee and groped until his fingers closed about a piece of stuff that could have been a dried root or vine. “What.” he began when Vandy interrupted him. “I say the Fannards have taken you over. You’re Hacon, but it’s my story – always my story – and we are in it.” Nik felt the cord tighten; Vandy held the other end. Should he give that tie a jerk, try to get the boy within reach? But such an aggression on his part would break the thin bond of trust. He was impressed by the shrewdness of Vandy’s reasoning. If Nik had endeavored to push them back into the fantasy, then Vandy would play by the original rules. The adventures of Hacon had been created by Vandy and would continue so. That the boy had made the switch was the surprising part. His flight from Leeds might have been triggered by his conditioning and suspicion, but his ability to get this far, to remain reasonably steady in the whole wild Disian adventure, would have been more believable had he continued to think himself in some Hacon-Vandy adventure. Instead, he knew this was real and yet had not yielded to fright or panic. This suggested he was tough-fibered and determined.
There was nothing to do now but to go ahead with the game on Vandy’s terms and try to win back to the Hacon-leader pattern, which the boy had earlier allowed. Nik gave the cord a twist about his wrist and the slightest of tugs to make sure his guess was right – that Vandy intended to lead him now. The cord held.
“There is only one way to go,” Nik remarked. “They must be ahead of us – perhaps waiting all through these burrows. We’ll have to go back. The Patrol will come in that way.” Nik hastened to pile up arguments that might influence the boy. “They were with me until we were caught in a storm, and I lost touch.”
He stared into the dark. Vandy was watching him – he must be! And Nik’s tone of voice and his expression were the only ways he had to influence the other.
There was a small sound, not quite a laugh, but it held a note of derision. Again Nik was disconcerted. Vandy was a boy, a small boy, someone to be led, protected, guided. The Vandy he met here in the dark was far too mature and able.
“So we go back? I thought you said they had traps there?” The amusement in that was not childlike.
Nik kept to the exact truth. “They do – I broke through one. But you have two blasters.”
“No, I used one up.”
Was that the truth? Nik swallowed and began again. “There is still one – and the Disians give themselves away.”
“How?”
“With the lures.” Nik explained about the swinging lights and the aura given off by Disian bodies.
“Then you don’t mean the worm things?” For the first time, Vandy sounded less assured and really puzzled. “Worm things?”
“They light up when you step near their holes. There were a lot of them in one of the passages. That’s where I used up the blaster. But I never saw these other things. This is for true?”
Again he was separating the real from the fantasy, and at the risk of losing contact, Nik kept to the truth.
“This is for real – just as your worm things were for real.”
“All right. But to go back there.”
“To go on,” Nik pointed out patiently, “is maybe to tangle with something even a blaster can’t handle, Vandy. And the Patrol are behind.” He took a bigger chance. “This is your story, Vandy, but it has to work out to the right end, doesn’t it? Give me my goggles.”
The rope suddenly went lax, and Nik knew he had erred.
“No!” Vandy’s response was emphatic. “I keep the goggles. I keep this blaster. If you want to come along, all right – but this is my story, and we’re going my way.”
The cord tightened once again, pulling Nik forward. For the moment he had lost. He accepted that – but only for the moment.
Chapter XVII
IT WAS one of the most difficult things Nik had ever done to allow Vandy to tow him along through the dark. As he followed the tugs of the cord linking them, he tried to plan, to think of some way of regaining Vandy’s cooperation.
“Vandy, are you hungry?” Nik made his first attempt on the level he thought might be easiest.
“I ate – while you slept back there!” Again that oddly adult amusement in the reply.
“Good.” Nik felt that he must keep talking, that words could unite them better than the cord. “Vandy, you have the goggles. What do you see now?”
The boy seemed to consider that deserving of an answer.
“Just walls lighted up a little – not as much as back there, though.”
“No openings in them?” Nik persisted. The possibility of another ambush was always in his mind.
“No.” Vandy began and then corrected himself as the twitch on the cord became a jerk. “There’s a door – up there. And…”
But Nik saw this, too. His eyes, so long accustomed to the dark, made out a faint glow. He stopped short, pulling back on the cord.
“No! Wait!”
“Why? What is it, Hacon?”
To his vast relief, Nik heard the compliance in that query. The pull on the cord loosed. Vandy must have halted.
“I don’t know yet. What do you see, Vandy – tell me!” That was an order.
“Shine – but just at one place,” the boy reported. “It isn’t a lure, I think. More like something big and tall just standing there waiting.” With each word a little of the confidence in his tone ebbed.
Then Nik heard a half whisper closer at hand, as if Vandy were shrinking back to him. “Not a story.”
“No, this is not a story, Vandy.” He answered that straight.
“It – it wants us to come – so – so – it can get us!” Vandy’s whisper was a rapid slur of words.
And Nik felt that, also. Just as he had known earlier that sensation of a lurking watcher, so now he was caught – or struck – for that contact was as tangible in its way as a physical blow. Was it hatred, blind, unreasoning malice – that emotion beating at him? He was not sure of what had reached him like a spear point probing into shrinking flesh. He only knew that they were now fronting some danger quite removed from the animal furred hunters, from the Disians and their clawed hounds. This was greater, stronger, and more to be feared than all three of those native perils combined.
The blaster Vandy carried? The rayer in his own belt? Nik watched that gleam. Now he could see that it was as the boy reported – not a twinkling, dancing lure light but an upright narrow bar, unmoving as yet. Did it merely stand there to bar their way or was it gathering force for attack?
“It’s – it’s calling – !”
Vandy’s body pressed against Nik. Perhaps that contact enabled him to feel it also. His arm went about the boy, holding him tight, while with the other hand he stripped off the second pair of goggles Vandy had hung about his neck. To put those on meant freeing the boy now threshing in Nik’s grip, crying out with queer high-pitched ejaculations that sounded almost as if he were trying mimic the whistles of the Disians.