“Must – go.” The words in Basic broke through those squeals. “It wants.”
Nik knew that already, the pull, the insistent, growing demand. He swung around, dragging the struggling Vandy with him so that his body was now a barrier for the boy. The goggles – he had to have sight again. He must get them on!
So, he took the chance of freeing his hold on Vandy. Struggling with fingers made awkward by haste, Nik slipped the straps over his head and adjusted the fastening. Vandy pushed against him, striking out madly with small fists to beat Nik out of his bath.
Sight again. Nik blinked at that sudden transition and whirled about. Vandy was already well down the passage toward that pillar of cold light. Cold light? Nik wondered. Yet that was true. The cold radiating from that alien thing was eternal – alien as the rest of Dis, in spite of its weird life, was not. The hunters, the Disians, and their hounds were strange to off-world eyes, but this thing of the burrows, did not share blood, bones, and flesh with any species remotely akin to life as Nik knew it.
Vandy was running, his head up, his eyes fastened on the thing. And once he reached it – !
The rayer! It might not act against that creature, but wearing goggles as he was, Vandy would be blinded by the ray, momentarily out of action. It was the only answer Nik could think of in those few seconds. He clawed his own goggles down as he fired.
Light flared above and ahead of Vandy as Nik had hoped.
The boy cried out and reeled against the wall, his hands to his eyes. That swirling mist of light, strong as fire flames for Nik, must have been scorching for Vandy. Nik hurried forward, caught at the moaning boy, and pulled him back.
The attraction from the thing was shut off as if some knife had snipped a tug cord. They were free! Nik did not halt to put on his own goggles again. The light in the corridor made diamond-bright particles, giving him a start on the backward road. Vandy did not fight him now but lay, a heavy weight, on Nik’s shoulder.
Then, it struck at him! Not with the drag to bring him back but with an invisible whip of cold rage so potent that Nik cried out as if a lash had truly been laid across his quivering skin. He had no experience with which to compare this torment, which was not of body at all. A curling thong of sensation first used to punish, then to wrap about him, to pull him in.
He fought that, holding Vandy’s dead weight to him, fought the demand to turn, to march back, to deliver himself and the boy into deadly peril. Nik leaned, panting, against the wall. Vandy flung out an arm, his fist striking Nik’s face, tangling in the dangling goggles. He was threshing for freedom again but more feebly. A last wriggle brought him out of Nik’s weakening grasp – to fall to the pavement.
Nik turned slowly, his teeth set. How much of a charge did that rayer hold? Would it fail him this time? It took infinite effort to bring the weapon up and point it in the general direction of the sparkling mist that still marked his first shot.
Once more that burst of light, bearable, just bearable this time, to his ungoggled eyes. And once again the abrupt cessation of communication freed him. Vandy was on hands and knees, crawling, moaning. Nik caught him by the back of his tunic and pulled him to his feet. He could not carry the boy any farther, but perhaps he could support him along. Nik started them both at the best pace he could muster back toward the terminal chamber.
The second dose of raying must have reactivated some of the remaining sparks from the first, for the light behind them lingered, and Nik did not pause to reset his goggles. He waited for another sign that the thing would pressure them to its will. The blaster – could the blaster stop it more effectively? Vandy had a blaster – but even to stop to find it now might be greater risk than straightforward flight.
They reeled out of the passage into the terminal chamber. Here the glow was only the faintest of glimmers. Nik allowed Vandy to slip to the floor again as he fumbled for the goggles. He was aware of an increasing cold, not in the atmosphere about him but within himself, as if in those two brushes with the alien’s will he had been chilled, frozen. He could not still the shaking of his hands.
“Vandy.” Nik leaned over the boy. “Come on.” He could not carry him. Vandy would have to help himself in part. Nik’s hands brought him to his feet. But the boy’s head hung down on his chest, and his body was racked with even greater shudders than shook Nik.
“This way.”
At least he kept on his feet and moving, as Nik steered him toward the passage that would retrace their journey. As they went, Vandy seemed to regain more conscious will, and the farther they moved from that weird battleground, the firmer his steps became. At last he looked up at Nik.
“What was – that?” His voice shook.
“I don’t know.”
“Will it – come after – us?”
“I don’t know.”
They were still in the lighted portion of the passage, but beyond was the dark strip in which the Disian ambush had been. Nik fingered the grip of the rayer. He had to save it for extreme emergencies.
“The blaster,” he asked Vandy. “Where is it?”
“It’s – it’s not much use. I tried it after I used the other up on the worm things.” Vandy pulled the off-world weapon from the front of his tunic. “It flickers some.”
Flickering, the sign of power exhaustion! They had not known how long the charges would last, and Vandy had exhausted one and nearly finished the other.
“But it still worked then?” Nik persisted.
“Yes.”
A few moments of firing power must remain. That would have to be saved for most dire need – which left the rayer, and how close that was to extinction Nik did not know.
They had reached the end of the lighted sector. Ahead was the dark and all it might contain. Nik looked back. Nothing behind, no glimmer of greater light, none of that menacing wave of broadcast fear. Perhaps whatever they had fronted had been bested by the second use of the ray or was confined for some reason to that special territory in the burrows.
“No!” Vandy’s sudden cry startled Nik. The boy was staring ahead as if he sighted some trouble.
“What is it?
“I don’t want to go – not back there!”
“We have to!” Nik’s patience and control had worn very thin. He wanted to get back to where he had left Leeds. That desire was an ache throughout his shaking body. Somehow that was a small island of security in this threatening underground world.
“I don’t want to!” Vandy repeated, his voice rising. “It may be waiting there – to get us!”
“We left it behind,” Nik pointed out, though he was dismayed by the tone of certainty in the boy’s voice.
“It’s-it’s all wrong.” Vandy spoke more quietly now. “It’s not like all the others – the animals, the worms, the men you told me about. This – this can do things they can’t!”
Like slide through solid rock walls? Nik forced his imagination under bonds. He could believe that, but allowing the idea to stop them on the mere suggestion that such action was possible was the rankest stupidity. They could not stay here forever, and he held to the thought of the Patrol’s pursuit. To see even Commander i’Inad would give Nik a feeling of relief just now.
“We can’t stay here, Vandy.” Nik schooled his tone to an evenness and once more took firm hold of his patience. “And we know what is along this corridor. You don’t – don’t feel the thing ahead right now, do you?”
“No.” The admission was reluctant, but it was the one Nik wanted.
Vandy started on slowly, Nik’s hand on his shoulder to steady him. The dark swallowed them up. There was the sound of their own heavy breathing, the click of their boot plates on the rock under them, but Nik could hear nothing else. And there was no light ahead.
“Hurry!” His hold on Vandy tightened as he pushed the boy along.
“I can’t!” Vandy’s protest was half sob. Since their meeting with the thing, he had lost much of his self-assurance. “Hacon – the Patrol is coming?”
“Yes.” Nik did not doubt that at all. He wanted to pick up Vandy and run – the feeling of urgency was a goading pain – but he knew he did not have the strength.