With a final clang, the chime stilled, and Nik was aware of the increasing discomfort of landfall. His past travelling on ships had been long ago, and now he was conscious of the strain on his body, though an LB, which might be transporting injured, was rigged with every possible protection against pressure.
“Hacon!” The cry shrilled with a sharp undertone of fear and made Nik force his head to one side on the bunk. Across the narrow space between them, he saw Vandy’s eyes wide open, the fear in them.
“All-right.” Nik got out the words of assurance. “We’re setting down.”
Then he felt the surge of the deter-rockets, and the weight of change brought him close to the edge of a complete blackout.
They were down, a smooth three-fin landing he judged, though his knowledge of such was very meager. Wriggling one arm loose from the straps, Nik pushed the button on the side wall and looked up expectantly at the visa-plate for the first glimpse of the new world. And in spite of all the worries nibbling at him, there was a small thrill of excitement in waiting to see what lay outside the skin of the LB.
Dark – darker than the blackest night on Korwar – with a faint glimmer in the distance. But such dark!
“Hacon – where – where are we?” Vandy’s voice was thin, shaken.
“On Dis.” At least Leeds had supplied him with a name. But where Dis was remained another matter.
“Dis.” the boy repeated. “Hacon – what are we going to do here?”
Nik unbuckled his straps, sat up, and reached across to do the same for Vandy. “We” – he tried to make his voice express the proper authority.”are going to have an adventure.”
“The Miccs – they’re hunting again?”
The Miccs – those were Vandy’s ever-present, ever-to-be-battled enemies. But no use in Nik’s building what he might not be able to deliver, well-versed as he was in Vandy’s fantasy world.
“This is just a scouting trip,” he replied. “I don’t know whether they are here or not.”
“Hacon – look! Something’s coming!”
Nik glanced at the visa-plate. There was movement there, the on-and-off flash of what might be a torch, and it was advancing toward the LB. He helped Vandy from the bunk and drew the boy with him to the escape lock at the end of the small compartment, but he made no move to open that until he heard the tapping from without.
Air poured in – humid, hot, with a sweetish, almost gagging odor, as if it had blown across a stretch of rotting vegetation. It was cloying, clogging in the nostrils. Vandy coughed.
“That smells bad,” he commented rather than complained.
“All right?” The inquiry came from without. The light from the LB port showed a man, his face, raised to view them, half masked with large goggles. “Here.” A hand reached to Nik, and obediently he took the ends of two lines, both made fast to the welcomer’s belt. “Tie those on,” he was ordered. “This is no place to be lost!”
The humidity of the dark beyond was so oppressive that Nik was already bathed in perspiration, and he breathed shallowly, as if a weight rested above his laboring lungs. He knotted one cord to his own belt, one to Vandy’s, and then dropped from the lock hatch, lifting down the boy.
“This way.” Their guide had already melted into the all-enveloping dark, towing them behind him. Luckily, he did not walk fast, and the ground under their feet appeared reasonably smooth. Vandy pressed against Nik, and the latter kept hold of the smaller boy’s shoulder.
As they moved away from the lights of the LB, more features of the dark landscape became clearer. Here and there were faint halos of misty radiance outlining a large rock, a weird-seeming bush – or at least a growth that had the general appearance of a bush. But for the rest, it was all thick black, and when Nik turned his eyes to the sky, not a single gleam of a star broke the brooding blackness. Always the rotten stench was in their nostrils, and the humidity brought drops of moisture rolling in oily beads across their skin.
“Hacon.” Vandy was only a small body moving under Nik’s hand, not to be seen in this night-held steambath. “Why doesn’t that man use his torch?”
For the first time, Nik’s attention was drawn from their weird surroundings to the guide. Vandy was right; they had seen the flicker of a torch when the stranger had approached the LB, but since they had left the ship, he had not used it. Yet he moved through the soupy blackness with the confidence of one who could see perfectly. Those goggles? But why link his two companions to him by towlines? Why not simply use a torch and show them the way?
The lines became for Nik not a matter of convenience but a symbol of dependence, which was disquieting. He stepped up, bringing Vandy with him and closing the gap between them and their guide.
“How about using your torch? This is a dark night.” To Nik’s amazement, the answer was a laugh and then the words, “Night? This is the middle of the day!”
If that was meant to confuse him, Nik thought, it did. “First day I ever saw that was a complete blackout,” he retorted sharply.
“Under an infrared sun,” the other replied, “this is all you’ll ever see.”
Nik was puzzled. His education had been a hit-or-miss – mostly miss – proposition, so the guide’s explanation was meaningless. But Vandy apparently understood.
“That’s why you’re wearing cin-goggles then,” he stated rather than questioned.
“Right,” the stranger began, and then his voice arose in a shouted order. “Down! Get down!”
Nik flung himself forward, taking Vandy with him, so that they rolled across a hard surface on which evil-smelling, slimy things smeared to pulp under their weight. Their guide was using the torch now, sending its beam in a spear shaft of light to impale in the glare a winged thing of which they could see only nightmare portions. Then the beam of a blaster cut up and out, and there was a curdling scream of pain and fury as the blackened mass of the attacker whirled on, already charred and dead, to fall heavily some distance away.
Again their guide laughed. “Just one of the local hunters,” he told them. “But you see that planet-side walks are not to be recommended. Now, let’s get going. There’re going to be some more arrivals soon; they don’t get a chance to dine on flapper very often.” Jerking at the towlines, he hurried them along.
They were going on a downslope, Nik knew, and walls of stone were rising higher on either side. But whether those were purposeful erections or native cliffs, he had no idea. He did see at one backward glance that, where their boots had crushed the ground growths, there were small ghostly splotches of phosphorescence with an evil greenish glow marking their back trail.
But even if he and Vandy could regain the LB, the ship would not lift. The controls had been locked in a pattern to bring them here, and Nik had neither the knowledge of a course to take them home or the ability to reset the controls. Home? Korwar – the Dipple – His hand went to his face. What lay behind him was not home! And why did he wish to backtrack? The action, as Leeds had outlined it, was simple enough. Vandy accepted him without question, and to the boy this would be only a very real adventure straight out of his fantasy world. He would be induced to share with Hacon the information Leeds or his superiors wanted. Then Vandy would go home, and he, Nik, would have earned his pay. He knew from his briefing what Vandy had made of Hacon and what he would have to do to sustain his role. Only, in these surroundings, with their total and frightening alienness. could Nik Kolherne be Hacon long? Already he was baffled by information Vandy knew and he did not, and he would be a prisoner wherever they were going until he gained some manner of sight. He was sure that this was a planet on which Terran stock were total aliens and where every danger was to fronted without much preparation on his part.
But once he saw Leeds – Nik held tightly to that thought. Leeds was the stable base in this whole affair and meant security.
Without warning, there gaped before them a slit of light, which grew wider as they approached it. Then they passed through and into a rock-hewn chamber, for that was what it was, not a natural cave. A click behind them signalled the closing of the door.
The humid, sickly air of the outside was thinned by a cooler, fresher current, and their guide shed his goggles. He was a stocky, thick-set man, with the deep browning of a space crewman, like any to be seen portside at Korwar. Now he stepped into an alcove in the wall and stood while a mist curled out and wreathed about him. In a moment he came out and waved Nik and Vandy to take his place. “What for?” Vandy wanted to know.