She did not want to admit that he was right, but she had to. Lantee knew every inch of the base; she was a stranger there. The invaders might have other safeguards besides the nullifier.
“You don’t even have a stunner . . . “
“If I can get in down there, that little matter can be corrected. More than a stunner is needed now. This you can do—work your way around to the landing strip. If I succeed, we’ll make use of the copter. You can fly one?”
“Of course! But where will we go?”
“To the Wyverns. They’ll have to be made to understand what they are up against here. I ought to find evidence of one kind or another as to whether this is a Company grab. The witches may be able to blanket you out of their own mode of travel, but I’ll swear they have no way of preventing the copter from reaching their prime base. Let us just get to them and they can pick the truth out of our minds whether they want to or not.”
It sounded simple and as if it might work, Charis had to admit. But there was that tall hedge of ifs in between.
“All right. When do we move?”
Lantee crawled up to their former vantage point and she trailed him. After he surveyed the landscape he spoke, but he did not answer her question.
“You circle around in that direction, giving me a hundred-count start. We haven’t spotted any guards about the strip, but that doesn’t mean that they haven’t plugged it with sniffers, and those may even be paired with anti-persona bombs into the bargain.”
Was he deliberately trying to make her regret any part in this?
“We could certainly use the wolverines now. No sniffer could baffle them,” he continued.
“We could use a detachment of the Patrol, too,” Charis retorted tartly.
Lantee did not rise to that. “I’ll come in from that direction.” He pointed south. “Let’s hope our wild stars have the value we hope they do on this board. Luck!”
Before she could more than blink he had gone, vanished into the brush as if one of the disks had whirled him into Otherwhere. Charis strove to fight down her excitement and began a slow count. For some seconds she heard a subdued rustling which she was sure marked his retreat—then nothing.
No movement about the domes. Lantee was right; they could have used the wolverines and Tsstu to advantage now. Animal senses, so much keener than human, could have scouted for them both. She thought of an anti-persona bomb twinned to a sniffer detector, and her own part in the action had less and less appeal. The copter was far too tempting a bait; those below must have some watch on it! Unless they believed that they had effectively disposed of all resistance.
“—ninety-five—ninety-six—“ Charis counted, hoping she was not speeding up. It was always far easier to be on the move than to lie and wait.
“—ninety-nine—one hundred!” She crept down slope to the east on the first lap of her own journey. The light held enough so that she kept to cover, pausing within each shadowed shelter to study the next few feet or yards of advance. And, to keep in concealment, she pulled her circle arc into a segment of oval. When she knew that she must head in again to meet the landing strip, Charis’s mouth was dry in contrast to her damp palms, while her heart thudded in a heavy beat.
She found a tree limb, old and brittle—dry but long enough for her purpose. A sniffer activated to catch a prowler would be set about so high—knee-high for a walking man—or less. Would they expect someone to crawl in? All right, then, to be on the safe side—calf-high Charis set about stripping small branches for handfuls of leaves. Several tough ground-vines gave her cords to lash the mass of vegetation to the stick.
As a device for triggering a trap, it was very crude, but it lessened the odds against her somewhat. Now her wriggling advance was even slower as she worked the bundle before her, testing each foot of the way.
The pole was hard to hold in her sweating hands, her shoulders ached with the effort necessary to keep it at what she believed to be the right height. And her goal could have been half the continent away since she appeared to draw no closer to it in spite of her continued struggles.
But so far—no sniffer. And there had to be an end sometime. Charis paused for a breather. No sound came from the domes, no indication there were any guards, either human or machine. Were the invaders under the impression they had nothing to fear, no reason to post sentries?
Must not let growing confidence make her careless, Charis told herself. She did not have one hand on the copter door yet. And—why! — that might be it! The machine itself could be rigged as a trap. And if that were so, could she discover and disarm it?
One thing at a time—just one thing at a time . . .
She had raised her bundle probe, was on the creep again when the twilight breeze brought her a faint scent. Wolverine! When aroused in fear or anger, Charis knew, the animals emitted a rank odor. Was this a mark of the passing of Togi and her cubs?
Could Charis contact the female wolverine who had no knowledge of her as friendly? Lantee had said that afternoon that Togi was less amenable to human contact or control since she had become a mother; the wolverines were noted hunters, accustomed to living off the land. Was Togi now hunting?
Charis sniffed, hoping for some clue as to direction. But the scent was faint, perhaps only a lingering reminder of some earlier passage of an angry wolverine clinging to grass or bush. And there stood the beacon of the Patrol scout not too far to her left. She was close to the fringe of the landing strip. Charis thrust her bundle detector before her and crept on.
A screech—a snarling—a thrashing in the brush to her left. A second cry cut into a horrible bubbling noise.
Charis bit her tongue, painfully muffling a cry of her own. Wide-eyed she watched that wildly waving bush. Another cry—this time not unlike a thin, pulsating whistle. Then suddenly there were figures out in the open, running toward the commotion. As they neared, Charis could see them better.
Not the off-worlders she and Lantee had watched from the hill. Wyverns? No.
For the second time, Charis choked back a cry. For these running figures carried spears, the same type of spear she and Lantee had found at the post. And they were taller than the Wyverns Charis knew, their spiky head and shoulder growths smaller so that they resembled ragged and ugly spines rather than small wings: the Wyvern males Charis had never seen in all her days among the witches!
They cried out shrilly in a way which rasped Charis’s nerves and hurt her ears. Two of them hurled spears into the now quiet bush.
A shout from behind, from the domes; this surely had issued from a human throat. No words Charis could distinguish but it brought confusion to the Wyverns. The two at the rear stopped, looked over their shoulders; then, at a second shout, they turned and ran swiftly in the direction of that call. The foremost attackers had reached the bushes, spears thrust ahead. One of them cried out. Again no words, but Charis judged the tone to be one of disappointment and rage.
They milled around out of her sight and then came back into the open, two of them carrying a limp body between them. One of their own kind killed by some means. Togi’s doing?
But Charis had little time to wonder about that for there was more shouting from the domes, and all but the two Wyverns carrying the body began to run in that direction.
Lantee—had they found Lantee?
XIV
The Wyvern males had left the landing strip. Charis could follow their path through the brush to the open and the waiting copter. Lantee’s plan of heading out to sea in the copter, aiming at the witch Citadel, was practical. Lantee?
Charis rubbed her hands together and tried to think clearly. Something had happened back there at the domes; it was only logical to associate the clamor with Lantee’s attempt to scout the enemy. He could now be a prisoner—or worse.
But if she took the copter now when the attention of any sentries was fixed elsewhere, she had her best chance of escape, though she might well be deserting a man who had aroused the invaders but managed to evade them. To go—to get to the Citadel and warn the witches of the possible danger, leaving Lantee, his fate unknown? Or to stay in hopes of his coming?