Kosti set the controls to full speed, but they had covered little more than a mile of the return journey before he was forced to throttle down. For the mist was not only spilling out of the valleys, it was also curling up from the land under them, each thread of haze spinning to join and thicken with others.
It was true that they were in no danger of being lost. The thin reed of sound humming in their ears provided a guide to bring the flitter back to the parent ship. But they were none the easier knowing that as they coasted above a curdling sea of mist.
The stuff rose about them forming viscid bubbles on the windbreak. Only the constant hum of the radar beam linked them with reality.
“Hope our boys made it down from the mountains before the worst of this hit,” Kosti broke the strained silence.
“If they didn’t,” Mura replied, “they will have to land until it clears.”
Kosti throttled down once more as the radar hum sharpened. “No use crashing into the old lady-”
Within the blanket of mist all sense of direction, of distance was lost. They might have been up ten thousand feet, or skimming but one above the broken surface of the rock plain. Kosti hunched over the controls, his usually good-humoured face pinched, his eyes moving from the mist to the dials before him and back again.
They sighted the ship-a dark shadow looming through the veil. With masterly precision Kosti brought the flitter down until it jarred against the ground. But he was in no hurry to climb out. Instead he wiped his face with the back of his hand. Mura leaned forward and patted the big man’s shoulder.
“That was a good job!”
Kosti grinned. “It had to be!”
They crawled out of the flitter and, on impulse, linked hands as they started for the dim pillar which was the Queen. The contact of palm against palm was not only insurance and reassurance, but it was also security of a type Dane felt he needed-and guessed that his companions wanted also. The menacing, alien mist pressed in upon them. Its damp congealed greasily on their helmets, dripped from them as they moved.
But ten paces took them to the welcome arch of the ramp and they went up, to stand a moment later in the pleasant light and warmth of the entrance hatch. Jasper Weeks teetered back and forth there, his pallid little face expressing worry.
“Oh-you-” was his unflattering greeting.
Kosti laughed. “Who did you expect, little man-a Sensor dragon breathing fire? Sure, it’s us, and we’re glad to be back-”
“Something wrong?” Mura interrupted.
Weeks stepped to the outer opening of the hatch once more. “The other flitter-we haven’t heard from them for an hour. Captain ordered them back as soon as he saw the fog closing in. Survey tape says these fogs sometimes last a couple of days-but they aren’t usual this time of year.”
Kosti whistled and Mura leaned back against the wall, unbuckling his helmet.
“Several days.” Dane thought of that. To be lost out in that soup for days! You’d just have to stay grounded and hope for the best. But an emergency landing in the mountains under such conditions-! Now he could understand why Weeks fidgeted at the hatch. Their own journey over the unobstructed plain was, under the circumstances, a stroll in a Terran park, compared to the difficulties those on the other flitter might be forced to face.
They went up to make their report to the Captain. But all through it he sat with at least half his attention given to the com where Tang Ya sat before the master visa-screen, his hand ready for the key of the caster or to tend the rider beam which might guide the missing flyer in. Somewhere out in the mystery which was now Limbo was not only Ali, but Rip, Tau and Steen Wilcox-a good section of their crew.
“There it is again!” Tang’s forehead creased, his hands pulled the phones from close contact with his ears. As he did so the rest heard the clamour which had jolted him. Not unlike the drone of the rider beam-it scaled up to a screech which was real pain.
It continued steadily for a space and as Dane listened to it he became conscious of something else-a muffled rhythm deep within that drone-a rhythm he had known before-when he laid his hands upon the wall of the sinister valley. This disturbance was akin to the vibration in the distant rock!
Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the sound was gone. Tang put on his earphones once more and listened for a signal-either from the missing flitter or from Ali’s personal com-unit.
“What is that?” Mura asked.
Captain Jellico shrugged. “Your guess is as good as ours. It may be a signal of some sort-been cutting in at regular intervals all day.”
“So we must admit-” that was Van Rycke looming in the door of the control cabin, “that we are not alone on Limbo. In fact there is much more to Limbo than meets the casual eye.”
Dane voiced his own suspicion. “Those archaeologists-” he began, but the Captain favoured him with a sharp pointed stare that stopped him almost in mid-word.
“We have no idea what is at the root of this,” Jellico said coldly. “You men get some food and rest-”
Dane, smarting from his abrupt dismissal, trailed Mura and Kosti down to the mess cabin. As they passed the Captain’s private quarters they could hear the wild shrieks of the Hoobat.
That thing sounded, Dane thought, just the way he felt. And even warm food, bearing no resemblance to the iron rations he had eaten earlier, did little to raise the general curtain of gloom.
But the meal had an excellent effect on Kosti’s spirits. “That Rip,” he announced to the table at large, “he’s got a lot of sense. And Mr. Wilcox, he knows what he’s doing. They’re all snug somewhere and’ll stay holed up until this stuff clears. Nobody’ll come out in this-”
Was Kosti right there, Dane wondered. Suppose there were those on Limbo who knew the tricks of the climate, who were familiar enough with such fogs to be able to navigate through them-use them as a cover-? That signal they had heard blatting out of the com-could it be a beam to guide some expedition creeping through the mist? An expedition heading towards the unsuspecting Queen?
CHAPTER EIGHT: FOG BOUND
THOSE OF THE QUEEN’S men who had no definite duties engaging them elsewhere, drifted to the hatch which gave upon the grey wool of the new Limbian landscape. They would have liked to hole up close to the control section and Tang’s com, but the presence of the Captain there was a dampener. It was better to hunker down at the top of the ramp, look out into the mist, and strain one’s ears for the motor purr of a flitter which did not arrive.
“They’re smart,” observed Kosti for the twentieth time. “They won’t risk their necks ploughing through this muck. But Ali-that’s different. He was snatched before this started.”
“You think it is poachers?” ventured Weeks.
His big partner considered the point. “Poachers? Yeah-but on this Limbo what have they got to poach-tell me that? We aren’t pulling a cargo of sveek furs, nor arlun crystals-leastways I haven’t seen any of those lying around waiting to be picked up. What about those dead things back in that valley? Thorson,” he turned to Dane, “did they look as if they had anything worth poaching?”
“They weren’t armed-or even clothed-as far as we could tell,” Dane replied a bit absently. “And their fields grew spicy stuff I never saw before-”
“Drugs-could it be drugs now?” inquired Weeks.
“A new kind then-Tau didn’t recognize the leaves.” Dane’s head was up as he faced out into the mist. He was almost sure- there-there it was again! “Listen,” he caught at Kosti, dragged the big man out on the ramp.
“Hear anything now?” he demanded a moment later.
There was sound in the fog, a fog which was now three parts night, through which the signal light on the nose of the Queen could not cut. The regular beat of a true running motor was magnified by some trick of the mist until it seemed that a whole fleet of small flyers was bearing down upon the space ship from all points of the compass.
Dane whirled and brought his hand down on the lever which controlled the lights along the ramp. Even swirled in the fog as they were, some faint gleam might break through to offer a landing mark for the flitter. Weeks had disappeared. Dane could hear the clatter of his space boots on the ladder within as he sped with the news. But before the wiper could have reached control a new marker blazed into view, the full powered searchlight from the nose, a beacon which could not be blanketed out, no matter how its rays were diffused.