The astrogator started the motor and then clung with iron fingers as the machine under him bucked and heaved over the loose bridge stuff. Once the treads hit a pocket and the crawler canted to the left. A foot more and it would have spilled its passenger down into the black depths of the gulf.
Kosti went next, both hands on the rope which still tied him to the machine. He took tiny steps in the middle of the bridge, and beneath his helmet drops of sweat washed the fog slick from his cheeks. The others picked their way slowly, testing each step. The fact that they could not see the bottom of the crevice on either side did not make the trip any easier.
Beyond the crawler picked up speed again and made a quick turn back to its original course. The lifting of the mist was even more apparent-though it did not vanish entirely. But their range of vision, from a foot or two about their persons, had increased to half a block.
“They did have bubble tents,” Dane said suddenly, “And regulation camping gear.”
“So-where’s the camp?” Rip sounded almost peevish. Since he had found the crax cud his buoyant good humour had vanished.
“They wouldn’t camp in the city,” Dane was convinced of that. There was about these ruins an alien, brooding atmosphere which dragged at one’s spirits. He had never regarded himself as a particularly sensitive person, but he felt this strongly. And he believed that the others did also. Little Mura had hardly spoken since they had sighted the ruins, he had dragged back on his guide rope, his eyes darting from one side of the street to the other as if at any moment he expected some formless horror to dash at him out of the murk. Who would dare to set up a tent here, sleep, eat, and carry on the business of daily living fenced in with the age old effluvium which clung to the blasted and broken dwellings-dwellings which perhaps had never harboured human creatures at all?
The crawler drew them on through the maze until the structures which still had a semblance of completeness were behind them once again and only broken walls and shattered mounds of blocks and earth made obstructions around which their machine led them in the pattern it must follow.
It was halfway around one towering mound when Wilcox brought it to a quick stop by smashing his hand down on the control button. That gesture and the frantic haste in which he made it were not lost on the others. They dived into hiding and then began working forward to edge in behind the crawler.
From a cleared space arose-though its lines were still blurred by the fog-a bubble tent, its puffed surface slick with the moisture. They had reached Rich’s camp at last.
But Wilcox gave no order to advance. Though they had nothing but suspicion against the archaeologist, the attitude of the astrogator suggested that he was about to reconnoitre a position held by open enemies.
He tightened his helmet strap after adjusting his throat mike. But his orders did not come audibly-instead he gestured them out to encircle the sealed bubble. Dane crept to the right with Rip, automatically keeping cover between them and the tent.
They had gone a quarter of the circle when Rip’s hand came down on Dane’s arm and the astrogator-apprentice motioned that Thorson was to remain where he was while Rip crawled on to another vantage point in the circle they were drawing about Rich’s headquarters.
Dane studied the lay of the ground between his station and the bubble. Here the rubble had been levelled off, packed down, as if the men who camped here needed room to accommodate either crawlers or flitters. But as far as Dane could see, and he was frankly ignorant of the archaeologist’s trade, there was no indication of work on uncovering the ruins. Vague memories of items he had seen on news tapes, and Rip’s briefings, were his only guides. But surely they should have come across excavations, things waiting for study, maybe even crates ready to pack with transportable finds. But this place had rather the stripped look of a field headquarters for some action team of pioneers or Survey. Could it be left by Survey and not Rich’s camp at all?
Then he saw the crawler come into sight, Wilcox on it, his lame leg drawn up so that the fact that he was inactive would not be apparent to anyone watching from the bubble. The crawler crunched on towards the tent without rousing any sign of life within.
But to the astonishment of Dane and the surprise of Wilcox- judging by his expression-the machine did not come to a stop at the level space before the tent. Instead it changed course to evade the bubble and kept steadily on until Wilcox halted it. The astrogator stared at the tent and then his voice whispered in Dane’s earphones:
“Come on in-but take it slow!”
They converged on the bubble, slipping from cover and racing across the clearing to new protections. But the tent might be deserted for all the attention their actions aroused. Mura reached the structure first, his sensitive fingers searching for the sealing catch. When the flap peeled down, all of them stared in.
The bubble was only an empty shell. None of its interior partitions had been put into place, even the tilo-floor was missing, so that bare rubble of the field showed. And there was not a box or bag of all the supplies which had been brought from the Queen present in that wide space.
“A fake!” Kosti spluttered. “This was set up just to make us think-”
“That they were still here,” Wilcox finished for him. “Looks that way, doesn’t it?”
“Passing over here in a flitter,” Rip murmured, “we’d believe everything was just as it should be. But where are they?”
Mura resealed the bubble’s flap. “Not here,” he announced as if that were a new discovery. “But, Mr. Wilcox, did not the crawler attempt to proceed past this area? Perhaps it knows far more than we have given it credit for-”
Wilcox fingered the throat strap of his helmet. About them the fog was fading-though far more slowly than it had descended. His eyes went from the bubble to the mist beyond. Perhaps if Ali had not been involved he would have ordered a return to the Queen. But now, after a pause, he switched on the crawler’s motor once more.
The machine circled around the bubble and kept on. There were clumps of vegetation appearing now-the tough grass, the stunted bushes. And knobs of rock slanting up signalled their approach to the foothills.
Here the fog which was thinning on the plains curdled again, shutting down until they bunched about the crawler in a tight cluster, each man within arms-distance of his fellows.
That feeling of being spied upon, of being dogged by something they could not see grew strong once more. Underfoot the ground became rougher. But Kosti pointed out other tracks, rutted in the soft patches of soil, indications that they were on a road the crawler had used before.
As the mist thickened they strained ears and eyes-but they saw nothing but each other and their machine guide. And what they heard they could not believe.
“Look out!” Rip grabbed at Dane, jerking him back just in time to avoid a painful meeting with a rock wall which loomed out of the fog. From the echo of their boots on the ground they gained the impression that they were entering a narrow defile. Linking hands they spread out-to discover that the four of them marching at arms-length could span the road they now followed.
Once more Wilcox slowed to a halt. He was uneasy. Marching blind this way, they could walk into a trap. On the other hand those they hunted must believe that the crew of the Queen would not attempt to travel through the fog. The astrogator had to weigh the possibility of a surprise descent upon the unseen enemy against the chance that he was going into an ambush.
And being imbued with that extra amount of caution which made him an excellent astrogator. Wilcox was not given to snap decisions. Those with him knew that no argument could move him once his mind had been made up. Therefore they sighed with relief when he started the crawler once more.
But the strange solution to their chase came so shortly that it was a shock. For, within feet, they were fronted by towering rock, rock against which the crawler stubbed its flat nose, as its treads continued to bite into the ground as if to force it into the solid, unmoving stone.
CHAPTER TEN: THE WRECK
“SHE’S TRYING TO dig into that!” Kosti marvelled.
Wilcox snapped out of his surprise and turned off the motor so that the crawler stopped heaving, nuzzling the rock wall through which its “memory” urged it.