“I have yet to see a neutral win anything—especially when the enemy wants something he has. But we can’t quarrel with even half luck—we’ll settle for the use of their port buildings now.”
When the van of the Horde reached the outer guard post they found it deserted, the building empty, the sentry and the wedge car gone. And as they marched on down to the Landing nothing moved in the narrow lanes between the warehouses. The turtle ships had vanished—a last conning tower slicing the waves could just be seen far out on the bay. But not a Ventur, not a scrap of their goods was left in the silent and empty port.
Hansu posted sentries, though he allowed that the sturdiness of the thick walls would be ample protection against the most that even a Mech force could throw against them. The Blademaster took up quarters in the house backing upon the sea where Kana had met with the Venturi leaders. The apparatus was gone from the wall of the room, leaving holes and dangling brackets, but the small tables were still bolted to the floor and a seat pad had been left behind.
For the first time since they had left Tharc the Combatants were under roofs. And none too soon, for the rising wind of the night brought with it the banners of a storm.
The thick walls kept out most of the howl of the wind. But one could lay a hand against their surfaces and feel the vibration of such tempests as the Terrans had not known before. They need fear no attack while this held.
Curiosity led them to explore their new quarters, finding a few discarded articles, the use of half of which they could not deduce. Kana, with Mic and Rey, armed with Terran night torches, dared a trap door they discovered in a far hallway and descended a steep flight of steps whose risers had not been fashioned for off-world feet. They ended in a cellar, half natural sea cave, in which a water-filled slip ran part way up, slopping back and forth with the force of the wind-driven sea without.
Flicking his light across the water Kana sighted a line fastened inconspicuously to a hook embedded in the floor, pulled taut below the surface. Something heavy must be tethered there!
He gave it a questioning tug. There was an object on the other end all right. The three of them dragged it together, bracing their feet and trying to free what lay below with a series of sharp jerks. Seconds later they pulled up the slimy incline a strange craft. It was rounded, contained, like the turtle ships—more so, for it lacked the conning tower.
“A bomb?” ventured Mic.
“No, not when it’s anchored that way.” Kana moved around the end. “One man escape ship maybe.”
“They went off and forgot it—?”
“No,” Kana denied again. “It was hidden—so I’d say we still have a visitor.”
“Left behind to watch us—” Mic’s eyes roved about the rough walls. “Perhaps he’s to set some traps, too.”
“I don’t think that the Venturi have the trap-type mind,” Kana defended the traders. “I’d say we were left an observer—maybe even a contact with Po’ult, if we handle it right. However, perhaps it would be better if we kept a watch on this.” He kicked the ship with the toe of his boot. Whoever traveled in that would have cramped quarters indeed. A Terran could not fit in it at all, not even when flat and unmoving.
They reported the find to Hansu and the ship was transported to an upper hall. A searching exploration was made of all the Landing buildings without any concrete results.
The storm had not blown out by morning. Instead it increased and it became almost impossible, because of the wind and driven spray, to win from one building to another. But this would continue to keep off attack—which almost balanced the Arch disappointment at being unable to search for the space port Hansu was sure must be close at hand.
Kosti examined the escape ship with care and solved the riddle of its opening, displaying to his crowding comrades the narrow padded slit within, which would cradle the body of the navigator.
“What kinda man would fit in there?” demanded Sim.
“Perhaps not a ‘man’ at all,” Kosti returned.
“Huh?”
“Well, none of us have seen a Venturi without one of those muffling robes. How do we know if they are like the Llor—or us? This could be comfortable for a non-human.”
Kana eyed the slit speculatively. It was too narrow for the length if it were fashioned to accommodate a humanoid. It suggested an extremely thin, sinuous creature. He did not feel any prick of man’s age-old distaste for the reptilian—any reminder of the barrier between warm-blooded and cold-blooded life which had once held on his home world. Racial mixtures after planet-wide wars, mutant births after the nuclear conflicts, had broken down the old intolerance against the “different.” And out in space thousands of intelligent life forms, encased in almost as many shapes and bodies, had given “shape prejudice” its final blow. The furred Llor and Cos were “man”-shaped, but it might be that they shared Fronn with another race, evolved from scaled clans.
Why not snake or lizard? There were races whose far ancestors had been feline, and others who had, dim ages ago, sacrificed the wings of birds to develop intelligence and civilization—and yet the Yabanu and the Trystian were now equal partners in the space lanes. As for reptiles—what of the lizard Zacathans, whose superior learning had confounded half the universe and yet who were a most peace-loving and law-abiding collection of scholars?
Kana, remembering the Zacathans he had known and admired, viewed that padded cushion with no aversion, only curiosity. What did it matter if a body was covered with wool, or with scales, or with soft flesh which had to be protected by clothing? The Venturi he had met had not been in any way terrifying or obnoxious creatures—once one became used to their constant concealment of their faces and forms. Now he wanted to know what they were really like—and why they shrouded themselves so carefully.
But the owner of the escape ship, if he were concealed somewhere within the Landing, made no move to declare his presence. And the storm continued. On the morning of the second day Hansu fought his way across a short strip of court to a nearby building and returned, being once hurled against a wall with a force which almost lost him his footing. Kana, waiting, grabbed for the Blademaster’s coat and dragged him inside. The commander gasped painfully before he could speak.
“We can’t face this. It is the West Wind Drive!”
Kana recalled the record-pak. The West Wind Drive, that paralyzing push of Fronn’s terrible windy season when all life went to cover and death itself rode the blasts. There would be no hope of surviving even a short journey in the open. Anything caught outside the shelter of the Landing would be whirled off and battered flat. Their luck had held—bringing them out of the mountains behind the strong walls of the port just in time.
“No spacer would try to land now,” Kana pointed out. “They would be warned.”
Hansu nodded. But it was plain that his inability to do something about the situation was an added irritant.
“I wish I could meet the Ventur.” He gazed down the hall as if he could summon the hidden one out by the force of his will. “We must be ready to move the minute this clears.”
Their future was still a race for time. If the Blademaster could get a messenger aboard a spacer before Hart Device located them and brought up his wings—they would win. And—did the Venturi hold the deciding cards in this game?
12 — ON TO PO’ULT
The inactivity caused by the storms began to bore the Combatants. At first they had been content to sleep much of the time, rebuilding the stores of energy worn out by the trek across the mountains. But now they roamed restlessly through the buildings, making reckless sorties from one to another during what they believed were lulls, or allowing their irritation to show in sudden snarling quarrels. But Hansu was prepared to meet this. There were drills in unarmed combat and scouting as well as follow-the-leader hunts in which a handful of veterans hid and the younger members of the teams traced them in silent pursuit.
Since the storm established a perpetual gray dusk one could no longer distinguish day from night. It might have been noon or well into evening when Kana climbed one of the perilously steep flights of narrow stairs to almost roof level of a warehouse. His eyes had long since adjusted to the pallid green light given off by the walls and he moved softly, intent upon reaching the small platform just under the curve of the domed roof. From there he would be able to see into the large storage space which occupied the center section of the building. He was a hound and Sim was hare today. It had become a matter of pride for the recruit to locate this one veteran, even if he must devote every moment until the sleep period to the problem.