They shivered in the bite of the night wind, cringing from the salt-laden air. And below the sigh of that they could hear quite clearly the distant boom of surf. But nothing moved about the ship.
It seemed a very long time before Hansu rejoined them. And when he did it was only to order them back to where they had left Larsen and their mounts. There, as they huddled behind some rocks, he outlined his discoveries.
“—small ship—general outlines of a Patrol cruiser,” he told them. “There’re guards. Can’t tell much more in the dark. We’ll have to wait until daybreak and light before we make any plans.”
Kana dozed off for broken snatches and he guessed that the others did too. Uncomfortable as they were, long service in the field had given them the power of taking sleep where and when they could find it. And dawn brought a lighter sky than they had seen since the beginning of the big blows.
The guen were secured by their head ropes in a side gully, though Hansu gave orders that they were not to be fastened tightly. And he did not need to advance his reasons. This was one venture from which the Terrans would not return. Either they would blast off in the ship—or they would no longer care about guen or anything else on Fronn.
They took the same way up the cliffs, working along the broken rim to look down on the hidden camp. In the light of day the beams of the lamp had paled and the ship was distinguishable from the black and white stone of the walls. It had been set down with the skill of an expert pilot in the center of a small, almost flat-floored canyon. And as Hansu said, it looked like a fast cruiser such as were built for the use of the Galactic Patrol.
In fact the Combatants were not greatly surprised when the daylight revealed Patrol insignia etched on its space-scoured side. Needle slim, it would accommodate a crew of not more than a dozen. And if it had brought in a cargo of crawlers, the living quarters must have been even more reduced.
“That’s what we want, all right.” Larsen breathed hardly above a whisper. “Only, how do we take her?”
Under a slight overhang of the canyon wall across from them was the plasta-cloth bubble of a temporary camp. And now a man crawled out of its door vent to stand stretching at his ease. His uniform was that of a Mech, and, as far as they could see, he was a fellow Terran. But a moment later he was joined by another, who, though he wore the blue-gray of a Legion man, was physically an alien. Those too long, too thin legs, the curiously limber arms, as if the limbs possessed an extra joint—To Kana’s trained eyes they betrayed his non-Sol origin at once, although the recruit could not, without a closer examination, have said which star he did claim as his native sun.
The Mech made way respectfully for the newcomer, who tripped forward into the open and stood gazing down the narrow mouth of the canyon as if waiting for something important to appear there. And he was not to be disappointed for the shrill squeal of a gu carried clearly to the ears of both the men in the canyon and the hidden Swordsmen on the cliff.
A mounted party shuffled into view. The Llor sagged as they rode and their guen paced very slowly, their bony heads drooping to knee level with the lag of overriding. Yet Kana judged none of the Fronnian natives were soldiers—they had more the appearance of backlands guen hunters the Terrans had encountered after their forced march over the mountains. Their leader had a rifle slung over his shoulder—the rest were armed only with swords, lances, and the thick coils of rope about their middles which served frontier hunters for both a weapon and a snare.
The Llor chief swung off his mount and immediately dropped cross-legged to the ground, while the alien in the Mech uniform sat on a small stool hurriedly brought from the bubble tent by a second Mech and placed to front the native. As the rest of the Llor slipped out of their saddles, one or two to lie full length on the ground, three more Terrans appeared, grouping themselves some distance away. It was plain that a conference was about to begin.
It was a discussion which grew heated at times. Once the Llor leader went so far as to get to his feet and jerk at the reins of his gu so that the animal ambled unhappily into a position in which it could be mounted. Yet a quick gesture and word from the alien apparently soothed the native commander and he seated himself once more.
To be a spectator but not an auditor at that meeting was wearing on the Blademaster. He shifted his position among the concealing rocks as if his first choice of hiding places had inadvertently harbored a nest of Vol fire ants. But unless he could develop the art of complete invisibility, he was not going to be able to hear that group below.
At length the meeting came to an end. The Llor chieftain gave some order to the lounging members of his escort. Four of them got up, without any display of alacrity, and as they trudged across the space dividing them from the Mech contingent, their reluctance could be read in every line of their woolly bodies. While their leader and the alien stood apart waiting, they slouched to the vent door of the bubble tent. The Mechs went inside and returned in a moment or two with large narrow boxes, one carried by each pair of men.
Hansu had gone so far as to rise to his knees and Kana wondered if he dared give a warning tug to the Blademaster’s coat. But those below seemed so intent upon what they were doing that there was little chance of their looking aloft at that moment.
Two boxes had been passed on to the Llor who received them in charge with signs of open distaste, but did carry them to the foot of the ramp leading to the hatch of the ship. A second pair of boxes were man-handled out of the bubble, also to be transported. Kana tried to imagine what lay within them. Weapons of some sort? But why put weapons into the ship? It would be far more logical if those boxes had been drawn from the cargo hold of the spacer.
When six boxes were grouped about the ramp the alien and two of the Mechs worked on the covering of one.
“That—!” Hansu’s face was oddly pale beneath its dark pigment. He was breathing in harsh, shallow gasps, as if he had been pounding up the slope. His eyes, glints of steel, deadly, measuring, were on the group. Alone of the Swordsmen he must have guessed at once the contents of those coffers.
Coffers—Kana’s own skin crawled as he realized belatedly that the word was rightly “coffin.” For the Mechs were taking out of the box what could only be the body of a dead man—a man who wore the white and black of the Patrol.
“But why—?” His muttered protest brought no answer except gasps from his two companions and an uninformative grunt from Hansu.
The boxes, now emptied, each of the same contents, were carried off by the Llor and piled against the wall of the canyon a good distance away from the ship. The alien was in command, directing the arrangement of the bodies in an uneven line.
Hansu hissed—there was no other way to name the sound he made with breath expelled between his teeth. To Kana the actions below did not make sense, but to the Blademaster the design must be growing clearer every moment.
Now the alien stood back, motioning the Mechs away, though the Llor still clustered about the ship as if examining the dead who had been so carefully placed there.
“He’s making a record-pak!” The words came from Larsen and Kana saw that he was right. The alien, a sight scriber in his hands, was making a pictorial record of the scene—the ship—the tumbled bodies—the Llor moving among them. A record of what—to be shown to whom?
“A frame—a neat frame—” That was Hansu. “So that’s their little game!”
The alien took several more shots and then nodded to the Llor chieftain who signaled his men. They scattered away from the ship with a speed which suggested that they were only too glad to be done with the odd duty their leader had demanded of them. And what followed was almost as mystifying to the spying Swordsmen.
Two of the Mechs struck the bubble tent, and the material, along with various bundles, was carried off. Shortly thereafter a crawler appeared from behind an outcrop but it did not approach the ship, only halted until the remaining Mechs and the alien hurried over and climbed through its hatch. Then it made off up the canyon eastward. The Llor waited as if to give the off-world men a good start and then mounted. But they did not follow the grinding passage of the crawler—instead they rode off down a side way.