Kartr studied it, saw the muscles ripple under the thick fur as it moved slowly forward. It was beautiful—so wonderful in its wild freedom that he wanted to know more of it. He made contact, felt his way into that alien brain.
The hunger was there, but at his touch it began to submerge—the curiosity was stronger. It sat up, front limbs straight, haunches tucked in. Only the twitching tail tip betrayed its slight unease.
Without turning his head Kartr gave an order. “March to the left a bit—angle around the rock there. It will not attack us now—”
“Why don’t you just blast it?” demanded Snyn querulously. “All this stupid ‘don’t kill this—don’t kill that’! That thing’s only an animal after all—”
“Shut up!” Smitt gave the crewman a slight push to set him going. “Don’t try to teach a ranger his business. Remember, if they hadn’t made contact with those purple jelly flying things we wouldn’t have come through the Greenie attack—those devils would have wiped us out without warning.”
Snyn grunted, but he turned to the left. Smitt, Dalgre and Rolth followed—Zinga went last of all. Kartr remained until the last of the party had passed the forest beast. It yawned abruptly, displaying wicked fangs. Then, almost sleepy-eyed, it sat there, statue still, to watch them out of sight. Kartr brought up the rear. The creature was in two minds about following them. Curiosity pulled it after the travelers, hunger suggested the more immediate employment of hunting. And, at last, hunger won, the sergeant’s contact faded as the animal slipped back into the woodland, away from their path.
But the meeting left Kartr both puzzled and faintly disturbed. He had made contact easily enough—had been able to impress the animal properly with the idea that they were not food and that they meant no harm. But he had been totally unsuccessful in his attempt to establish any closer relationship. Here was certainly nothing like the purple jelly thing, nothing which could be counted upon to render aid to man. The forest animal had a wild and fierce independence which refused the command of his will. If all the natives of this world were so conditioned it would leave the handful of shipwrecked survivors just that much more isolated and alone.
Man, or at least some type of superior life form had once lived here. They had been here a long time and in some numbers—or that road would not run through the edge of wastelands. And yet no living creature he had so far encountered had any memory, or even an instinctive fear, of man. How long had the race who built that road been gone—where had they gone—and why? He longed to take off with the sled and the tailer and run along the road which could never be buried so deeply that the pointer could not betray it—run along it to the city which must lie somewhere near its end or beginning.
Cities—cities were mostly found along the edges of continental land masses where there were opportunities of sea travel—or in strategic points by river beds. There were seas on this planet—he mourned again in silence the crushing of the pilot’s recorder which had rendered useless the notations made as they had come in to that fatal landing. Maybe if they struck due east now—or west—they would come out upon the sea coast. Only which way—east or west? He had had only one fleeting glimpse at the ship’s viewplate and it had appeared that the land mass they had set down upon had been a very large one. They might be hundreds of planet miles from either coast. Would even that road be the right guide?
Once they had a good base established he was going, Kartr promised himself, to get to the bottom of the fuel source Dalgre and Jaksan had been talking about. With the sled repowered they could explore much farther than they could hope to do on foot. And with the road as a beginning—
Rolth had come to a full stop and was looking back.
“You are happy?”
Kartr realized that he had been humming.
“I was thinking about that road—of following it—”
“Yes—it sticks in one’s mind—that road. But what good would it be to us? Do you honestly believe that we shall find man—or even man’s distant kindred—at the end of it?”
“I don’t know—”
“That, of course”—Rolth wriggled his shoulders to settle his pack the better—“is my true answer. What we do not know, we must find out— It is that urge to go and see what lies beyond the hills which brought us into the rangers. We are conditioned to such searching. I must admit that I would relish such an expedition much more than I do this crawling from place to place through a wilderness, bending under burdens as if I were a draft pfph from the outer islands of Falthar!”
It took them almost two full days of tramping to reach the camp Fylh and Jaksan had made. But once there they found waiting them shelters constructed from tree branches, a fire going to light them in through the dusk of evening, and the savor of roasting meat to turn their tired shuffle into strides again.
A shelf of rock ran down smoothly into the shallows of the stream, offering a natural landing place for the sled. At the back of this was piled the material ferried up the river. Jaksan had located some wild grain, fully ripe, and some sourish fruit from trees growing at the edge of the woods. A man would have no difficulty living off the land here, Kartr decided. He wondered about the seasons—whether there was any great change between them during the years. Not to know—not to have any guides! Seasons had not mattered when they were only visitors in a strange world—but now— There was so much they should know—and would have to learn by the hard way of experience.
He stretched out by the fire, trying to list all that should be done—so deep in his thought that he was honestly startled when Rolth touched his shoulder. The night world was Rolth’s and he was alive with it as were the beasts now prowling beyond the circle of the firelight.
“Come!” The urgency in that one whispered word got Kartr to his feet. He gave a quick glance about the fire. The rest were in their bedrolls, asleep, or putting on a good show of being so. The sergeant crept out of the light, not setting his full foot to the ground until he reached the shadows.
“What—?” But he did not get to complete that question. Rolth’s hand was on his arm and the fingers pressed into his flesh as a warning.
Then those fingers slipped down until they tightened about his and Rolth drew him on into the full dark.
They were going up a slope which steepened as they advanced. The trees thinned out and vanished, leaving them in the moonlit open. On the crown of the hill the Faltharian pulled the sergeant around to face north.
“Wait!” Rolth ordered tersely. “Watch the sky!”
Kartr blinked into the curtain of the night. It was a clear one, stars made familiar and unfamiliar patterns across the sky. He remembered other suns and the myriad worlds they nourished.
Across the horizon from left to right swept a yellow-white beam, reaching from some point on the earth ahead far into the heavens. It took three seconds for it to complete the full sweep. Kartr counted. Sixty seconds later it leaped into sight once more, moving in the same course. A beacon!
“How long—?”
“I saw it first an hour ago. It is very regular.”
“It must be a beacon, a marker—but for whom—run by whom—?”
“Must it be run by anyone?” asked Rolth thoughtfully. “Remember Tantor—”
Tantor, the sealed city. Its inhabitants had been overwhelmed by a ghastly plague two centuries ago. Yes, he recalled Tantor well. Once he had flown above the vast bubble which enclosed it in an eternal prison for the safety of the galaxy, and had watched the ancient machines going about their business below, running a city in which no living thing walked or ever would walk again. Tantor had had its beacons too, and its appeals for help streaming into the skies mechanically long after the hands which had set them going had been dust. Behind those hills ahead might well rest another Tantor—it would explain the puzzle of a fair but deserted world.
“Ask Jaksan to come,” Kartr said at last. “But do not arouse the others.”
Rolth disappeared and the sergeant stood alone, watching the light sweep across the sky in its timed sequence. Was the machine which cast that tended or untended? Was that some signal for help, a help long since unneeded? Was it a guide set for a ship from the stars which had never arrived?