“Ah—the supreme energy and recuperative powers of the young!”
The booming voice was drowned out by a splash. Kartr raised his head just in time to receive a face full of water as Zor passed him at full swimming speed. And Zicti was sliding cautiously down over a flat rock, allowing the stream to engulf him by inches.
The dignified Zacathan blinked in mild benevolence over the wavelets at the ranger sergeant. With two lazy strokes Kartr joined him.
“Pretty primitive, I’m afraid, sir—”
The former hist-techneer of the Galactic University of Zovanta gave a realistic shudder but answered calmly:
“It does one good at times to be shaken out of the comfortable round of civilized life. And we Zacathans are not so physically breakable as you humans. The general idea now held by my family is that this is a most delightful holiday, showing much more imagination on my part than they had believed possible. Zor, for one, has never been so happy—” He grinned as he watched that small scaled body shoot across the current of the stream in pursuit of a water creature.
“But this is not a holiday, sir.”
Zicti’s large grave eyes met Kartr’s. “Yes, there is that to take into consideration. Permanent exile—”
He looked away, over the tumbled rocks, the bluffs beyond the river, the massed greenery of the wilderness. “Well, this is a rich world, and a wide empty one—plenty of room—”
“There is the city, partly in working order,” Kartr reminded him.
And in that instant he felt a warmth of reassurance close about him, a mental security he had not known for a long, long time. Zicti was not replying with actual mind speech, but answering the ranger in his own way.
“I believe that those in the city must be left to work out their own destiny,” the hist-techneer said at last. “In a manner of thinking that choice is now a retreat. They wish life to remain as it always has been. But that is just what life never does. It goes up—one advances—or it goes down—one retreats. And if one tried to stand still—that is retreat. We are now following the path our whole empire is taking. We have been slowly slipping back for the past century—”
“Decadence?”
“Just so. For example—this spread of dislike for those who are not human. That is increasing. Luckily we Zacathans are sensitives—we are ready to meet situations such as that which ensued after the X451 set down—”
“What did you do then?” asked Kartr, momentarily distracted.
Zicti chuckled. “We landed, too—on a lifeboat. There was a promising tract of wilderness not too far away. Before they got over the surprise of seeing us pop out of the escape port we were safely beyond their reach. But—had we not been able to sense Cummi’s attitude—it might have ended differently—
“We came in this direction and established a camp. And I must tell you, sergeant, I was the most amazed being in this solar system when I accidentally contacted Zinga. Another Zacathan here! It was as if I had met a sootacl face to face when I was not wearing a wrist blaster! After we joined forces with your party everything was, of course, satisfactorily explained. They were hunting you—you are very well regarded by your men, Kartr—”
Again that warmth of security and reassurance flooded the sergeant’s mind. He colored. “Then, when they found me—”
“Yes, when they found you—well, they loaded you on the lifeboat and brought you here. And your adventure has taught all of us an important lesson—not to underrate an opponent. I would never have believed Cummi capable of such an attack. But, in turn, he was not as strong as he thought himself to be, or you would not have been able to escape from his control after you left the city—”
“But did I?” Kartr’s frown was black. “In spite of your therapy I can’t remember what happened between leaving the city and waking up alone in the wilderness.”
“I believe that you did break free from him,” Zicti said soberly. “Which is why I have laid the compulsion on you— But, let us examine the facts, you men of Ylene are six point six on the sensitive scale, are you not?”
“Yes. But Ageratans are supposed to be only five point nine—”
“True. But there is always the chance lately that one may be dealing with a chance mutant. And this is the proper time in the wave of history for mutants to appear. A pity we do not know more of Cummi’s background. If he is a mutant that would explain a great deal.”
“Would you mind,” Kartr asked humbly, “telling me just where on the sensitive scale Zacathans place themselves?”
The big eyes twinkled at him. “We have purposely never submitted to classification, young man. It is always best and wisest to keep some secrets—especially when dealing with non-sensitives. But I would rate us somewhere between eight and nine. We have produced several persons who are combination telepaths and teleports, and more only a step or two below them, during the past three generations. So I am sure that while such mutation is on the increase among my people, it must be working in other races also.”
“Mutants!” Kartr repeated and he shivered. “I was on Kablo when Pertavar started the Mutant Rebellion—”
“Then you know what can come of such an upcurve in mutant births. There are good and bad results from all changes. Tell me, when you were a small child, were you aware of being a sensitive?”
Kartr shook his head. “No. In fact I was never aware of my powers until I entered the ranger cadet school. Then an instructor discovered my gift and I was given special training.”
“You were a latent sensitive. Ylene was a frontier planet, its people too close to barbarism to know their full strength. Ah—to have such a vigorous world thrown away! The foul sins of war! It is just because things such as the destruction of Ylene are happening too often now that I am convinced our civilization is nearing its end. Now in this camp we are a strange mixture.” He pulled himself out of the water and applied a towel with vigor. “Zor, it is time to come!” he called after his son.
“Yes, we are a strange mixture—a collection of odds and ends of the empire. You and Rolth, Smitt and Dalgre, are human, but you are all of different races and widely separated stock. Fylh, Zinga and my family are non-human. Those back in the city are human and highly civilized. And, who knows yet, there may also be natives in this world. One might almost believe that Someone or Something was about to conduct an experiment here.” He chuckled and sniffed the air. “Ah, food, and I am indeed empty. Shall we go to see what lies in the cooking pots?”
But before they came up to the fire Zicti touched Kartr’s arm.
“There is only one thought I wish to leave with you, my boy. I know little of your race—you may not be a mystic, although most sensitives tend to look beyond the flesh and seek the spirit—and you may have no religious beliefs. But if we have been chosen to work out some purpose here, it is up to us to prove worthy of being so selected!”
“I agree,” Kartr returned shortly but he knew that the other recognized his sincerity.
The Zacathan nodded. “Fine, fine. I am going to enjoy my declining years. And to think I have been given this just when I thought that life was totally devoid of excitement. My dear”—he raised his voice to address Zacita—“the aroma of that stew is delightful. My hunger increases with every step I draw nearer to the fire!”
But Kartr spooned up the soup mechanically. It was very well for Zicti to paint the future in such bold strokes. A hist-techneer by his training was always taught to look at the whole situation, not to study details. Now ranger instruction worked in just the opposite fashion, it was the small details which mattered most, the careful study of a new planet, the long hours of patient spying upon strange peoples or animals, the rebuilding by speculation from a few bricks of a whole vanished civilization. And here and now they were faced with a detail which he and he alone must handle.
He must render Cummi harmless!
That was the thought which had held over from sleep that morning, had been part of his dreams, and was now crystallized into a driving urge. Living or dead—he must and would find the Ageratan. If Joyd Cummi were still alive he was a menace to all of them.
Odd—Kartr shook his head as if to clear it—he was so haunted by that thought. Cummi was a danger, and Cummi was his business. Luckily the Ageratan was no trained explorer-woodsman, he must leave a trail so plain it would be child’s play for a ranger to follow. They had been together when they left the city. Somewhere that night they had parted company. Had Cummi pushed him off the sled in the dark, intending the fall to kill him? If that were so it would be a much more difficult task to locate the Ageratan—he would leave no footprints on clouds. The thing for Kartr to do was to return to that ledge where he had first gained consciousness.