“That” lay about a mile before them, a wide circle of bare and blackened ground covered with the charred stumps of trees among which the thin green heads of saplings were beginning to show. Sometime not too far in the past this section had been burnt over. Zinga brought them down where the stumps were fewer.
And just as they left the lifeboat that plea for help reached them again, the terror in it plainer. Kartr caught something else. They were not the only living things to answer that call. There was a hunter on the trail ahead, a four-footed hunter, hungry—one who had not fed that day or the night before.
The slot of an old game trail led across the burnt land. Years of pressing hooves and pads had worn it so deep that it could be followed by touch as well as by sight. Kartr’s boots slipped into it easily and he trotted on through the slackening rain toward a sharp rise of bare rock. The rock wall which had once kept the fire from advancing was broken in one place by a narrow gap through which the game trail led. And then it went down slope into the heart of a real forest.
Not too far ahead was the hunter, very close to its prey. Kartr caught the mind of the one who was trapped. It was human—but not Cummi. A stranger, hurt, alone, and very much afraid. A different mind—
Now the hunter knew it was being followed. It hesitated—and Kartr heard a cry which was hardly more than a moan. There was a screen of bushes through which he beat his way and then he stood looking down at broken tree limbs and at a small, pitifully thin body pinned to the ground by one shattered branch. A distorted face was turned up to him—and he saw that the captive was no straggler from the city.
Kartr threw himself down in the soft muck and tried to lift the weight of the limb. But he could not shift it far enough for the other to escape. And now the hunter waited—just beyond a neighboring clump of bushes.
“Yahhhhh—” That rising, horrible bellow was the battle cry of a Zacathan warrior. A blaster cracked above Kartr’s head.
The tawny-furred body had been met in mid-spring by a searing shaft of flame. And the power of the beam bore it back, already terribly dead, into the very nest of leaves from which it had just sprung. A thick stench of singed hair and flesh curled about them.
Kartr went back to work. He was scooping the soft earth from under the branch when a shriek of pure, unreasoning terror whipped him around.
The captive’s face was a mask of naked fear, distorted out of human shape.
But there was nothing there to fear—the giant cat was dead. Only Zinga stood there, slipping his blaster back into its holster.
Only Zinga—but it was the Zacathan who aroused that fear!
Kartr did not need to give warning, the other ranger had sensed what was happening and disappeared, melting back into the bushes instantly. Kartr saw the captive was limp now, eyes closed—unconscious! Well, if he would stay that way for a while it would simplify the task.
As silently as he had vanished Zinga came back and together they worked until they had that slim body free and straightened out between them on the ground. Kartr’s hands made quick and skilled examination.
“No bones broken. The worst damage is this.” There was a deep and ugly gash across the ribs where a fold of the stranger’s flesh had been pinned by a sharp stub.
The body was thin, outlines of ribs showed beneath the sun-browned skin. And the stranger was small and slight—very small to be full grown or close to that, as Kartr judged the boy to be. His head was covered with a tangled, mud-and-briar-filled mass of yellow hair and there were downy sproutings along the lines of his jaw and across his upper lip. His torn garments consisted of a sleeveless, open jerkin made of the hide of some animal and a pair of leggings of the same material, while there were strange bag-like coverings on his feet.
“Very primitive—a native?” Zinga wondered.
“Or a survivor of another wreck—”
The Zacathan bit at one talon. “Might be. But then—”
“Yes—if the stranger was the survivor of another galactic shipwreck why his terror at the sight of you?”
The Zacathans were widely known, and they did not arouse fear—they had never been raiders. But—Kartr studied his companion objectively for the first time—suppose one had never seen a Zacathan before? Suppose one’s world was only inhabited by beings more or less like one’s self? Then the first glimpse of those pointed, fanged jaws, of that scaled skin, of the frill depending about a hairless head and neck—yes, it would be enough to frighten a primitive mind.
Zinga nodded; he had followed that reasoning. Now he had an answer ready.
“I’ll go back to the lifeboat and keep out of sight. You can try to discover where he came from and all the rest. If you move him, I’ll follow. Natives here! What if Cummi finds them?”
But Kartr did not need that implied warning. “Get going now— I think he’s coming around!”
Eyelids flickered. The eyes they had shielded were light blue, almost faded. First there was terror mirrored in them, but when they saw only Kartr’s human features the fear went and a sort of wary curiosity took its place. The sergeant probed lightly and found what he had suspicioned. This was no survivor of a space shipwreck, or, if the lad was descended from galactic rovers, their landing on this forsaken world was many generations back.
To make entirely sure of that Kartr asked his first question in the speech so common to all travelers of the stellar routes.
“Who are you?”
The boy was puzzled and his surprise deepened into fear once more. He was not accustomed to hearing a strange tongue, apparently, and galactic speech meant nothing to him. Kartr sighed and returned to the easiest methods of communication. He jabbed a thumb at himself.
“Kartr—” he said slowly and distinctly.
The wariness remained, but the curiosity was stronger. And after a moment of hesitation the boy repeated the ranger’s gesture and said:
“Ord.”
Ord. That might be the native term for man, but Kartr thought it more likely a personal designation. Again, and with infinite caution, the sergeant tried mind contact. He expected some shrinking, fear— But, to his surprise and interest, the boy appeared familiar with such an exchange. Yet—surely—he was not a sensitive! Kartr went deeper and knew that the stranger was not.
Which meant only one thing—he had had in the past some dealings with a sensitive—enough not to fear the mind touch. Cummi! The sergeant’s own signal went out to Zinga. The Zacathan was in the lifeboat ready and waiting.
Kartr turned to Ord. Making the boy comfortable on a bed of boughs under the drooping branches of a neighboring tree where the rain could not drench them so completely, he went to work. Sometime later, with mind touch and a fast-growing vocabulary, he learned that Ord was one of a tribe who lived a roving life in the wilderness. Any mention of the city sent him into shivering evasion—it was in some manner taboo. Those “shining places” had once been the homes of the “sky gods.”
“But now the gods return—” Ord was continuing. Kartr’s attention snapped to “alert.”
“The gods return?”
“Even so. One has come to us, seeking out our clan—that we may serve him as is right—”
“What is the appearance of this sky god?” asked the sergeant, keeping his voice carefully casual as if it mattered very little.
“He is like unto you. But—” Ord’s eyes widened—“but then are you also of the sky gods!” And he made a gesture with crossed fingers pointed at the ranger.
Kartr took the plunge. “After your way of speaking—yes, I come out of the sky. And I am trying to find the god who is now among your people, Ord.”
The boy moved uncomfortably, inching away from the sergeant. His hand fell on his bandaged side and he looked up with the old wary suspicion.
“He said that there were those who might come hunting him—night demons and doers of evil. And”—terror colored his voice again—“when first you came upon me I thought I saw with you such a one—a demon!” His voice slid up scale until it was almost a scream.
“Do you see him now, Ord? I, alone, am here with you. And you say that I look like the sky god who is with your people—”
“You must be truly a god—or a demon. You killed the silent hunter with fire. But if the god who came to us is your friend, why did he say that those who came after him were his enemies?”