Thorvald tossed his improvised stone ax from hand to hand.
“But do the Throgs know that?”
The implications, the possibilities, in that idea struck home to Shann. Now he began to understand what Thorvald might be planning.
“Now there is going to be a native race.” Shann made that a statement instead of a question and saw that the other was watching him with a new intentness, as if he had at last been recognized as a person instead of rank and file and very low rank at that—Survey personnel.
“There is going to be a native race,” Thorvald affirmed.
Shann resheathed his knife and went to search the pond beach for a suitable stone to use in its place. Even so, he made harder work of the clumsy chopping than Thorvald had. He worried at one sapling after another until his hands were skinned and his breath came in painful gusts from under aching ribs. Thorvald had gone on to another task, ripping the end of a long tough vine from just under the powdery surface of the thick leaf masses fallen in other years.
With this the officer lashed together the tops of the poles, having planted their splintered butts in the ground, so that he achieved a crudely conical structures. Leafy branches were woven back and forth through this framework, with an entrance, through which one might crawl on hands and knees, left facing the lakeside. The shelter they completed was compact and efficient but totally unlike anything Shann had ever seen before, certainly far removed from the domes of the camp. He said so, nursing his raw hands.
“An old form,” Thorvald replied, “native to a primitive race on Terra. Certainly the beetle-heads haven’t come across its like before.”
“Are we going to stay here? Otherwise it is pretty heavy work for one night’s lodging.”
Thorvald tested the shelter with a sharp shake. The matted leaves whispered, but the framework held.
“Stage dressing. No, we won’t linger here. But it’s evidence to support our play. Even a Throg isn’t dense enough to believe that natives would make a cross-country trip without leaving evidence of their passing.”
Shann sat down with a sigh he made no effort to suppress. He had a vision of Thorvald traveling southward, methodically erecting these huts here and there to confound Throgs who might not ever chance upon them. But already the Survey officer was busy with a new problem.
“We need weapons—“
“We have our stunners, a force ax, and our knives,” Shann pointed out. He did not add, as he would have liked, that they could have had a blaster.
“Native weapons,” Thorvald countered with his usual snap. He went back to the beach and crawled about there, choosing and rejecting stones picked out of the gravel.
Shann scooped out a small pit just before their hut and set about the making of a pocket-sized fire. He was hungry and looked longingly now and again to the supply bag Thorvald had brought with him. Dared he rummage in that for rations? Surely the other would be carrying concentrates.
“Who taught you how to make a fire that way?” Thorvald was back from the pond, a selection of round stones about the size of his fist resting between his chest and forearm.
“It’s regulation, isn’t it?” Shann countered defensively.
“It’s regulation,” Thorvald agreed. He set down his stones in a row and then tossed the supply bag over to his companion. “Too late to hunt tonight. But we’ll have to go easy on those rations until we can get more.”
“Where?” Did Thorvald know of some supply cache they could raid?
“From the Throgs,” the other answered matter of factly.
“But they don’t eat our kind of food . . . “
“All the more reason for them to leave the camp supplies untouched.”
“The camp?”
For the first time Thorvald’s lips curved in a shadow smile which was neither joyous nor warming. “A native raid on an invader’s camp. What could be more natural? And we’d better make it soon.”
“But how can we?” To Shann what the other proposed was sheer madness.
“There was once an ancient service corps on Terra,” Thorvald answered, “which had a motto something like this: ‘The improbable we do at once; the impossible takes a little longer.’ What did you think we were going to do? Sulk around out here in the bush and let the Throgs claim Warlock for one of their pirate bases without opposition?”
Since that was the only future Shann had visualized, he was ready enough to admit the truth, only some shade of tone in the officer’s voice kept him from saying so aloud.
4 : SORTIE
Five days later they came up from the south so that this time Shann’s view of the Terran camp was from a different angle. At first sight there had been little change in the general scene. He wondered if the aliens were using the Terran dome shelters themselves. Even in the twilight it was easy to pick out such landmarks as the com dome with the shaft of a broadcaster spearing from its top and the greater bulk of the supply warehouse.
“Two of their small flyers down on the landing field . . . “ Thorvald materialized from the shadow, his voice a thread of whisper.
By Shann’s side the wolverines were moving restlessly. Since Taggi’s attack on the Throg neither beast would venture near any site where they could scent the aliens. This was the nearest point to which the men could urge either animal, which was a disappointment, for the wolverines would have been an excellent addition to the surprise sortie they planned for tonight, halving the danger for the men.
Shann ran his fingers across the coarse fur on the animals’ shoulders, exerting a light pressure to signal them to wait. But he was not sure of their obedience. The foray was a crazy idea, and Shann wondered again why he had agreed to it. Yet he had gone along with Thorvald, even suggested a few modifications and additions of his own, such as the contents of the crude leaf sack now resting between his knees.
Thorvald flitted away, seeking his own post to the west. Shann was still waiting for the other’s signal when there arose from the camp a sound to chill the flesh of any listener, a wail which could not have come from the throat of any normal living thing, intelligent being or animal. Ululating in ear-torturing intensity, the cry sank to a faint, ominous echo of itself, to waver up the scale again.
The wolverines went mad. Shann had witnessed their quick kills in the wilds, but this stark ferocity of spitting, howling rage was new. They answered that challenge from the camp, streaking out from under his hands. Yet both animals skidded to a stop before they passed the first dome and were lost in the gloom. A spark glowed for an instant to his right; Thorvald was ready to go, so Shann had no time to try and recall the animals.
He fumbled for those balls of soaked moss in his leaf bag. The chemical smell from them blotted out that alien mustiness which the wind brought from the campsite. Shann readied the first sopping mess in his sling, snapped his fire sparker at it, and had the ball awhirl for a toss almost in one continuous movement. The moss burst into fire as it curved out and fell.
To a witness it might have seemed that the missile materialized out of the air, the effect being better than Shann had hoped.
A second ball for the sling—spark . . . out . . . down. The first had smashed on the ground near the dome of the com station, the force of impact flattening it into a round splatter of now fiercely burning material. And his second, carefully aimed, lit two feet beyond.
Another wail tearing at the nerves. Shann made a third throw, a fourth. He had an audience now. In the light of those pools of fire the Throgs were scuttling back and forth, their hunched bodies casting weird shadows on the dome walls. They were making efforts to douse the fires, but Shann knew from careful experimentation that once ignited the stuff he had skimmed from the lip of one of the hot springs would go on burning as long as a fraction of its viscous substance remained unconsumed.
Now Thorvald had gone into action. A Throg suddenly halted, struggled frantically, and toppled over into the edge of a fire splotch, legs looped together by the coils of the curious weapon Thorvald had put together on their first night of partnership. Three round stones of comparable weight had each been fastened at the end of a vine cord, and those cords united at a center point. Thorvald had demonstrated the effectiveness of his creation by bringing down one of the small “deer” of the grasslands, an animal normally fleet enough to feel safe from both human and animal pursuit. And those weighted ropes now trapped the Throg with the same efficiency.