Usually tractable enough, the pack horses were hard to handle that morning. Storm wished he could have coaxed Surra to serve as an additional drover, but the big cat had disappeared on her own early in the rain and the Terran knew she was going to hole up somewhere out of the wet. Since he had given her no definite orders she would follow her own instincts. He had not sighted Baku since dawn.
Nearly all the horses had scrambled up a steeper rise when the Terran heard Mac shout excitedly. Hoping that the pack master had discovered a good stretch of higher territory, Storm whacked at the last horse in line, his own mare.
Then the world came apart about him. Storm had been under fire on the training range, he had witnessed – from a distance – the obliteration bombing of an enemy stronghold. But this was no man-made fury – it was the raw sword of nature herself striking unleashed.
The rain, now heavier than before, became a smothering blanket under a black sky. He could not even see Rain’s ears, head, plastered mane. The gush of water took away his breath, beat about his body.
Lightning – purple fire in jagged spears – thunder claps that left one deafened, battered – Storm’s horse reared, fought for freedom, wild with fear. Then the stallion ran through a wall of water and his rider could only cling blindly to his seat, lying along the horse’s neck gasping.
They were still in the dark but the rain no longer beat on them, only the fury of its rushing filled the world with sound. Lightning again tore at the sky. And above him, in that flash, Storm saw an overhang of earth break loose and fall. Half dazed, he jumped, stumbled to his knees, and went down, as mud cascaded on him, pressing him flat under its weight until he lost consciousness.
It was dark when the Terran opened his eyes and tried feebly to move – dark with an absence of all light that was as frightening as the silence that now walled him in. But, half-conscious as he was, Storm struggled for freedom. There was a break in the cover over him, and he levered up the forepart of his body.
None of his bones appeared to be broken. He hurt all over, but he could move arms and legs, wriggled the rest of him out of the mass of soil that had imprisoned him. Storm tried to remember just what had happened in those last moments before the world caved in.
He called – to be answered by a plaintive whinny, shrill and frightened. Storm called again through the darkness in soft-voiced reassurance, using the speech of the horse tamer, which he had used with Rain since the first moment he had laid hands on the stallion. And, as he spoke, he dug at the earth still encasing his legs, until he could stand up.
The Terran explored about him with outstretched arms – until he remembered the torch at his belt. Snapping its button, Storm aimed the beam straight up. The answering light was faint, oddly paled. He stood by a rock wall – and, as the beam swept down and away from that solid surface, it was swallowed up in a pocket of darkness that might mark the interior of a cave of some expanse. But caught in the torch’s beam was Rain, white foam roping his jaws, his eyes rolling wildly.
Storm moved to run his hand along the sweating arch of the horse’s neck, conscious now of the smell of this place. Just as they had found it in the entrance tunnel of the valley, so here the air was stale, musty. As he continued to breathe it the Ter-ran felt a growing sickness and an impulse to turn and batter his way out of this cave, or pocket, or whatever it was, that held them. He fought for self-control.
On his right was a second rock wall, and behind him the fall of moist earth in which he had been caught. Then the torch beam glistened at floor level. Runnels of water were sluggishly crawling toward him from under that mass of loose earth, gathering in the slight depressions of the rock floor. As Storm watched there was more movement, a slide of the soil, only this one uncovered a dim spot of light close to the roof – a hands-breadth of metallic grey that might mark the sky.
Storm snapped off the torch, spoke once more to Rain. With great care he climbed, a few inches at a time, to reach that breakthrough, once leaping clear to avoid being carried back by a second slip. But, at last, he got there, thankful to draw in lungfuls of the rain-washed air, clean and sweet without. The soft earth was easy enough to dig and he set about with his hands to enlarge the opening.
He came upon a rock that had to be dislodged with care, and marvelled at the chance or good fortune that had saved him and the stallion from such a bombardment, giving them their lives in spite of their imprisonment. Storm’s wonder at the narrowness of their escape increased as his nails scraped across an even larger stone, one wedged in the opening as a stopper might be driven into a bottle.
The Terran returned to clawing at the earth heaped about that rock, pushing outward when he could. Now and again he checked the seepage under the wall; the flow was increasing, if slowly. Could a stream, or part of the lake, be lapping outside?
He could not remember in which direction Rain had raced in panicked flight – west, north, or east –
A whole block of moist soil tangled with roots gave way before him and rain beat in to soak him in an instant. The moisture felt clean and good against his body, washing the mud and staleness of the place from him.
Worming his way back up, Storm thrust head and shoulders out of the hole. Visibility was limited by the rain, but what he could see made him gasp, for the whole area below bore no resemblance to anything he remembered.
A sheet of water, swirling angrily and pitted by the lash of the rain, lapped at the other side of the barrier on which he half lay. Uprooted trees tossed on that roiled surface and just below him was the body of the black pack mare, anchored to the shore by the weight of a rock that had crushed her head and one foreleg.
On the frail island of her body crouched a small shape with matted fur, clinging despairingly to the bobbing pack. And seeing that refugee, Storm shovelled swiftly at the earth. He ripped off his belt, stripping it quickly of knife sheath and stun rod holster, and on his third toss one end of the belt landed on the pack. The meerkat moved swiftly, climbing that improvised ladder to a point where Storm could scoop the small creature to safety.
It was Hing and she was uninjured as far as his examining hands could determine. What had happened to Ho he did not want to guess, for the bag in which Hing’s mate had ridden must now be trapped under the dead mare.
Whimpering, the meerkat clung to Storm, trying in plaintive little cries to tell her misery. He scraped the mud from her fur as best he could, and carried her into the cave to wrap her in the blanket With her snug he returned to their window on the outside.
It might be dangerous to try to dig out more of the cave-closing slide at present. Such efforts could only let in the lake waters to engulf them. For such work he needed better light and an end to the rain. And both of those might come in the morning. For the present there was nothing to do but wait out the hours. Surely the skies could not go on releasing such a weight of water forever!
The grey of the day became the dark of a starless, moonless night. Storm rested half across the wall, Hing curled against him, watching in vain hopes of seeing some light along the cliff walls that would signal the escape to safety of the others, some indication that he was not the only human survivor of the flood that filled the valley.
Storm must have fallen asleep at last, for when he roused, it was to find weak sunlight on his face. Hing sat by his shoulder making an exacting toilet, chittering with almost human disgust at the unhappy state of her usually well-groomed fur.
The water had fallen away outside, grounding some of the wrack that it had floated. Something as red-brown as the soil, with a wicked mouthful of teeth, was busy at the mare, feasting upon the bounty. Storm shouted and flung a clod of earth at the creature.