“The Survey party crossed a river coming in,” Storm replied. “High with rainfall, of course, but would it dry up entirely?”
“The Staffa, no. But that runs pretty far south of this region, rises in the East Peak country. I don’t know about this other one you mention. To try to make the Staffa and trail it out would just about double your ridin’ time and you’d be in the edge of the Nitra raidin’ country –”
“Then we had better make our break soon –” Storm stopped almost in mid-word as the fan-shaped piece of valley he could sight from his vantage point was suddenly peopled. Through his lenses those distant figures leaped into clear detail. They were wearing Norbie corselets and boot leggings, but they had not taken the trouble to continue the deception farther than their clothing. That pale greenish skin, the lank, bleached hair hanging in curled rats’ tails down to their shoulders in the back, marked two of the riders as Xiks, while their three companions were plainly of the settler race. Two of the latter had bows, but the former were armed with off-world weapons. And one of them bore across his saddle a tube of dead white colour.
Storm had accepted the presence of slicers, the blaster he now half lay upon, the force beam he had seen at its deadly work in the other valley. But still he jibbed at the white tube and what it meant. There were few enough of them, a development produced so close to the end of the war that it had never been in wide use. And certainly the last place the Terran would expect to see it carried casually on horseback was here in the wastes of a frontier planet. Two, captured in outposts so quickly overrun by Confed forces that the defenders had not been able to blow them up and so avoid surrender, had been tested on barren asteroids. And, witnessing the result, the Con-fed command had ordered that all others found were to be destroyed at once.
The tubes could be used, yes – and the results would be disastrous to the enemy before their sights – only there was in addition an upredictable backlash of energy, though it might not affect the Xiks as adversely as it did the Confed force that tested the weapons. Built on a principle not unlike that of the disrupters, used to dispose of inanimate material, the tubes were far more powerful than any Confed disrupter of three times their size and range.
“More trouble?” Logan asked.
Storm held out the lenses, steadying them for the other.
“See that tube on the second horse – that’s the worst trouble I know.” The Terran added what he had heard about that weapon.
“Coin’ to make sure of somebody – or somebodies,” commented the Arzoran dryly. “I don’t particularly care for Nitra warriors. We’ve had our differences, and until you have a Nitra double-barbed arrow cut out of you, fella, you don’t know just how much you can sweat over a little knife work. No – I’ve never felt kindly toward Nitras. But any disputes we’ve had have been on a more or less even basis. Usin’ that tube against Norbies’s more like puttin’ up a grass hen against your Surra and tyin’ the hen’s feet into the bargain.”
Storm made signs for Gorgol, repeating as well as he could the information about the Xik weapon. The Norbie nodded that he understood and watched the riders round the lake, to be hidden by a series of mounds linked together by a brush wall.
“Nitra there”- last night. Maybeso not so now. Nitra do not wait like bug one sets foot upon! This evil thing – better we take it –”
“Not so,” Storm returned regretfully. “Made only to be used by evil men – we touch – we killed!” He used the most emphatic of the death signs.
The rider with the tube appeared on the far side of the end mound. He dismounted, with none of the easy grace of a settler or the litheness of a Norbie, but in a scrambling way that informed Storm that to the alien the animal he had bestridden was merely a means of transportation and no more. Seeing that, the Terran could understand better how the Xiks had been able to cut down the frightened animals in the other valley undisturbed by the brutality of the act.
Having shouldered the tube, the invader climbed to the top of the mound and set about the business of putting together the rubble there to form a base for it. He moved expertly but with no hurry. Yet Storm did not miss that flash through the air, was able to pick out with the aid of the lenses the arrow, head down and still quivering, planted in the soil just a foot short of its target. But that must have been a specially lucky shot as no more arrows hit the mound.
The Nitra are shooting.” Storm passed the lenses again to Logan.
“Poor devils,” the other commented, “they must be cornered –they wouldn’t take such a chance unless they were.”
The other riders burst into sight, with the outlaws well to the fore, urging their mounts in a retreat that held panic as part of its haste.
“Drawing them on –” Storm speculated aloud. “Those idiots are really planning to use that thing!”
He squirmed around on the bank of earth and stone, jabbing a fist at Gorgol’s shoulder to urge him down. Another sweep of Storm’s arm sent the blaster skidding to the cave floor ahead of him, as he took a grip on Logan’s belt and jerked the younger man down with him. Surra? The cat was on the floor – Baku – Baku!
The eagle had gone foraging an hour ago. Storm beamed as best he could a message to keep up – up and safe in the high heavens.
“Get those horses back! All the way back into the tunnel mouth!”
“What’s the matter? They set up that thing about a mile from here and facin’ the other way –” Logan protested, but he was limping toward Rain, flapping his arms at the mares.
Together they forced the horses back into the mouth of the tunnel. Storm glanced back despairingly at that window on the outer world. But there was no time to close it.
“Get down!” He set the example, throwing himself flat on the floor, and saw Gorgol and Logan obey. “Your eyes! Cover your eyes!” He shouted that to Logan, signed it to the Norbie. Then he lay waiting, his face buried in the crook of his arm.
The heartlessness of the aliens was never more plain than in this move. They would wipe out the pocket of Nitras right enough – but they would also doom most of the living things in this valley into the bargain. The Terran grinned without mirth as he remembered those outlaws riding for their lives. If he knew Xiks they would hardly delay long enough to give their colleagues a good start to safety. The chance for those riders to survive was so slender as to be practically nonexistent.
Surra had flattened herself beside Storm, and Hing was endeavouring to dig her way under him, scraping fruitlessly at the rock floor and whimpering, until he reached out an arm and gathered her in between him and the cat. He heard the horses stamp, but they did not venture out of the tunnel mouth where Logan had driven them. It was as if they were as alert to the warning in Storm’s mind as the other animals.
He had nothing to guide him except those army reports. But those, using the terse language of such communications, had been circulated widely among all Commando outfits where the men or beast and man teams engaged in mopping-up activities might chance upon the new and horrific weapon. And service reports were not prone to exaggerate.
Why were the effects of the thing so much worse on non-Xiks? How long now before it would blow? Storm tried counting off seconds in the dark and was not aware he was doing it aloud until he heard a sound that could only be a chuckle coming from Logan’s direction.
“I hope you’re not makin’ us pull this burrow trick for nothin’,” the other remarked. “How long before the world comes apart?”
His words might have been a cue. For their world, dark and stuffy as it was, did come apart then. Storm could never later describe what happened to him in that space of time lifted out of the ordinary stream of seconds, minutes, hours. The experience was like being caught up in a giant’s hand, rolled into a conveniently sized ball, and tossed up in the air to be caught again. There was no thinking – no feeling – nothing but emptiness, with himself blown through it – on and on – and on –