The Hub: Dangerous Territory by James H. Schmitz

A little shiver went over him when it sank completely under the water and he realized it intended to swim after the raft. But it was mostly excitement. He had never seen a yellowhead come down out of the reeds before. The obliging monster he’d been looking for might be presenting itself in an unexpected way.

Half a minute later, he watched it again, swimming awkwardly far down. It had no immediate intention of boarding, at any rate. Cord saw it come into the area of the raft’s trailing stingers. It maneuvered its way between them with curiously human swimming motions, and went out of sight under the platform.

He stood up, wondering what it meant. The yellowhead had appeared to know about the stingers; there had been an air of purpose in every move of its approach. He was tempted to tell the others about it, but there was the moment of triumph he could have if it suddenly came slobbering up over the edge of the platform and he nailed it before their eyes.

It was almost time anyway to turn the raft in toward the farms. If nothing happened before then—

He watched. Almost five minutes, but no sign of the yellowhead. Still wondering, a little uneasy, he gave Grandpa a calculated needling of heat.

After a moment, he repeated it. Then he drew a deep breath and forgot all about the yellowhead.

“Nirmond!” he called sharply.

The three of them were standing near the center of the platform, next to the big armored cone, looking ahead at the farms. They glanced around.

“What’s the matter now, Cord?”

Cord couldn’t say it for a moment. He was suddenly, terribly scared again. Something had gone wrong!

“The raft won’t turn!” he told them.

“Give it a real burn this time!” Nirmond said.

Cord glanced up at him. Nirmond, standing a few steps in front of Dane and Grayan as if he wanted to protect them, had begun to look a little strained, and no wonder. Cord already had pressed the gun to three different points on the platform; but Grandpa appeared to have developed a sudden anesthesia for heat. They kept moving out steadily toward the center of the Bay.

Now Cord held his breath, switched the heat on full, and let Grandpa have it. A six-inch patch on the platform blistered up instantly, turned brown, then black—

Grandpa stopped dead. Just like that.

“That’s right! Keep burn—” Nirmond didn’t finish his order.

A giant shudder. Cord staggered back toward the water. Then the whole edge of the raft came curling up behind him and went down again, smacking the Bay with a sound like a cannon shot. He flew forward off his feet, hit the platform face down, and flattened himself against it. It swelled up beneath him. Two more enormous slaps and joltings. Then quiet. He looked round for the others.

He lay within twelve feet of the central cone. Some twenty or thirty of the mysterious new vines the cone had sprouted were stretched out stiffly toward him now, like so many thin green fingers. They couldn’t quite reach him. The nearest tip was still ten inches from his shoes.

But Grandpa had caught the others, all three of them. They were tumbled together at the foot of the cone, wrapped in a stiff network of green vegetable ropes, and they didn’t move.

Cord drew his feet up cautiously, prepared for another earthquake reaction. But nothing happened. Then he discovered that Grandpa was back in motion on his previous course. The heat-gun had vanished. Gently, he took out the Vanadian gun.

A voice, thin and pain-filled, spoke to him from one of the three huddled bodies.

“Cord? It didn’t get you?” It was the Regent.

“No,” he said, keeping his voice low. He realized suddenly he’d simply assumed they were all dead. Now he felt sick and shaky.

“What are you doing?”

Cord looked at Grandpa’s big armor-plated head with a certain hunger. The cones were hollowed out inside; the station’s lab had decided their chief function was to keep enough air trapped under the rafts to float them. But in that central section was also the organ that controlled Grandpa’s overall reactions.

He said softly, “I’ve got a gun and twelve heavy-duty explosive bullets. Two of them will blow that cone apart.”

“No good, Cord!” the pain-racked voice told him. “If the thing sinks, we’ll die anyway. You have anesthetic charges for that gun of yours?”

He stared at her back. “Yes.”

“Give Nirmond and the girl a shot each, before you do anything else. Directly into the spine, if you can. But don’t come any closer—”

Somehow, Cord couldn’t argue with that voice. He stood up carefully. The gun made two soft spitting sounds.

“All right,” he said hoarsely. “What do I do now?”

Dane was silent a moment. “I’m sorry, Cord. I can’t tell you that. I’ll tell you what I can—”

She paused for some seconds again. “This thing didn’t try to kill us, Cord. It could have easily. It’s incredibly strong. I saw it break Nirmond’s legs. But as soon as we stopped moving, it just held us. They were both unconscious then—”

“You’ve got that to go on. It was trying to pitch you within reach of its vines or tendrils, or whatever they are, too, wasn’t it?”

“I think so,” Cord said shakily. That was what had happened, of course; and at any moment Grandpa might try again.

“Now it’s feeding us some sort of anesthetic of its own through those vines. Tiny thorns. A sort of numbness—” Dane’s voice trailed off a moment. Then she said clearly, “Look, Cord—it seems we’re food it’s storing up! You get that?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Seeding time for the rafts. There are analogues. Live food for its seed probably; not for the raft. One couldn’t have counted on that. Cord?”

“Yes. I’m here.”

“I want,” said Dane, “to stay awake as long as I can. But there’s really just one other thing—this raft’s going somewhere. To some particularly favorable location. And that might be very near shore. You might make it in then; otherwise it’s up to you. But keep your head and wait for a chance. No heroics, understand?”

“Sure, I understand,” Cord told her. He realized then that he was talking reassuringly, as if it weren’t the Planetary Regent but someone like Grayan.

“Nirmond’s the worst,” Dane said. “The girl was knocked unconscious at once. If it weren’t for my arm— But, if we can get help in five hours or so, everything should be all right. Let me know if anything happens, Cord.”

“I will,” Cord said gently again. Then he sighted his gun carefully at a point between Dane’s shoulder blades, and the anesthetic chamber made its soft, spitting sound once more. Dane’s taut body relaxed slowly, and that was all.

There was no point Cord could see in letting her stay awake; because they weren’t going anywhere near shore. The reed beds and the channels were already behind them, and Grandpa hadn’t changed direction by the fraction of a degree. He was moving out into the open Bay—and he was picking up company!

So far, Cord could count seven big rafts within two miles of them; and on the three that were closest he could make out a sprouting of new green vines. All of them were traveling in a straight direction; and the common point they were all headed for appeared to be the roaring center of the Yoger Straits, now some three miles away!

Behind the Straits, the cold Zlanti Deep—the rolling fogs, and the open sea! It might be seeding time for the rafts, but it looked as if they weren’t going to distribute their seeds in the Bay—

For a human being, Cord was a fine swimmer. He had a gun and he had a knife; in spite of what Dane had said, he might have stood a chance among the killers of the Bay. But it would be a very small chance, at best. And it wasn’t, he thought, as if there weren’t still other possibilities. He was going to keep his head.

Except by accident, of course, nobody was going to come looking for them in time to do any good. If anyone did look, it would be around the Bay Farms. There were a number of rafts moored there; and it would be assumed they’d used one of them. Now and then something unexpected happened and somebody simply vanished—by the time it was figured out just what had happened on this occasion, it would be much too late.

Neither was anybody likely to notice within the next few hours that the rafts had started migrating out of the swamps through the Yoger Straits. There was a small weather station a little inland, on the north side of the Straits, which used a helicopter occasionally. It was about as improbable, Cord decided dismally, that they’d use it in the right spot just now as it would be for a jet transport to happen to come in low enough to spot them.

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