“What were they shooting at later?” she asked.
Sweeting tilted her nose at the sky, gave the approximate otter equivalent of a shrug. “Up here! Kesters. . . . ”
“Kesters?”
Kesters it seemed to have been. Perhaps the gun crew had picked up a high-flying migratory flock in its instruments and mistaken it for human vehicles. In any case, some time after the discharge a rain of charred and dismembered kester bodies briefly sprinkled the lagoon surface.
Nile chewed her lip. Parrol couldn’t possibly be about the area yet, and that some other aircar should have chanced to pass by at this particular time was simply too unlikely. It looked like a case of generally jittery nerves and growing demoralization. Ticos had questioned whether the Voice of Action would be able to maintain the organization of the forces which were now under its sole control.
“And this last time?” she asked. Water stirred at her left as she spoke. She glanced over, saw that the wild otter pair had joined them, lifted a hand in greeting. They grinned silently, drifted closer.
“Wasn’t us,” Sweeting told her. The fire had been directed into the lagoon again, near the western end of the island. The otters hadn’t been anywhere near those waters. Another panic reaction?
“What are they doing over there?” Nile asked. She nodded to the north, across the lagoon. The pinpricks of blue light had continued to move slowly along the base of the forest.
The otters had investigated them. A flotilla of small submersibles had appeared, presumably dispatched by the great command ship in the depths. Each was marked by one of the lights—purpose unknown. They were stationing sentries in pairs along the edge of the forest.
Nile considered it. The beginning of a major organized drive to encircle the Tuvela in the lagoon, assuming the energy gun hadn’t got rid of her? It seemed improbable. Sentries normally were put out for defensive purposes. They had at least one gun emplacement over there, perhaps other posts that looked vulnerable to them. They might be wondering whether the Tuvela would presently come out of the water and start doing something about those posts. . . .
How open were the sentries to attack?
The otters had been considering the point when Sweeting picked up Nile’s signal. The Parahuans were stationed above water level, at varying heights. One pair squatted on a floatwood stub not much more than fifteen feet above the lift of the waves. There was no visual contact between most of the posts.
Nile had seen Spiff and Sweeting drive up twenty-five feet from the surface of the sea to pluck skimming kesters out of the air. . . .
“If you can pick off that one pair before they squawk,” she said, “do it. It will keep the rest of them interested in that side of the lagoon for a while. Stay away from there afterward . . . and don’t bother any other waddle-feet until you hear from me.”
They agreed. “What you doing now, Nile?” Sweeting asked.
“Getting a fire started so Dan can find us.”
Chapter 9
She moved steadily upward. The ancient floatwood trunks swayed and creaked in the wind; lesser growth rustled and whispered. The uneasy lapping of the ocean receded gradually below.
When she had come high enough, she turned toward the sea-haval rookery. The thickest sections of the oilwood stand rose somewhat beyond it. A swirl of the wind brought the rookery’s stenches simmering about her. Vague rumblings rose through the forest. The area was quieter than it had been in early evening, but the gigantic feedings and the periodic uproar connected with them would continue at intervals through the night. She kept well above the rookery in passing. It was like a huge dark cage, hacked and sawn by great toothed beaks out of the heart of the forest. Intruders there were not viewed with favor by the sea-havals.
She was perhaps three hundred feet above the rookery and now well over toward the southern front of the forest when she came to an abrupt halt.
Throughout these hours her senses had been keyed to a pitch which automatically slapped a danger label on anything which did not match normal patterns of the overall forest scene. The outline which suddenly impressed itself on her vision was more than half blotted out by intervening thickets; but her mind linked the visible sections together in an instant. The composite image was that of a very large pale object.
And that was enough. She knew in the same moment that another tarm had been brought to the island by the Parahuans.
Nile stood where she was, frozen with dismay. There was no immediate cover available here; the slightest motion might bring her to the tarm’s attention. The massive latticework of the forest was fairly open, with only scattered secondary growth between her and the clusters of thickets along the great slanted branch where the giant thing lay. The wild otters had reported seeing two of the creatures when the Parahuans first arrived. This one must have been kept aboard the big headquarters ship since then; it had been taken back to the surface to be used against her, had approached the island through the open sea to the south—
What was it doing in the upper forest levels? . . . Had it already discovered her?
The answer to the first question came immediately. The wind carried the scent of all life passing through the area to the west and along the lagoon up to the tarm. It was lying in wait for an indication that the human enemy was approaching the big blockhouse. A defensive measure against the Tuvela . . . and it was possible that it had, in fact, made out her shape, approaching along the floatwood branches in the night gloom, but hadn’t yet defined her as human because she didn’t bring with her a human scent.
Nile took a slow step backward, then another and a third, keeping her eyes fixed on what she could see of the tarm. As she reached the first cluster of screening growth, the great body seemed to be hunching, shifting position. The bushes closed behind her. Now the tarm was out of sight . . . and it was difficult to avoid the thought that it had waited only for that instant to come swinging cunningly through the floatwood in pursuit, grappling branches with its tentacle clusters, sliding along the thicker trunks. She ran in lightweight balance toward a huge central bole, rounded it quickly, clutching the gnarled surface with hands and grip-soles, hesitated on the far side, eyes searching the area below.
Forty feet down was a twisted branch, thickets near its far end. Nile pushed off, dropped, landed in moments, knees flexing, ran along the branch and threaded her way into the thickets. From cover, she looked back. Nothing stirred above or behind her. The tarm hadn’t followed.
She moved on less hurriedly, stopped at last to consider what she could do. She was still stunned by the encounter. Scentlessness would have been no protection if she had come much closer to that lurking sea beast before she discovered it. And how could she get to the oilwood now? The tarm lay so near it that it seemed suicidal recklessness to approach the area again. She scanned mentally over the weapons the floatwood offered. There was nothing that could stop a great creature like that quickly enough to do her any good. The UW’s beam would only enrage it.
She had an abrupt sense of defeat. The thing might very well lie there till morning, making it impossible to start the beacon which was to identify the island to Parrol. There must be something she could do to draw it away from its position.
Almost with the thought, a vast bellowing erupted about her, seeming to come from inches beneath her feet, jarring her tight-drawn nerves again. . . . Only a sea-haval from the rookery below.
Nile’s breath caught.
Only a sea-haval? From the rookery below—
She went hurrying on down through the forest.
Presently she returned, retracing her former route. But now she gave every section of it careful study—glancing ahead and back, planning it out, not as a line of ascent but of a headlong descent to follow. When she came back along it, she would be moving as quickly as she could move, unable to afford a single misstep, a single moment of uncertainty about what to do, or which way to turn. A good part of that descent would be low-weight jumping; and whenever one of the prospective jumps looked at all tricky, she tried it out before climbing farther.
She reached a point at last where she must be within a minute of sighting the tarm . . . if it had stayed where it was. For it might have been having second thoughts about the upright shape which had been coming toward it and then backed away, and be prowling about for her now. Nile moved as warily and stealthily as she ever had in her life until she knew she was within view of the branch where the tarm had lain. She hadn’t approached it from the previous direction but had climbed up instead along the far side of the great bole which supported most of the floatwood and other growth in the area.