“Little noises?” he asked. “Things in the thickets?”
“Little noises,” Hulik nodded. “Things in the thickets. This and that. We’re being followed and watched. So is Yango. He’s had more than one reason, I think, for staying on the back of his Assassin most of the time.”
“Whatever those creatures are, they’ve kept their distance,” the captain said. “They don’t seem to have been bothering Yango either.”
“Almost anything would keep its distance from the Spider!” Hulik remarked. “And perhaps it’s your little witch who’s been holding them away from us. I wouldn’t know. But I’m sticking close to you two while I can, that’s all…. So what do you have in mind to do about Yango?”
The captain chewed his lip. “If it doesn’t work,” he said, “the Spider will have us.”
“I should think so,” Hulik agreed.
He glanced at her, said, “Let’s turn back then. We’re going in the wrong direction for that.”
“Back along our trail?” Hulik said as they swung around.
“A couple of hundred yards. I noticed a place that looked about right. Just before we saw the robot.” He indicated the cliffs looming over them. “It’ll take pretty steep climbing, I’m afraid!”
“Up there? You’re not counting on outclimbing the Spider, are you?”
“No. It should be able to go anywhere we can, faster. “
“But you’ve thought of a way to stop it?”
“Not directly,” said the captain. “But we might make Yango stop it… or stop Yango.”
There’d been a time when something had nested or laired on the big rock ledge jutting out from the cliff face and half overhung by it. Its cupped surface still held a litter of withered vegetation and splintered old bones, along with the musty smell of dried animal droppings. A narrow shelf zigzagging away to the right along the cliff might have been the occupant’s means of access.
Winded and shaking, stretched out full length in the ancient filth, the captain hoped so. Almost any way down from here, except dangling from the jaws or a taloned leg of the Sheem Spider, must be better than the way they had come up. Peering over one corner of the ledge, he stared back along that route. About a hundred and twenty yards of ascent. From here it looked almost straight down and he wondered briefly again how they’d made it. In a kind of panicky rush, he decided, scrabbling for handholds and toeholds, steadying each other for an instant now and then when a solid-looking point crumbled and powdered as human weight came on it, not daring to hesitate or stop to think, to think, in particular, of the distance growing between them and the foot of the cliff below. And then he’d given the do Eldel’s smallish, firm rear a final desperate boost, come scrambling up over the corner of the ledge behind her, and collapsed on the mess half filling the wide, shallow, wonderfully horizontal rock crop.
They unroped Goth from him then, and laid her down against the cliff under the sloping roof of the ledge. She scowled and murmured something, then abruptly turned over on her side, drew her knees up to her chin, and was gone and lost again, child face smoothing into placidity, in the dream worlds of Yango’s special drug. He and Hulik stretched out face down, one at each comer of the big stone lip, holding their guns, peering from behind a screen of the former occupant’s litter at the shadowy thickets and boulders below.
They had come past there with Vezzarn, not many minutes before, along a shoulder of rock, scanning the lower slopes for any signs of pursuit. And there, in not many more minutes, Yango and the Spider must also appear. The robot might discover the trail was doubling back at that point and swerve with its rider directly towards the cliff. Or stride on and return. In either case the Agandar soon would know his quarry had gone up the rock.
If he rode the robot up after them, they would have him. That was the plan. They’d let him get good and high. Their guns couldn’t harm the Sheem machine, but at four yards’ range they would tear the Agandar’s head from his shoulders if he didn’t make the right moves. Nothing more than the guns would be showing. The war robot’s beams would have only the ponderous ledge overhanging it and its master for a target.
With a gun staring at him from either corner of the ledge, caught above a hundred yard drop, Yango wasn’t likely to argue. He’d toss up his control devices. They’d let the Spider take him back to the foot of the cliff then before they gave the gadgets the twist that deactivated and collapsed it….
“And if,” Hulik had asked, “he does not come riding up on the thing? He might get ideas about this ledge and wait below while it climbs up without him to see if we’re hiding here or have gone on.”
“Then we shoot Yango.”
“That part will be a pleasure,” the do Eldel remarked. “But what will the robot do then?”
They didn’t know that, but there was some reason to think the Sheem Spider would be no menace to them afterwards. It must have instructions not to kill in this situation, at least not to kill indiscriminately, until the Agandar had Goth safe. The instructions might hold it in check when they shot down Yango. Or they might not.
Something like a short, hard cannon-crack tore the air high above the valley, startled them both into lifting their heads. They looked at each other.
“Thunder,” the captain said quietly. “I’ve been hearing some off and on.” The sound came again as he spoke, more distantly and from another angle, far off in the mountains.
“No,” Hulik said, “it’s them. They’re looking for us. “
He glanced at her uneasily. She nodded towards the valley. “It goes with the great, deep sound we heard down there; and other things. They’ve been moving around us. Circling. They’re looking for us and they’re coming closer.”
“Who’s looking for us?” asked the captain.
“The owners of this world. We’ve disturbed them and they don’t like visitors. The things that’ve been following us are their spies. Old Horny was a spy; he flew off to tell about us. A while ago a shadow was moving along the other side of the valley. I thought they’d discovered us then but it went away again. It’s because we’re so small, I think. They don’t know what they’re looking for, and so far they haven’t been able to find us. But they’re getting closer.”
Her voice was low and even, her face quite calm. “We may stop Yango here, but I don’t think we’ll be able to get away from this world again. It’s too late for that! So it doesn’t really matter so much about the Spider,” She nodded towards the captain’s right. “It’s coming now, Captain!”
He dropped his head back behind the tangle of dusty, withered stuff he’d arranged before him, watching the thickets below on the right through it. For a moment, half screened by the growth, a pale green glimmer moved among the rocks, then disappeared again. Still perhaps two hundred yards away! He glanced briefly back at Hulik. She’d flattened down, too, gun hand next to her chin, head lifted just enough to let her peer out from the left side of the ledge. Whatever fearful and fantastic thoughts she’d developed about this red-shadowed world, she evidently didn’t intend to let them interfere with concluding their business with the Agandar. If anything, her notions seemed to be steadying her as far as the Sheem Assassin was concerned, as if that were now an insignificant terror. She might, he thought uncomfortably, be not too far from a state of lunatic indifference to what happened next.
No time to worry about it now. The green glow reappeared from around an outcropping; and with a smooth shifting of great jointed legs, the Spider moved into view, Yango riding it, gripping the narrow connecting section of the segmented body between his knees. The Spider’s head swung from side to side in a steady searching motion which seemed to keep time with the flowing walk; the paired jaws opened and closed. Seen at this small distance, it was difficult to think of it as a machine and not the awesome hunting animal which had been its model. But the machine was more deadly than the animal could ever have been….
There was the faintest of rustling noises to the captain’s left. He turned his head, very cautiously because the Sheem Spider and its rider were moving across the rock shoulder directly in front of them now, saw with a start of dismay that Hulik had lifted her gun, was easing it forward through the concealing pile of litter before her, head tilted as she sighted along it. If she triggered the blaster now….