Half of my body lay under the curve of the ship, if ship it was. But the rest of me was exposed to the storm. I scrabbled feebly with my fingers in the mud and somehow pulled back under the shelter.
There I huddled stupidly, not more than three-quarters conscious, without the energy or will to move again. The beamer had gone out and the dark closed in as completely as any of those monolithic walls I had been climbing.
“There is an opening-“ Eet’s words in my mind were only an irritation. I put my hands over my eyes and shook my head from side to side slowly, as if by that effort I could refuse communication. It was a call to action and I had no intention of obeying.
“Around here- there is an opening!” Eet was peremptory.
Stubbornly I looked to see where I was. My leg ached abominably and my exertions since we had landed on this inhospitable world had caught up with me. I was content to have it so. In fact, I thought dully, since that long period of boredom on the Vestris, I had not had a moment of rest.
Hunger gnawed at me with an ever-growing pain. There might be a few of the seeds rattling around in the container swinging from my pack, but I had no desire to mouth them. They were not food- Food was a platter of sizzling vorst steak, a mound of well-cooked lattress, beaten, creamed with otan oil and herbs; it was an omelet of trurax eggs sweetened just enough with a syrup of bargee buds; it was-
“An empty belly about to be gutted by the sniffers!” Eet rapped out. “They no longer sniff along the wall – they have found a way around it!”
A moment earlier I could not have moved, but Eet’s words, whether by his will or not, projected a mental picture which acted on me as a whiplash might on a reluctant burden bearer. I moved, on my hands and knees still, but at what speed I could muster, under the overhang of the ship, around to where Eet waited.
When I tried to use the beamer there was no response. I supposed my fall had finished it. But somewhere above, Eet waited and gave directions. He had not found an open hatch, but rather a break in the fabric of the ship, and I climbed, using the edge of the rent to pull myself in. At last I lay on a slanting surface in a wan light.
That gleam came from a crowding of the plants which I had first seen in the forest. The shell of the ship might have been of an alloy which resisted the tearing claws of time. But here there must have been inner fittings which afforded rooting to the parasites as they rotted. The plants had grown and flourished, first on that, and then on the debris of their own ancestors, until the accumulated products of that cycle of life, death, decay, and life again had filled most of the open space. These broke off in huge, ill-smelling chunks which sifted to powder and arose in dust around me as I moved slowly and clumsily about.
The surface on which I half lay might be a floor, or the wall of the corridor. It was choked by plants, but those thinned out as one penetrated farther. I braced myself against the wall and looked back. I was certainly not as heavy of body as the sniffers and it had taken determined wriggling to enter. The opening my exertions had left would admit no more than one at a time, and that one only after a struggle. With the knife I could defend my new lair. We were out of the storm, and the wind was now but a muffled sighing.
Was this, I wondered suddenly, the goal to which the stone had been guiding us? If I explored farther into this disintegrating hulk would I come upon another long-deserted engine room with a box of dead stones?
I looked down at the pouch which held my strange guide. But that slight glow I had seen in the bog land was gone. When I brought out the ring it was as dull and lifeless as it had been before our venture in space.
“They sniff around-“
One of the glimmering plants guarding the rent shook and I made out the shadow of Eet crouched there, his neck outthrust at what seemed to me an impossible angle as he nosed into the night. “They sniff but also they fear. This is a place filled with fears for them.”
“Maybe they will go then,” I answered. The lassitude of moments earlier had again closed upon me. I was not sure that even if one of the natives tried to force his way in I could raise knife in defense.
“Two do-“ Eet replied. “One remains. He waits underneath, but where he can watch this door. I think he is settling in for a seige.”
“Let him-“ I could not keep my eyes open. Such crushing fatigue was new to me. It was like being drugged. If I lay ready for the slayer’s club, I could not help it. I was done.
If Eet tried to rouse me, it was in vain. Nor did I dream. Perhaps the dust of the plants, the crushing of their leaves, produced a narcotic which overcame me. When I finally did awake, light lay across my eyes and I blinked, dazzled. At least, I thought sluggishly, I was not killed in my sleep.
The refuse caused by my entrance into this lair was all about me. Plants torn from their roots were already decaying with strong smells. It was not their phosphorescence which gave the light, but day beyond. I began to crawl toward that more wholesome gleam as an escape from the evil-smelling mass holding me. But there was agitation at the jagged opening and Eet’s body humped up, as if, small as he was, he would interpose that insignificant bulk between me and some danger.
“There are many now – waiting-“ he warned.
“The sniffers?”
“Just so. Many – and they are always on watch.”
I retreated crabwise from the light. The plants thinned and finally I reached a place relatively clean from their rooting.
“Another door-hole?”
“There are two,” Eet replied promptly. “One is on the underside and too small for you. There can be no digging to enlarge it, for it is pressed against stone paving. I think it was once a hatch. The other is on the other side of the ship and they watch there also. They are showing more intelligence than I thought they possessed.”
“Never underestimate your opponent.” Those were not my words but ones I had heard often from Hywel Jern in the old days. I had not, I thought now, done much credit to his teaching.
“I do not understand what moves them.” Eet sounded fretful, lacking in that assurance which could irritate one. “They have a fear of this place. That emotion is strong in them. Yet they stay here with great patience – waiting for us to come forth.”
“Perhaps they did this once before – ran a quarry to earth, had it come out. You said they look upon me as meat. Yet the land abounds in other game-“
“Among some primitive races there is another belief.” Eet had returned to his instructor role. “To eat of the body of a creature looked upon with superstitious awe or fear, is to imbibe the unusual quality of that prey. This may be such a case.”
“Which could mean that they have seen men, or humanoids, before.” I seized upon that as a small hope. “But they surely could not hold memories of the people who built those walls, this ship – the remains are too old. And those are primitives, who normally do not remember events, save as vague legends, from one season to the next.”
“Take your own advice,” Eet made answer. “Do not judge all primitives alike. These may possess a form of memory more acute than any you have encountered before. Knowledge of events may even be handed down through a special body of trained ‘rememberers.’”
He could be very right. Did those sniffers with their clubs, their near-to-animal look, treasure some tribal legend of a race which had once built here, had perhaps enslaved or mistreated their far-off ancestors – who had come to death in some fashion (perhaps at the hands of those same ancestors)? And now did they believe they had cornered one of the old masters and intend to have him out for the purpose of refreshing some inner strength?
“On the other hand,” Eet continued, “there may have been landings of off-world ships, and you could be right in your first guess that men of your type have been hunted, killed, and their ‘spirits’ so absorbed by their slayers.”