“All very interesting, but it does not get us out of here. Nor provide us with food, water, and the means of keeping alive while they cork us in here.”
While I talked I brought out the two containers. The one with the seeds rattled faintly. But to my surprise the other was heavy and gurgled encouragingly.
Eet was amused. “Rain is water,” he observed. “We had enough of that last night to fill a well-placed bottle.”
Again he had put me to shame. I tested the contents for taste. The sharpness of the ship’s liquid was still present, but much diluted. I sipped when I wanted to gulp, and then held it for him to do likewise, but he refused.
“There was much to drink last night. And this body does not need much moisture. That is one advantage in being small. But for food we do not fare so well – unless-“ His neck went up to its full length. He was intently watching something which moved at the door rent. I could not make out the nature of the thing crawling in, nor did I have time to see it plainly before Eet sprang.
His feline ancestry went into that sharp attack. He bent his head and used his teeth, then came back to me dragging a body which dangled from his mouth, weighing down his head.
It was long and thin, with three legs on either side. The body was covered with plates of a horny substance, the head a round bead with four feathery antennae. Eet flipped it over to expose a segmented underside of a paler hue.
“Meat,” he commented.
My stomach turned. I could not share his taste and I shook my head.
“Meat is meat.” Eet was scornful of my squeamishness. “This is a feeder on plants. Its shape may not be that of a creature you know, but its flesh is of a type you and I can assimilate and live upon.”
“You live upon it,” I said hurriedly. The longer I studied that segmented insectile body, the less I wanted to discuss the matter. “I will stick to the seeds.”
“Which are few and will not last long,” Eet pointed out in deadly logic.
“Which may not last long, but while they do, I stick to them.”
I averted my eyes and crawled a little away. Eet was a dainty eater. That, too, he took from his dam. But even though he was fastidious about the business, I had no desire to watch him.
My crawl brought me into a portion of the ancient corridor where I felt inequalities under me. I ran my hands over the surface and decided I had found a door and that the ship must lie on its side. I worked at the latch, if latch it was, trying to open it. There was always a chance that a small discovery might lead to a larger – even a way out past the sentries.
At last I could feel a slight give – then, with a suddenness which almost carried me with it, a plate gave way and fell with a clang, leaving my hands braced on the edge of a square space. I felt around carefully. It must be a door. But I could not explore below without light. Once more I clicked the beamer, but to no purpose. I glanced at the daylight coming from the rent There was no way to introduce that to this point. But my eyes fastened on some of the plants which still grew unbroken above the level where I had crawled the night before. They were certainly very feeble torches, but they were better than nothing at all.
I crept past the busy Eet. The passageway was so full of debris at this point that I could not stand upright. And my badly bruised leg was a further hindrance. But I was able to jerk from their rooting two goodsized plants. With one in each hand I came back to the hole.
The phosphorescence was indeed very pale, but the longer I crouched with my back to the daylight, and held them over that dark drop, the more my eyes adjusted. And I was able to make out a few details.
At last I twined the dangling roots of the two together, and using those for a cord, I lowered the ball of plants into the dark. What I had uncovered was a cabin right enough. And as I examined it, allowing for the greater ruin and decay, I thought it twin to those I had seen in the derelict. There was nothing below to aid us, either as weapon or tool. But when I drew up my luminous plant ball, I had learned this much – with such a lamp I dared go deeper into the ship. For the darker the space into which it was thrust, the brighter by contrast became its glow.
With it again in hand I set about surveying the passageway. Eet had said he had found only two other exits. But had he fully explored the ship? Suppose there was another hatch not jammed against the ground which we could force open to escape?
Leaving my improvised torch ball at the open cabin door, I climbed back to the rent to examine the rest of the plants. They were, judging by their stalks and leaf structure, of several different varieties. One, with long slender leaves parting into hair-fine sections, possessed a bulbous center which was particularly effective as a light-giver. I snapped off four of these. They were brittle and yielded easily to pressure. I knotted them together, using their fine leaves, and carried the mass in my hand as one might carry a bouquet of more fragrant and entrancing growths.
Eet had finished his meal and I found him sitting by my first torch, using a hand-paw to clean his face and whiskers, licking his fur in another entirely feline gesture.
“There is a division of corridor beyond. Which direction?” he asked, apparently willing to join in an expedition.
“There might be another hatch-“
“There is surely more than one for any ship,” was his withering reply. “Right, or straight ahead?”
“Straight ahead,” I said, choosing instantly. I did not have any idea how long my torch would last, and I had no desire to be caught by the dark in some inner maze.
But when we reached the crossway Eet had mentioned, he suddenly hissed and spat, his whip tail shooting up, his back arching, until he was a weird caricature of a cat.
What he had sighted was a shining trace along the wall. It was a little higher than my ankle at first; but ascended until it striped that surface at about shoulder height. I did not touch it. There was that about it which was so disgusting that I wanted no close contact. It was as if the slime which had ringed the dying lakes and ponds had here been used to draw a marker, fresh, as a warning.
“What is it?” So much had I come to depend upon Eet that I now asked that almost automatically.
“I do not know – except that it is nothing to be meddled with. And darkness is its choice of abode.” I thought he seemed shaken as I had never seen him before.
“You must have been along here before, for you knew about this side passage. Was it here then?”
“No!” His denial was sharp. “I do not like it.”
Nor did I. And the more I surveyed that sticky trail with its suggestion of utter foulness, the way it climbed the wall so that whatever made it might hang overhead – waiting- My imagination began to work. And in that moment I knew that only desperation worse than any I had faced so far would ever drive me to take that road deeper into a dark where such horrors might lurk.
I turned back, nor did it matter to me that Eet could read my mind and knew just what fears rode me. But I wondered if he cared, for he was streaking back along the passage as if some terror lashed also at his flanks.
ELEVEN
Our precipitous retreat was in itself so unnatural as to startle me when, back at the door rent, I paused to think. That the sight of a mere trail could so unnerve one was a disturbing thing. Eet caught my thought and answered:
“Perhaps that leaver of trails uses fear for a weapon. Or else it is so utterly alien to us that we are repelled. There are things on many worlds which cannot be contacted by another species, no matter how willing one is. However, I do not want to walk ways in which that prowls.”
I edged forward on my belly, pushing before me, though my nose revolted, a small screen of debris. The air outside was bright with sunlight. I stared out longingly. For my kind were meant for the open day and not dark burrows and night’s dusk. We were, a quick glance from side to side told me, close to the ground, and that was covered with patches of shaggy, yellowish grass. Between those were expanses of glassy surface which might mark ancient rocket blasts, as if this had been a port site.