For one or two heart-lifting moments I could believe that we were free, that no sentries lingered. Then I heard a shrilling, such as had been voiced the night before. But this was infinitely louder, since there was no storm. It hurt my ears with the pitch of its note. And it came from almost directly below me, so that I jerked back from the rent.
Eet’s report reached me. “They are beneath, along the side. They wait for hunger, or perhaps what lurks in the depths of this wreck to drive us out to them.”
“Perhaps they will lose patience.” My hope was a forlorn one but I knew that the powers of concentration varied to a great degree, and intelligence had something to do with it. Intelligent purpose could teach patience which was unknown to those of lesser brain capacity.
“I think they have played this game, or heard of it played, before, with success.” Eet refused to feed my hope. “There are too many factors of which we are not aware. For example-“
“For example – what?” I demanded when he hesitated.
“The stone led you here, did it not? But is it alive now?”
I freed the zero stone and held it out into the daylight. The gem was dead and murky. I turned it this way and that, hoping to awaken some response. Certainly it did not beckon us any deeper into the wreck. But as I inclined it outward, in the general direction of the rush of water along the other side of the ship, its condition suddenly altered. There was no bright flash, not even a glow to outshine the corridor plants, but there had been a small spark. Only now the width of the ship lay between us and the direction in which it pointed.
“There is one way.” Eet set his hand-paws on my knee and stood with his nose almost touching the stone, as if it gave forth some scent he could trace. “I can get out of this hole, cross the ship above with that. I could perhaps trace it to its source.”
I thought that he spoke the truth. Being small and wary, using the growths on the hull for cover, he could well do it. Though of what benefit such knowledge would be to us-
“All knowledge is of benefit;” he countered.
I laughed without humor. “I sit waiting to be gathered up and put in some native’s cooking pot and you speak of gaining knowledge! What good will it do a dead man?”
My thoughts probably did me no credit. It was true that a trap holding me was not one for Eet. He could leave at any moment he chose, with a good chance for freedom. In fact I did not know why he had remained as long as he had. But the zero stone – there was that in me which could not lightly surrender it, even for a space. I did not covet it, as one might covet some gem of beauty. It was rather that I was, in a manner I could not describe, tied to it, and had been ever since my father had first shown it to us. The more so since I had taken it from the hiding place he had devised for it.
To give it to Eet would be a breaking of ties I could not quite face. I turned the ring around and around, slipping its large circlet on and off my fingers, my thoughts disjointed, but mainly occupied with the fact that more than all else I did not want to remain here alone.
Eet said nothing more. I did not even sense that faint mind touch he maintained most of the time. It was as if he had deliberately withdrawn now to allow me some decision which I alone could make, and which was of great importance.
“There is also the matter of food-“ Eet finally broke that utter silence.
I still turned the ring around and stared almost unseeingly at the stone. “Do you think this will gain that?” I half sneered.
“No more than you do,” he replied. “But neither do I propose to sit here and starve.”
Which I thought was the truth, since he seemed well able to provide for himself. And there was something in that realization which held a sour taste for me.
“Take it!” I pulled from the rotting vegetable stuff a long string of fiber, made it into a necklet supporting the ring, and slipped it over Eet’s head. He sat up on his haunches when I dropped it around his neck, folding his hand-paws over it for an instant, his eyes closing. I had the feeling he was seeking – though how and where, and for what, I did not know.
“You have chosen well.” He fell to four feet and crept to the doorway. “Better than you know-“
With no more than that he was gone, climbing to the top of the rent where plants still stirred in a ragged curtain, pushing through them.
“They are still here,” he reported. “Not only under the ship, but along the wall. I think they do not like the sunlight, for they keep to the shadow. Ah- on this side – there is the river! And- another wall – it once fell to make a dam. But now it is broken in two places. Across the water – there lies what the stone seeks!”
He had gone successfully up over the top of the ship. Could I make the same climb? I touched my bruised leg, winced from the pain that followed. I tried to flex it, but it was too stiff. Eet might run easily along that path, but I would have to move slowly. I would have no hope of eluding the watchers, or even of climbing well enough to transverse that slippery surface.
“What lies across the river?”
“Cliffs with holes in them, more tumbled walls,” Eet told me. “Now-“
He ceased to communicate. Instead I had from mind to mind as one might pick up a scent, a sharp emanation of violence.
“Eet!” I tried to get to my feet, bringing down upon my head and shoulders more of the plant life, so that I choked and coughed, and I beat the air, trying to brush aside the foul stuff and get a clean breath again.
“Eet!” Again I sent out that mind call in alarm. There was no answer.
I scrambled to the rent. Had some thrown club knocked him down?
“Eet!” The silence seemed greater than a silence which was only for the ears. For I could hear well enough wind, water, and other sounds of life outside.
And – something else!
No one who has ever heard the sound of a ship cutting atmosphere, coming in on deter rockets for a landing, can mistake it. The rumbling – the roar. About me the wreck quivered and vibrated in answer to it. A ship under control was about to set down, and not too far away. I slipped back from the rent. The roar was too loud; it sounded as if the ancient ship might be caught in the wash of rocket fire. As the corridor shook about me, I slid down it, striving to break my descent with my hands, around me the foul mess from the rent cascading to blind and choke me. There was a blast and even through the walls I could feel a wave of heat. Whatever had been exposed to that must have been instantly crisped. I wondered about the sniffers. Now would be my chance to escape.
But – who had landed? Some First-in Scout of Survey on a preliminary check of a newly discovered world? Or had there been landings here before for some mysterious reason? At any rate there was a ship down, and from the sound, a small one of a design made for such touchdowns, nothing larger than a Free Trader.
I clawed the debris away and crawled on hands and knees back to the rent. There was a stifling smell of burning. Eet – if he had still been alive on the outer shell when that ship-
“Eet!” My mental call this time must have held the force of a scream. No answer.
A thick steam rose outside, enough to veil most of the landscape. The heat made me cower back for the second time. No one would be going out there until it had had a chance to cool a little. Perhaps some of the rockets’ fire had struck into the river, boiling its flow. I shifted impatiently, eager to be out, to see the ship. A very faint chance had come true, as I had never really thought it would. We would not be marooned here for the rest of our lives- We? It seemed I was alone now. If Eet had not died in that burst of violence, then certainly he had at the landing of the ship.