The head was the least human, almost grotesque in its ugliness to the time agents’ eyes. There were sharply pointed ears, overshadowing in their size and extension the rest of the features which were crowded together in the forepart of the face. Eyes were set deep within cavities under heavy skull ridges, the nose was simply a vertical slit above a mouth from which thin vestiges of lips curled back to display a frightening set of fangs. And yet its ugliness was not repulsive, nor horrifying. There was no clothing to suggest that it represented an intelligent being. Yet all of them were certain, the longer they examined the figure, that it had not been meant to portray an animal.
To the touch the violet stone was smooth and cool, and when Travis held it out into a patch of light from the dome, the statuette sparkled gemlike. The careful detail of the figure contrasted with the abstraction of the murals on the outer walls, more akin to the carvings on the dome and about the doorways.
Ross drew his finger along the interior of the niche where Ashe had found the image. Dust piled there dribbled out to the floor. How long had the winged one stood there undisturbed?
Ashe carried it in the crook of his arm as they went on—not up the spiral of the ramp, but into the first of the open doorways on ground level. But the room beyond was empty, lighted through slits high on the wall. They wandered on. More empty rooms, no trace of those who had once lived here—if this indeed had been a dwelling place and not a building for public use. It was as if the inhabitants had stripped it bare when they had at last withdrawn, forgetting only the little statue in the hall.
As they came from the last bare chamber, Ross sighed and leaned against the wall.
“I don’t know how you feel about it,” he announced. “But I’ve swallowed more than my share of dust this past hour or so. Also breakfast was a long time back. A coffee break right now—providing we had coffee—might be heartening.”
They didn’t have coffee, but they had come provided with the foam drink from the ship. So, sitting in a row across the ramp, they sucked in turn from containers of that and ate some of the “corn” cakes they carried for trail rations.
“Be good to have some fresh food,” Travis said wistfully. The rather monotonous diet from the ship’s stores satisfied hunger but did not appeal to his taste. He allowed himself the luxury of visualizing a sizzling steak and all that would accompany it back at the ranch.
“Maybe some on the hoof—out there.” Ross, his hands full, pointed with his chin toward the riot of greenery they could sight from their present perch. “We could go hunting . . .”
“How about that?” Travis roused and turned to Ashe eagerly. “Dare we try?”
But the older agent did not warm to the suggestion. “I wouldn’t kill—until I knew what I was killing.”
For a moment Travis did not understand, and then the meaning of the rather ambiguous statement sank in. How could they be sure that the prey was not—man! Or man’s equivalent here? But he still wanted that steak, with a longing which gnawed at him.
“Do we climb?” Ross stood up. “This’ll be an all-day job right here, if we stick to it. I’d say the cupboard’s bare, though.”
“Maybe.” Ashe cradled his bat-thing in his arm. “We can take a quick look through the ground floor of that big red block to the north.”
They fought their way through the thick wall of brush, grass, tree and vine to the monolithic building. Here again they faced an open door, this one narrow as the window slits, as if grudging any entrance at all.
“I’d say the guys who built this one didn’t like their neighbors too well,” Ross commented. “This could make a pretty good fort if you had to have one. That domed place is wide open.”
“Different peoples . . .” Travis had been a little in advance, lingering for a moment before he took the step which would bring him over the threshold. Once inside he froze.
“Trouble!” His weapon was out, ready to fire.
There was a wide hall before him, as there had been in the dome building. But where that had been clean and bare, this one was different.
A series of partitions some five or six feet high cut back and forth, chopping the floor space into a crazy quilt of oddly shaped and sized spaces, with little chance to see from one to the next. But that did not bother Travis so much as the message recorded by his nose.
The odor of the night creatures had been something like this. It was the taint of a lair—a lair long in use. It smelled of decay, alien body reek, dried and rotted vegetation, and animal matter. Something denned here and had used this place freely for a long time.
It was the eagerness of the strange hunter which betrayed it. A low, throaty murmur, such as a cat might utter when intent upon unsuspecting prey, carried across the shadows.
Travis spun around. He saw the hunched shape balancing on top of a partition, knew it was about to launch straight for him. And he pressed the firing button of the weapon as he brought it up.
The attacker was caught in mid-air. A terrible yowl of rage, and pain, echoed and re-echoed about the massive walls. A flailing limb, well provided with claws, raked across Travis’ body from the waist down, sending him reeling from the door into the greater gloom. Just then Ross and Ashe burst in, to center the full beams of their weapons on the rolling, caterwauling thing making a second attempt at Travis.
Whatever it was, the creature possessed abnormal vitality. It was not until their blast rays met and crossed in its body that it lay still. Travis scrambled to his feet, shaken. He knew that if he had not had that split second of warning, he would be dead—or so badly mauled he would have longed for death.
He limped back toward the door, his thigh and leg feeling numb from the force of that smashing stroke. But under his questing hand the fabric of the suit was untorn, and there seemed to be no open wound.
“Did it get you?” Ashe came to meet him, pushing aside his hands to look at his body. Travis, still shaken, winced under the exploring probe of the other’s fingers.
“Just bruised. What was it?”
Ross arose from a gingerly inspection of the remains. “After the blasting we gave it, your guess is as good as mine. But it is sure sudden death on six legs—and that’s no overstatement.”
The weapons had not left too much to identify, that was true. But the thing had been six-legged, furred, and carnivorous—and it was about eight feet long with fangs and claws in proportion to the size.
“Sabertooth, local variety,” Ross remarked.
Ashe nodded to the outside world. “I suggest we make a strategic withdrawal. These may be nocturnal, too, but I’d rather not tangle with another in the jungle.”
13
“Did you think we’d find no nasty surprises?” Ross drummed on the mess table with his scarred hand, his eyes showing amusement, even if his lips did not curve into a smile. “Let me share with you a small drop of good common sense, fella. It’s just when things look smoothest that there’s a big trap waiting ahead on the trail.”
Travis rubbed his bruised thigh. The other’s humor grated. And since he had had time to consider the late battle, he began to suspect that he had been a little too sure of himself when he had entered the red-walled building. That didn’t make him more receptive to Ross’s implied criticism, though—or what he chose to believe was criticism.
“You know”—Renfry came in from the corridor talking to Ashe—”those blue flying things came back twice while you were gone. They flew almost up to the port, but not inside.”
Travis, recalling the claws with which those were equipped, grunted. “Might be just as well,” he commented.
“Then,” Renfry said, paying not attention to his interruption, “just before you came back I found this—inside the outer lock.”
“This” was clearly no natural curiosity left on their doorstep by some freak of the wind. Three green leaves possessing yellow ribs and veins had been pinned together with two-inch thorns into a cornucopia holder, a holder filled with oval, pale-green objects about the size of a thumbnail.
They could be fruit, seeds, a form of grain. Oddly enough, Travis was sure they were food of a sort. And plainly, too, they were an offering—a gesture of friendship—an overture on the part of the blue flyers. Why? For what purpose?