Whatever lay in ambush beside the upper track was growing impatient as its destined prey ceased to advance, the coyotes reported.
“Your left—beyond that pointed rock—in the big shadow—”
“Do you see it?” Tsoay demanded.
“No. But the mba’a do.”
The men had their bows ready, arrows set to the cords. But in this light such weapons were practically useless unless the enemy moved into the path of the moon.
“What is it?” Kaydessa asked in a half whisper.
“Something waits for us ahead.”
Before he could stop her, she set her fingers to her lips and gave a piercing whistle.
There was answering movement in the shadow. Travis shot at that, his arrow followed instantly by one from Tsoay. There was a cry, scaling up in a throat-scalding scream which made Travis flinch. Not because of the sound, but because of the hint which lay behind it—could it have been a human cry?
The thing flopped out into a patch of moonlight. Its four-limbed, silvery body was as big as a man’s. But the worst was that it had been groveling on all fours when it fell, and now it was rising on its hind feet, one forepaw striking madly at the two arrows dancing head-deep in its upper shoulder. Man? No! But something sufficiently manlike to chill the three downtrail.
A whirling four-footed hunter dashed in, snapped at the creature’s legs. It squalled again, aiming a blow with a forepaw; but the attacking coyote was already gone. Together Naginlta and Nalik’ideyu were harassing the creature, just as they had fought the split horn, giving the hunters time to shoot. Travis, although he again felt that touch of horror and disgust he could not account for, shot again.
Between them the Apaches must have sent a dozen arrows into the raving beast before it went to its knees and Naginlta sprang for its throat. Even then the coyote yelped and flinched, a bleeding gash across its head from the raking talons of the dying thing. When it no longer moved, Travis approached to see more closely what they had brought down. That smell . . .
Just as the embroidery on Kaydessa’s jacket had awakened memories from his past on Earth, so did this stench remind him of something. Where—when—had he smelled it before? Travis connected it with dark, dark and danger. Then he gasped in a half exclamation.
Not on this world, no, but on two others: two worlds of that broken stellar empire where he had been an involuntary explorer two planet years ago! The beast things which had lived in the dark of the desert world the humans’ wandering galactic derelict had landed upon. Yes, the beast things whose nature they had never been able to deduce. Were they the degenerate dregs of a once intelligent species? Or were they animals, akin to man, but still animals?
The ape-things had controlled the night of the desert world. And they had been met again—also in the dark—in the ruins of the city which had been the final goal of the ship’s taped voyage. So they were a part of the vanished civilization. And Travis’ own vague surmise concerning Topaz was proven correct. This had not been an empty world for the long-gone space people. This planet had a purpose and a use, or else this beast would not have been here.
“Devil!” Kaydessa made a face of disgust.
“You know it?” Tsoay asked Travis. “What is it?”
“That I do not know, but it is a thing left over from the star people’s time. And I have seen it on two other of their worlds.”
“A man?” Tsoay surveyed the body critically. “It wears no clothes, has no weapons, but it walks erect. It looks like an ape, a very big ape. It is not a good thing, I think.”
“If it runs with a pack—as they do elsewhere—this could be a very bad thing.” Travis, remembering how these creatures had attacked in force on the other worlds, looked about him apprehensively. Even with the coyotes on guard, they could not stand up to such a pack closing in through the dark. They had better hole up in some defendable place and wait out the rest of the night.
Naginlta brought them to a cliff overhang where they could set their backs to the hard rock of the mountain, face outward to a space they could cover with arrow flight if the need arose. And the coyotes, lying before them with their noses resting on paws, would, Travis knew, alert them long before the enemy could close in.
They huddled against the rock, Kaydessa between them, alert at first to every sound of the night, their hearts beating faster at a small scrape of gravel, the rustle of a bush. Slowly, they began to relax.
“It is well that two sleep while one guards,” Travis observed. “By morning we must push on, out of this country.”
So the two Apaches shared the watch in turn, the Tatar girl at first protesting, and then falling exhausted into a slumber which left her breathing heavily.
Travis, on the dawn watch, began to speculate about the ape-thing they had killed. The two previous times he had met this creature it had been in ruins of the old empire. Were there ruins somewhere here? He wanted to make sure about that. On the other hand, there was the problem of the Tatar-Mongol settlement controlled by the Russians. There was no doubt in his mind that, were the Russians to suspect the existence of the Apache camp, they would make every attempt to hunt down and kill or capture the survivors from the American ship. A warning must be carried to the rancheria as quickly as they could make the return trip.
Beside him the girl stirred, raising her head. Travis glanced at her and then watched with attention. She was looking straight ahead, her eyes as fixed as if she were in a trance. Now she inched forward from the mountain wall, wriggling out of its shelter.
“What—?” Tsoay had awakened again. But Travis was already moving. He pushed on, rushing up to stand beside her, shoulder to shoulder.
“What is it? Where do you go?” he asked.
She made no answer, did not even seem aware of his voice. He caught at her arm and she pulled to free herself. When he tightened his grip she did not fight him actively as during their first encounter, but merely pulled and twisted as if she were being compelled to go ahead.
Compulsion! He remembered her plea the night before, asking his help against recapture by the machine. Now he deliberately tripped her, twisted her hands behind her back. She swayed in his hold, trying to win to her feet, paying no attention to him save as a hindrance against her answering that demanding call he could not hear.
7
“What happened?” Tsoay took a swift stride, stood over the writhing girl whose strength was now such that Travis had to exert all his efforts to control her.
“I think that the machine she spoke about is holding her. She is being drawn to it out of hiding as one draws a calf on a rope.”
Both coyotes had arisen and were watching the struggle with interest, but there was no warning from them. Whatever called Kaydessa into such mindless and will-less answer did not touch the animals. And neither Apache felt it. So perhaps only Kaydessa’s people were subject to it, as she had thought. How far away was that machine? Not too near, for otherwise the coyotes would have traced the man or men operating it.
“We cannot move her,” Tsoay brought the problem into the open—”unless we bind and carry her. She is one of their kind. Why not let her go to them, unless you fear she will talk.” His hand went to the knife in his belt, and Travis knew what primitive impulse moved in the younger man.
In the old days a captive who was likely to give trouble was briskly eliminated. In Tsoay that memory was awake now. Travis shook his head.
“She has said that others of her kin are in these hills. We must not set two wolf packs hunting us,” Travis said, giving the more practical reason which might better appeal to that savage instinct for self-preservation. “But you are right, since she has tried to answer this summons, we cannot force her with us. Therefore, do you take the back trail. Tell Buck what we have discovered and have him make the necessary precautions against either these Mongol outlaws or a Russian thrust over the mountains.”
“And you?”
“I stay to discover where the outlaws hide and learn all I can of this settlement. We may have reason to need friends—”
“Friends!” Tsoay spat. “The People need no friends! If we have warning, we can hold our own country! As the Pinda-lick-o-yi have discovered before.”