“If we saw one rock ape,” Dane wondered, “why didn’t we see others? And why here and now?”
“That!” Tau pointed ahead on the trail Asaki had picked for their ascent. For a long moment Dane could see nothing of any interest there and then he located it-a finger of rock. It did not point directly skyward this time, in fact it slanted so that its tip indicated their back trail. Yet in outline the spire was very similar to that outcrop from which the real rock ape had charged them the day before.
Asaki exclaimed in his own tongue and slapped his hand hard against the stock of the needler.
“We saw that and so again we saw an ape also! Had earlier we been charged by graz or jumped by a lion in such a place, then again we would have been faced by graz or lion here!”
Captain Jellico gave a bark of laughter colored only by the most sardonic humor. “Clever enough. He merely leaves it to us to select our own ghost and then repeat the performance in the next proper setting. I wonder how many rocks shaped like that one there are in these mountains? And how long will a rock ape continue to pop out from behind each one we do find?”
“Who knows? But as long as we drink this water we’re going to continue to have trouble; I feel safe in promising that,” Tau replied. He put the vial of doctored purifier into a separate pocket of his medical kit. “It may be a problem of how long we can go without water.”
“Perhaps,” Asaki said softly. “Only not all the water on Khatka comes running in streams.”
“Fruit?” Tau asked.
“No, trees. Lumbrilo is not a hunter, nor could he be certain when and where his magic would go to work. Unless the flitter was deliberately sabotaged, he was planning for us to use our canteens in the preserve. That is lion country and there are long distances between springs. This is jungle below us and there is a source there I think we can safely tap. But first I must find Nymani and prove to him that this is truly deviltry of a sort, but not demon inspired.”
He was gone, running lightly down-slope in the direction his hunter had taken, and Dane spoke to Captain Jellico.
“What’s this about water in trees, sir?”
“There is a species of tree here, not too common, with a thickened trunk. It stores water during the rainy season to live on in the hot months. Since we are in the transition period between rains, we could tap it-if we locate one of the trees. How about that, Tau? Dare we drink that without a purifier?”
“Probably a choice of two evils, sir. But we have had our preventive shots. Personally, I’d rather battle disease than take a chance on a mind-twisting drug. You can go without water just so long . . . ”
“I’d like to have a little talk with Lumbrilo,” remarked Jellico, the mildness in his voice very deceptive.
“I’m going to have a little talk with Lumbrilo, if and when we see him again!” promised Tau.
“What are our chances, sir?” Dane asked. He screwed the cap back on his canteen, his mouth feeling twice as dry since he knew he dared not drink.
“Well, we’ve faced gambles before.” Tau sealed the medical kit. “I’d like to see one of those trees before sundown. And I don’t want to face another pointed rock today!”
“Why the leopard?” asked Jellico reflectively. “Another case of using flame to fight fire? But Lumbrilo wasn’t among those present to be impressed.”
Tau rubbed his hand across his forehead. “I don’t really know, sir. Maybe I could have made the ape vanish without a counter projection, but I don’t think so. With these hallucinations it is better to battle one vision against another for the benefit of those involved. And I can’t even tell you why I selected a leopard-it just flashed into mind as about the fastest and most deadly animal fighter I could recall at that moment.”
“You’d better work out a good list of such fighters.” Jellico’s grim humor showed again. “I can supply a few if you need them. Not that I don’t share your hope we won’t see any more trigger rocks. Here comes Asaki with his wandering boy.”
The Chief Ranger was half-leading, half-supporting his hunter, and Nymani seemed only half-conscious. Tau got to his feet and hurried to meet them. It would appear that their search for the water tree would be delayed.
VI
THEY WITHDREW to a spot hacked from the edge of the jungle, leaving a screen of green between them and the traitorous up-slope. But within the few hours of daylight left them, it was proven that Asaki had been overly optimistic in his hopes of discovering a water tree. They were now in a narrow tongue of land between the range and the swamps, and this territory was limited. Nymani, still shaken, was of little help, and the spacemen did not dare to strike out into unexplored land alone.
So they mouthed dry concentrates and dared not drink. Dane was tempted to pour out the liquid in his canteen. Water so close to hand was a continual torment. And, now that they were away from the heights and the possibility of more finger-shaped rocks, surely the threat in that moisture was small in comparison to the needs of his body. Only that caution which was drilled into every Free Trader supplied a brake to his thirst.
Jellico drew the back of his hand across cracked lips. “Suppose we should draw lots-some of us drink, one or two not. Could we manage that way until we were over the mountains?”
“I wouldn’t want to chance it, unless we are left with no other choice. There is no way of telling how long the drug works. Frankly, right now I’m not even sure I could detect a hallucination for very long under these conditions,” was Tau’s discouraging verdict.
If any of them slept that night, they did so only in snatches. The apprehension which had come with the previous night was back, intensified, and that lurking, indefinable fear rode them hard.
They were shaken out of their private terrors shortly after dawn. There were always sounds to be heard in the jungle: the cries of unseen birds, the crash of some tree eaten alive by parasitic sapping. But what broke now was no bird call, no isolated tree falling. A trumpeting roar, the crackling smash of vegetation, heralded a real menace. Asaki spun to face northward, though there was nothing to be seen there except the unshaken wall of the jungle.
“Graz! Graz on stampede!” Nymani joined his superior.
Jellico arose swiftly and Dane read on the captain’s face the seriousness of this. The off-worlder turned to his own men with a sharp order. “On your feet! We may have to move on the double. Up-mountain?” he demanded of the Chief Ranger.
The other was still listening, not only with his ears but with the whole of his tense body. Three of the deer-like creatures they had hunted for food broke out of the green wall, fled past the men as if the latter were invisible. And behind them, the hunted now and not the hunter, came a lion, its strikingly marked black-and-white hide dramatic in the light of the morning. It showed fangs in a snarl and then was gone in one huge bound. More deer things, scurrying of other small creatures, moving too fast for clear identification, and behind them the fury of destruction which marked the headlong advance of Khatka’s largest mammals slamming through the jungle.
They had started up-slope when Nymani cried out. A white bulk, hard to distinguish in that light against the gray of the earth, headed after them. Dane had a fleeting glimpse of curled tusks, of an open mouth, raw-red and wide enough to engulf his whole head, of shaggy legs driving at an unbelievable pace. Asaki snapped a beam from the needler. The white monster roared and came on. They dived for the scant cover offered as the graz bull died, not two yards away from the Chief Ranger, its heavy body skidding along the earth with the force of its speed as it went down
“That did it!” Jellico sighted coolly with his blaster as a second bull, fighting mad, tore from the jungle and pounded at them. Behind it a third tusked head thrust out of the brush, large eyes searched for an enemy. Dane studied the dead bull, but the animal did not come to life this time. These were not hallucinations. And the malignancy of the rock apes, the cunning of the native Khatkan lion, were pallid things compared to a graz herd on the rampage.
The second bull yelped with an almost canine complaint as Jellico’s blaster caught it head-on. Blinded, the beast blundered ahead, climbing the mountain side. The third met a ray from Nymani’s needler. But the Chief Ranger leaped from behind his sheltering rock to the one where the captain had taken refuge and pulled him into the open.