Tau laughed shortly. “No, but then I have merely done as you wished, have I not, sir? I have focused on myself the enmity of a dangerous man, and now you hope I shall be forced, in self-defense, to remove him from your path.”
The Khatkan turned slowly, resting the weapon across his forearm. “I do not deny that, spaceman.”
“Then matters here are indeed serious-”
“They are so serious,” Asaki interrupted, speaking not only to Tau but to the other off-worlders as well, “that what happens now may mean the end of the Khatka that I know. Lumbrilo is the most dangerous game I have faced in a lifetime as a hunter. He goes, or we draw his fangs-or else all that I am, all I have labored here to build, will be swept away. To preserve this I will use any weapon.”
“And I am now your weapon, which you hope will be as successful as that needler you are carrying.” Tau laughed again, without much humor. “Let us hope I shall prove as effective.”
Jellico moved out of the shadows. It was just after dawn, and the grayness of the vanishing night still held in the corners of the armory. Deliberately he took his own stand before the arms racks and chose a short-barreled blaster. Only when its butt was cupped in his hand did he glance at his host.
“We came guesting, Asaki. We have eaten salt and bread under this roof.”
“On my body and my blood it is,” returned the Khatkan grimly. “I shall go down to the blackness of Sabra before you do, if the flames of death are against us.” From his belt he flipped loose his knife and offered the hilt to Jellico. “My body for a wall between you and the dark, Captain. But also understand this: to me, what I do now is greater than the life of any one man. Lumbrilo and the evil behind him must be rooted out. There was no trickery in my invitation!”
They stood eye to eye, equal in height, in authority of person, and that indefinable something which made them both masters in their own different worlds. Then Jellico’s hand went out, his fingertip flicked the hilt of the bared blade.
“There was no trickery,” he conceded. “I knew that your need was great when you came to the Queen.”
Since both the captain and Tau appeared to accept the situation, Dane, not quite understanding it all, was prepared to follow their lead. And for the moment they had nothing more in plan than to visit the Zoboru preserve.
They went by flitter-Asaki, one of his Hunter pilots, and the three from the Queen-lifting over the rim of mountains behind the fortress-palace and speeding north with the rising sun a flaming ball to the east. Below, the country was stark-rocks and peaks, deep purple shadows marking the veins of crevices. But that was swiftly behind and they were over a sea of greens, many shades of green, with yellow, blue, even red cutting into the general verdant carpet of treetops. Another chain of heights and then open land, swales of tall grass already burnt yellow by the steady sun. There was a river here, a crazy, twisted stream coiling nearly back upon itself at times.
Once more broken land, land so ravished by prehistoric volcanic action that it was a grotesque nightmare of erosion-whittled outcrops and mesas. Asaki pointed to the east. There was a dark patch widening out into a vast wedge.
“The swamp of Mygra. It has not yet been explored.”
“You could air map it,” Tau began.
The Chief Ranger was frowning. “Four flitters have been lost trying that. Com reports fail when they cross that last mountain ridge eastward. There is some sort of interference which we do not yet understand. Mygra is a place of death; later we may be able to travel along its fringe and then you shall see. Now-” He spoke to the pilot in his own tongue and the flitter pointed up-nose at an angle as they climbed over the highest peak they had yet seen in this mountainous land, to reach at last a country of open grass dotted with small forest stands. Jellico nodded approvingly.
“Zoboru?”
“Zoboru,” Asaki assented. “We shall go up to the northern end of the preserve. I wish to show you the roosts of the fastals. This is their nesting season and the sight is one you will long remember. But we shall take an eastern course; I have two Ranger stations to check on the way.”
It was after they left the second station that the flitter swung farther out eastward, again climbing over the chain of heights to sight one of the newly discovered wonders the staff at the last station had reported-a crater lake.
And the flitter skimmed down across water which was a rich emerald in hue, filling the crater from one rock wall to the other with no beach at the foot of those precipitant cliffs. As the machine arose to clear the far wall, Dane tensed. One of his duties aboard the Queen was flitter pilot for planet-wise trips. And ever since they had taken off that morning he had unconsciously flown with the Khatkan pilot, anticipating each change or adjustment of the controls. Now he felt that sluggish response to the other’s lift signal, and instinctively his own hand went out to adjust a power feed lever.
They made the rise, were well above the danger of the cliff wall. But the machine was not responding properly. Dane did not need to watch the pilot’s swiftly moving hands to guess that they were in trouble. And his slight concern deepened into something else as the flitter began to drop nose again. In front of him Captain Jellico shifted uneasily, and Dane knew that he, too, was alerted.
Now the pilot had plunged the power adjuster to the head against the control board. But the nose of the flitter acted as if it were overweighted or magnetically attracted by the rocks below. The best efforts of the man flying it could not keep it level. They were being drawn earthward, and all the pilot could do only delayed the inevitable crack-up. The Khatkan was turning the machine north to avoid what lay below, for here a long arm of the Mygra swamp clasped about the foot of the mountain.
The Chief Ranger spoke into the mike of the com unit while the pilot continued to fight against the pull which was bringing them down. Now the small machine was below the level of the volcanic peak which cradled the lake, and the mountain lay between them and the preserve.
Asaki gave a muffled exclamation, slapped the com box, spoke more sharply into the mike. It was apparent he was not getting the results he wanted. Then with a quick glance about he snapped an order:
“Strap in!”
His Terran companions had already buckled the wide webbing belts intended to save them from crash shock. Dane saw the pilot push the button to release fend cushions. In spite of his pounding heart, a small fraction of his brain recognized the other’s skill as the Khatkan took a course to bring them down on a relatively level patch of sand and gravel.
Dane raised his head from the shelter of his folded arms. The Chief Ranger was busy with the pilot, who lay limply against the controls. Captain Jellico and Tau were already pulling at the buckles of their protective crash belts. But one look at the front of the flitter told Dane that it would not take to the air again without extensive repairs. Its nose was bent up and back, obscuring the forward view completely. However, the pilot had made a miraculously safe landing considering the terrain.
Ten minutes later, the pilot restored to consciousness and the gash in his head bandaged, they held a council of war.
“The com was off, too. I did not have a chance to report before the crash,” Asaki put the situation straightly. “And our exploring parties have not yet mapped this side of the range; it has a bad reputation because of the swamp.”
Jellico measured the heights now to their west with resigned eyes. “Looks as if we climb.”
“Not here,” the Chief Ranger corrected him. “There is no passing through the crater lake region on foot. We must travel south along the edge of the mountain area until we do find a scalable way into the preserve region.”
“You seem very certain we are not going to be rescued if we stay right here,” Tau observed. “Why?”
“Because I’m inclined to believe that any flitter that tries to reach us may run into the same trouble. Also, they have no com fix on us. It will be at least a day or more before they will even begin to count us missing, and then they will have the whole northern portion of the preserve to comb; there are not enough men here-I can give you a multitude of reasons, Medic.”