The Game of Stars and Comets Read online

  "Gordy, that bush over there." Rees shook the boy gently. They could not leave any survivor of the post. And for him to beat the bushes would only drive the terrorized alien child deeper into hiding. Gordy was the only way to locate the Salariki cubling.

  Gently Rees turned the boy around, pointed to the bush. Then he shook Gordy again, thankful to see a measure of comprehension dawn in the child's face. With drawn blaster in one hand and the other on Gordy's shoulder, Rees eased them both out of the roller and towards the bush. Still some feet away from the objective he released his hold on the boy, gave him a push in the right direction. Mercifully that yammering screaming had stopped. What they heard now was only the blatting of the natives.

  Gordy went to his hands and knees, crawled under the dropping branches of the shrub. There was an agitated shaking and Gordy's plump buttocks, his scuffed boots reappeared. He was retreating backwards, tugging at some recalcitrant captive, both hands clasped about two small wrists while fingers with claw nails writhed for freedom.

  Rees made a swift swoop, felt the rake of those nails, cruel and sharp across his cheek and chin as he gathered a spitting, wildly threshing small body up in his arms. Gordy, without being told, was already streaking back to the safety of the roller. And Rees followed, to put his fright-maddened captive down in the seat between them. He fended those raking nails with his forearm while he activated the sonic and set the roller on its way again. Only then, when they were in motion, did he take a closer look at the rescued.

  She crouched all together, her point-tip ears flattened against her rounded skull, her mouth half open as she hissed silently in the heritage of her long ago feline ancestors. The fine, plushy, fur-hair on her head and along her backbone and outer arms was roughened and standing erect. Her orange-red eyes, set aslant in her broad face, were slitted and wild.

  Rees had no way of determining Salariki ages. She might have been younger than Gordy or older. Her torn garment was a short kilt held about her waist by a jeweled belt from which still hung a few scent bags suspended on beautifully patterned ribbons. The ribbons for others were torn and fluttering free. So, by her dress, she was still a young child, and a favored one, probably one of Sakfor's daughters. Salariki females did not circulate freely except among their own people, and Rees had no idea of the number or ages of those composing Sakfor's late household. The Terran did know that a man of influence living off the Salariki home planet was allowed more than one wife, usually marrying two or three sisters from the same family clan.

  The Salarika's head turned slowly as she surveyed Gordy, Rees, and the interior of the roller. A red, sharply pointed tongue licked out across her face and flipped in between her teeth again.

  "She's got fur on her." Gordy put out an investigating finger but he did not quite touch the soft golden down covering the outer side of the arm next to him. "She sure smells nice, doesn't she?" His nose wrinkled as the heavy scents from those waist bags grew stronger in the machine. Apparently he was so interested in the newcomer he had forgotten the sights and sounds of the immediate past. Rees nodded.

  "Salariki people love perfumes, Gordy. Those are their principal trade items." He could have bitten out his tongue at that slip but Gordy had not apparently noticed.

  "What's her name, Rees?" the boy continued.

  "I don't know," the young man was more occupied with finding a way through the mass ahead. To keep the machine to any open path was to invite immediate discovery. And what had happened at the mission? Had his decision been the wrong one? Had he thrown away the lives of three Terrans when he had chosen to go fruitlessly to the post? Sweat beaded Rees' face, rolled in glistening drops down to salt his lips and drip from his chin.

  "What's your name?" Gordy asked in Basic. "I'm Gordy Beltz. I live at the mission."

  The Salarika licked her face again and then raised one hand. Blood oozed from between two of her fingers. She applied her tongue there also.

  "Rees, she's hurt! Her fingers're all bloody!"

  Rees glanced sidewise. "A bad scratch, Gordy. But it's stopped bleeding. I'll see to it as soon as I can." He hoped that the Salariki followed the usual off-world custom and inoculated their kind against alien diseases. But he must reach the mission, he must.

  "We're almost home," Gordy announced a short time later. "I see the big crook-tree. Mom, she'll give you something for your finger," he assured the Salarika. "Does it hurt much?"

  Those almost noiseless hisses no longer issued from the alien. Her examination of her companions continued, but her hair was no longer standing erect and she appeared to be settling down. Rees doubted if she understood Basic. But he believed she had sensed the good will of the Terrans and their difference from those devils back at the post.

  "Rees, what are you stopping here for? Why don't you drive down the road?" Gordy's questions were strung together. His face was paling once more as the young man pulled the machine to a stop well away from the mission buildings.

  Rees dared not drive in until he knew conditions ahead. It would be better to avoid the usual approach and take a more concealed way from the copse of farb trees. Those would screen any scouting expedition clear to the laboratory building.

  "Rees, Dad's going to be awful mad at you, running this roller across a planted field, he had doman seeds put in here last week." Gordy's hands clenched on the edge of the instrument board. "Please, Rees, what's the matter?" His momentary interest in the Salarika forgotten, he was beginning to shiver once more.

  "Gordy, be quiet!" Rees maneuvered the roller along, trying to keep it screened from any enemy that might lurk about the mission. He thought he could get the machine well in unseen. Of course, so far he had seen no sign that the natives had been here. But they might well infest the jungle, be closing in about the clearing ready for an attack.

  Rees brought the jungle car to a halt and turned in the seat to face both children.

  "Now listen, Gordy, this is very important. We have to get your Dad, your mother, and my Uncle Milo, take them away from here or else gather them in one place where we can fight. Do you understand that?"

  Gordy's hands were knuckle-white in that grip on the edge of the panel. But his nod told the young man that he was taking this all in.

  "You are to stay here, in the roller with the Salarika. She's afraid and if she's left alone she may try to run away again. Then we might lose her in the jungle. So I'm trusting you to see she stays here, Gordy."

  "While you go to get Mom and Dad, Rees?"

  "Yes. And if there are native hiding around here they mustn't see us so don't leave this machine!"

  "You can send a message on the com, then the Patrol will come and take us away," Gordy's hold on the panel eased.

  "Yes, we'll do something like that. But you stay right here with the Salarika, Gordy. I'll be back as soon as I can. Now see this button? It controls the sonic. I have to turn that off when I get out. You press it down to put the curtain back up again. And keep it up all the time I'm gone."

  Gordy nodded solemnly. Rees hoped he would follow orders. With that sonic up the children had a measure of protection. It reacted against Ishkurian ears in a painful manner—but that was scanty enough.

  "I'm going now. And Gordy, even if Ishbi or Ishky come—don't go to them." Rees had no way of knowing if the mission natives were among the raiders, but he dared take no chances that they were still friendly.

  "Yes, Rees."

  The young man got out, watched Gordy thumb on the sonic, and then sprinted for the side of the nearest building. The cloying scent which had filled the interior of the roller, rising from the Salarika's clothing, began to clear from his nostrils. He stood braced against the rough wall for a long moment, using both ears and nose to give him warning of trouble.

  Only the chirrup of insects, the bubbling call of the hoobra hens, the sigh of breeze through shrubbery, all peaceful sounds. But no welcoming hum from the laboratory—the a-motor was not running. And Rees tensed. He slipped along the wall,
no windows broke its surface here, he would have to go around to the courtyard side before he could really see anything of the mission's interior.

  At this hour Beltz should be in the lab, and Rees' uncle either there or in the house. Gordy said his mother was sleeping off one of the fever attacks. Three people to locate and warn. Mrs. Beltz first? Or the men in the lab? But they would have screens up there; a small protection but still enough to give them warning. The woman was alone; Again Rees must choose.

  He was still against the wall, masked by one of the bushes. As far as he could see from here there had been no change in the garden courtyard since he had crossed it more than three hours ago.

  Then the warning hit him full force, carried by a puff of wind ruffling the long spikes of leaves about him; the reek of native body odor, musky, nauseatingly strong. That was the smell of a Croc who was heated, excited. Croc—a forbidden epithet here, but one Rees knew. Croc stink here, and strong!

  The Terran studied the peaceful scene, trying to guess at the source of that stench. It could be that one of those horny bodies crouched very close to him now. Or the smell could be only a lingering reminder of the recent visit of an Ishkurian aroused to the fever pitch of some strong emotion.

  To reach the Beltz cottage, he would have to keep between hedge and lab wall, past the storeroom, hidden most of the way. Crouching low Rees began the ordeal of that venture. So far his nose could not pin the Croc smell to any one section. And he had seen no disturbance in the courtyard. His training in hunting craft, all he had learned during those months with Vickery, would now be put to the test.

  Rees scuttled from one clump of lace-thong to the next. Then his hand went to the sill of the window which must open on the Beltz' sleeping room. To go around to the door meant advancing into plain sight. And he could endure the pain of passing through a sonic long enough to get in. Cara Beltz should still be sleeping after that shot. He would have to rouse her.

  He was head and shoulders over the sill and then he lurched back. The Croc reek was a deadly miasma in that room. He did not need more than one sickened glance at the bed to know what had happened. Stomach heaving, Rees crouched back into the bushes, using the control he had been taught at the academy to master his body so it would not betray him by sounds of retching. At least she must have been still asleep when they got to her and probably never knew. He could cling to that hope.

  There was no reason to try the lab now. The absence of motor hum was only too well explained. What about the com? Could he summon help by that? But that warning last night had been firm and final. You had to reach the port by 'copter then—and on your own. No rescue missions to be flown. And their 'copter had not returned. As for the one at the trading post, the Crocs would have destroyed that, they weren't stupid.

  However, in the house were other things which could mean life for fugitives. His own trail bag and its contents—he must make a try for that. Rees mastered the involuntary shaking of his body, studied the courtyard once more while he mapped out his next movements.

  He did not make those until he had decided just what and where he must go. Then he went into action with swift sureness to reach another window, that of his own room.

  Crocs had been here all right. Rees took in the incredible confusion of the looted room, the paw marks and scratches where they had tried to force palm locks of the cupboards. But Ishkurian body heat was radically different from Terran. They had not been able to activate those controls. Short of chopping down the walls the storage cupboards were safe.

  Rees pressed his hand over one of those smears, his flesh shrinking from even such a remote contact with the murderers. From the now open cupboard he snatched the bag he had packed so carefully and he gathered up three spider silk blankets too, as well as the long bladed dagger which had been one of his father's gifts. Good as dura-steel was, it could not penetrate Croc hide, but there was other life besides the natives to be met in the jungle. And the jungle would have to be their refuge.

  Opening one of the blankets Rees dumped all his gatherings into that and knotted the whole into an unwieldy bag which he hurled out of the window. Outside again he stood above his loot to listen and sniff.

  Why the Crocs had struck and then gone so soon puzzled him. There had been no fires here, no evidence that they had amused themselves after the beastly fashion they had at the post. A quick kill of the Terrans, then a fade away. Why?

  Sakfor's post had been a relatively primitive structure, his storehouses easily raided. The mission was a more complex system of lab, warehouse, living quarters. Had the Ishkurians perhaps been afraid of the lab and its equipment? Or did they intend to return at their leisure for a more prolonged looting?

  The natives working at the mission whom Dr. Naper had promoted to tasks about the lab did have some elemental technical training. Those three at least knew the value and the use of much of the equipment. And there were things in the lab which could be turned into far more formidable weapons than the dart guns and throw ropes of the jungle people.

  Rees did not know why he thought about that now. But it stuck tight in his mind, a kind of "hunch." And in the Academy hadn't they always stressed the value of examining the basis of such a hunch? Somebody might have wanted the mission left intact, somebody might be able to turn off-world machines, off-world ideas against the off-worlders who had imported them. He must remember that, and he prepared to face just such a problem.

  But there was nothing he could do here to wreck the installations. In fact, the two Ishkurian technicians knew more about what was in the lab than Rees did. And he had to get back to the roller before it attracted any attention.

  Gordy saw him coming and snapped off sonic. Slinging his bundle back into the storage space, Rees settled himself once more behind the controls.

  "Where's Mom?"

  Rees flinched as much from that question as from the touch of Gordy's hand on his arm.

  "She's gone, Gordy, so has your Dad, and Dr. Naper."

  "Where? But Mom wouldn't go without me!" Gordy's protest was sharp, fear-filled.

  "She was sick, remember, Gordy. She must have been sleeping when they left. We're going on to the big plantation by the mountains, maybe we'll meet the 'copter and them there."

  Rees could not bring himself to tell Gordy the truth, not there and then with Gordy's own memories of Kassa and the trading post still raw and horrible. And he had to think ahead further than just a few minutes, or an hour. The post, Vickery's hunting camp where he had been gathering the animals sold to off-world zoos, the mission; as far as Rees knew those were the only off-world holdings this far west.

  The proxlite mines had closed down two months ago when the first broadcast had suggested off-world withdrawal. But between them now and the mountains, the range which sealed away the plain and the Nagassara space port, there were two plantations. One of them, Wrexul's, was large enough to maintain its own private police force. If the fugitives could reach that and the off-world staff had not already left—A black collection of "ifs" but that was all Rees had to hold to.

  The immediate problem was to find some place to hole up until dark came. In the night he would dare to use hopping power and really make speed. To keep to the jungle floor was to leave a trail a half-blind, jungle-foolish tourist could follow. And to hop in daylight was as revealing. Yes, a hiding hole for now; and after dark run east for Wrexul's!

  Chapter 3

  The roller was concealed between two points of rocks, crouching as might a spurred yandu in a tree den. Rees had driven back along that camp trail which numerous hunting expeditions had beaten down, and then lifted the machine by one carefully timed hop into this pocket. Lace thongs made a protecting gray-green curtain about them when he had pulled those elastic branches into position, following a pattern which Vickery had early taught him during their trapping. He plunged in the sense alarm making them safe from any surprise attack. And, with a stone wall behind them, the flamer facing the only entrance way, they were
in the best fort he could improvise.

  Rees looked at his watch. Four hours and a little more since he had left Uncle Milo at the breakfast table. Four hours, enough time to end a world.

  "Rees, I'm thirsty." Gordy tugged at his sleeve.

  Water? Food? There were always survival rations stored in the roller. But how was the water? To check the tank had been one of the first morning jobs, he had had other things to think about today.

  Rees knelt on the seat to read the gauge. About half full, which meant they must use that supply sparingly. But there were other ways of obtaining water in the jungle and they should keep the contents of the tank for emergencies.

  "I want a drink!" Gordy persisted.

  "I'll get you one. You stay here, turn on the sonic again after I get out but stay inside, understand?"

  The young man worked one of the plastic canteens out of its hold hook and tucked the jungle knife into his belt. Both the Salarika and Gordy watched his preparations with round-eyed interest.