Storm Over Warlock Page 5

  5. PURSUIT

  As the raft revolved slowly it also slipped downstream at a steadilyincreasing pace, for the current had them in hold. The wolverinespressed close to Shann until the musky scent of their fur, their animalwarmth, enveloped him. One growled deep in its throat, perhaps in answerto that wind-borne wail.

  "Hound?" Shann asked.

  Beside him in the dark Thorvald was working loose one of the poles theyhad readied to help control the raft's voyaging. The current carriedthem along, but there was a need for those lengths of sapling to fendthem free from rocks and water-buried snags.

  "What hound?" the younger man demanded more sharply when there came noimmediate answer.

  "The Throgs' tracker. But why did they import one?" Thorvald'spuzzlement was plain in his tone. He added a moment later, with some ofhis usual firmness, "We may be in for bad trouble now. Use of a houndmeans an attempt to take prisoners----"

  "Then they do not know that we are here, as Terrans, I mean?"

  Thorvald seemed to be sorting out his thoughts when he replied to that."They could have brought a hound here just on chance that they mightmiss one of us in the initial mop-up. Or, if they believe we arenatives, they could want a specimen for study."

  "Wouldn't they just blast down Terrans on sight?"

  Shann saw the dark blot which was Thorvald's head shake in negation.

  "They might need a live Terran--badly and soon."

  "Why?"

  "To operate the camp call beam."

  Shann's momentary bewilderment vanished. He knew enough of Surveyprocedure to guess the reason for such a move on the part of the aliens.

  "The settler transport?"

  "Yes, the ship. She won't planet here without the proper signal. And theThrogs can't give that. If they don't take her, their time's run outbefore they have even made a start here."

  "But how could they know that the transport is nearly due? When weintercept their calls they're pure gibberish to us. Can they read ourcodes?"

  "The supposition is that they can't. Only, concerning Throgs, all weknow is supposition. Anyway, they do know the routine for establishing aTerran colony, and we can't alter that procedure except in smallnonessentials," Thorvald said grimly. "If that transport doesn't pick upthe proper signal to set down here on schedule, her captain will call inthe patrol escort ... then exit one Throg base. But if the beetle-headscan trick the ship in and take her, then they'll have a clear five orsix more months here to consolidate their own position. After that itwould take more than just one patrol cruiser to clear Warlock; it willrequire a fleet. So the Throgs will have another world to play with, andan important one. This lies on a direct line between the Odin andKulkulkan systems. A Throg base on such a trade route could eventuallycut us right out of this quarter of the galaxy."

  "So you think they want to capture us in order to bring the transportin?"

  "By our type of reasoning, that would be a logical move--_if_ they knowwe are here. They haven't too many of those hounds, and they don't riskthem on petty jobs. I'd hoped we'd covered our trail well. But we had torisk that attack on the camp.... I needed the map case!" Again Thorvaldmight have been talking to himself. "Time ... and the right maps--" hebrought his fist down on the raft, making the platform tremble--"that'swhat I have to have now."

  Another patch of light-willows stretched along the river-banks, and asthey sailed through that ribbon of ghostly radiance they could see eachother's faces. Thorvald's was bleak, hard, his eyes on the stream behindthem as if he expected at any moment to see a Throg emerge from thesurface of the water.

  "Suppose that thing--" Shann pointed upstream with his chin--"followsus? What is it anyway?" Hound suggested Terran dog, but he couldn'tstretch his imagination to believe in a working co-operation betweenThrog and any mammal.

  "A rather spectacular combination of toad and lizard, with a few othergrisly touches, is about as close as you can get to a generaldescription. And that won't be too accurate, because like the Throgs itsremote ancestors must have been of the insect family. If the thingfollows us, and I think we can be sure that it will, we'll have to takesteps. There is always this advantage--those hounds cannot be controlledfrom a flyer, and the beetle-heads never take kindly to foot slogging.So we won't have to expect any speedy chase. If it slips its masters inrough country, we can try to ambush it." In the dim light Thorvald wasfrowning. "I flew over the territory ahead on two sweeps, and it is aqueer mixture. If we can reach the rough country bordering the sea,we'll have won the first round. I don't believe that the Throgs will bein a hurry to track us in there. They'll try two alternatives to chasingus on foot. One, use their energy beams to rake any suspect valley, andsince there are hundreds of valleys all pretty much alike, that willtake some time. Or they can attempt to shake us out with a dumdum shouldthey have one here, which I doubt."

  Shann tensed. The stories of the effects of the Throg's dumdum weaponwere anything but pretty.

  "And to get a dumdum," Thorvald continued as if he were discussing apurely theoretical matter and not a threat of something worse thandeath, "They'll have to bring in one of their major ships. Which theywill hesitate to do with a cruiser near at hand. Our own danger spot nowis the section we should strike soon after dawn tomorrow if the rate ofthis current is what I have timed it. There is a band of desert on thisside of the mountains. The river gorge deepens there and the land isbare. Let them send a ship over and we could be as visible as if we weresending up flares----"

  "How about taking cover now and going on only at night?" suggestedShann.

  "Ordinarily, I'd say yes. But with time pressing us now, no. If we keepstraight on, we could reach the foothills in about forty hours, maybeless. And we have to stay with the river. To strike across country therewithout good supplies and on foot is sheer folly."

  Two days. With perhaps the Throgs unleashing their hound on land,combing from their flyers. With a desert.... Shann put out his hands tothe wolverines. The prospect certainly didn't seem anywhere near assimple as it had the night before when Thorvald had planned this escape.But then the Survey officer had left out quite a few points which werenot pertinent. Was he also leaving out other essentials? Shann wanted toask, but somehow he could not.

  After a while he dozed, his head resting on his knees. He awoke, rousedout of a vivid dream, a dream so detailed and so deeply impressed in apicture on his mind that he was confused when he blinked at theriverbank visible in the half-light of early dawn.

  Instead of that stretch of earth and ragged vegetation now gliding pasthim as the raft angled along, he should have been fronting a vast skullstark against the sky--a skull whose outlines were oddly inhuman, fromwhose eyeholes issued and returned flying things while its sharplyprotruding lower jaw was lapped by water. In color that skull had been aviolent clash of blood-red and purple. Shann blinked again at theriverbank, seeing transposed on it still that ghostly haze of bone-baredome, cavernous eyeholes and nose slit, fanged jaws. That skull was amountain, or a mountain was a skull--and it was important to him; hemust locate it!

  He moved stiffly, his legs and arms cramped but not cold. The wolverinesstirred on either side of him. Thorvald continued to sleep, curled upbeyond, the pole still clasped in his hands. A flat map case was slungby a strap about his neck, its thin envelope between his arm and hisbody as if for safekeeping. On the smooth flap was the Survey seal, andit was fastened with a finger lock.

  Thorvald had lost some of the bright hard surface he had shown at thespaceport where Shann had first sighted him. There were hollows in hischeeks, sending into high relief those bone ridges beneath his eyesockets, giving him a faint resemblance to the skull of Shann's dream.His face was grimed, his field uniform stained and torn. Only his hairwas as bright as ever.

  Shann smeared the back of his hand across his own face, not doubtingthat he must present an even more disreputable appearance. He leanedforward cautiously to look into the water, but that surface was notquiet enough to act as a mirror.

 
; Getting to his feet as the raft bobbed under his shift of weight, Shannstudied the territory now about them. He could not match Thorvald'sinches, just as he must have a third less bulk than the officer, butstanding, he could sight something of what now lay beyond the risingbanks of the cut. That grass which had been so thick in the meadowlandsaround the camp had thinned into separate clumps, pale lavender incolor. And the scrawniness of stem and blade suggested dehydration andpoor soil. The earth showing between those clumps was not of the usualblue, but pallid, too, bleached to gray, while the bushes along thestream's edge were few and smaller. They must have crossed the line intothe desert Thorvald had promised.

  Shann edged around to face west. There was light enough in the sky tosight tall black pyramids waiting. They had to reach those distantmountains, mountains whose feet on the other side were resting in seawater. He studied them carefully, surveying each peak he could separatefrom its fellows.

  Did the skull lie among them? The conviction that the place he had seenin his dream was real, that it was to be found on Warlock, persisted.Not only was it a definite feature of the landscape somewhere in thewild places of this world, but it was also necessary for him to locateit. Why? Shann puzzled over that, with a growing uneasiness which wasnot quite fear, not yet, anyway.

  Thorvald moved. The raft tilted and the wolverines became growly. Shannsat down, one hand out to the officer's shoulder in warning. Feelingthat touch Thorvald shifted, one hand striking out blindly in a blowwhich Shann was just able to avoid while with the other he pinned themap case yet tighter to him.

  "Take it easy!" Shann urged.

  The other's eyelids flicked. He looked up, but not as if he saw Shann atall.

  "The Cavern of the Veil----" he muttered. "Utgard...." Then his eyes didfocus and he sat up, gazing around him with a frown.

  "We're in the desert," Shann announced.

  Thorvald got up, balancing on feet planted a little apart, looking tothe faded expanse of the waste spreading from the river cut. He staredat the mountains before he squatted down to fumble with the lock of themap case.

  The wolverines were growing restless, though they still did not try tomove about too freely on the raft, greeting Shann with vocal complaint.He and Thorvald could satisfy their hunger with a handful ofconcentrates from the survival kit. But those dry tablets could notserve the animals. Shann studied the terrain with more knowledge than hehad possessed a week earlier. This was not hunting land, but thereremained the bounty of the river.

  "We'll have to feed Taggi and Togi," he broke the silence abruptly. "Ifwe don't, they'll be into the river and off on their own."

  Thorvald glanced up from one of the tough, thin sheets of map skin,again as if he had been drawn back from some distance. His eyes movedfrom Shann to the unpromising shore.

  "How? With what?" he wanted to know. Then the real urgency of thesituation must have penetrated his mental isolation. "You have anidea--?"

  "There's those fish we found them eating back by the mountain stream,"Shann said, recalling an incident of a few days earlier. "Rocks here,too, like those the fish were hiding under. Maybe we can locate some ofthem here."

  He knew that Thorvald would be reluctant to work the raft in shore, tospare time for such hunting. But there would be no arguing with hungrywolverines, and he did not propose to lose the animals for the officer'swhim.

  However, Thorvald did not protest. They poled the raft out of the mainpull of the current, sending it in toward the southern shore in the leeof a clump of light-willows. Shann scrambled ashore, the wolverinesafter him, sniffling along at his heels while he overturned likelylooking rocks to unroof some odd underwater dwellings. The fish with therudimentary legs were present and not agile enough even in their nativeelement to avoid well-clawed paws which scooped them neatly out of theriver shallows. There was also a sleek furred creature with a broad flathead and paddle-equipped forepaws, rather like a miniature seal, whichTaggi appropriated before Shann had a chance to examine it closely. Infact, the wolverines wrought havoc along a half-mile section of bankbefore the Terran could coax them back to the raft.

  As they hunted, Shann got a better idea of the land about the river. Itwas sere, the vegetation dwindling except for some rough spikes ofthings pushing through the parched ground like flayed fingers, theirpuffed redness in contrast to the usual amethystine coloring ofWarlock's growing things. Under the climbing sun that whole stretch ofcountry was revealed in a stark bareness which at first repelled, andthen began to interest him.

  He discovered Thorvald standing on the upper bluff, looking out towardthe waiting mountains. The officer turned as Shann urged the wolverinesto the raft, and when he jumped down the drop to join them, Shann saw hecarried a map strip unrolled in his hand.

  "The situation is not as good as we hoped," he told the younger man."Well have to leave the river to cross the heights."

  "Why?"

  "There're rapids--bending in a falls." The officer squatted down,spreading out the strip and making stabs at it with a nervous fingertip. "Here we have to leave. This is all rough ground. But lying to thesouth there's a gap which may be a pass. This was made from an aerialsurvey."

  Shann knew enough to realize to what extent such a guide could go wrong.Main features of the landscape would be clear enough from aloft, butthere might be unsurmountable difficulties at ground level which werenot distinguishable from the air. Yet Thorvald had planned this journeyas if he had already explored their escape route and that it was as openand easy as a stroll down Tyr's main transport way. Why was it sonecessary that they try to reach the sea? However, since he had noobjection to voice except a dislike for indefinite information, Shanndid not question the other's calm assumption of command, not yet,anyway.

  As they embarked and worked back into the current, Shann studied hiscompanion. Thorvald had freely listed the difficulties lying beforethem. Yet he did not seem in the least worried about their being able towin through to the sea--or if he was, his outer shell of unconcernremained uncracked. Before their first day together had ended, theyounger Terran had learned that to Thorvald he was only another tool, tobe used by the Survey officer in some project which the other believedof primary importance. And his resentment of the valuation was undercontrol so far. He valued Thorvald's knowledge, but the other's attitudechilled and rebuffed his need for something more than a half partnershipof work.

  Why had Thorvald come back to Warlock in the first place? And why had itbeen necessary for him to risk his life--perhaps more than his life iftheir theory was correct concerning the Throgs' wish to capture aTerran--to get that set of maps from the plundered camp? When he hadfirst talked of that raid, his promised loot had been supplies to filltheir daily needs; there had been no mention of maps. By all signsThorvald was engaged on some mission. And what would happen if he,Shann, suddenly stopped being the other's obedient underling anddemanded a few explanations here and now?

  Only Shann knew enough about men to also know that he would not get anyinformation out of Thorvald that the latter was not ready to give, andthat such a showdown, coming prematurely, would only end in his owndiscomfiture. He smiled wryly now, remembering his emotions when he hadfirst seen Ragnar Thorvald months ago. As if the officer ever consideredthe likes, dislikes--or dreams--of one Shann Lantee. No, reality anddreams seldom approached each other. Dreams....

  "On any of those shoreline maps," he asked suddenly, "do they havemarked a mountain shaped like a skull?"

  Thorvald thrust with his pole. "Skull?" he repeated, a little absently,as he so often did in answer to Shann's questions unless they dealt withsome currently important matter.

  "A queer sort of skull," Shann said. Just as vividly as when he hadfirst awakened, he could picture that skull mountain with the flyingthings about its eye sockets. And that, too, was odd; dream impressionsusually faded with the passing of waking hours. "It has a protrudinglower jaw and the waves wash that ... red-and-purple rock----"

  "What?"

  He had Th
orvald's complete attention now.

  "Where did you hear about it?" That demand followed quickly.

  "I didn't hear about it. I dreamed of it last night. I stood there rightin front of it. There were birds--or things flying like birds--going inand out of the eyeholes----"

  "What else?" Thorvald leaned across his pole, his eyes alive, avid, asif he would pull the reply he wanted out of Shann by force.

  "That was all I remember--the skull mountain." He did not add his otherimpression, that he was meant to find that skull, that he _must_ findit.

  "Nothing...." Thorvald paused, and then spoke slowly, with a visiblereluctance. "Nothing else? No cavern with a green veil--a wide greenveil--strung across it?"

  Shann shook his head. "Just the skull mountain."

  Thorvald looked as if he didn't quite believe that, but Shann'sexpression must have been convincing, for he laughed shortly.

  "Well, there goes one nice neat theory up in smoke!" he commented. "No,your skull doesn't appear on any of our maps, and so probably my caverndoes not exist either. They may both be smoke screens----"

  "What--?" But Shann never finished that query.

  A wind was rising in the desert to blow across the slit which held theriver, carrying with it a fine shifting of sand which coasted down intothe water as a gray haze, coating men, animals, and raft, and sighing assnow sighs when it falls.

  Only that did not drown out another cry, a thin cry, diluted by themiles of land stretching behind them, but yet carrying that longululating howl they had heard in the Throg camp. Thorvald grinnedmirthlessly.

  "The hound's on trail."

  He bent to the pole, using it to aid the pace of the current. Shann,chilled in spite of the sun's heat, followed his example, wondering iftime had ceased to fight on their side.