Still, he wasn’t precipitate. Caution reinforced his habitual lassitude while trying to dispell it. Half a dozen times he tensed for combat, only to relax hopelessly. But finally he found a place—and the will—to make a stand.
He passed up a wide shelf, and let them tug him along a narrow ledge without much objection. He chose a near-vertical pitch about a hundred feet from the bottom—a mere crack that slanted upward to the right, offering the shallowest of hand- and foot-holds.
He could only hope that he wasn’t in sight from the trail—or else that the villagers had left. He couldn’t see through the treetops to make sure. But he hadn’t the strength to worry.
He froze to the rock, pulling as if in fright. The two witch-doctors in single file above him jerked on the chains they held. But they needed a hand apiece to hold on with, and couldn’t lift him.
The one below, standing on a six-inch ledge, tried to push. When that didn’t work, he broke off a chunk of rock and beat Chet’s left foot with it.
Spurred by the sudden pain, Chet kicked the witch-doctor in the face. The Agvar fell, screaming—until he crashed through the treetops and was still.
To Chet, forgetful of his hearing superiority, it seemed as if that outcry would be heard on Earth itself. Certainly he expected it to alarm the countryside. Still, unless the swift foot-thrust had been seen, no one would be sure the witch-doctor’s fall was not an accident….
Chet had tasted victory for the first time in three years! He’d had a little revenge, and he wanted more. He could take the other two witch-doctors with him to death!
He put all his weight on the chains they held. But they chose not to die—let go, instead, to save themselves. The chain-ends rattled past, dislodging a small avalanche of dust and gravel and bruising stones—dislodging him when the full weights jerked at neck and waist.
Prepared, he didn’t let himself be pulled away from the cliff’s face. He slid down it to the ledge from which the Agvar below him had fallen. There he teetered a moment, balancing precariously on toes scraped raw in his slide. Clawing fingers found a crack to the right, a knob to the left—safety! He clung there breathless.
No time for resting! Rattling stones warned of pursuit. He looked quickly around, found a route, and after a short traverse let himself slide to a long talus-slope. Down it he ran barefoot through sharp debris into concealing mosses.
The silence alarmed him. But it freed him from the need for craft; he didn’t know what to avoid nor where it might be lurking, so he set out for the spaceship by what he hoped was the shortest way.
In the village, he’d located the landing-place by sound, fixed it by sun. The sun would guide him now. Not accurately, but well enough.
The ship would have landed in a clearing. Standing on its tail, it should loom high over the woods. And its men would scatter—he ought to run into one.
Run he did, trotting under thirty pounds of hardwood chain on reserves of strength dredged from a deep pit of desperation, through a forest overgrown with menace, full of life he could always sense but seldom see—of noises whose origin he couldn’t guess.
The Agvars, for all their inferior hearing, could at least interpret what they heard. Chet couldn’t. Every whispered cry, wild grunt and muttered growl was completely unfamiliar. He didn’t know which sound signalled danger. He feared them all.
But more than sounds he feared the silence that chinked the logs of time between each nerve-wracking noise. Often he had to stop and rest, and silence threatened him then like the ominous quiet of bated breath. When he’d force himself to go on, each tree seemed like a porchful of malicious old women, pretending to disregard him as he passed, certain to make trouble when he’d gone. The buzz of small life-forms was a deprecatory murmur, ready at any second to burst into condemnation and terror….
What was that sound? And that? Noises that seemed out of place in their familiarity pinned him to the forest floor.
It was only the village. Satisfied, he worked up courage to skirt the place and walk on toward the ship.
But he was near collapse. When he heard human voices he could only yell incoherently once or twice, sob, and pass out.
Dimly through succeeding days Chet was aware of the ship’s sickbay, of the enlisted attendants, the hovering doctor, the silent commander. Later he realized he’d been kept under opiates so his body could recover while his mind rested. At the time, he felt only the dimness.
It wore off abruptly. He was in a civilized cot, stretching luxuriously, aware of warmth and comfort and a cheerful voice that seemed familiar.
He opened his eyes. A fat young corpsman had been watching.
“How do you feel, sir?” the boy said. “Ready for coffee?”
“Sure,” Chet answered. And grinned lazily as he sat up to sip the proffered cup. “You’ve taken good care of me.”
“Used to be a barber in civilian life,” the boy said smugly. And Chet found with an exploratory hand that he’d been shaven and shorn, bathed, bandaged where necessary—even, he saw, clad in a pair of fancy red broadcloth pajamas.
“You’ve got me cleaned up, all right,” he said. “Whose p.j.’s have I got on?”
“Dr. Pine’s, sir. You’ll see him in a couple of minutes—he and the Old Man been waiting to question you. There’s a robe and slippers, if you want me to help you get up….”
“I’m not helpless,” Chet said, boasting in his turn. He proved it by climbing—gingerly—out of the cot. The boy helped him into the robe, found the slippers, pushed the small room’s one chair an inch closer to the open porthole, and left, closing the door behind him.
Vaguely Chet found he knew the two men who soon entered the room—they’d been there before. But this was his first fully conscious look at them. Commander Seymour, the C.O., looked surprisingly young for his job. He was young, Chet decided—not over thirty-five—and his short slight figure made him seem younger still.
He had few words. “You’re looking fine, Barfield,” he said, and sat on the edge of the cot, thin face impassive, gray eyes alert.
Dr. Pine—tall, balding, affable—was associated in Chet’s mind with hypodermic needles, bitter medicines, restrictions. Today, the doctor gave him a firm and friendly handshake, but yesterday, Chet felt, that same hand had inflicted pain.
“Glad to see you looking so well,” the doctor said, taking a stance against the wall by the porthole. He sounded sincere enough, but Chet, resuming his chair, wondered how much of the gladness was based on the doctor’s pride in professional handiwork.
There was an awkward pause. Chet remembered to murmur polite replies to the men who were so obviously sizing him up. Then he asked, “When do you think I’ll be ready for duty?”
His visitors exchanged a glance. “Later,” Commander Seymour said. “Take it easy while you can, Barfield.” He smiled unconvincingly at what must have been meant as a joke.
Talk again lapsed, and Chet became uncomfortable. “The corpsman said you wanted to ask me some things,” he said. And added, “You’ve already questioned me, haven’t you?”
“Only a little,” Dr. Pine said, flexing his long fingers and looking down at them. “We—ah—we had to find out about your shipmates. Commander Seymour wanted to look for them, naturally….”
Naturally…. “Are we going to leave here now, sir?” Chet asked the commander.
“Not yet,” he said. “Dr. Pine has a job to do.”
“What’s that, Doctor?”
“I’m going to study your Agvar friends, Mr. Barfield. Want to help?”
“Sure,” Chet said. “There’s nothing I’d rather do than bring you a few corpses to dissect.”