To the west—there—” Najar’s right hand was a compass direction, pointing southwest.
Baku—Hosteen thought the command that sent the eagle up and out into the sky. She soared past the point of their sighting, exulting, in the freedom she had not been able to find in the invisibly roofed valley. And from her came the report he wanted.
There was a party of men, encamped in a hollow, doubtless digging in for protection against the heat of the day. Now Hosteen depended upon Gorgol for advice.
“Can we reach them before the sun is too high?”
The Norbie was uncertain. And Hosteen could give him little help as to distance, though Najar insisted from the strength of the recon-beam the camp could not be farther than five miles. Only, five miles in this broken country for men on foot might be equal to half a day’s journey in the plains.
“If these others come into the Blue,” Gorgol warned, “then will all of my people unite against them, and there will be no hope of breaking truce between tribe and tribe.”
“That is so. But if you go to the clans and I and this one who knows much concerning the evil one go to the settlers, then with our talk we may hold them apart until the war arrows can be hidden and wise heads stand up in council.”
Gorgol climbed to the top of the rocky pile hiding the cave entrance, studying a southern route. His fingers moved.
“For me the way is not hard; for you it may be impossible. The choice is yours.”
“What about it?” Hosteen asked Najar. “They’ll have to hole up during the day. But they’ll be moving on. And they have scouts out in this territory or you wouldn’t have picked up that beam. And once they enter the big valley, there’ll be a fight for sure—one that Dean will win under the present circumstances and that will begin his war.”
“What will you do?” Najar counterquestioned.
“Try to reach them before night when they’ll move on—”
Perhaps that was the wrong decision; perhaps his place was here, pursuing Dean through the interior burrows. But even if some miracle of luck would put the renegade tech into his hands, there would still be war when the off-world force crossed the line into the Blue.
“You’ll never find them unless you follow the beam.” Najar rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth.
“I have Baku and Surra,” Hosteen replied, though in one way Najar was right. With the Recon scout they could take the quickest and easiest route to that camp, following the broadcast.
Najar hitched the cord of a canteen around his bony shoulder. “We’d better blast if we’re going.” He circled the rocks and started on.
Hosteen waved a hand at Gorgol, and the Norbie slid down the other side of the rock pile, heading into the valley to find the clansmen who might listen to him if they were not provoked by an invasion.
It was still early enough so that the heat was no more than that of midmorning in the milder season. Hosteen, eying the sun’s angle, thought they might squeeze in two or two and a half hours of travel before they would have to lay up. Then they might have another hour—if they were lucky—in the early evening. But the best way was to think only of what lay immediately ahead—first of the next ridge or crevice, then, as the sun burnt higher and patches of shade were few, of the next ten steps, five steps, ahead.
Surra, ranging wider than the men, disappeared, only keeping mental contact with Hosteen. The time came when he asked of her the location of a hiding hole, for the time between their rests grew shorter and the land beyond was as barren and sun-seared as that he had seen through the “window” in the sealed valley wall.
Najar took a quick step farther right.
“The beam—it has doubled its strength! We’re either practically on top of them or there’s an emergency recall.” From their careful, slow plod he broke into a trot, topping a small ravine and dropping into it in a cascade of rocks and earth. At the same time Surra’s alert came—she had sighted the camp.
The ravine fed them into a larger break, and there they came upon a halt station such as Norbies and hunters used in the Peaks—a collection of stones heaped over a pit in the earth—in which men could rest during the day in a livable atmosphere. Surra prowled about its circumference and raised her voice in a growl of feline exasperation.
Hosteen hurried on and clawed at the frawn-skin robe wet down with seal seam to close the entrance. A moment later the head and shoulders of a man pushed that aside—Kelson!
“Storm! We knew you were on the way—Baku came in a few minutes ago. Come in, man, come in. And you, Logan—” Then the Peace Officer took a closer look at Hosteen’s companion.
“That isn’t Logan—”
“No.” Hosteen shoved Najar ahead of him through the hole as Kelson retreated to give them passage. Then Surra and finally he dropped in. He stood there allowing his eyes to adjust to the gloom.
The quarters had been chosen well, the scooped out pit leading back into a cave of sorts. Only Hosteen had little time to assess his surroundings, for he was facing Brad Quade.
“Logan—?”
The question Hosteen had been asking himself for what seemed now to be days of time was put into words—and by the one he most dreaded hearing it from. All he had beside the bare fact of their parting on that strange transport device of the caves was Najar’s story of the other man who had taken that route but had not come to the installation hall. If Logan were still alive, he was lost somewhere in the tunnels.
“I don’t know—”
“You were with him?”
“Yes—for a while—”
“Storm”—Kelson’s hand on his shoulder brought him partly around to face the other—“we picked up that com cast from in there, the one you sent.”
All Hosteen’s frustration, fears, and fatigue boiled over into rage.
“Then why in the name of the Dang Devil are you heading in? Take one step into that valley and the rocket goes up for sure!” He was shaking. The anger in him, against this country, against the odds of ever pulling down Dean, against the tricks of the cave passages he could not hope to master, was eating at him until he wanted to scream out as loudly as Surra did upon occasion. And now the cat snarled from the shadows and Baku voiced a cry, both of them sensitive to his loss of control.
Two hands on his shoulders now forced him down, steadily but gently. He tried to twist out of that grip and discovered that his tired body would not obey him. Then there was a cup at his cracked lips, and he drank thirstily until it was removed.
“Listen, boy, no one is trying to run this through blind. We’ve scouts in the heights, but they have orders not to go into that Valley. Can you give us some idea of what is going on?” Quade spoke quietly as he settled Hosteen on the floor of their sunhide, moistened a cloth in a milky liquid he had poured from a small container, and with it patted Hosteen’s face, throat, and chest. The aromatic scent of the stuff brought with it soothing if fleeting memories of relaxing at the day’s end back at the holding.
The younger man was as sobered as if in the heat of his anger he had plunged into an icy stream. And in terse sentences he told them what little he knew, then waved Najar forward to add his part of the tale.
“You’re right,” Kelson commented when they were done. “Dean is the answer. An unstable tech with a genius-level brain turned loose in a Sealed Cave storehouse—Lord, that could finish Arzor just as quickly as a continental Tri-X bomb!”
“You’ve called the Patrol in?” Hosteen asked.
“Not officially yet. We’ve borrowed some trained personnel. Maybe now”—he stood up in the dugout, his hands on his hips, his face flushed with more than the heat of their shelter—“the Council will listen to a little common sense. This country should have been adequately patrolled five, ten years ago.”