She had no answer.
He exhaled. “I grant that you’ve every right to suspect me, but for the moment, no matter what my true identity, we’re on the same side. Does that answer your question?”
Linda nodded slowly. “Yes, I guess it does.”
“Then conjure Snowclaw some comrades-in-arms.”
Linda turned to the great white beast. “Snowy, do you have any objection?”
“Do whatever you have to do, Linda. I’m ready to go back there and kick some hind ends.”
“Okay,” Linda said. “We’ll try it.”
Linda sidestepped twice, then moved forward a bit. Sir Gene backed off to give her room.
“Here goes.”
She closed her eyes. There was silence. At length, something began to form in the air above her. At first it was an almost imperceptible movement, a whirling. Then it grew darker and more turbulent. It swelled and took shape, forming a funnel cloud.
Sir Gene and Snowclaw edged back. Linda’s eyes were still shut and her arms were stiff at her sides. She began to teeter, as if caught in the flux of some oscillating invisible force. Her eyelids fluttered.
The thing above her grew. It became a dark cone-shaped vortex, rotating rapidly. Dust rose all around.
Linda dropped to the ground. Snowclaw rushed to her and picked her up, carried her to one side.
“Linda, wake up.”
Head cradled in Snowclaw’s arms, Linda opened her eyes. “What happened?”
“Good Lord,” Sir Gene said.
The cloud was huge now, a black cyclone. A high-pitched whine emanated from it.
Suddenly a white shape dropped out of the cloud, a furred creature. It hit the ground, rolled, and sprang to its feet. It bore a huge broadax.
It was Snowclaw. “I’m ready,” he said.
Linda stood, looked at the Snowclaw who had helped her up, then at the new Snowclaw. “I guess it works.”
“What is that thing?” Sir Gene said, aghast, pointing at the cloud.
“I don’t know.”
“You mean you can’t control it?”
“Nope. Told you it’d be risky.”
The cloud disgorged another furry hulk. Another Snowclaw. The two new ones looked at each other, then at the original, who raised his broadax in greeting.
“Hi, guys,” he said.
“This is getting interesting,” Linda said.
Another Snowclaw dropped, then another. More followed.
“You’ll have to stop it at some point,” Sir Gene said.
Linda shook her head. “I can’t touch that thing. It’s going to make Snowclaws until it decides to quit.”
Dismayed, Sir Gene watched. The phenomenon seemed to be generating Snowclaws at an ever-increasing rate. It was a downpour of white fur and battle-axes.
“Well, General, you’ve got your army,” Linda said. “Now what are you going to do with it?”
Eighteen
Golfworld
“Look at this!” Thaxton said indignantly.
The fairway on the twelfth hole was mostly sand with patches of burnt grass. However daunting, though, the twelfth hole was an improvement over the eleventh, which had been mostly superheated rock, and a vast improvement over the tenth, which had featured hazards of sulphuric acid and man-eating plants in the rough. (They had looked man-eating, Thaxton claimed.)
“Get out your sand wedge,” Dalton said.
The gargoyle twosome was playing ahead, making their approach shots.
“Go ahead,” Dalton said. “You have the honor.”
Thaxton had birdied the last hole. His injuries seemed to have been liberating, somehow. What did he have to lose? His play had improved. His leg was unbroken but very sore, and he still hobbled using his partner’s two-iron as a crutch. He owed his intact bones to the fact that the clubhouse roof had not been concrete but some lighter material. Also, the offending chunk of masonry had rolled onto him after falling. A direct hit would have done real damage.
“They look out of range,” Thaxton said as he watched the gargoyles hike to the green. He yelled fore, anyway, and hit his drive.
They played across the desert. Thaxton swore he saw things moving in the sand. Dalton saw nothing.
“Are there bloody big worms in sand?” he asked.
“You never know what you may find in a dune,” Dalton said.
In the burning wastes every lie was a “fried egg,” but they carried on. Dalton made a beauty of a cut shot and was on the green in three. Thaxton did even better, sinking his chip shot for an eagle.
“You’re quite proud of yourself, aren’t you?” Dalton said.
“All in a day’s play, my dear fellow,” Thaxton said smugly.
Dalton two-putted and they went off to find the next tee, which was nowhere in sight.
“That way?” Thaxton asked, pointing to the right.
“Out across there,” Dalton said, indicating flats ahead.
They walked for a good long while. The desert wastes blended to arid plain. The sky became a strange color, a sort of yellowish green. Dark mountains lay opposite the large blue sun.
“God, it is blue, isn’t it?” Thaxton said, shading his eyes.
“Blue-white. A blue giant star, right at the top of the Main Sequence.”
“The what?”
“Astronomy lingo. Blue giants are very large, very hot stars.”
“Bloody hot. I’m sweating like a Turk.”
“What’s this?”
Thaxton looked around. “What’s what?”
“Up ahead. Is that a road?”
Indeed it was a road, a wide black highway running from horizon to horizon. They walked to it and stood on the shoulder, looking one way and then the other. No traffic in sight. Thaxton put one spiked shoe on the paved surface and scraped it back and forth.
“Doesn’t seem to be macadam or asphalt.”
“Black concrete?” Dalton ventured.
“A bit strange.”
“Yeah,” Dalton said, nodding slowly.
Thaxton tilted his head to one side. “Hear that?”
“What?”
“A buzzing?”
Dalton listened. “Yup. Any electric lines around?”
“I think it’s coming from the road.” Thaxton tried to stoop but couldn’t.
Dalton did and cocked an ear. “Maybe. Faintly buzzing.”
“Interesting.”
“I hear something else.”
Thaxton looked up the road. “Something’s coming.”
They waited. At the road’s vanishing point a silver dot grew to a bigger dot, then got a lot bigger very fast. The thing roared like a wounded beast.
“Good God, what’s that?”
“A very fancy eighteen-wheeler.”
It was a trailer truck, that was sure, but an intimidatingly futuristic one, composed of daring curved planes, clear bubbles, and other rakish features. Whatever it was rolling on, there seemed to be more than eighteen of them. The vehicle was huge and it was traveling at a terrific rate of speed.
Suddenly it began to decelerate, emitting all sorts of horrendous screeches and roars. The golfers warily stepped back from the edge of the road. The vehicle swerved to the shoulder as it braked and came to a shuddering stop not more than ten feet from the golfers.
The two walked around the gargantuan cab and looked up at what they took to be the driver’s window.
A port hissed open and a man poked his head out. He was about thirty-five with wavy dark hair and twinkling eyes. There was a rugged, blue-jawed handsomeness to him. He flashed an engaging smile.
“Greetings, gentlemen. We didn’t know this planet was inhabited. Fact is, it’s not on any official map. Are we lost, or are you?”
“We’re not natives,” Thaxton said, “if that’s what you mean. Just playing a few holes of golf.”
“Golf, eh? What’s your handicap?”
“Oh, God, high twenties, I’m afraid. Do you golf?”