"But it's so far--" she broke off. "Can we signal the ship?,.
"We can try. We're at least eight thousand feet higher than they are; maybe we're in a line-of-sight. Here, take the glasses, see if you can find any sign of a flash. But of course they could be behind some fold of the hills."
He put his arm around her, steadying the glasses. She did not draw away. She said, "Do you have the bearing for the ship?"
He gave it to her; she moved the glasses slightly, compass in hand.
"I see a light--no, I think it's lightning. Oh, what difference does it make?" Impatiently she put the glasses aside. He could feel her trembling. "You like these wide open spaces, don't you?"
"Why, yes," he said, slowly, "I've always loved the mountains. Don't you?"
In the darkness she shook her head. Above them the pale violet light of one of the four small moons gave a faint tremulous quality to the dimness. She said, faintly, "No. I'm afraid of them."
"Afraid?"
"I've been either on a satellite or training ship since I was picked for space at fifteen. "You" her voice wavered, "you get kind of agoraphobic."
"And you volunteered to come on this trip!" MacAran said, but she mistook his surprise and admiration for criticism. "Who else was there?" she said harshly, turned away and went into the tiny tent.
Once again, after they had swallowed their food--hot tonight, since there was no rain to put out their fire--MacAran lay awake long after the girl slept. Usually at eight there was only the sound of blowing rain and creak lag, lashing branches: tonight the forest seemed alive with strange sounds and noises, as if, on the rare snowless night, all its unknown life came alive. Once there wan a faraway howling that sounded like a tape he had heard, once, on Earth, of the extinct timber wolf; once an almost feline snarl, low and hoarse, and the terrified cry of some small animal, and then silence. And then, toward midnight, there was a high, eerie scream, a long wailing cry that seemed to freeze the very marrow of his bones. It sounded so uncannily like the scream Marco had given when attacked by the scorpion-ants that for a dreaming moment MacAran, shocked awake, started to leap to his feet; then as Camilla, roused by his movement, sat up is fright, it came again, and he realized nothing human could possibly have made it. It was a shrill, ululating cry that went on, higher and higher, into what seemed like ultrasonic; he seemed to hear it long after it had died away.
"What is it?" Camilla whispered, shaking.
"God knows. Some kind of bird or animal, I suppose."
They listened in silence to the ear-shattering scream again. She moved a little closer to him, and murmured, "It sounds as if it were in agony."
"Don't be imaginative. That may be its normal voice, for all we know."
"Nothing has a normal voice like that," she said firmly.
"How can we possibly know that?"
"How can you be so matter of fact? Oooh--" she flinched as the long shrilling sound came again. "It seems to freeze the marrow of my bones'!'
"Maybe it uses that sound to paralyze its prey," MacAran said. "It scares me too, damn it! If I were on Earth--well, my people were Irish, and I'd imagine the old Arran banshee had come to carry me off!"
"We'll have to name it banshee, when we find out what it is," Camilla said, and she wasn't laughing. The hideous sound came again, and she clapped her hands over her ears, screaming, "Stop it! stop it!"
MacAran slapped her, not very hard. "Stop it yourself, damn you! For all we know it might be prowling around outside and big enough to eat up both of us and the tent too! Let's keep quiet and just lie low until it goes away!"
"That's easier said than done," Camilla murmured, and flinched as the eerie banshee cry came again. She crept closer to him in the crowded quarters of the tent and said, in a very small voice, "Would you--hold my hand?"
He searched for her fingers in the dark. They felt cold and stiff, and he began to chafe them softly between his own. She leaned against him, and he bent down and kissed her softly on the temple. "Don't be afraid. The tent's plastic and I doubt if we smell edible. Let's just hope
whatever-it-is, the banshee if you like, catches itself a nice dinner soon and shuts up."
The howling scream sounded again, further away this time and without the ghastly bone-chilling quality. He felt the girl sag against his shoulder and eased her down again, letting her head rest against him. "You'd better get some sleep," he said gently.
Her whisper was almost inaudible. "Thanks, Rafe."
After he knew, by the sound of her steady breathing, that she slept again, he leaned over and kissed her softly. This was one hell of a time to start something like that, he told himself, angry at his own reactions, they had a job to do and there was nothing personal about it. Or shouldn't be. But still it was a long time until he slept.
They came out of the tent in the morning to a world transformed. The sky was clear and unstained by cloud or fog, and underfoot the hardy colorless grass had been suddenly carpeted by quick-opening, quick-spreading colored flowers. No biologist, MacAran had seen something like this in deserts and other barren areas and he knew that places with violent climates often developed forms of life which could take advantage of tiny favorable changes in temperature or humidity, however brief. Camilla was enchanted with the multicolored low-growing flowers and with the bee-like creatures who buzzed among them, although she was careful not to disturb them.
MacAran stood surveying the land ahead. Across one more narrow valley, crossed by a small running stream, lay the last slopes of the high peak which was their destination.
"With any luck we should be near the peak tonight, and tomorrow, just at noon, we can take our survey readings. You know the theory--triangulate the distance between here and the ship, calculate the angle of the shadow, we can estimate the size of the planet. Archimedes or somebody like that did it for Earth, thousands of years before anyone ever invented higher mathematics. And if it doesn't rain tonight you may be able to get some clearer sightings from the heights."
She was smiling. "Isn't it wonderful what just a little change in the weather can do? Will it be much of a climb?"
"I don't think so. It looks from here as if we could walk straight up the slope--evidently the timberline on this planet is higher than most worlds. There's bare rock and no trees near the peak, but only a couple of thousand feet below there's vegetation. We haven't reached the snowline yet."
On the higher slopes, in spite of everything, MacAran recovered his old enthusiasm. A strange world perhaps, but still, a mountain beneath him, the challenge of a climb. An easy climb it was true, without rocks or icefalls, but that simply freed him to enjoy the mountain panorama, the high clear air. It was only Camilla's presence, the knowledge that she feared the open heights, that kept him in touch with reality at all. He had expected to resent this, the need to help an amateur over easy stretches which he could have climbed with one leg in a cast, the waiting for her to find footing on the stretches of steep rocky scree, but instead he found himself curiously in rapport with her fear, her slow conquest of each new height. A few feet below the high peak he stopped.
"Here. We can run a perfectly good line of sight from here, and there's a flat spot to set up your equipment. We'll wait here for noon."
He had expected her to show relief; instead she looked at him, with a certain shyness, and said, "I thought you'd like to climb the peak, Rafe. Go ahead, if you want to, I don't mind."
He started to snap at her that it would be no fun at all with a frightened amateur, then realized this was no longer true. He pulled his pack off his shoulder and smiled at her, laying a hand on her arm. "That can wait," he said gently, "this isn't a pleasure trip, Camilla. This is the best spot for what we want to do. Did you adjust your chronometer so that we can catch noon?"