There was another click, and then the voice resumed—but a different, fearful, worried voice now: "Report two: Vision did not improve. I was forced to fly and land by radar, and landed with some difficulty. I do not know if the vehicle is damaged. The blue material appears to be covering the viewports. I will reconnoiter outside and return for further report." Click . . .
And then nothing, nothing but the faint distant hiss of the recorder coil unwinding under the scanner heads.
Ben Yale let it run through, hoping against hope for more word, but there was none. He had felt there would not be. He could write the rest of the story himself. He stood at the port of the vehicle, looking out at the great yellow-tipped trees, the marshland and moss, the distant river; and'he could imagine that other he standing in that place and looking at that same view, and venturing out to explore this strange new world . . . and never noticing the blue slime that clung to him as he swabbed experimentally at the viewports, or steadied himself against the landing skids. And then, later, trying to get back to the vehicle and medicpacs, and not quite making it—as the skeleton outside attested . . .
Ben Yale scowled, rubbing absentiy at his bandages, refusing to entertain the unwanted thought that kept popping into his head: suppose this other Ben Pertin had used the medicpacs . . . and suppose modern galactic medicine had not been enough to stop the inroads of the blue slime?
Belatedly he became aware of the excitement outside. What were they rattling on about?
He activated the Pmal translator on his arm, and managed to catch a few words of what the giant was shouting. Something about aliens in the sky?
At once Ben Yale was all attention. Now he remembered hearing the zzzzt of laser weapons, and the screams of those creatures like the one the boy appeared to keep for a pet. Something was surely going on, but what? .
He leaped to the top of the vehicle, staring toward the sky. Yes, there was something there, tantalizingly at the very limit of visibility, something that looked like tiny dots proceeding in file across the broad dome of Cuckoo's heaven. They were terribly near some of the bright clouds in Pertin's line of vision, which made the identification of them even harder; but surely that one creature that glinted so brilliantly had to be one of the winged girls?
And that other—was it human?
He stood benumbed until he heard the screams of wild orgs passing overhead, and remembered to scramble out of sight just in time; he did not want them dining off him! He saw the boy's org join them without any particular interest, and then realized something was going on overhead.
The straight line of beings had broken up. Several were dropping away, the others changing course. He heard the scream of high-speed transport, and caught the distant glint of some sort of air vehicles moving in toward the dissolving party of creatures.
Ben Yale pawed at his forehead, and realized the visors were gone; the red-haired giant had picked them up, now seemed to be playing with them. Pertin bounded over and grabbed for them.
To his surprise, the giant fled from him as if he were carrying the plague. "Give me my glasses!" Pertin roared, pursuing. The giant ripped off a series of words, which the Pmal struggled over and produced:
"Don't touch! Stay away! I'll kill!"
"They're mine!" Pertin said stubbornly, and, hesitantly, Redlaw glanced at the boy, shrugged, and slowly drew them off his head. He did not hand them directly to Ben Yale but dropped them on the ground and stepped quickly back.
Ben Yale didn't care; he snatched them up and put them on, staring blindly at the sky.
It was so hard to find anything at this extreme distance! Twice he caught a corner of one of the bright clouds, and the magnified light dazzled him. Then he found something, lost it, zeroed in on it again: It was a vessel, like the ones the giant had called "Watcher ships." It looked ugly and dangerous, and it was heading purposefully, at high speed, toward where the party had been sailing along. He sought the party again, with success until he heard the thrump-thrump-thrump of a steam rocket. Peering under the glasses, he saw the string of steam puffs the jet left behind, and managed to get the person who was using it in quick focus just a moment before it dropped out of sight.
Before she dropped out of sight.
Ben Yale stood transfixed, heedless of the shouts of the boy and the giant, staring emptily in to the now empty sky where he had just seen, diving at breakneck speed for the jungle, the girl he had left behind him on Sun One and had thought never to see again in this life, Zara Doy.
FOURTEEN
When Zara realized that she was alone on this strange planet, she was not so much afraid as deeply resentful. She had not had the practice of much physical fear. There was little occasion for it on tamed, human-filled Earth. The sorts of fear she had learned to experience were fear of the unknown, as when she had volunteered for this assignment—and that was more excitement, really—and, from time to time, the fear, or the angry suspicion to be more exact, that some rival was going to damage her standing with the stereo audiences, or that she might fail to perform well in a broadcast.
It was only as time passed, and the only nearby sounds she heard were of stirrings and whisperings in the forest around her, that she began to understand that that quivering in her shoulders, that jumpy need to look around all 360 degrees at once, were the beginnings of terror.
She was not quite alone. She had her communications equipment. She could be in touch with the ground station in any moment. She might even hear, through the Pmal links, some message from her partners, if they happened to come close enough to her. But nothing came from the Pmal, and she drew her hand back a dozen times from the switch that would activate the long-range communicator. Something had drawn those enemy ships toward them—homing on their transmissions? She did not know, but until she felt more sure she was reluctant to risk bringing them back.
And she could hear them, could even catch glimpses from time to time that had to be them, circling low over the treetops, searching. Searching, she felt quite sure, for such of their quarry as had evaded them—like herself.
What had become of the others?
Of only one thing was she sure: in the fight, her side had not triumphed, because there the stranger ships were, roaming boldly around. Val and the Scorpian had lost that battle, and if they survived they too were in hiding.
She thought of her husband and wondered if he had taken part in that fight, or if, at the last moment, he had sheared off and followed after her. There were two conclusions from that thought. If he had followed her, he should be nearby. If he had not, he was probably dead.
At that moment she realized the drone of the enemy ships was no longer distant.
She crept to the edge of a fern-bordered lake, and peered cautiously upward. The drone grew louder, a ceaseless, crushing, killing sound, and something appeared over the trees.
It was long and tapered, with finlike wings at the end and mottled markings that were no doubt a form of camouflage. It poked into the little circle of sky over the lake like a thick, blunt spear.
Zara Gentry' cautiously pulled back, away from the black water of the lake, into the doubtful shelter of the trees. The Watcher ship floated out over the lake, supporting itself easily with the thrust of its propulsive jets against the light gravity of Cuckoo. A thin golden snake was trailing below it, slipping around the treetops, dropping into the black water. A snooper device, Zara guessed, and tried to be perfectly still.