As he emerged back into the small clearing, he saw movement in the bush, crouched, but knew-from the strange sideways rush and then stillness-that it wasn’t human. The local had followed-or waited for-him here.
More motion on the other side, and a rush of air in the trees behind him. Scratch that: the locals are here. All around me.
Caine held the gun away, knew what he had to do even while several million years of carefully-evolved self-preservation instincts roared negations so loud that he couldn’t think. So he acted.
He crouched down, reached far forward, laid the rifle in the direct sunlight. Then he frog-walked a step back, waited another moment, and kneeled. He bowed his head.
The only thing he heard was the blood pounding in his ears-and he listened to it for what seemed like a very long time. Then, from the left, came a shuddering whistle that slowly turned into what was clearly recognizable as a thin keening. Two more “voices” rose up from the right, then many from the higher branches of the canopy behind him. He lost count, knowing only that there were many-dozens, probably.
And then nothing. As if someone had found the off-switch for their grieving, it was over. He looked up, heard a single, dwindling swooping noise in the trees behind him. And that was all. He was alone again.
He rose slowly, picked up his weapon, looked at the sun. Where to sleep tonight? I need to find some flat rock, a good clear area-and he suddenly knew that he had seen only one suitable place since leaving the camp where he had killed the Pavonosaur twenty years ago this morning. The mountainside amphitheatre. He expected to feel fear, but didn’t. Not because he had become brave-he knew he hadn’t-but because he was too tired by the many successive shocks, fears, and enigmas of the day. He headed back up the trail.
So when he arrived at the head of the trail-where it met the western extension which led to the amphitheater, and the broad northern trail which led back toward the site of his encounter with the Pavonosaur-he was beyond being surprised to discover the local waiting there for him. Caine stopped, realized he was still carrying his gun in his hands, shouldered it. The local made a low noise-something like a buzzing purr-and set off on the northern trail. Caine, shrugging to no one but himself, followed without a word.
Following behind the local, Caine noticed what he had not before: that the creature’s-no, the being’s-legs had a “reverse knee,” like a dog or a cat, but that it stood and walked in a plantigrade fashion: its full foot in contact with the ground. However, when the local used a bit more speed, he leaned forward into the motion and came up onto his toes, shifting into a typical digitigrade stance. Which produced the distinctive loping gait that Caine had seen in the thermal-imaging footage from the Navy recon VTOL.
Four times within the first five or six kilometers, Mr. Local turned aside, led them into the brush for a few hundred yards. Each time their detour ended at another-albeit smaller-burnt dirt clearing. Caine was beyond outrage or even pity: that was for later, for a time and a place at which the responsible parties could be made-somehow-to pay for their deeds.
The fifth time, Mr. Local did not even bother with a detour. He stopped, turned, pointed off into the bush, huddled down and drew a circle with his finger-which was actually one of four radially-arranged, prehensile digits. He pointed into the bush again. Caine just nodded and followed when Mr. Local resumed their northward course.
The next time, Mr. Local just pointed off to one side of the trail and kept moving. After half a dozen such indications, Caine stopped counting.
Night was falling when Mr. Local veered onto a small path to the left. It plunged into a narrow defile between the shoulders of two foothills which crowded against the trail from the west. Caine checked his watch: in thirty minutes, he was due to contact Site One so that they could relay his daily check-in call to CINCPAV COMCEN-but flanked by these steep granite escarpments, there was no way he was going to get that signal through. And then he realized that, tonight, he would not be checking in with Site One at all. He would be using Brill’s portable transmitter to send a three-digit recall code directly to Admiral Silverstein. Establishing contact with Mr. Local meant that Caine’s mission was over. It also meant that he had to be extracted posthaste, because now he was in a race to reach Earth before CoDevCo-and possibly others-could stop him from delivering the news of what he had found on Dee Pee Three.
Mr. Local seemed to pick up the pace a bit when the defile opened out into another valley: much smaller, but-for all practical intents and purposes-inaccessible, except through the narrow passage they had just come. A refuge? Mr. Local’s hidden home?
But Caine saw he was not to learn the answer to that, for Mr. Local selected yet another new trail. This one was a narrow switchback that ascended the rear of the hills, which sheltered this glen from the main valley. It was an easy climb and was mostly carpeted by the spongy weeds and low fronds that were Dee Pee Three’s equivalent of meadow grass.
It was dark when they reached the summit of the hill and stood looking out across the valley and up toward the stars. Caine hazarded a closer approach to Mr. Local, who made no move away when the human came to stand beside him. Caine wondered if he would be so brave in the Pavonian’s place-and doubted it.
For a long moment they looked at the stars together in silence. Then the Pavonian crouched down and patted the ground. Then he patted his own chest. He repeated the combination: he patted the ground and patted his chest.
Yes. Your place. Your planet. I wish I could tell you how sorry-
But then Mr. Local stood again, and pointed at Caine, the tendril-finger unfolding with slow, deliberate precision at the center of his chest. Then Mr. Local turned and pointed up, back across the valley.
At the stars.
Caine felt his scalp jump back reflexively. My God, he knows. He knows we’re from space. Good Christ- “Yes. Yes, yes. That’s right. We’re from there, from the stars-”
The Pavonian made a rumbling noise in his chest-which was where his mouth seemed to be-and moved back a step. He pointed at Caine again.
Who nodded. Okay. Me.
Then Mr. Local slowly, cautiously, moved behind Caine, before extending his arm, then his hand, and then one tendril at the stars-again.
Caine followed along the sightline of the alien arm, hand, finger-and noted, with surprise, that he was looking at something very familiar. Although appearing flattened, the Big Dipper was clearly visible about one-third of the way above the center of the western horizon. The cup of the dipper was a square box here, the handle now a straight bar with one kink in it.
The surrounding stellar patterns similarly reprised those found in Earth’s own night sky. The Big Dipper was still discernibly part of the larger constellation of Ursa Majoris, which had retained much of its shape. However, here the Great Bear was somewhat thinner, leaner-more like a wolverine. Except, this one had grown bull’s horns-and had a very bright yellow eye.
Caine stood silently for several long seconds, waiting. Okay: so I’m looking. He turned; Mr. Local was very close, and Caine finally saw his eyes-a triangle of lusterless mauve circles on each angled “side” of his face.