“That’s what we have to find out. Get moving!”
Travis, his bruises and aches gone, dressed, buckled the arms belt Ross pushed into his hands. “Let’s have the story.”
Ross was already in the corridor, every line of his taut body expressing his impatience.
“We were out there—fixed up a trading stone. There were a couple of flyers watching us and we waited to see if they would come down. When they didn’t, Ashe said we had better take cover, as if we were going on to the buildings. Ashe detoured around a fallen tree—I saw him go. I tell you— I saw him! Then he wasn’t there—or anywhere!” Ross was clearly shaken well out of his cultivated imperviousness.
“A ground trap?” Travis gave the first answer probable as he followed Ross to the air lock. Renfry was there making fast two lengths of silky cord barely coarser then knitting yam but which, as they had discovered earlier, possessed a surprising strength. So hitched to the ship, they could prowl the vicinity and yet leave a guide to their whereabouts.
“I crawled over that ground inch by inch,” Ross said between set teeth. “Not so much as a worm or ant hole showing. He was there one minute—the next he wasn’tl”
Making fast their lines and leaving Renfry as lookout, they descended into the trampled and blasted area about the globe where the green was now withering under a sun not far from setting. Darkness would complicate their search. They had better move swiftly, find some clue before they were so baffled.
Ross took the lead, balancing along a fallen tree trunk to its crown of dropping fern fronds, now crushed and broken. “He was right here.”
Travis swung down into the crushed foliage. The sharp smell of sticky sap, as well as the heavy scents of flowers and leaves, was cloying. But Ross was right. The vegetation on the ground had been pulled away in a wide sweep, and there was no sign that the dank earth beneath had been disturbed. He sighted a round-toed track, but it was twin to the ones he was leaving in the mold and could have been pressed there by either Ashe or Ross. But, because it was the only possible trace, he turned in the direction it pointed.
A moment or two later, at the very edge of the clearing Ross had made during his search, Travis saw something else. There was another tree trunk lying there, the remains of a true forest giant. And it had not been brought down by the landing of the ship, but had lain there long enough for soil and fallen leaves to build up about it, to grow a skin or red-capped moss or fungi.
Across that moss there were now two dark marks, ragged scars, suggesting that someone or something had clawed for a desperate hold against irresistible force. Ashe? But how had he been captured without Ross’s seeing or hearing his struggles?
Travis vaulted the tree trunk. There was his confirmation— another footprint deep in the mold. But beyond it-nothing—absolutely nothingl And no living creature could have continued along that stretch of soft earth without leaving a trace. From this point it did appear that Ashe had vanished into thin air.
Airl Not on the ground but above it was where they would have to search. Travis called to Ross. There were tall trees about them now, trees with twenty feet or more of smooth bole before their first fem branches broke from the trunks. The wind rustled there, but they could sight no movement that was not normal, hear no sounds aloft.
Then one of the blue flyers came along, hovering over Travis, watching him with all four of its stalked eyes. The flyers—had they taken Ashe? He couldn’t believe that. A man of Ashe’s weight and strength, undoubtedly struggling hard into the bargain—at least the scrapping on the moss suggested that—could not have been airborne unless by a large flock of the blue creatures working together. But the Apache believed as completely as if he had witnessed it, that Ashe had been taken away either through the air or along a road of treetops.
“How did they get him up?” Ross puzzled. He appeared willing to accept Travis’ idea, but the Apache, in turn, was forced to agree such a maneuver would be difficult. “And getting up,” the time agent continued, “where in the world did they take him?”
“This lies in the opposite direction from the three nearest buildings,” Travis pointed out. “To transport a prisoner might force them to travel in a direct line to their own quarters-speed would matter more than concealment.”
“Which means a direct strike out into, the jungle.” Ross eyed the wilderness of trees, vines and brush with disfavor. “Well, there’s one little trick—let me have your belt. This was something they showed us in basic training—good old basic.” He took Travis’ belt, made it fast to his own, increasing its expansion to the last hole before he measured it about the tree. But the girth of the bole was too great. Ross untied his cord connection with the ship, slashed off a length to incorporate in the circle of belts. This time it served, uniting him to the bole. With the belt to support him, he hitched up the trunk which overhung the signs of struggle.
The fronds shook as he forced his way between them. “Here’s your clue,” he called down. “There’s been a rope strung about this limb—worn a groove in the bark. And— Well, well, well—they’re not so bright, after all—or they don’t think we are. Here’s a way to travel, all right—and by the upper reaches. Come up and see!”
A line made of cord and belts slapped down the trunk and Travis caught at it, making the climb with less agility than Ross had shown, to join the other at his perch among the fronds. He found the agent folding up between his hands another rope, but a supple green one which aped the vines native to this aeriel place.
“You do a Tarzan act.” Ross flipped the rope end for emphasis. “Swing over to that tree, probably find another rope end there—and so on. I still don’t see how they boosted Ashe along. Though”—his eyes narrowed—"maybe they waited to go until I went back to the ship for you.”
Travis eyed the rope. “Leaving that here means one thing—”
“That they intend to return?” Ross nodded. “They may have some bright plans about scooping us up one by one. But who are ‘they’? Not those blue flyers….”
“Those might act as their hounds.” Travis tried not to glance at the ground, for his present perch inspired little confidence in him.
“And that fruit present was bait for a trap,” Ross agreed. “It fits. The fruit to get us out of the ship, the flyers to report when we came. Then—pounce!—one of us is snaffled! Only Ashe isn’t going to stay a prisoner.”
“This could be a trap, too,” Travis reminded him as he gave the rope a jerk and discovered Ross had been right, the line was very firmly attached to its tree anchorage.
“True enough. But we’ll find some way.”
“At night?” The sun was close to setting. Travis wanted to be on the trail just as much as Ross, but common sense would pay off better than a reckless dash to the rescue.
“Night—” Ross squinted at the patches of sunlight. “These things move around in the daytime. And they’re used to heights.”
“Which suggests there may be good reasons for not traveling on the ground or in the dark.” Travis was growing a little tired of talking. “Our friend in the red house may be one of those reasons. What is your solution?”
“We go back to the domed place—up to the top. There is a balcony around the dome itself, and we can take our bearings from there.”
Travis could agree with that. But they had to argue down the protests of Renfry. The technician’s demands to accompany them Ross was able to overcome by pointing out crisply that alone of their party Renfry possessed the knowledge, or fraction of knowledge, which might mean their eventual control of the ship, and so of their future. And the need for a scouting party before dark urged the necessity for speed in their try to locate landmarks which might guide them on a hunt for Ashe.