Ross moved out on the narrow path. It had twists and turns, but the way did run in the direction of the funnel top which was their first goal.
“We do,” he decided.
Travis dropped into a loose trot which fitted his feet into the slot of the track. He caught small sounds in the vegetation about them—twitters, squeaks, sometimes a harsh, croaking call. But he saw nothing of the creatures that voiced them.
The trail took a dip into a shallow ravine. At the bottom a stream trickled lazily over brown-green gravel and above them the sky was open. There they disturbed a fisher.
Travis’ hand went to the grip of his blaster, dropped away again. Like the blue flyers, this strange inhabitant of the unknown world gave no impression of hostility. The beast was about the size of a wild cat, and somewhat similar to a cat in appearance. At least, it possessed a round Jiead with eyes set slighdy aslant. But the ears very very long and sharply pointed with heavy tufts of—feathers at their tips. Feathersl The blue flyer had been furred, provided with insect wings. The fisher, plainly a ground dweller, was fluffily clothed in soft feathers of the same blue-green shade as the foliage about. Had it not been crouched on the rock in the open, it would have passed unseen.
Its haunches and hind legs were heavy and it squatted back upon them. Two pairs of far more slender and longer front limbs held a limp, scaled thing which it had been methodically denuding of a series of fringe legs by the aid of teeth and claws. Interrupted, the animal watched Travis with round-eyed interest, displaying neither alarm nor anger at his sudden appearance.
As the Terran edged forward, the creature freed one front leg, still clasping its prey in the other three, and flicked a fringe leg or two from its feather-clad paunch in absent-minded tidiness. Then folding its breakfast to its middle with the intermediary pair of arms or forepaws, it leaped spectacularly from a sitting position, to be hidden in the brush.
“Rabbit—cat—owl—whatsis,” Ross commented. “Wasn’t afraid though.”
“Means that it either hasn’t any enemies—or none resembling us.” Travis studied the curtain into which the fisher had plunged. “Yes, it’s still watching—from over there,” he added in a half whisper.
But the presence of the feather-clad feaster was in a way a promise of security along this road. Travis found the opening of the trail on the other side of the stream. And he was now better pleased to follow it, Even though once more the tree fems closed in overhead and he and Ross were swallowed in what was a tight tunnel of green.
The indications of a busy, hidden life about them continued to come in sounds. Twice they stumbled on evidence of some hunter or hunters working the trail. Once they found a fluff of plush-like gray fur still bedaubed with light pinkish blood, then a clot of cream-yellow feathers and draggled skin.
There was an open apron about the funnel building. A fan of stone, dappled with red moss but not yet claimed in entirity by the jungle and the game trail, skirted this, running on past the building. If they were to continue to follow Ross’ plan, they must strike back now into the jungle again and bull their way through its resilient mass. But first, for the benefit of any watchers, they crossed that moss-spattered apron to the building as if about to search its interior. Only there was no easy entrance here. A grill, of the same imperishable material as that which formed the fan area before the door, forbade their entry. Through its bars they could see parts of the inside. Plainly this particular structure had been left furnished after a fashion, for objects, muffled in disintegrating coverings, crowded the floor.
Ross, his face pressed close to the bars, whistled. “I’d say they were getting ready for movers, only the vans never arrived. The chief’ll want to break in here, might be some of his kind of pickings about.”
“Better collect him first.” Travis stood at the top of those four wide steps leading to the barred door. He could sight the tower which was their ultimate goal, though the fern trees shielded it for about three stories up. To his survey there were no signs of life about it, nothing moved at any of the window holes. Yet there had been that light at yesterday’s dusk.
“All right—we’ll get to it!” Ross came away from the grill. He swung his arm wide in an extravagant gesture to mark not the goal of their choice but the block building beyond it.
They had to cut their way now, using blasters and their hands to pull and break a path between the small, isolated glades where the fall of some giant tree in the past had cleared a passable strip for them. Panting and floundering, they came to the fifth such clearing.
“This is it,” Ross said. “We’ll turn back from here.”
Luckily the summit of the tower showed now and then as a guide. They were approaching it from thevback, and by some freakish whim of nature there was less underbrush here. So they had to choose cover, watching the heights for any indication that some scout or spy might lurk aloft. Not that they could be certain of spotting any army under the circumstances, Travis decided gloomily, moving with the wariness of one expecting an ambush at any moment.
They had covered perhaps half of the distance which would bring them to the base of the tower when both of them were startled into immobility by a squall. The batde cry of the thing which had laired in the red hall! And the sound was so distorted by the jungle about them that Travis could not tell whether its source lay before or behind.
That first wail of battle was only the starting signal of a racket, a din to split Terran eardrums. A bird thing boomed out of the brush, flew in blind panic straight for the two, blundered past them in safety. A graceful, slender creature with a dappled coat and a single curving hom flashed away before Travis was tndy sure he had seen it.
But those howls of rage and blood hunger chorused on. There must be more than one of the beasts—perhaps a pack of them! And from the noise, they were engaged in combat. Travis could only think of Ashe cornered in the tower to face such as enemy. He began to run. Ross drew level with him before they plunged together into a hedge of brush, fighting their way in the straightest line to the base of the tower.
Travis tripped, staggered forward, fighting to regain his balance, and plowed on his hands and knees into the open. He was facing the entrance to the tower, a long, narrow slit of opening. From within came the sounds. Ross, blaster in hand, leaped past him, a blue streak of concentrated action.
The Apache scrambled up, was only a step or two behind the time agent as they entered, finding themselves directly on the foot of an upward-leading ramp. One of those squalling roars, sounding above, ended in a cough. A mass of dull red fur, flailing legs, a flat, narrow, weasel’s head showing snapping jaws, rolled down, struggling in convulsive death agony. Ross leaped aside.
“Blaster got that one!” he shouted. “Chief! Ashe! You up there?”
If there was any answer to that hail, the words were drowned in the screech of the animals. The light was dusky here, but there was enough for the Terrans to spot the barrier across the ramp. It was a barrier which had been there some lime but was now showing a gap, choked by two of the red beasts struggling against each other in their eagerness to force that doorway. Behind them snarled a third.
Travis steadied the barrel of the blaster across his forearm and nicked a darting weasel-head with a sniper’s expert aim. The thing did not even cry out, but reared, somersaulted backward down the ramp as the men jumped apart to give it room.
One of the creatures at the gap caught sight of the two below and pulled back, allowing its fellow through the barrier while it whirled to spring at Ross. His blaster beam raked across its shoulders and it screamed hideously, collapsed, scratching frantically with its hind feet to gain footing. Ross fired again and the animal was still. But the rage of the fight beyond the barrier continued.