Larsen came out of the first spaceboat. He panted incoherencies as he went swiftly to a second. He entered it, and there were more crashings. There was the sound of devastation. Larsen came out and trotted, snarling, to a third boat. Again there were monstrous sounds before he ran to the fourth, cursing.
The sun edged down behind the tops of the preposterous trees. Deep shadows crept across the clearing. In the last spaceboat Larsen seemed to have gone mad; to be trying to pull the boat apart with his hands. Then the blast rifle went off repeatedly. He seemed to be attempting the total destruction of the spaceboats that had brought castaways nearly a light year and a half from the abandoned Danae.
The mate licked dry lips. Larsen came out of the fourth boat, bellowing, "They hid it! They got it hid! But I'll get 'em!"
He strode to the Theban, his features contorted. He seemed ready to froth at the mouth. "Get lights going!" he rasped, "so they can't come back an' get away with the stuff! Lights! Plenty of 'em!"
He plunged into the ship. The mate looked scared. It was notorious that when Larsen was in a bad mood, somebody was in for a bad time. Now he was practically an incarnation of murder.
The mate said uneasily, "Stay here. Yell if you see anything."
He went into the ship. Horn did not answer. He was almost sick with relief that Ginny was at least possibly alive. He leaned against the landing fin from which the exit port opened. Presently he turned his eyes around. Yes, those fragments of crimson-fluorescent plastic had been a cache cover like the one on Hermas. And, like the Hermas cache, this one had been broken into, smashed, and cast aside. The emergency food supplies for possible castaways had now been broken open.
Horn did not have to look into the cache to know that those stores had been destroyed on the previous occasion when the Theban had landed here. This was the cause of Larsen's grin when Horn suggested that the fugitives might have restocked and refuelled their boats and gone away from Carola. The cook had said the engines began to act up after the Theban left Carola and before it could land on Hermas. So the Theban had gone on to Formalhaut for emergency repairs the little engineer was incompetent to make. Horn had been shanghaied to make them. And the present state of things was brought about.
Night fell quickly, as it did in the tropics in all planets. Lights flashed into being halfway up the Theban's battered hull. They were meant to give light for landing cargo in spaceports. Here they flooded the ground all about with a pitiless white glare. Horn grunted to himself. He'd had minutes of darkness in which to reach the jungle's edge before the lights went on, but he'd been too dazed by hope to take advantage.
Now the jungle seemed black by contrast with the floodlights' brilliance. In a little while there was movement at the foliage edge. Tiny things appeared, blinking and fascinated by the lights. They hopped and squirmed and crawled towards them. Larger things came, gazing adoringly at the brightness. Finally there was a great stirring, and something huge crawled into view. It stared raptly at the lights. It was a large thing, thirty feet long, with many legs. It looked like something that had crawled ashore from an ocean.
More things came out. There was one, larger than a horse, with incredible backward-curving horns and flippers. It stared stupidly at the lights. More small things appeared, staring too. Things on whipping wings flapped into the glare, swirled crazily out to darkness, and came back again. One of them crashed into the Theban's hull with a loud impact. There were things the size of dogs, which were wholly unlike dogs, and things the size of donkeys which were in no wise donkey-like.
The clearing filled with light-dazzled animals. They stared at the lights, edged towards them. They made no sound. They did not attack each other. They did nothing but crowd out from the jungle's edge, fascinated and drawn and hypnotized by the brightness.
It occurred to Horn that if anybody were watching a vision screen inside the Theban and saw this herd of nightmares, he would have no eyes for a man working his way through them. Yet if the creatures did not attack each other because of their fascination with the lights, they should not be aware of the presence of a man.
Horn began to move towards the jungle wall, around the ship from the exit port. The animals were utterly silent as he wormed his way among them. He heard clattering footsteps in the ship. Larsen had looked in the spaceboats for the money they'd brought from the Danae, and he hadn't found it. Now he came with tools and crewmen to tear the boats apart to find the money. The lights were to illuminate the boats for that enterprise - and of course to make sure the castaways did not come back to claim possession.
But there were the animals. Horn forced his way between them. They seemed unaware of his presence. Once his shadow crossed the eyes of a rapt and fascinated horned creature and it tossed its head in alarm. It moved as if to rear up, but then the lights struck its eyes again and it continued staring. Horn pushed it out of his way as he went towards the jungle.
He heard Larsen cursing horribly. A blaster rasped. Nothing happened. The blaster fired again, and again. Horn reached the jungle's edge. Larsen, bellowing fury, tried to drive away the animals by blasting them. He failed entirely. The animals stood rapt and motionless, intoxicated and hypnotized by the lights. Larsen killed, and killed, and killed....
The animals still stood gazing at the lights. More of them came from the jungles, replacing those Larsen shot.
Horn made his way through thick growths in pitch darkness, his stun pistol ready for use, but taking - and he knew it - appalling chances. But he believed that Ginny was alive, that she was somewhere in this jungle, and that she needed him.
Nothing was more important than that.
CHAPTER SIX
PRESENTLY he saw a moon, and in glimpses of it between tree branches he saw it move swiftly across the sky. It was particoloured, one section vastly brighter than the rest. It would rise as a crescent in the west and wax as it moved, until it set as a full moon at the east, into the shadow of Carola. Speckles of surprising brightness appeared where the moonlight trickled through leaves. There were other speckles, at first brighter, from the glaring lights outside the Theban. where a blaster still rasped occasionally. But those light patches faded as Horn thrust his way on. It was necessary for him to get far enough from the ship to have a good start if Larsen led crewmen in pursuit of him.
He heard rustlings, and froze. Something moved slowly in the jungle. It was huge and it smelled of slime, but the rustlings of its passage were relatively trivial. When it was gone, towards the white light fog of the ship's floodlights, Horn pressed on to find the trail the unseen large beast had followed.
He found it, a small game trail. He'd had to force his way between treetrunks and underbrush till now, but this trail was clear to head height. Even fumbling along it, he could move at a reasonable pace.
Presently he was just barely able to see the glare of the Theban's floodlights behind him. He pushed on. A long time later he saw the moon again. It was the same one he'd seen before, passing through all its phases as it raced across the sky.
Presently he smelled swamp, and realized that the game trail he had followed had seemed to trend slightly downwards. Nobody should attempt a swamp in darkness! Horn climbed a tree; not far up, but high enough so animals using the same trail would not find him disputing the way. He braced himself to try to sleep, but inevitably his mind suggested that in this world there must be climbing carnivores, and that some things that in the darkness seemed treetrunks or branches might be something else - something deadly.