Beside the trail there was the evil-smelling, still-smoking proof that a blast rifle had been shorted out. He saw the stock of the weapon, partly carbonized by heat. There was a pit exploded out of mud and already filling from the water around it. Mud had been thrown in all directions. It stank.
But Horn only glanced at the weapon. That was ruined. More important, he could see that the game trail went on and on through the treetrunks growing in the water. Presumably the footprints did the same. There was dense vegetation growing in the water on either side of a game passage, as if water-dwelling animals kept paths clear to swim in when they went ashore into the jungle.
Then he realized the truth. Water animals did not graze fixed paths through swamp water. Rather, the water had risen and flooded the trail. Recently. He looked to right and left, and it was evident. The muddied treetrunks proved that water had risen here some weeks or months ago. It had been not less than eight feet deep where now was spongy solid ground. Now the water was rising again. It might stop at a lower level, or it might rise to eight feet in depth here again.
The situation was appallingly clear. He said shortly, "Come along!"
He waded into the water, which barely covered his instep. As he moved on it deepened to his ankles. After two hundred yards, it was up to his knees. The little man said fearfully, "It's getting deeper!"
Horn only grunted in reply. He moved slowly, watching the treetrunks on either side. The water was halfway up his thighs when he found what he was looking for - another game trail joining this one; submerged, like this one; apparently kept clear by wild beasts, and actually a forest trail which had become covered by rising water.
Horn turned into the new trail, heading back in the direction of the beacon and the Theban. He moved slowly and carefully, making few ripples and not enough disturbance to be heard. The engineer made the beginning of a whimpering sound, but Horn turned upon him a face so filled with menace that the little man gasped instead.
Fifty yards. A hundred. The water was again up to his knees, and no higher. He moved more slowly and more silently still. This was a long way from where the blast rifle had burned itself out - at least a mile, possibly two. Then there was a sound which did not belong in a swamp: a child spoke querulously. The engineer gasped. The water grew more shallow.
Horn walked out of the water into a relatively dry new trail with very many footprints in it. Less than thirty feet from the water's edge, he looked straight into the astounded, unbelieving eyes of a man not six feet from him in the jungle.
"Where's Ginny Forbes?" asked Horn in a matter-of-fact voice. "I've come to help out in the mess you're in. She'll tell you why."
The man, with a spasmodic gesture, belatedly raised his weapon. Horn said impatiently, "Don't be an idiot! Where's Ginny Forbes?"
There were startling stirrings. Faces appeared. Then, with a little cry, Ginny came running down the path. She clung to Horn. "I knew you'd come! I knew you'd come!"
"That's more than I did," said Horn wryly. "You'd better introduce me. I must seem a suspicious character."
Ginny had to weep a little, from relief, before she could explain to the other castaways who Horn was. She didn't know how he'd got here, but he'd come because, she was in danger. And he would help them. Perhaps he had someone with him -
"Not him," said Horn coldly, of the engineer. "He's useless."
But there was no time to go into a long explanation of how he happened to be here in a swamp of rising water on a beacon planet several light years from where he should have been waiting for Ginny. At the beginning, he doubted that he'd be believed. The captain of the Danae regarded him with calm eyes that Horn at first thought were noncommittal.
He said politely, "You know the water's risen?"
"Naturally!" said the Danae's captain, composedly. "That gave us the idea of hiding here. We can't be trailed to this place."
"I trailed you," said Horn shortly. "Have you noticed how high the water's likely to rise?"
"We are watching it," said the captain, as calmly as before.
Horn pointed to the treetrunks about him. Very plainly, when one looked, at some time not too long past this jungle had been flooded to a depth which here was fully ten feet. The Danae's captain blinked. He hadn't noticed it. His expression wavered, then returned to a conscious and confident calm.
"Ah, yes!" he said composedly. "We have to take account of that."
The castaways clustered around, staring. All the ship's company of the Danae were gathered here; two officers, four crewmen, and seven passengers. The Danae's captain wore that air of calm confidence which is so reassuring to passengers that it is practically part of a liner captain's uniform. But it might mean nothing more than that, by following all the rules, obeying all directions, and travelling only on surveyed space lanes, he has never faced an emergency and therefore has an unblemished record.
The junior officer looked boyish and uneasy. Space-academy training had not prepared him for a situation like this. The passengers were oddly assorted. There were two children. a stout businessman, two women besides Ginny, and a cadaverous man who, muddied and dirtied like all the rest, still looked like one of that dismal brotherhood who travel from world to world seeking a cure for what they refuse to believe is hypochondria.
The crewmen were no more and no less than the usual crew of a space liner; men who had made their runs stolidly on well-found vessels between well-equipped spaceports with the regularity and all the sense of adventure of wind-up clocks, and who had lived until now in placid expectation of eventual pensions. They were not well suited to the role of castaways or fugitives from the crew of the Theban.
Horn noticed eyes turned on his companion. "This man," he said dryly, "is the engineer of the Theban, which landed last sundown. He has run away from his ship because he fears he'll be murdered for proven incompetence. I can't think of any way in which he'll be of use to himself or anybody else, but here he is. Now, how much food have you?"
They had food for some days yet. There'd been more, but it was left in the lifeboats. They hadn't finished stocking their hiding place when the Theban appeared in the sunset sky.
"Load up," commanded Horn. "It looks to me as if this planet has rainy seasons to make your hair curl. Every animal I've seen looks like a water dweller. They're equipped to live in a flooded jungle, but we aren't! So we've got to move to where we won't be drowned."
The Danae's captain said with calm dignity, "I chose our hiding place because we couldn't be trailed here by our footprints."
"But I trailed you," said Horn.
"Yes," agreed the captain, gravely. "But still -"
"There's a ridge of high land behind the beacon," Horn told him, "with hills beyond that. I'm going there. Ginny will come with me. When this swamp is under water we won't be here. Those are the facts. The decision is yours."
The Danae's captain frowned, as if in deep thought. But he was badly shaken inside. The fact that Horn had trailed his party was a severe shock. He'd hoped to stay hidden until the Theban went away. He apparently had no idea how long men will keep up a search for forty million credits. His training and experience were comparable, in a way, to those of a ferryboat captain. The space journeys he'd made demanded just about as much skill as steering a ferry across a river. He was official leader of the castaways because of his rank, and he had his rank because he'd never got into trouble. But Horn was another kind of man. The Danae's captain relievedly accepted his direction.
"Since you were able to find us," he said with a fine air of decision, "the men of the - the Theban might do so too. We should move, if only for that reason. And it will certainly be more - ah - salubrious at a higher ground level." He turned to the others. "We will go on. We must carry everything we have brought here."