"Art Hegler's doing the job he was trained for; it occupies his mind," Chase said mildly. "Would you rather he took up embroidery?"
"Art's harmless enough, I guess." Ruth sighed. "I just don't see the purpose, the reason behind it all--Maxwell and Hegler and all the others beavering away on their own crackpot schemes like a pack of mad scientists."
"Does that include me?"
"It includes all of us. We must be crazy."
"We could always leave, if you want to. The question is--"
"I know what the question is, Gavin. Why leave when there's nowhere else to go. At least we're safe here." She laughed shortly. "Safe to rot. Safe to die. Safe from everything but . . ." Her voice sank to a rasping whisper and she closed her eyes.
Chase looked at her for a moment and then took her hand. It felt limp and lifeless. "What about you," he said, "writing up medical research notes from ten years ago? Some might find that rather strange and pointless."
"It's for my own amusement."
"What Art and the others are doing is probably for theirs--and who knows, they might come up with something."
Ruth opened her eyes. "If they do," she said, pressing his palm to her breast, "I hope they won't expect the Nobel Prize."
Night enveloped them with the dramatic abruptness of the desert. Above them the stars wavered and blinked with the rising heat, like a purple sequined cloth shimmering in the breeze. Except there was no breeze: The desert was inert, silent, pulsating heat in waves so that it was like walking through hot sticky syrup.
They had abandoned everything but their weapons. Hours spent scrambling over rocks and fighting their way through thorny brush in the searing sunlight had taken all their strength and there was none left for anything that didn't contribute directly to their survival.
Dan pretended to drink, merely moistening his lips, and gave Jo the last few drops from the canteen. He estimated that they had crossed the border and were back in Utah. The nearest access point to the tunnels could be only two or three miles away, but that still left an underground walk of perhaps ten miles before they reached the Tomb. Was it better to go underground or continue on the surface where they could make good time? Three hours steady march would see them back at the Tomb, whereas it could take at least twice as long in the tunnels.
There was, however, a bigger dilemma than that. Were they being followed, and if so, by whom? At Echo Canyon, a few miles back, he thought he'd glimpsed movement behind them. Had the mutes picked up their trail? If so, they were leading them back to the others, revealing the Tomb's location. And what had happened in the tent? Those white grubs . . . where had they come from? He shuddered at the memory.
Jo screwed the top on the canteen and slung it around her neck. "Will they have lights?" "What?"
"If they're following our trail they'll need lights, won't they, to see by? So we should be able to see them!"
That hadn't occurred to him. But see whom, for God's sake? Mutes? Prims? Men with guns in Sherman tanks? Or somebody else. Something else . . .
They had both stopped and were straining their eyes to penetrate the dense velvety darkness that seemed almost palpable. "I can't see anything, can you?" Jo said, sounding relieved.
"No. What if they can see in the dark?"
"You mean like cats?"
"It's possible."
"How?"
Dan looked at her, seeing the polished glint of her eyes in a smudge of pale yellow, which was the barrier cream caking her face. They had removed their gauze masks and goggles the minute the sun had dipped over the horizon. "Most of the mutes have impaired faculties, but some of them have developed heightened senses to compensate. There was one I came across near Adamsville last year who could actually smell water, you know, like animals can. And somebody else I heard of who had infrared vision. If they've got that they won't need any light."
"You'd make a great morale officer."
"Sorry. Thinking out loud."
"Then think of something cheerful and let's keep moving while you're doing it."
Ten minutes later they heard what sounded like a cry in the distance. Human or animal? Was there any animal life left in the desert? They listened intently but heard nothing more.
Dan flicked on a pencil flashlight and, shielding it with his body, squinted at his wrist compass. They were heading northeast. At this rate they couldn't be more than an hour, perhaps less, from the nearest access point. He'd made up his mind to enter the complex and not risk being overtaken by whatever, if anything, was following them. He prayed he could find the concealed entrance in the darkness. It was hard enough in daylight, searching for the triangular markers.
He moved on, having taken a dozen paces before he realized that Jo wasn't beside him. Dimly he made out her slight figure standing rigid, head raised, and beyond her saw the reason for it: five blue-white spheres ascending in perfect formation against the blaze of stars. They rose from the southwest in total silence and arced across the sky, gradually fading and becoming lost somewhere in the region of Draco.
"What are they?" Jo said in a hushed voice. "Are they terrestrial?"
It was the first time either of them had seen the UFOs, and Dan for one hadn't believed in them until now. He said, "You mean our spacecraft? From Earth?"
"It's possible, isn't it?"
"Well, they sure as hell weren't meteorites," he said tartly.
Again they heard the cry, like a lost bird, nearer now, and Jo clutched his arm. "They're still following us! I bet you were right, one of the bastards has infrared vision."
"I wish I'd never mentioned it," Dan said gloomily. "That was an animal, a gopher out hunting."
"I never knew gophers cried like babies."
"A baby gopher then. Satisfied?"
All the same they held on to each other, keeping up a steady pace across the rocky terrain even though the air was stifling and their bodies were running with sweat. It seemed as familiarly grotesque as a nightmare, this endless walking through a lost landscape and getting nowhere, being pursued by a nameless horror. Something less than human --subhuman--whose only instinct was to destroy.
They passed the gray squat shape of a blockhouse, which told them that the nearest entrance was within a mile. The steel doors of some of the entrances had been welded shut and Dan hoped and prayed this wasn't one of them. Another fear, so disquieting that he didn't dare voice it, gnawed at the edge of his reason. What if there were things living in the abandoned tunnels? Creatures who like them had sought shelter and protection underground. There were over two hundred miles of tunnels outside the Tomb's sealed enclosure that had never been explored since the day the scientific community moved in.
Dan timed their progress and after seventeen minutes he knew that the entrance had to be in the immediate vicinity. All they had to do now was find it.
Jo sucked in a shuddery breath as the cry came again, this time on their left, to be answered by others on all sides. In the darkness Dan thought he saw ghostly white shapes closing in, floating like wraiths, making no sounds. Disembodied. Living dead. Zombies.
Perhaps Jo didn't believe in zombies, or her reactions were sharper than his, because she was already down on one knee, rifle leveled, and had fired three times before Dan had unslung his from his shoulder. He fired and saw one of the white shapes fold and crumple. Another drifted into view and he fired again, seeing it spin and wobble to the ground.