Eric gave up. He lay on his side, as he did part of every sleep period, reviewing and reviewing. The conclusions came just as he began to doze. He was_more convinced than ever that there was no specific weapon that Walter was leading them to, merely the hope of one. This burrow they were to enter, on the other hand …
A low, urgent call from the man on guard duty brought him and all the others awake.
When they saw what had startled the guard, they scrambled to their feet, faces turning pale, bodies sweating and shuddering with overwhelming fear.
Two hundred or so paces away, a Monster, one of the largest they’d ever seen, stood staring at them calmly. The great gray legs supporting the enormous gray body were set wide apart, as a man might stand to study carefully an interesting phenomenon. The extended neck waved slightly to and fro, bringing the head with its unblinking eyes first here, then there. The tentacles at the base of the head—they were quite long, Eric noticed, and a very light shade of pink—undulated in sympathy with the neck as if they too had some sort of eyes and were trying to see as well as they could. But there was no suggestion of imminent attack.
On both sides, there was a dead silence. Neither the trembling humans nor the gigantic, watching Monster made a sound. Eric found himself breathing rapidly: he made up his mind that if sudden panic developed, he would try to run in a different direction from the rest.
What did the terrifying creature want? What precisely was it looking at? And what was happening inside its alien mind?
Abruptly, it wheeled and presented its back to them. Then it strode away, off, off into the white distance. Despite its size, the floor shook only slightly as it went. They watched it until it was no longer visible. And the moment it was gone, everyone began to babble, more than a few hysterically.
“Walter,” Arthur the Organizer called out. “What do you think? What was going on?”
They all turned to the Weapon-Seeker. He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never seen one of them do a thing like that before.”
14
A council of war was held on the incident, to determine whether it should be allowed to affect their plans. There were three men in the counciclass="underline" Arthur the Organizer, who presided, Walter the Weapon-Seeker, since he alone knew anything at all about this area to which they had come, and the oldest member of the expedition, a white-haired and surprisingly spry old fellow by the name of Manny the Manufacturer, selected apparently out of deference to his age and nothing else.
Roy and Eric were asked to participate in a non-voting advisory capacity, it being presumed, Eric decided with a wry, internal giggle, that as scouts and front-burrowers they would know something the others did not about unusual circumstances and extraordinary dangers.
“We can go on or we can go back,” Arthur the Organizer pointed out. “If we go back, we’ve failed and we don’t have much. If we go on, we have to take it for granted that we might be—and please notice that I say no more than might be—walking straight into disaster.”
Walter the Weapon-Seeker drummed on the floor with an impatient foot. “Sure. They’ll be expecting us. And they’ll be laying for us.”
“Possibly. And then again, possibly not.” Arthur held up a finger and faced each one of them in turn. “The Monsters don’t think as we do: we have no reason to believe that they react as we do, or give alarms as we do. This creature might have been simply curious about us. The way it went on about its business would argue for that point of view. It’s one of the things we must consider seriously.”
“Consider!” the Weapon-Seeker spat. “Considering is your job, not mine. Doing something is my job. I say we go ahead and do what we started out to do.”
“We don’t have a choice, anyway,” said Manny the Manufacturer. “If we go back without the weapon we came for, we spend the rest of our lives as outlaws. I don’t think lives like that are worth a hell of a lot. And neither do most of the men. I say let’s take our chances.”
Arthur turned to his two front-burrowers. “Eric?”
Eric the Eye tried to give as much formal dignity as possible to his first opinion in a council. “I believe we should go on. As planned.”
“Mind telling us your reasons?”
“Well,” Eric unbent a bit. “If there’s been an alarm, the Monsters know we’re here. There’s no nearby doorway into the burrows: we can’t escape. They could be waiting for us both ways—whether we go on or whether we go back. At least if we go on, we stand a chance of getting something. And I agree with Manny that an outlaw’s life is a pretty damn unappetizing prospect.”
“Roy?”
The Runner shuffled and made a large, indeterminate gesture with his left hand. “There’s this and there’s that. There’s a lot to consider. It’s awfully easy for some people to sound off and say they know for sure what the Monsters are doing—that we should follow our original plans, no matter what. Some people still have hair all over their eyes. The only thing I heard that makes sense is what you said, Arthur—that we should consider. It sounds like an intelligent thing to do. I vote to do what you suggested: to consider.”
“You don’t have a vote,” the Weapon-Seeker told him. “All you have a right to give is your opinion. What the kid said,” he pointed to Eric with his thumb, “is about it. If they’re laying for us, they’re laying for us both Ways, ahead and behind. Ahead’s where we want to go. So let’s go.”
Arthur summed up. “The sense of this meeting is that at least two of you, Walter and Manny, feel we risk as much by turning back as by going on—and that there are substantial advantages to going on. I’m inclined to go along with that majority view, so long as we proceed with all the caution that these new circumstances make necessary. You see, Roy,” he said placatingly, “it’s not that we reject your advice, but in a democratic discussion you have to give a little and take a little. You can’t always have your own way.”
The tall, thin young man looked from Arthur to Eric, then pulled a spear out of his back sling and walked off to the head of the column.
“You give Eric some idea of what to look out for,” Arthur suggested to Walter. “I’d like to start moving as soon as possible—before there’s much more talk among the men.”
“Right!” growled Manny the Manufacturer. “Let’s get this expedition off the floor.”
There wasn’t much that the Weapon-Seeker could tell him, Eric found out. It was now quite clear that Walter had only seen this new Monster burrow from the entrance, and very briefly. He could describe the first piece of Monster furniture in the place—and that was all.
From now on, Eric realized, he would really have to be an Eye.
He went through the archway into the burrow that was the goal of the expedition, Walter some thirty paces behind him. When he saw the succession of tall black rods standing on the floor, crisscrossed horizontally with dozens of other rods, he waved to the Weapon-Seeker, who passed the wave on to the men in his rear. Then the chunky chief scout pointed forward, giving Eric the order to move on.
Now came the hard part, the truly frightening part. At least, there were no Monsters about—none that he could see.
Eric swallowed. He left the archway, and the wall. He crept out into open Monster territory, where there was nothing but the harsh white light and stretching vistas of floor.
His heart began pounding. He found that his regular, cautious breathing was turning into noisy gasps. He felt exposed, terrifyingly vulnerable, completely alone. And lost—he felt as if he would be lost in that whiteness forever.