"Where?" Reith demanded.
"I don't know. If I was taken, I wanted no knowledge, so that I could not be forced into betrayal. Traz wrote 'Onmale' on the shed. He said that you would know where to come."
"Let's go back to the warehouse. I left a friend there."
Anacho asked: "Do you know what he means by 'Onmale'?"
"I think so. I can't be sure."
They returned along the trail. Reith asked, "Is the sky-car still available for our use?"
"I carry the call-token. I see no reason why there should be difficulty."
"The situation isn't as bad as it might be then ... I've had an interesting set of experiences." He told Anacho something of his adventures. "I escaped the Shelters. But along the shore of the Second Sea Gzhindra began to follow.
Perhaps they were hired by the Khors; perhaps the Pnume sent them after us. We saw Gzhindra in Urmank; probably these same Gzhindra boarded the Nhiahar. They are still on the Saschanese Islands, for all I know. Since then we apparently haven't been followed, and I'd like to leave Sivishe before they pick us up again."
"I'm ready to leave now," said Anacho. "At any instant we may lose our luck."
They turned down the road leading to Woudiver's old warehouse. Reith stopped short. It was as he had feared, in the deepest darkest layer of his subconscious. The door to the office stood ajar. Reith broke into a run, with Anacho coming after.
Zap 210 was nowhere in the office, nor in the ruined warehouse. She was nowhere to be seen.
Directly before the office the ground was damp; the prints of narrow, bare feet were plain. "Gzhindra," said Anacho. "Or Pnumekin. No one else."
Reith gazed across the salt flats, calm in the amber light of afternoon.
Impossible to search, impossible to run across salt marsh and flat, looking and calling. What could he do? Unthinkable to do nothing ... What of Traz, the spaceship, the return to Earth which now was feasible? The idea sank from his mind like a waterlogged timber, with only the umbral shape, the afterimage, remaining. Reith sat down upon an old crate. Anacho watched a moment, his long white face drawn and melancholy, like that of a sick clown. Finally, in a somewhat hollow voice, he said, "Best that we be on our way."
Reith rubbed his forehead. "I can't go just yet. I've got to think."
"What is there to think about? If the Gzhindra have taken her, she is gone."
"I realize that."
"In such a case, you can do nothing."
Reith looked toward the palisades. "She will be taken back underground. They will swing her out over a dark gulf and after a time drop her."
Anacho hunched his shoulders in a shrug. "You cannot alter this regrettable fact so put it out of your mind. Traz awaits us with the spaceship."
"But I can do something," said Reith. "I can go after her."
"Into the underground places? Insanity! You will never return!"
"I returned before."
"By a freak of fate."
Reith rose to his feet.
Anacho went on desperately: "You will never return. What of Traz? He will wait for you forever. I can't tell him you have sacrificed everything because I do not know where he is."
"I don't intend to sacrifice everything," said Reith. "I intend to return."
"Indeed!" declared Anacho with a sneer of vast scorn. "This time the Pnume will make sure. You will swing out over the gulf beside the girl."
"No," said Reith. "They will not swing me. They want me for Foreverness."
Anacho threw up his arms in bafflement. "I will never understand you, the most obstinate of men! Go underground! Ignore your faithful friends! Do your worst!
When do you go below? Now?"
"Tomorrow," said Reith.
"Tomorrow? Why delay? Why deprive the Pnume of your society a single instant?"
"Because this afternoon I have preparations to make. Come along: let's go into town."
CHAPTER TWELVE
AT DAWN REITH went to stand at the edge of the salt flats. Here, months before, he and his friends had detected Aila Woudiver's signals to the Gzhindra. Reith also held a mirror; as Carina 4269 lifted into the sky, he swept the reflection back and forth across the salt flats.
An hour passed. Reith methodically flashed the mirror, apparently to no avail.
Then from nowhere, or so it seemed, came a pair of dark figures. They stood half a mile away, looking toward Reith. He flashed the mirror. Step by step they approached, as if fascinated. Reith went to meet them. Gradually the three came together, and at last stood fifty feet apart.
A minute passed. The three appraised each other. The faces of the Gzhindra were shaded under low-crowned black hats; both were pale and somewhat vulpine, with long thin noses and bright black eyes. Presently they came closer. In a quiet voice one spoke: "You are Adam Reith."
"I am Adam Reith."
"Why did you signal us?"
"Yesterday you came to take my companion."
The Gzhindra made no remark.
"This is true, is it not?" Reith demanded.
"It is true."
"Why did you do this?"
"We hold such a commission."
"What did you do with her?"
"We delivered her to such a place as we were bid."
"Where is this place?"
"Yonder."
"You have a commission to take me?"
"Yes."
"Very well; " said Reith. "You go first. I will follow."
The Gzhindra consulted in whispers. One said: "This is not feasible. We do not care to walk with others coming at our backs."
"For once you can tolerate the sensation," said Reith. "After all, you will thereby be fulfilling your commission."
"True, if all goes well. But what if you elect to burn us with a weapon?"
"I would have done so before," said Reith. "At the moment I only want to find my companion and bring her back to the surface."
The Gzhindra surveyed him with impersonal curiosity. "Why will you not walk first?"
"I don't know where to go."
"We will direct you."
Reith spoke so harshly that his voice cracked. "Go first. This is easier than carrying me in a sack."
The Gzhindra whispered to each other, moving the corners of their thin mouths without taking their eyes off Reith. Then they turned and walked slowly off across the salt flats.
Reith came after, remaining about fifty feet to the rear. They followed the faintest of trails, which at times disappeared utterly. A mile, two miles, they walked. The warehouse and the office diminished to small rectangular marks; Sivishe was a blurred gray crumble at the northern horizon.
The Gzhindra halted and turned to Reith, who thought to detect a fugitive flicker of glee. "Come closer," said one of the Gzhindra. "You must stand here with us."
Reith gingerly came forward. He brought out the energy gun which he had only just purchased, and displayed it. "This is precautionary. I do not wish to be killed, or drugged. I want to go alive down into the Shelters."
"No fear there, no fear there!" "Have no doubts on that score!" said the Gzhindra, speaking together. "Put away your gun; it is without significance."
Reith held the gun in his hand as he approached the Gzhindra.
"Closer, closer!" they urged. "Stand within the outline of the black soil."
Reith stepped on the patch of soil designated, which at once settled into the ground. The Gzhindra stood quietly, so close now that Reith could see the minute creases in the skin of their faces. If they felt alarm for his weapon they showed none.