For a world without any native dangers, or so Trewsworld had been designated, Dane thought that the cluster of structures had the appearance of a fort. The houses, their doors all opening on a court within, were linked one to the next with clay walls again planted with bulbs.
A smooth length of ground just outside the gate was the vehicle park. There was a crawler drawn to one side and a smaller scooter, which Dane would have thought too light to travel this rough and roadless country. Meshler set down their flitter there.
The ranger swung out almost before the vibration of the motor was stilled. Cupping his hands about his mouth, he gave a loud hail.
“Ho, the house!”
It would seem that Cartl’s holding was as inexplicably empty of life as the first two lathsmer fields had been. Then from out of the wall before them a voice called thinly, “Name yourself!”
Meshler threw back his hood so that his face could be clearly seen.
“Wim Meshler, ranger. You know me.”
The voice did not answer. They stood waiting in the cold, Dane holding the brach. Then the heavy door grated open only part way.
“Come, and quickly!”
The urgency in that was enough to make Dane glance over his shoulder. This place had all the marks of a fort under siege. But who—or what—had driven the inhabitants to this extremity? They had seen no living thing except the lathsmers, though the wild fear of those had been a warning that all was not well.
He crowded through the narrow space the gate had opened. Then the man waiting there slammed the portal shut as if he expected death itself to follow in upon their heels and dropped in place a bar to lock it.
The householder was a tall man, wearing a shaggy coat loose about his shoulders as a cloak, the empty sleeves flapping as he moved. He was of a different racial stock than Meshler, being dark of skin, as dark as Rip, his hair a wiry brush, as if encouraged to stand so from his head.
He wore a shirt of lathsmer skin, the inner down left on, though rubbed away here and there by the friction of use, belted in with a wide belt that carried the customary two knives of the holdings men, one at the fore for eating and general use, the ornamentally sheathed one to the back as a sign of adulthood, to be used on the now rare occasions of honor-feud.
His leggings and boots were of furred hide, and with the shaggy coat he seemed as well “feathered” as his lathsmers. But there was something new. In his hand he carried an old-time projectile gun, such a weapon as Dane had seen only in museums on Terra, or which was used on a few primitive worlds where blaster charges were too expensive for importation and the settlers had made their defenses of native materials.
“Meshler!” The man held out his hand, and the ranger laid his beside it, so they clasped each other’s elbow in the customary greeting.
“What’s going on?” demanded the ranger, not introducing his greeter.
“Perhaps you can tell us,” returned the other as sharply. “Or rather tell Jaycor’s widow. He got back here last night just—And all he could tell us was a garbled story about monsters and men. He had been inspecting the far fields when they savaged him.”
“Savaged him?” echoed Meshler.
“Right enough. I never saw such wounds! We forted up when we discovered the com was ng— interference! Kaysee took the flitter to the port. But that was before we realized that Angria and the children weren’t back! I tried to reach them via com at Vanatar’s—no chance. Inditra and Forman took off in the big hopper for there.” He spilled it in a rush of speech as if he needed badly to tell someone.
Meshler, who had kept the arm grip, now cut into that flow.
“One thing at a time. Vanatar—then he is establishing his holding at last?”
“Yes, they called us by com for a gathering to clear. I had the shakes again, but Angria, Mabla, Carie, and the children and Singi, Refal, Dronir, Lantgar—they all went in the freight flitter. Kaysee had to make the west rounds, Jaycor the east, and Inditra and Forman were setting up the new tooling shed. And what will I tell Carie—Jaycor dead! We set for the noon news from the port day before yesterday. Got only some story about criminals off a trader making trouble and then—slam—interference. We haven’t been able to get through since.
“Kaysee got back all right. But Jaycor was late. Then we saw the crawler coming, weaving all over the place, as if it were running on its own. It just about was. Jaycor was in the driver’s seat, almost dead. He said something about men and monsters out of the woods—then he was gone!
“We couldn’t use the com, so Kaysee said he’d lift in to the port. Inditra and Forman got the hopper to working and went off to Vanatar’s to see about the women. With these damned shakes I was no good for anything. Ya, here they come again!”
The tall man began to shudder violently and instantly Tau stepped forward to steady him. “Vol fever!”
“Not quite,” Meshler returned. “It acts like vol, but the reserbiotics won’t cure it. They haven’t found anything that will yet. Maybe you can do something for him.”
The shudders that ran through the overthin body of the settler made him sway back and forth. His head rolled limply back, and he might have fallen to the ground had not the ranger and the medic held him up between them.
“Get him to bed and warm,” Tau said. “Reser may not work, but warmth will help.”
They half led, half supported him between them to the middle house opposite the gate, and Dane hastened ahead to throw open the door.
That warmth was a remedy used by the settlers was plain, for there was a blazing fire in the wide, deep fireplace, and before it someone had pulled a cot with a tangle of thick blankets. They lowered the man to this, and Tau packed him in a cocoon of coverings, while Meshler went to a pot hanging on a rod that could be swung around to lower it over the flames. He sniffed at the steaming contents and picked up a cup from a nearby table and a long-handled spoon, which he used to transfer some of the contents of the pot into the cup.
“Esam brew,” he explained. “It’s hot enough to warm up his insides. But he’s in for a stiff bout by the looks of it.”
Tau braced up the well-covered man and, with Meshler’s aid, got a cupful of liquid down his throat. But when they lowered him again, he seemed to have lapsed into unconsciousness.
Dane set down the brach, who padded over to crouch in the full heat of the fire. The alien gave such a sign of relief and pleasure that Dane wondered how he had been able to stand the cold of most of their wayfaring.
“He is the only one here?” Tau nodded at his patient.
“The way he said it, yes. That’s Cartl. He must be half crazy, what with the shakes and knowing he daren’t try to reach the women himself. In this cold he would black out if he tried it.”
“This Vanatar—so there is another south holding?” Dane asked.
“I knew Vanatar had been talking about coming for about two years now but not that he had really decided. He must have made up his mind in a hurry. Anyway, I’ve been on detached duty and not on field patrol. Let’s see—”
He walked to the left wall, and when Dane followed him, the Terran saw there was a map painted there. Portions with the more or less regular lines of such fields as they had flown over were colored yellow, the uncleared land gray. But to the east was the edge of another set of boundaries, these dotted in as if not permanent.
“Vanatar had this surveyed about five years ago.” Meshler indicated the dotted area. “Then he was in two minds about ever taking it up. It lies east and farther south.”
Dane examined the gray blot of the wilderness. Where in that was the wood of the force field, the basin?
Or was that area on this map at all?
“Vanatar would have no defenses. And a gathering—they would be spread out, working on field barriers all over, women and children watching. If those monsters came at them—” Meshler’s half-finished sentences needed no clarification for Dane.