Their captors were working with two camp diffuse lamps, making adjustments to their shades to throw a maximum of light—one on the wreck and the two men there, the other to mark out a landing site for the craft they confidently expected to entice in.
Why did they not use the control beam again, wondered Dane, and then found an answer for himself. They had tried that, and it had ended with a wreck. They did not want that to happen again.
Having set the stage with care, the alien gave a last-minute inspection. Two of his men took cover in the shadow of the wreck, using pieces of the flitter to give them protection from the sky. And each was armed with a tangler.
The alien came once more to stand before Dane and the ranger.
“Hope or pray to whatever gods you own,” he said, “that you do not have long to wait. We are holding off the beasts, but we do not have equipment here of any great strength, and how long we can so hold—who knows? This is a game of chance and one in which you and those fools behind the stones there have the most to lose. There goes their last robo—and how long will two blasters and a brace of stunners hold against what prowls out there—once it is loosed?”
He waved to the expanse of half-cleared land, and Dane saw that nightmare and horror did prowl there. Most of it was beyond his power of description but enough allied to perils he knew to make him understand just how black the future was—more so than a moonless night, for there were no stars to light it.
18.PURSUIT TO THE RAT NEST
“We must depend,” the alien continued, “upon that weakness of your breed, that, seeing one of their kind in distress, they must straightway come to his assistance, emotion outweighing caution. We are giving them a piteous sight indeed.”
Dane thought he detected black humor in that, as if the alien considered this a source of laughter for his breed. But was he taking into consideration that this was a too well-set stage—that anyone with an ordinary amount of suspicion answering a distress call would be wary of a so well-lighted and arranged scene of disaster? Supposing Cartl’s counter impulse had broken through the earlier interference and—But Dane must not build upon hope, only accept what lay starkly before him now. If those who answered the call for help, always supposing they did, were not suspicious—
The alien was walking away.
“They can do it,” Meshler croaked, as if his throat were dry and the words rasped painfully from it. “From the air this must look all right. And if we try to warn them—”
“We have no hope anyway,” Dane answered. “I heard them talking.” Dane could not believe Meshler ever thought the jacks would keep their word.
The diffuse lamps were on, set in such a way as to suggest that at least one able-bodied man had escaped the crash of the flitter and was endeavoring to provide a guide for a rescue craft. The skill in placing that limited illumination was such that both Dane and Meshler were fully revealed. Any move the Terran might make would be instantly visible to those in ambush.
But the men waiting there had tanglers, not blasters. Did that mean that the enemy was running low on charges for the deadly weapons and were saving what they had? And how many of the monsters remained?
With the robos frozen when those were turned loose—Resolutely Dane tried to cut that picture out of his imagination and think about the immediate future and what might be done for the two of them in the here and now. Only he could see nothing at all!
He would like more water. Water—no, do not think of water, which was now as far from him as the Queen herself. The Queen, the LB—what had happened to his own star-going world? Apparently the box was still in the place where it had been buried, or else it would not be acting as a draw on the monsters. So its radiation must be able to pass the safeguards Stotz had set on it, acting as a contact beam.
Dane was so deep in his thoughts, thoughts that could lead nowhere, that he was not at first aware of the cold metal sliding under one of his hands as it rested on the ground, but the persistent nudging of that touch drew his attention at last.
The Terran dared not look down. Not only was he afraid that might awaken his dizziness, but also, if what he guessed was in progress, through some wild stroke of luck, he must not allow those in ambush to suspect. Stealthily he moved his hand, raising it a little. Instantly the object that had been nudging him pushed between palm and earth, first a barrel, and then the butt, worked carefully around so that his fingers could close on it.
A stunner! The brach! The alien from Xecho must be hidden by the wreck and was so supplying him with a weapon. It was far inferior to a blaster, to be sure, but better than the tanglers in ambush, though he could not be sure how much of a charge was left in it.
Another nudge against his hand. Dane touched the barrel of a second arm. But this one was gripped tight, held so for only a moment, and then withdrawn, as if the brach only wanted him to know that there was a second weapon. Dane remembered how the creature had faced him on the Queen—he knew how to use a stunner. If Dane could only communicate—suggest that the alien work around the flitter and use the stunner on the two in ambush. But that was impossible.
He tried to feel for the paws that must hold the second weapon, but there was nothing. He might have thought it a fever dream, except that he still had the first stunner.
The dark was drawing in fast, and the diffuse lamps were bright in the dusk. It was what prowled out there that fretted the nerves. A stunner—what good would a single stunner be when the breakthrough came? Don’t think of that now. Could he reach either of the men in ambush? Dane edged his head around, kept his eyes half closed, yet was able to see a little from beneath drooping lids. Suppose the rescue craft came—might he take out at least one of the jacks before they could use their tanglers? And would Dane dare—or would he be answered by blaster fire from the shadows where the rest of the enemy had gone?
How many jacks were there? The alien, who appeared to be in command, at least six others—more probably. It was a wild, crazy, fruitless plan, but it was all Dane had to cling to.
The keen edge of expectation can last only so long, and waiting is a fret that saws it very dull. Dane had known such waits before action in the past, but never had he been so helpless before.
The night was not silent. There were the ominous sounds made by the things that prowled about, kept in check by their masters. Somehow, hearing them was worse than seeing them.
But at last, through those growls, snarls, hissing, there came another sound—the steady beat of a flitter engine. Dane, stretching his head farther up and back, tried to sight nose lights, but the craft must be coming from the north, and he faced south.
“Coming—” Meshler rasped. The ranger tried to heave his body out from under the wreckage, which held him tight. “Can’t you do something—warn them?”
“Don’t you think I would if I could?” Dane retorted. But there was no sense in moving or revealing his weapon until he could make that really count.
The sound died away, to Dane’s surprise, and then he was sure the pilot was wary, was going to run a survey of the scene before landing. Would suspicion keep him aloft? With a sinking of spirit Dane could not deny, he thought he had guessed right, for the muted drone of the engine grew fainter and vanished. Would that be a signal for the enemy to loose the monsters, since their trap had been rejected? But apparently the jack leader had patience and confidence in both his scheme and in his knowledge of human motivation, for those in ambush did not move. And his confidence was vindicated when once more that hum came through the night, now from the south, where the flitter had vanished.