“Captain says for you to take a look-see down west before you check in,” Rip added to Tau. “Use your own judgment, but don’t run into anything serious if you can help it.”
The Medic nodded. Ali was at the controls and they took to the air, leaving the relieving crew of the other flitter to take over their watch. Below them spread the now familiar pattern of small, narrow valleys, two or three showing squares of fields. But though Ali buzzed at a low altitude over these, there was no life but vegetation below. The Terran flitter was perhaps five miles on to the west before it came down over a scene of horror.
Smoke still curled sluggishly from smouldering brush and the black burns of high voltage blaster fire crossed and re-crossed the ground, cutting noisome paths through greenery and searing soil and rock.
But it was not that which attracted their attention. It was the things, three of them, huddled together in a rock pocket as if they had tried to make a last stand there against a weapon they did not understand. The contorted, badly burned bodies had little recognizable form now, but the three in the flitter knew that they had once been living creatures.
Ali went for a short run above the valley floor. There was no sign of any life. He manoeuvred for a landing close to that pocket. But it wasn’t until they had left the flitter and started to cross a rocky outcrop that they came upon the fourth victim.
He—or it—had been singed by the flame, but not killed at once. Enough will to live had remained to send the pitiful wreckage crawling into a narrow crevice where it must have clung until death loosened its hold and allowed it to tumble slackly into sight again.
Tau went down on one knee beside the twisted body. But Dane, his nostrils filled with a sickening stench which was not all born of the smouldering green stuff, took only one quick look before he closed his eyes and fought a masterly engagement with his churning stomach.
That hadn’t been a man! It resembled nothing he had ever seen or heard described. It—it wasn’t real—it couldn’t be! He gained a minor victory, opened his eyes, and forced himself to look again.
Even allowing for the injuries which had killed it, the creature was bizarre to the point of nightmare. Its body consisted of two globes, one half as large as the other. There was no discernible head at all. From the larger globe protruded two pairs of very thin, four jointed limbs which must have been highly flexible. From the small globe another pair which separated at the second joint into limber tentacles, each of which ended in a cluster of hair-fine appendages. The globes were joined by a wasp’s slenderness of waist. As far as Dane could see, and he couldn’t bring himself to the close examination which absorbed Tau, there were no features at all—no eyes, ears, or mouth.
But the oddest sight of all were the globes which formed the body. They were a greyish-white, but semi-transparent. And through the surface one could sight reddish structural supports which must have served the creature as bones, as well as organs Dane had no wish to explore.
“Great space!” Ali exploded. “You can look right through them!”
He was exaggerating—but not so much. The Limbians—if this were a Limbian—were far more tenuous than any creature the Terrans had found before. And Dane was sure that the record film would show that it was a thing such as this which had passed the contact point in the other valley.
Ali stepped around the body to examine the scars left by the blast which had driven the creature into the crevice. He touched a finger gingerly to a blackened smear on the rock and then held it close to his nose.
“Blaster right enough.”
“Do you think Rich—?”
Ali gazed down the valley. Like all the others they had yet sighted it ran from the towering mountains to the blasted plain, and they could not be too far from the ruins where the archaeologists had gone to earth.
“But—why?” Dane asked a second question before his first had been answered.
Had the globe things attacked Rich and his men? Somehow Dane could not accept that. To his mind the limp body Tau was working over was pitifully defenceless. It held not the slightest hint of menace.
“That’s the big question.” Ali tramped on, past the hollow where lay those other dreadfully contorted bodies, down to the edge of the stream, which this valley, as did all the cultivated ones, cradled in its centre, the fields strung out along it.
Plain to read here was the mark of the invader. No feet had left that pair of wide ruts crushed deep into the soft ground of the fields. Dane stopped short.
“Crawler! But our crawlers—”
“Are just where they should be, parked under the Queen or in their storage compartments,” Ali finished for him. “And since Rich couldn’t have brought one here in a kit bag, we must believe that Limbo is not as barren of life as Survey certified it to be.” He stood at the edge of the stream and then squatted to study a patch of drying mud. “Track’s odd though—”
Although his opinion had not been asked, Dane joined the Engineer-apprentice. The tread mark had left a pattern, clear as print, for about four inches. He was familiar with the operation of crawlers as they pertained to his own duties. He could even, if the need arose, make minor repairs on one. But he couldn’t have identified any difference in vehicles from their tread patterns. There he was willing to accept Ali’s superior learning.
Kamil’s next move was a complete mystery to Dane. Still on his knees he began measuring the distance between the two furrows, using a small rule from his belt tool kit for a gauge. At last Dane dared to ask a question:
“What’s wrong?”
For a moment he thought that Ali wasn’t going to answer.
Then the other sat back on his heels, wiped dust from the rule, and looked up.
“A standard crawler’s a four-two-eight,” he stated didactically. “A scooter is a three-seven-eight. A flamer’s carriage runs five-seven-twelve.”
The actual figures meant very little to Dane, but he knew their significance. Within the Federation machinery was now completely standardized. It had to be so that repairs from one world to the next would be simplified. Ali had recited the measurements of the three types of ground vehicles in common use on the majority of Federation planets. Though, by rights, a flamer was a war machine, used only by the military or Patrol forces, except on pioneer worlds where its wide heat beam could be turned against rank forest or jungle growth.
“And this isn’t any of those,” Dane guessed.
“Right. It’s three-two-four—but it’s heavy, too. Or else it was transporting close to an over-load. You don’t get ruts like these from a scooter or crawler travelling light.” He was an engineer, he should know, Dane conceded.
“Then what was it?”
Ali shrugged. “Something not standard—low, narrow, or it couldn’t snake through here, and able to carry a good load. But nothing on our books is like it.”
It was Dane’s turn to study the cliffs about them. “Only one way it could go—up—or down—”
Ali got to bis feet, “I’ll go down,” he glanced over at the busy Tau engrossed in his grisly task, “nobody’s going to drag him away from there until he learns all he can.” He shuddered, perhaps in exaggeration, perhaps in earnest. “I have a feeling that it isn’t wise to stay here too long. Any scout will have to be a quick one—”
Dane turned up stream. “I’ll go up,” he said firmly, it was not Ali’s place to give orders, they were equal in rank. He started off, walking between the tracks without looking back.
He was concentrating so on his determination to prove that he could think properly for himself that he made a fatal slip, inexcusable in any Trade explorer. Though he continued to wear his helmet, along with all the other field equipment, he totally forgot to set his personal com-unit on alert, and so went blindly off into the unknown with no contact with either of the others.