“A ship!”
Dane was no hundred flight man, but something in that shrieking crescendo splitting the sky above them argued that if a ship were coming in, all was not well with it. He caught at Tau’s arm.
“What’s the matter?”
The Medic’s face paled beneath the dark space tan. He bit hard on his lower lip. And the eyes still fastened on the arch of sky were haunted. When he answered he had to scream to be heard over the rumble.
“She’s coming in too fast—not on a braking orbit!”
And now they could see as well as hear—a dark shape in the morning sky, a shape which tore across that same sky to be gone in an instant to a landing somewhere among those jagged peaks which were the mountains of Limbo’s northern continent.
The sound was gone. It was broodingly quiet. Tau shook his head slowly.
“She must have crashed. She couldn’t have come out of that one in time.”
“What was she?” puzzled Dane. The passage of that shadow had been so quick that he had not been conscious of any identifying outline.
”Too small for a liner, thank the Lord of Far Space. Or at least—I hope it was no liner—”
For a passenger ship to crash would be utter horror. Dane could understand that.
“A freighter maybe,” Tau sat down and his hand went out to the click keys. “She must have been out of control when she entered atmosphere.” He began to relay this last information on to the Queen.
They did not have to wait long for an answer. They were to remain where they were until the second flitter joined them carrying Tau’s full medical kit. This flyer would then head out into the mountains in an attempt to locate the scene of the crash, so if there were any survivors the men from the Queen could render aid. While a smaller party would stay and try to trace Kamil.
It was only a matter of minutes before the other flitter did appear. Kosti and Mura dropped from it almost before it hit dirt and Tau hurried across to change places. The flyer whirled up into the sun of mid-morning and cut a straight course towards the rock teeth of the range, following the line of flight Dane and Tau had seen that shadow travel.
“Did you see her from the Queen?” Dane demanded of the other two.
Mura shook his head. “See her, no, hear her, yes. She was out of control!”
Kosti’s broad face wrinkled in concern. “She must have hit hard. A bad smash—no one living, perhaps. I once saw a smack landing like that on Juno—very bad—all dead. That ship—she must have been out of control before they started down. She was not even fighting the fall—she came in like a thing already dead.”
Mura whistled softly. “Plague ship, maybe—”
Dane shivered. Plague ships were the terrifying ghosts of the space lanes. Wandering derelicts, free roving tombs holding the bodies of the crews who on some uncharted world had contracted some new and virulent disease, dying alone in the reaches of the heavens—perhaps by stern choice—before they could bring their infection to inhabited worlds. The solar system guards had the unenviable task of rounding up such drifting threats of death and sending them into cleansing suns or giving them some other final end. But here, beyond the frontiers of civilization, a derelict could drift for years, even centuries, before some freak of chance brought it into the gravitational pull of a planet and so crash it on an unwary world.
But the men from the Queen knew the score, there would be no rash exploration of the ship if they did locate it. And its smash-up might have been a thousand miles away, well out of the range of the flitter. Tau was there—and of all men a Medic was the last to take any chances with a plague.
“Ali—he has disappeared?” Kosti brought them back to the business at hand.
Dane, not overlooking his own carelessness, reported in detail what had happened in the valley. To his relief neither of the newcomers made any comment on his part in the affair but centred their attention on the task at hand. Mura was the first to suggest a plan of action.
“Let Kosti take up the flitter and cruise above us. Then you and I shall search the ground. There may be some trace left which you could not easily sight from the air.”
So it was arranged. The flitter, cut to its lowest cruising speed, circled slowly around, never venturing too far ahead. While Dane and Mura on foot, having to swing bush knives in places against the thick mat of vegetation, made their way into the sinister valley. They found the place where the track of the crawler came from the rock of the burnt-off land to bite into the soft soil of the healthy area.
Mura turned there and stared back, over the plain. They could not sight from this point the blotch of brightly coloured ruins. But they were certain that the crawler had come out of the blasted area, to be driven with intelligent purpose towards the mountains—until it vanished into the solid rock of a cliff wall!
“Dr Rich’s party—?” Dane aired his suspicions.
“Perhaps—perhaps not,” was Mura’s ambiguous reply. “Did you not say that Ali thought this machine was not of the usual type?”
”But—” Dane gaped, “you can’t mean that the Forerunners survived—here!”
Mura laughed. “They say that all things are possible in space, do they not? But no, I do not think that those ancient rulers of the lanes have here left their sons to greet us. Only they may have left other things—which are now being put to use. I would like to know more about those ruins—a great deal more.”
Perhaps that guess Rip had made days earlier—that on some planet might lie, waiting to be discovered, possessions of the legendary Forerunners—was close to the truth. Had such a cache been discovered by parties unknown here on Limbo? But with that marched the grim warning voiced by Ali that Forerunner material in Terran hands might be a threat to all of them.
Slowly they combed the mouth of the valley, reassured by the flitter cruising above. Dane broke open his field rations, chewing as he went, on a cube of rubbery, tasteless stuff which was supposed to provide his lank young body with all it needed in the way of balanced nourishment—and yet which was so savourless and far removed from real food.
He hacked at a mass of prickly shrubs and stumbled through the clutch of longer branches to come into a pocket-sized clearing entirely ranged with thorn-studded greenery. Underfoot was a thick mat of decaying leaves through which not even the spears of grass could grow.
Dane stopped short. The brown muck of the mat had been disturbed. He was conscious of an unwholesome reek of decay which came from scuffed patches where a green slime had been recently uncovered.
He went down on his hands and knees, circling that ploughed up patch. He was no tracker, but even to his inexperienced eyes this had been the site of a scuffle. And since the slime was still uncrusted, that event had taken place not too long ago. Dane surveyed the brush which walled in the tiny area. It was just the place for an ambush. If Kamil had come through—over there—
Taking care not to disturb the churned muck, Dane made his way to the opposite side of the clearing. He was right! The cut of a bush knife showed where a branch had been lopped away.
Someone, armed with regulation Terran field equipment, had come through here.
Come through here—to find some one, or something, waiting for him!
The globe creatures? Or those who had used the strange crawler and burnt the globes in the valley?
But Dane was certain that he had discovered where Ali had been surprised—not only surprised but overpowered by a superior force. Overpowered—to be taken where? He subjected the walling shrubs to a careful scrutiny. But in no other place did he see any suggestion of disturbance or break. It was almost as if the hunter, having made certain of his prey, had vanished into thin air, transporting the prisoner with him.