A whistle, low, yet penetrating, reached their ears from the depths. That was Rip, about to set out on his risky venture. Dane held his glasses to his eyes, though he knew very well that he could not follow the other’s progress through the dark.
The rest of the hours seemed days long. Dane watched the beacon with a single-minded intensity which made his eyes ache. But there was no change. He felt Mura shift beside him, fumbling in the dark and a faint glow told him that beneath the shelter of tunic hem the other was consulting his watch.
“How long?”
“He has been out four hours—”
Four hours! It wouldn’t take a man four hours to reach the Queen from here. Even if he had to detour and hide out at intervals to escape the sentries. It looked very much as if that twenty percent which Mura had mentioned as standing against the success of Rip’s mission was indeed the part to be dealt with now.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN:
ATTACK AND STALEMATE
Dawn was hinted at with a light in the east, and still the Queen’s beacon had not changed its hue. The watchers did not expect it to now. Something had gone wrong—Rip had never reached the ship.
Unable to stand inaction longer, Dane crept from the improvised shelter and started along the cliff on which they had set up their lookout. It formed a wall between the entrances to two of the tongue-shaped valleys—the one in which Wilcox and Kosti were encamped, the other unknown territory.
Dane sighted a trickle of stream in the second. The presence of water heralded, or had heralded, other life in his experience of Limbo. And here and now that pattern held. For he counted ten of the small checkerboard spice fields.
But this time the fields were not deserted. Two of the globe creatures worked among the plants. They stirred the ground about the roots of the spice ferns with their thread like tentacles, their round backs bobbing up and down as they moved.
Then both of them stood upright. Since they lacked any discernible heads or features, it was difficult for Dane to guess what they were doing. But their general attitude suggested they were either listening or watching.
Three more of the globes came noiselessly into sight. Between two of them swung a pole on which was tied the limp body of an animal about the size of a cat. No audible greeting passed between the hunters and the farmers. But they gathered in a group, dropping the pole. Through the glasses Dane saw that their finger tentacles interlocked from globe to globe until they formed a circle.
“Sooo—” The words hissed out of the early morning murk and Dane, who had been absorbed in the scene below, gave a start, as Mura’s hand closed on his shoulder.
“There is a crawler coming this way—” the steward whispered.
Once more the group of globes had an aura of expectancy. They scattered, moving with a speed which surprised the Terrans. In seconds they had taken cover, leaving the fields, the stream bank deserted.
The crunch of treads on loose stone and gravel was clear to hear as a vehicle crept into the vision range of the two on the cliff. Just as Kamil had been the first to discover, the crawler was not the usual type favoured by Federation men. It was longer, more narrow, and had a curious flexibility when it moved, as if its body was jointed.
One man sat behind its controls. An explorer’s helmet shielded his face, but he wore the same mixture of outer garments as Rich and his men had affected.
Mura’s hand on Dane’s shoulder applied pressure. But Dane, too, was aware of the trap about to be sprung. Masked by a line of brush, there was stealthy movement. A globe thing came into the Traders’ sight, clasping close to its upper ball body a large stone. One of its fellows joined it, similarly armed.
“—trouble.” Mura’s voice was a thin whisper.
The crawler advanced at a steady pace, crunching over the ground, splashing through the edge of the water. It had reached the first field now, and the driver made no effort to avoid the enclosure. Instead he drove on, the wide treads rolling flat first the low wall, and then the carefully tended plants that it guarded.
The globe things hidden from their enemy, scuttling on a course which paralleled that of the vehicle. Their stones were still tightly grasped and they moved with a lightning speed. By all the signs the man on the crawler was heading into an ambush.
It was when the machine ploughed into the third field that the infuriated owners struck. A rain of stones, accurately hurled, fell on both crawler and driver. One crashed on the man’s helmet. He gave a choked cry and half arose before he slumped forward limply over the controls. The machine ground on for a moment then stopped, one tread tilted up against a boulder at an angle which threatened the stability of the whole vehicle.
Dane and Mura climbed down the side of the cliff. The driver might have deserved just what he had received. But he was human and they could not leave him to some alien vengeance. They could see nothing of the globes. But they took the precaution, when they had reached the valley floor, of spraying the bushes around the crawler with their sleep rays. Mura remained on guard, ready to supply a second dose of the harmless radiation while Dane ran forward to pull free the driver.
He lugged him back in a shoulder carry to the edge of the cliff where they could stand off an attack of the globes if necessary.
But either the sleep ray or the appearance on the scene of two more Terrans discouraged a second sortie. And the valley might well have been completely deserted as the two from the Queen stood ready, the limp body of the rescued at their feet.
“Shall we try it—” Dane nodded at the wall behind them. Mura contrived to look amused.
“Unless you are a crax seed chewer, I do not see how you are going to climb with our friend draped across your broad shoulders—”
Dane, now that it was called to his attention, could share that doubt. The cliff climbing act was one which required both hands and feet, and one could never do it with a dead weight to support.
The unconscious man groaned and moved feebly. Mura went down on one knee and studied the face framed by the dented helmet. First he unhooked the fellow’s blaster belt and added it to his own armament. Then he loosened the chin strap, took off the battered headcovering and proceeded to slap the stubbled face dispassionately.
The crude resuscitation worked. Eyes blinked up at them and then the man tried to lever himself up, an operation Mura assisted with a jerk at his collar.
“It is time to go,” the steward said. “This way—”
Together they got the man on his feet, and urged him along the wall, rounding the spur on which they had been perched all night, so coming to the hidden point where the other two of their party were camped.
The driver showed little interest in them, he was apparently concentrating on his uncertain balance. But Mura’s grip was about his wrist and Dane guessed that that grasp was but the preliminary of one of the tricks of wrestling in which the steward was so well versed that no other of the Queen’s crew could defeat him.
As for Dane, he kept an eye behind, expecting any moment to be the target of a hail of those expertly thrown rocks. In a way this move they had just made would lead the Limbians to believe them one with the outlaws, and might well ruin any hopes they had cherished of establishing Trade relations with the queer creatures. And yet to leave a human at the mercy of the aliens was more than either of the Terrans could do.
Their charge spit a glob of blood and then spoke to Mura: “You one of the Omber crowd? I didn’t know they’d been called in—”
Mura’s expression did not change. “But this a mission of importance, is it not? They have called many of us in—”
“Who beamed me back there? Those damned bogies?”
“The natives, yes. They threw stones—”