Zinga had propped his head on his two hands and was staring out toward the distant plain and hills.
"Green hills," he muttered. "Green hills and water full of very excellent food. The Spirit of Space is smiling on us this once. Do you wish to ask questions of our fishing friend below?"
"No. And it is not alone. Something grazes behind that clump of pointed trees and there are other lives. They fear each other — they live by claw and fang — "
"Primitive," catalogued Fylh, and then conceded generously, "Perhaps you are right, Kartr. Perhaps there is no human or Bemmy overlord in this world."
"I trust not," Zinga raised both his first and second eyelids to their fullest extent. "I long to pit my wits — daring adventurer style — against some fiendish, intelligent monster — "
Kartr grinned. For some reason he had always found the reptile-ancestored brain of the Zacathan more closely akin to his own thinking processes than he ever did Fylh's cool detachment. Zinga entered into life with zest, while the Trystian was, in spite of physical participation, always the onlooker.
"Maybe we can locate some settlement of your fiendish monsters among those hills," he suggested. "What about it, Fylh, dare we try to reach them?"
"No." Fylh was measuring with a claw tip the gage on the control panel. "We've enough to get us back to the ship from here and that is all."
"If we all hold our breath and push," murmured the Zacathan. "All right. And if we have to set down, we'll walk. There is nothing better than to feel good hot sand ooze up between one's toes — " He sighed languorously.
The sled arose, startling the brown-coated fisherman. It sat on its haunches, one dripping paw raised, to watch them go. Kartr caught its mild astonishment — but it had no fear of them. It had few enemies and did not expect those to fly through the air. As they swung around Kartr tried an experiment and sent a darting flash of good will into that primitive brain. He looked back. The animal had risen to its hind legs and stood, man fashion, its front paws dangling loosely, staring after the sled.
They passed over the falls so low that the spray beaded their skins. Kartr caught his lower lip between his teeth and bit down on it. Was that only Fylh's flying or did power failure drive them down? He had no desire to ask that question openly.
"To follow the river back," Zinga pointed out, "is to take the long way round. If we cut across country from that peak we ought to hit the ship — "
Kartr saw and nodded. "How about it, Fylh? Stick to the water or not?"
The Trystian hunched his shoulders in his equivalent of a shrug. "Quicker, yes." And he pointed the sled's bow to the right.
They left the stream thread. A carpet of trees lay beneath them and then a scrubby clearing in which a group of five red-brown animals grazed. One tossed its head skyward and Kartr saw the sun glint on long cruel horns.
"I wonder," mused Zinga, "if they ever do any disputing with our river-bank friend. He had some pretty formidable claws — and those horns are not just for adornment. Or maybe they have some kind of treaty of nonaggression — "
"Then," observed Fylh, "they would be locked in deadly combat most of the time!"
"You know" — Zinga stared at the back of Fylh's crested head fondly — "you're a very useful Bemmy, my friend. With you along we never have to wear ourselves out expecting the worst — you have it all figured out for us. What would we ever do without your dark, dark eyes fixed upon the future?"
The trees and shrubs below were growing fewer. Rock and sections of baked, creviced earth and the queer, twisted plants which seemed native to the desert appeared in larger and larger patches.
"Wait!" Kartr's hand shot out to touch Fylh's arm. "To the right — there!"
The sled obediently swooped and came down on a patch of level earth. Kartr scrambled out, brushed through the fringe of stunted bush to come out upon the edge of what he had sighted from the air. The other two joined him.
Zinga dropped upon one knee and touched the white section almost gingerly. "Not natural," he gave his verdict.
Sand and earth had drifted and buried it. Only here had some freak of the scouring wind cleared that patch to betray it. Pavement — an artificial pavement!
Zinga went to the right, Fylh left, for perhaps forty feet. They squatted and, using their belt knives, dug into the soil. Within seconds each had uncovered a hard surface.
"A road!" Kartr kicked more sand away. "Surface transportation here at one time then. How long ago do you guess?"
Fylh shifted the loosened soil through his claws. "Here is heat and dryness, and, I think, not too many storms. Also the vegetation does spread as it would in jungle country. It may be ten years — ten hundred or — "
"Ten thousand!" Kartr ended for him. But the spark of excitement within him was being fanned into more vigorous life. So there had been superior life here! Man — or something — had built a road on which to travel. And roads usually led to —
The sergeant turned to Fylh. "Do you think we could pry enough fuel out of the main drive to bring the sled back here with the tailer mounted?"
Fylh considered. "We might — if we didn't need fuel for anything else."
Kartr's excitement faded. They would need it for other work. The Commander and Mirion would have to be transported on it when they left the ship — supplies carried — all that they would require to set up a camp in the more hospitable hill country. He kicked regretfully at the patch of pavement. Once it would have been his duty as well as his pleasure to follow that thin clue to its source. Now it was his duty to forget it. He walked heavily back to the sled and none of them spoke as they were again airborne.
3. Mutiny
They circled the crumpled length of the Starfire and saw a figure waving from a point near her nose. When they landed the sled Jaksan was waiting.
"Well?" he demanded harshly, almost before the sand had fallen away from the keel of the sled.
"There's good, open, well-watered land to the north," Kartr reported. "Animal life in a wilderness — "
"Eatable water creatures!" Zinga broke in, licking his lips at the memory.
"Any indications of civilization?"
"An old road, buried — nothing else. The animals know no superior life form. We had the recorder on — I can run the wire through for the Commander — "
"If he wants it — "
"What do you mean!" The tone in Jaksan's voice brought Kartr up short, the reel of spy wire clutched in his good hand.
"Commander Vibor," Jaksan's answer came cold and hard, "believes it our duty to remain with the ship — "
"But why?" asked the sergeant in honest bewilderment.
Nothing was ever going to raise the Starfire again. It was folly not to realize that at once and make plans on that basis. Kartr did now what he seldom dared to attempt, tried to read the surface mind of the arms officer. There was worry there, worry and something else — a surprising, puzzling resentment when Jaksan thought of him, Kartr, or of any of the rangers. Why? Did it stem back to the fact that the ranger sergeant was not a child of the Service, had not been reared of a Patrol family in the tight grip of tradition and duty, as had the other human members of the crew? Was it because he was termed a Bemmy lover and alien? He accepted that resentment as a fact, pigeonholed the memory of it to recall when he had to work with Jaksan in the future.
"Why?" The arms officer repeated Kartr's question. "A commander has responsibilities — even a ranger should realize that. Responsibilities — "
"Which doom him to starve to death in a broken ship?" cut in Zinga. "Come now, Jaksan. Commander Vibor is an intelligent life form — "