They were a little more than halfway across when Cal felt a tugging on the line.
He looked back. Maury was waving him up into a shelter of one of the big rocks. He waved back and turned off from the direct path, crawling up into the ice-free overhang. Behind him, as he turned, he saw Maury coming toward him, and behind Maury, Doug.
“Doug wants to tell you something!” Maury shouted against the wind noise, putting his mask up close to Cal’s.
“What is it?” Cal shouted.
“—Saw it again!” came Doug’s answer.
“Something moving?” Doug nodded. “Behind us?” Doug’s mask rose and fell again in agreement “Was it one of the aliens?”
“I think so!” shouted Doug. “It could be some sort of animal. It was moving awfully fast—I just got a glimpse of it!”
“Was it—” Doug shoved his masked face closer, and Cal raised his voice—“was it wearing any kind of clothing that you could see?”
“No!” Doug’s head shook back and forth.
“What kind of life could climb around up here without freezing to death—unless it had some protection?” shouted Maury to them both.
“We don’t know!” Cal answered. “Let’s not take chances. If it is an alien, he’s got all the natural advantages. Don’t take chances. You’ve got your gun, Doug. Shoot anything you see moving!”
Doug grinned and looked harshly at Cal from inside his mask.
“Don’t worry about me!” he shouted back. “Maury’s the one without a gun.”
“We’ll both keep an eye on Maury! Let’s get going now. There’s only about another hour or so before the sun goes behind those other mountains—and we want to be in camp underneath the far ridge before dark!”
He led off again and the other two followed.
As they approached the far ridge, the wind seemed to lessen somewhat. This was what Cal had been hoping for—that the far ridge would give them some protection from the assault of the atmosphere they had been enduring in the open. The dark wall of the ridge, some twenty or thirty feet in sudden height at the edge of the cwm, was now only a hundred yards or so away. It was already in shadow from the descending sun, as were the downslope sides of the big rock chunks. Long shadows stretched toward a far precipice edge where the cwm ended, several thousand feet below. But the open icy spaces were now ruddy and brilliant with the late sunlight. Cal thought wearily of the pup tents and his sleeping bag.
Without warning a frantic tugging on the rope roused him. He jerked around, and saw Maury, less than fifteen feet behind him, gesturing back the way they had come. Behind Maury, the rope to Doug led out of sight around the base of one of the rock chunks.
Then suddenly Doug slid into view.
Automatically Cal’s leg muscles spasmed tight, to take the sudden jerk of the rope when Doug’s falling body should draw it taut. But the jerk never came.
Sliding, falling, gaining speed as he descended the rooftop-steep slope of the cwm, Doug’s body no longer had the rope attached to it. The rope still lay limp on the ground behind Maury. And then Cal saw something he had not seen before. The dark shape of Doug was not falling like a man who finds himself sliding down two thousand feet to eternity. It was making no attempt to stop its slide at all. It fell limply, loosely, like a dead man—and indeed, just at that moment, it slid far upon a small, round boulder in his path which tossed it into the air like a stuffed dummy, arms and legs asprawl, and it came down indifferently upon the slope beyond and continued, gaining speed as it went.
Cal and Maury stood watching. There was nothing else they could do. They saw the dark shape speeding on and on, until finally it was lost for good among the darker shapes of the boulders farther on down the cwm. They were left without knowing whether it came eventually to rest against some rock, or continued on at last to fall from the distant edge of the precipice to the green, unknown depth that was far below them.
After a little while Maury stopped looking. He turned and climbed on until he had caught up with Cal. His eyes were accusing as he pulled in the loose rope to which Doug had been attached. They looked at it together.
The rope’s end had been cut as cleanly as any knife could have cut it.
The sun was just touching the further mountains. They turned without speaking and climbed on to the foot of the ridge wall.
Here the rocks were free of ice. They set up a single pup tent and crawled into it with their sleeping bags together, as the sun went down and darkness flooded their barren and howling perch on the mountainside.
VII
They took turns sitting up in their sleeping bags, in the darkness of their tiny tent, with Cal’s gun ready in hand.
Lying there in the darkness, staring at the invisible tent roof nine inches above his nose, Cal recognized that in theory the aliens could simply be better than humans—and that was that. But, Cal, being the unique sort of man he was, found that he could not believe such theory.
And so, being the unique sort of man he was, he discarded it. He made a mental note to go on trying to puzzle out the alien’s vulnerability tomorrow… and closing his eyes, fell into a light doze that was the best to be managed in the way of sleep.
When dawn began to lighten the walls of their tent they managed, with soup powder, a little of their precious water and a chemical thermal unit, to make some hot soup and get it into them. It was amazing what a difference this made, after the long, watchful and practically sleepless night. They put some of their concentrated dry rations into their stomachs on top of the soup and Cal unpacked and set up the small portable still.
He took the gun and his ice-hammer and crawled outside the tent. In the dawnlight and the tearing wind he sought ice which they could melt and then distill to replenish their containers of drinking water. But the only ice to be seen within any reasonable distance of their tent was the thin ice-glaze—verglas, mountaineers back on Earth called it—over which they had struggled in crossing the cwm the day before. And Cal dared not take their only gun too far from Maury, in case the alien made a sudden attack on the tent.
There was more than comradeship involved. Alone, Cal knew, there would indeed be no hope of his getting the Messenger to the mountaintop. Not even the alien could do that job alone—and so the alien’s strategy must be to frustrate the human party’s attempt to send a message.
It could not be doubted that the alien realized what their reason was for trying to climb the mountain. A race whose spaceships made use of the principle of no-time in their drives, who was equipped for war, and who responded to attack with the similarities shown so far, would not have a hard time figuring out why the human party was carrying the equipment on Cal’s pack up the side of a mountain.
More, the alien, had he had a companion, would probably have been trying to get message equipment of his own up into favorable dispatching position. Lacking a companion his plan must be to frustrate the human effort. That put the humans at an additional disadvantage. They were the defenders, and could only wait for the attacker to choose the time and place of his attempt against them.
And it would not have to be too successful an attempt, at that. It would not be necessary to kill either Cal or Maury, now that Doug was gone. To cripple one of them enough so that he could not climb and help his companion climb, would be enough. In fact, if one of them were crippled Cal doubted even that they could make it back to the Harrier. The alien then could pick them off at leisure.
Engrossed in his thoughts, half-deafened by the ceaseless wind, Cal woke suddenly to the vibration of something thundering down on him.