Langley went on. There was nothing else he could do. He didn’t think Saris would have gone farther underground than necessary; the Holatans weren’t exactly claustrophobic, but they were creatures of open land and sky, it went against their instincts to remain long enclosed. The alien would be after an easily defensible site with at least a couple of emergency boltholes: say a small cave having two or three tunnels out from it to the surface. But that could be any of a hundred places down here, and no map of the system was available.
Logic helped somewhat. Saris hadn’t had a map of the caves either. He’d have slipped in through the main entrance, like his present followers, because he wouldn’t have known where any other approach was. Then he would look for a room to live in, with exits and a water supply. Langley turned to the man with the dowsing unit. “Isn’t there a pool or river somewhere near?”
“Yes—water over in that direction. Shall we try?”
“Uh-huh.” Langley groped toward the nearest tunnel. Beyond, the passage narrowed rapidly until he had to crawl.
“This may be it,” he said. Echoes shivered around his words. “Saris could easily slip through, he can go four-footed anytime he wants, but it’s a hard approach for a man.”
“Wait.,. here, you take the tracker, captain,” said someone behind him. “I think it kicked over, but all these people ahead of me make too much interference.”
Langley squirmed around to grasp the box. Focusing it, he squinted at the green-glowing dial. It was responsive to the short-range impulses emitted by a nervous system and -yes, the needle was quivering more than it should!
Excited, he crawled farther, the harsh damp wall scraping his back. His flashbeam was a single white lance thrust into blindness. His breathing was a loud rasp in his throat.
He came suddenly to the end and almost went over. The tunnel must open several feet or yards above the floor. “Saris!” he called. The echoes flew about, this was a good-sized room. Somewhere he heard running water. “Saris Hronna! Are you there?”
A blaster bolt smashed after him. He saw the dazzle of it, there were spots dancing before his eyes for minutes afterward, and the radiation stung his face. He snapped off the light and jumped, hoping wildly that it wasn’t too far to the ground. Something raked his leg, the jolting impact rattled his teeth, and he fell to an invisible floor.
Another beam flamed toward the tunnel mouth. Langley felt blood hot and sticky on his calf. The Holatan knew just where the opening was, he could ricochet his bolts and fry the men within. “Saris! It’s me—Edward Langley—I’m your friend!”
The echoes laughed at him, dancing through an enormous night. Friend, friend, friend, friend. The underground stream talked with a cold frantic voice. If the outlaw had gone mad with fear and loneliness, or if he had decided in bleak sanity to kill any human who ventured here, Langley was done. The incandescent sword of an energy beam, or the sudden closing of jaws in his throat, would be the last thing he ever felt. It had to be tried. Langley dug himself flat against the rock. “Saris! I’ve come to get you out of here! I’ve come to take you home!”
The answer rumbled out of blackness, impossible to locate through the echoes: “Iss you? What do you want?”
“I’ve made arrangements... you can get back to Holat—” Langley was shouting in English, their only common language; the Holatan dialects were too unlike man’s for him to have learned more than a few phrases. “We’re your friends, the only friends you’ve got.”
“Sso.” He could not read any expression into the tone. He thought he could feel the vibrations of a heavy body, flitting through the dark on padded feet. “I can not be sure. Pleasse to the present situation wit” honesty describe.”
Langley put it into a few words. The stone under his belly was wet and chill. He sneezed, snuffled, and reflected on the old definition of adventure as somebody else having a tough time a thousand miles away. “It’s the only chance for all of us,” he finished. “If you don’t agree, you’ll stay here till you die or are dragged out.”
There was a silence, then: “You I trust, I know you. But iss it not that thesse otherss you hawe deceiwed possible?”
“I... what? Oh. You mean maybe the Society is playing me for a sucker, too? Yes. It could be. But I don’t think so.”
“I hawe no dessire for dissection,” said the one who waited.
“You won’t be. They want to study you, see how you do what you do. You told me your thinkers back home have a pretty good idea of how it works.”
“Yes. Not’ing could from the gross anatomy of my brain be learned. I t’ink such a machine ass your... friendss... wish could eassily be built.” Saris hesitated, then: “Wery well, I musst take chancess, no matter what happenss. Let it be sso. You may all enter.”
When the lights picked him out, he stood tall and proud, waiting with the dignity of his race among the boxes of supplies which had been his only reliance. He took Langley’s hands between his and nuzzled the man’s cheek. “Iss good to see you again,” he said.
“I’m... sorry for what happened,” said Langley. “I didn’t know—”
“No. The uniwerse full of surprisses iss. No matter, if I can go home again.”
The spacemen accepted him almost casually, they were used to non-human intelligence. After binding Langley’s injury, they formed a cordon and returned. Valti raised ship as soon as all were aboard, and then conferred with them. “Is there anything you require, Saris Hronna?” he asked through the American.
“Yess. Two witaminss which seem to be lacking in Eart” chemistry.” Saris drew diagrams on a sheet of paper. “Thesse iss the structural formulass in Langley’ss symbology.”
The spaceman re-drew them in modern terms, and Valti nodded. “They should be easy to synthesize. I have a molecule maker in my hideaway.” He tugged at his beard. “We must go there first, to make preparations for departure. I have a light-speed cruiser in a secret orbit. You’ll be put aboard that and sent to our base in the Cygni system. That’s well outside the Solar and Centaurian spheres of influence. Then your abilities can be studied at leisure, sir, and your own payment rendered, Captain Langley.”
Saris spoke up. He had his own bargain to make. He would cooperate if he was afterward returned to Holat with a crew of technicians and ample supplies. His world lay too far off to be in direct danger from the stars of this region, but some party of wandering conquistadors might happen on it—and Holat had no defenses against bombardment from space. That situation must be rectified. Armed robot satellites would not stop a full-dress invasion fleet—nothing would do that except possibly another fleet—but would be able to dispose of the small marauding groups which were all that Holat really had to worry about.
Valti winced. “Captain, does he realize what the bonuses for a trip of that length are? Does he know how much it would cost to set up those stations? Has he no sympathy for a poor old man who must face an audit of his books?”
“Fraid not,” said Langley with a grin.
“Ah... what assurances does he want that we will keep our end of such an agreement?”
“He’ll have control over your development of the nullifier—you can’t make it without him, both his empirical evidence and his theoretical knowledge—so that part’s taken care of. When he sees the project nearing the end, he’ll want your ships prepared for him, ready to go. And he’ll want a bomb planted on the one carrying him, under his control; women and children will stay aboard while the work is being done for Holat, and at the first sign of treachery he’ll blow the whole thing up.”
“Dear me!” Valti shook a doleful head. “What a nasty suspicious mind he has, to be sure. I should think one look at my honest face- Well, well, so be it. But I shudder to think what the expense is going to do to our cost accounting.”