Listening hard, he could hear twanging and huffing noises, with the clatter of leaves closing around solid bodies. Nyawk-Captain froze. But the noises were fading, he decided, moving off into the forest. Whatever lived up here perhaps had more to fear from a kzin than he from it.
Instead of stepping off on the lower branches, as he had before, this time Nyawk-Captain kept close to the main trunk of his tree. He intended to climb as high as he could, until the width of the bole was insufficient to support his weight.
He was still climbing on firm wood when he saw a burn mark in the tree. His head came up level with a hole big enough for a newborn kzitten to curl up inside. He touched the edges of the scar, crumbling the charcoal that coated them. It was still warm. He tasted his fingerpads. Fresh soot, with the scent of smoke still in it. As he watched, a tear of yellow sap rolled down and across the curve of the hole, confirming his suspicion.
He drew his locator from its belt clip and aimed down along his leg.
No return image.
He aimed up, past his helmet.
No image, either.
He aimed to the four cardinal points, in one case reaching around the tree trunk to aim for it.
East by the sun, he got a hard return, but nowhere as close to him as the bloom had been a few minutes ago.
The artifact was on the move-and going fast.
Nyawk-Captain did not think a Whitefood would have come to take it. He did not think a sudden burst of lightning had burned this hole, And he could think of no animal living in this world of green vines which might have control of such fire. Unless it was a form of superior monkey… the sons of Hanuman.
Certainly they had come here in the Leaf-Eater hull. They had not died with it. And, considering its present condition, they could not leave in it.
He began the long climb down to the forest floor. As he went, he sent a call to Cat’s Paw. It was time to get Weaponsmaster started on a wide-area sweep with those sensors they still possessed.
Daff Gambiel rested in the fork of a large branch, balancing the Slaver stasis-box on his knee. He and Krater had traveled eastward five kilometers by his own dead reckoning.
Now they were in disagreement about which way they had actually gone. So Krater had climbed higher into the overgrowth, to take bearings by the setting sun. Fine in theory-if she could keep her sense of direction while moving around in this leaf maze.
Gambiel was willing to bet she would get lost just coming down.
While he waited, he studied the stasis-box. One side had a flattened place with a dull-gray disk etched onto the mirrored surface. It was the only feature in an otherwise featureless object. It had to be the field actuator switch.
Gambiel considered it carefully. He knew he should wait on opening the box until the other team members could be present. They would all want to inventory the contents together. That way they could examine anything inside that might be fragile or valuable, offer witness of anything that might fall apart or evaporate, or try to protect each other against anything that might suddenly leap out and attack them.
But Cuiller and Jook might also have been captured by now. Or he and Krater might be captured anytime soon. Better to open the box now and know what it contained. Besides, even though it massed only ten kilos, the thing was too awkward to keep carrying around. Gambiel was tired of working his launcher one-handed, and no sling or belt he could rig would hold on to the box’s slick, mirrored surface. More to the point, if the kzinti were using deep radar-or any radar at this distance-the box was a sure signal of his and Krater’s location. So it made most sense to abandon it, unload and abandon it, now.
Without more thinking, he pressed down on the disk.
The box changed, its surface slowly becoming a cloudy gray. It was like watching a time-lapse video of silver tarnishing. When the transformation was complete, a crack appeared along the keg’s length and down each end-face.
Gambiel forced the crack open with his hands and found himself blinking into a pair of wide-set, liquid eyes. They belonged to a face that was part of a rounded body covered in soft, white hair that was trimmed in intersecting globes of fluff. He was reminded of pictures he once had seen of Earth dogs
– useless, yapping, brainless pets. This animal, however, studied him with a wary expression and made no move to climb out of the stasis-box.
Gently, in case the animal should suddenly display teeth and snap at him, Gambiel felt around inside the box He quickly found the remaining contents: a long tubular device that had a fretwork of keys and finger-holes, like a flute, but no mouth hole for blowing; and three patties of wrinkled, brownish material that looked like freeze-dried meat, each wrapped in a tight plastic sheath. Gambiel assumed the meat was some kind of food ration for the “dog.”
He set the stasis-box, with the animal still sitting patiently inside it, down among the interwoven vines of the canopy. It was the “flute” that drew his attention.
He held it up with the end pointing at his mouth, like a clarinet or recorder, and tried to fit his fingers to the keys and holes. It didn’t work for eight fingers and two thumbs. He frowned and looked down along the flute’s length, counting. Yes, it did have more than ten positions-thirteen, in fact-but the spacing was wrong for human hands. Not surprising, considering that a billion years ago humans had not evolved on Earth, nor much else, other than bacteria and blue-green algae.
He raised the flute again, and Yip!
The dog had barked at him. Gambiel looked down. The animal’s eyes had grown big and it was trying to shy away from him.
Daff shrugged and began pressing keys at random, still looking for a hole to blow through. He heard a faint and almost familiar strain of music. He stopped fingering. Instead of breaking off in the middle, the tune wandered away from the notes and faded in a burble of sound. If this was a flute, Gambiel decided, it was a defective one.
He set it aside and looked at the dog, which seemed to be going to sleep on him.
“Come here, Fellah.”
The dog immediately straightened up and jumped out of the case. It came directly to Gambiel, sure-footing its way across the vines, and rested its chin on his knee. It looked up at him with an attitude of rapt attention.
“Yeah, you’re a good Fellah, aren’t you? Bright little guy, too. You know I won’t hurt you… It’s a good thing we found you first, instead of those kzinti.
They probably hate dogs-would if they had any in their Patriarchy, that is… And they’re big enough to do something about it, too… I figure they’d take you for a snack. You’re just about one bite to them.”
As he talked, the animal’s eyes slowly closed… falling asleep.
The darkness was beginning to grow around them, seeping in between the leaves, and Gambiel expected Krater to come down soon.
“Are you hungry, Fellah?” He picked up one of the meat patties and looked it over. No kind of heat tab or peel point in the wrapper. He drew his knife and slit around the edge.
The dog never lifted its head from his knee.
He pulled the plastic back and sniffed the patty. It smelled vaguely unpleasant, like dried meat saturated with chemical preservatives.
“You eat this stuff?” He offered it to the dog.
Fellah slid his chin off Gambiel’s leg and backed away. His eyes were still half closed and his head down between his shoulders. Gambiel knew very little about dogs, because they didn’t fare well in Jinx’s high gravity. But he decided the animal’s reaction was purely negative, a cross between “guilt” and “disgust.”
Gambiel shrugged and broke off a piece of the meat for himself He put it in his mouth, let his saliva soak it for a moment, and began chewing. It had no flavor, like chewing on wood pulp. He rewrapped the patty, putting it and the others in his pocket.
“What the hell are you doing?” Krater asked as she brushed aside a branch and climbed the last few meters down to his level.