The captain’s eyes searched the part of the thickets he could see behind the robot. Something moved slightly there, moved again, stopped. A half-crouched figure interested in keeping as much screening vegetation as it could between itself and possible observers from above. The Agandar.
The Spider still hadn’t stirred. The captain inched his gun forwards, brought it to bear on the center of the crouching man-shape. Not too good a target in that tangle, if it came to shooting! But perhaps it wouldn’t. If the robot’s sensor equipment couldn’t detect them here, if they made no incautious move, Yango still might decide they weren’t in the immediate neighborhood and remount the thing before it began its ascent along their trail…
That thought ended abruptly.
The robot reared, front sets of legs spread, swung in towards the cliff face and, with that, passed again beyond the captain’s limited range of vision. He didn’t see the clawed leg tips reach up, test the rough rock for holds and settle in; but he could hear them. Then there were momentary glimpses of the thing’s shaggy back, as it drew itself off the ground and came clambering up towards the ledge.
Heart thudding, he took up the slack on the trigger, held the gun pointed as steadily as he could at Yango’s half hidden shape. When he heard Hulik’s blaster, he’d fire, too, at once. But otherwise wait — a few seconds longer; wait, in fact, as long as he possibly could! For Yango might move, present a better target, or he might discover some reason to check the robot’s ascent before it reached the ledge. If they fired now and missed -
Sudden rattle and thud of dislodged rock below! The section of the robot’s back he could see at the moment jerked sharply. The thing had lost a hold, evidently found another at once for it was steady again — and startlingly close! Already it seemed to have covered more than half the distance to the ledge.
And down in the thickets, apprehensive over the robot’s near-slip, Yango was coming to his feet — instantly recognizing his mistake and ducking again as Hulik’s blaster spat. The captain shot, too, but at a figure flattened down, twisting sideways through dense cover, then gone. He stopped shooting.
From below the ledge came a noise somewhere between the robot’s usual snarl and the hiss of escaping steam. Hulik was still firing, methodically shredding the thicket about the point where the Agandar had last been in view. The captain came up on hands and knees, leaned forward, looked down at the robot.
The thing had slewed halfway around on the cliff, head twisted at a grotesque angle as it stared at the whipping thicket. The hissing rose to giant shrieks. It swung back to its previous position. From between the black jaws protruded a thick gray tube, pointed up at the ledge. The captain threw himself sideways, caught Hulik’s ankle, dragged her back through the lair litter to the cliff wall with him, pulled her around beside Goth.
The ledge shuddered in earthquake throes as the Sheem robot’s war-beam slammed into it from below. It was thick, solid rock, and many tons of it, but it wasn’t battle-steel. It lasted for perhaps two seconds; then most of it separated into four great chunks and dropped. Halfway down, the falling mineral mass scraped the robot from the cliff and took it along. Through the thunderous crash of impact on the slope below the cliff came sharper explosive sounds which might have been force fields collapsing. When the captain and Hulik peered down from what was left of the ledge a moment later, they could make out a few scraps of what looked like shaggy brown fur lying about in the wreckage of rocks. The Spider hadn’t lasted either…
The captain sucked in a deep lungful of air, looked at Goth’s face. She was smiling a little, might have been peacefully asleep in her own bed. Some drug! “Better move!” he remarked unsteadily. He fished rope from his pocket, shoved his gun back into the pocket. “Think you hit Yango?”
Hulik didn’t answer. She was sitting on her heels, face turned towards the dim red sky above the valley, lips parted, eyes remote. As if listening to something. “Hulik!” he said sharply.
The do Eldel blinked, looked at him. “Yango? Yes… I got him twice, at least. He’s dead, I suppose.” Her voice was absent, indifferent.
“Help me get Dani back up! We—”
Thunderclap! Monstrously loud — the captain had the impression it had ripped the air no more than four hundred yards above them. Then a series of the same sounds, still deafening but receding quickly as if spaced along a straight line in the sky towards the mouth of the valley and beyond. There were no accompanying flashes of light. As the racket faded, a secondary commotion was erupting on the slopes about the foot of the cliff — hooting, howling, yapping voices, a flapping of wings, shadowy shapes gliding up into the air. And all that, too, moved rapidly away, subsided again.
“Dear me!” Hulik giggled. “We really have them upset now.” She reached for the rope in the captain’s hand. “Lift the little witch up and I’ll get her fastened. It doesn’t matter though. We won’t make it back to the ship.”
But they did make it back to the ship. Afterwards, the captain couldn’t remember too much of the hike down along the slope. He remembered that it had seemed endless, that his legs had turned into wobbly rubber from time to time, while Goth’s small body seemed leaden on his back. The do Eldel walked and clambered beside or behind him. Now and then she laughed. For a while she’d hummed a strange, wild little tune that made him think of distant drum-dances. Later she was silent. Perhaps he’d told her to shut up. He couldn’t remember that.
He remembered fear. Not of things following on the ground or of some flying monster that might come swooping down again. As far as he could tell, they had lost their escort; the gorges, ravines, the thicket-studded slopes, seemed almost swept clean of life. Nothing stirred or called. It was as if instead of drawing attention now, they were being carefully avoided.
The fear had no real form. There were oppressive feelings of hugeness and menace gathering gradually about. There was an occasional suspicion that the red sky had darkened for moments as if shadows too big to be made out as shadows had just passed through it. The staccato thunder, which had no lightning to explain it, reverberated now and then above the mountains; but that disturbance never came nearly as close again as it had done at the cliff. When they reached the edge of the ravine where, on the way up, they’d stopped to listen to something like a series of deep, giant bells, far off in the valley, he thought he heard a dim echoing of the same sound again. No matter, he told himself — the Venture still lay undisturbed below and ahead of them in the valley, not many more minutes away…
“They’re waiting for us at the ship,” Hulik said from behind him. She laughed.
He didn’t reply. The do Eldel had been a good companion when it came to facing the Agandar and his killing machine. But this creepy shadow world simply had become too much for her.
Then, on the final stretch down, Hulik faltered at last, started weaving and stumbling. The captain helped her twice to her feet, then clamped an arm around her and plodded on. He began to do some stumbling himself, got the notion that the ground was shifting, lifting and settling underfoot, like the swell of an uneasy sea. When he looked up once more to see how much farther it was, he came to a sudden stop. The bow of the Venture loomed above them; the ramp was a dozen steps away. He glanced at the dark open lock above it, steered Hulik to the foot of the ramp, shook her shoulder.