"Earl!" Kemmer came running toward him. In the blue glow of a lantern his face was ghastly. "Thank God. I thought-"
"Get packed!" The man had been on watch and Dumarest snatched the rocket-rifle from his hands. "Where's Carl? Get him to help. Zarl!" The guide was at the sonarscope. "Did you trace the direction?"
"Earl, the noise-"
"To hell with that! The thing can't sense us over that racket and we can't waste time. Did you check? Give me the figures."
Dumarest sat, comparing them with those he had taken, setting one against the other and gaining direction, depth and approximate distance. The small sounds he'd plotted from what had to be a feeding-node had come from the east and the sannak had headed in that direction. Other soundings traced the path of the creatures south and away from the ridge. As he'd guessed, the position they were in was barren, the multiple tunnels now serving to amplify distant vibrations.
"Here." His finger touched a position on a map. "About three miles to the east and maybe a quarter down."
"Three miles!" Kemmer sucked in his breath. "So far?"
"If it was nearer they'd be all over us. Zarl?"
"It's about as you say, Earl. A small node, I'd guess, and that could be in our favor. How do we get there? Up and over then down and chance we find an entry?"
"What are the chances?"
"Not good if the node is deep. We'd have to spread out and search for a mouth then take a chance on its remaining firm. That's the usual method."
There was another but he didn't mention it, watching as Dumarest calculated the probabilities. To climb out of the caverns back to the upper ridge, to walk along it, then to descend would take time and expose them to the outside and, if a storm was blowing, render them immobile until it was over. But to press on through the tunnels was to risk getting lost in a maze and, the nearer they approached the node, the more dangerous it would be.
"We'll go through," said Dumarest.
"Through these tunnels!" Kemmer was against it. "Why man, what's the point? It's taking risks for the sake of it. What if we get lost?" A vision of a nightmare of endless walking, starving, dying of thirst, waiting for the moment when destruction would strike. He added pleadingly, "Let's play it safe."
"Carl?"
"There's no point in going out just to come in again. I'm with you, Earl."
Hine said, "I'll ride along. You seem to know what you're doing. We can use the node as a guide and it's possible that some of these later tunnels could run straight toward it. How do we operate? Point, porters and rear guard? Right, I'll take the point." He paused as if waiting for argument; then, as none came, said, "We move in an hour."
It was like a dream he'd had when young; a nightmare which had afflicted him when, after his first hunt, he had seen his uncle buried beneath a fall and had wandered for hours in a mesh of tunnels. That had been at the foot of Peak 14 and he had never hunted there since. Hadn't hunted at all for years when financial need had driven him back to the Hills to earn enough to pay off his first debt. Then the second child and another loan and then the illness and the trouble and now the endless moving through tunnels made long before he'd been born.
But safe-Dumarest had been right about that and Hine wondered why he and others had never thought of it for themselves. Habit, he guessed, old ways die hard and when it's a question of land and search and grab and run and think yourself lucky if you manage to stay alive-God grant they be lucky!
He paused as they reached yet another junction and shone his lantern from one opening to another. The dust was a trifle thicker in one but it sloped up and they needed to head down. One had an appearance he didn't trust, the rock had run into veins of impacted sand and it could fall or be blocked farther ahead. The other? Should he lead the way into the other?
Dumarest said, "We'll halt for a while, Zarl. I'll check the readings."
"No. I can manage."
"You can and will but Santis needs a rest and Kemmer's bushed." A lie, but too near the truth for comfort. The trader, burdened with gear, was dragging his feet and Santis couldn't maintain concentration while battling fatigue. As the guide hesitated, Dumarest added, "You've made good time but we could lose everything if you make a mistake. Tent up, now, and rest."
As he obeyed, Dumarest moved to the junction, squatted, set up his apparatus and listened. The blur of noise was louder now and he judged they must have covered two-thirds of the distance to the node. A hard two miles, stretched into seven by turns, rises, blocked tunnels and diversions. Hours of painful progress marked by frozen halts and stealthy movements. Caution dictated by Hine and followed by the others. And twice they had found tranneks.
Dumarest looked at them, glowing in the blue shine of his lamp. Smooth pebbles enriched with fluorescence created by the ultraviolet. Kemmer had found one and Santis the other, both had been buried deep, both exposed by a passing boot. Perhaps, if they roved the tunnels, they would find more but he could not afford to spare the time. And, at best, the harvest would be difficult to reap with the stones buried deep beneath settled dust.
Time and money-to escape he needed both. He leaned back, switching off the lantern, seeing little flecks dance in his retinas from lingering images. Flecks which formed a pattern and became the fifteen units of the affinity twin. The secret Kalin had given him, one handed to her by Brasque who had stolen it from a secret laboratory of the Cyclan. Her gift which had made him the hunted prey of the organization which dominated worlds. One which offered incredible power. With it the intelligence of one could be placed in the body of another so that the subject-host would be ruled and controlled in every sense by the dominant factor. An old man could be given a new, young, virile body. A raddled crone be fresh and attractive and desirable again. New life. New bodies-a bribe none could resist.
And with the intelligence of a cyber ruling their mind and bodies none of power or influence could do other than dance to the tune the Cyclan chose to play.
And he had it, the secret they wanted so badly, the one they would move worlds to obtain.
The basic units they knew-but the sequence in which they had to be assembled they had lost. And to try to test each possible combination would take millennia. Time they wanted to save. Time he could give them.
And, once within their power, he would have no choice. They would take him and probe him and tear his mind apart and when they had done with him he would be eliminated as so much unwanted rubbish. To save his life he must escape the trap. And only the node could help him.
They reached it five hours later, inching forward through a narrow fissure, a chimney blown by some age-old venting of volcanic fury to crouch, helmets touching, staring at what lay below. A cavern as vast as the one they had first entered, the walls crusted with masses of crystalline protrusions which glowed with a cold, unwavering, greenish light. In it the sannaks feasted.
"God!" Kemmer's voice carried a stunned disbelief. "Look at those things!"
"Like worms," whispered Santis. "Giant worms."
But worms had no scales, no rasping, multi-toothed jaws, no eyes which gleamed like prisms beneath transparent protective membranes. And no worm could ever have been as large or as noisy.
"A feeding-node," said Hine. "I've heard of them but this is the first I've seen." His voice dimmed in the rasp of scales passing over scales, of jaws gnawing at the deposits. "Chitney," he said. "And, yes, elmish. See, over there. The dark purple stuff. That's what holds tranneks."
"Let's get them and go," said Kemmer. "Before those things spot us."
"They aren't to be found in a node-I told you that." The guide was impatient. "They don't void where they feed. We'll have to swing round and head out so as to search their runs."