Ancestor's World (37 page)

Mahree grimaced. "McAllister, they were drilling on a fault line! If they've got contaminated radonium lying around, they could all be dead."

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The radio sputtered and sizzled, but no more words came from it. Gordon looked at her. "Mahree, I'm going to the Lab. People should be gathering there by now. Can you check on the condition of the jets and shuttle?"

"Of course." She grabbed her com unit, stuck it to the belt of her shorts, winced as thunder boomed again, then pointed down at the sodden sand.

"Gordon, there's a lot of water coming from somewhere."

"Damn right there is!" He grabbed his pulse-gun holster, threw it over his shoulder. "Bet the water is cascading over the canyon rims by now." He rushed out.

Beyond the flap-door, sheets of rain turned the light of morning pale gray.

Bracing herself, Mahree followed.

The rain hit her. A thundering boom bounced back and forth from canyon wall to canyon wall. In an instant her hair was soaked through. She cleared her vision just in time to see Mother's Touch reach down from blue-black clouds and strike the canyon rim, a spiderweb of yellow-white fury.

She heard Gordon shouting something, turned to see Krillen staggering toward them. They ran to meet him, slipping and sliding in the mud. Etsane's tent was the closest, and it was half down, but Mahree saw no sign of the Ethiopian woman.

A moment later, she reached Krillen, just in time to keep him from falling flat on his snout. The Na-Dina investigator was obviously injured, his eyes wide and dazed with pain.

"Krillen?" she cried, supporting him and motioning to Gordon to help. "What happened?"

"Beloran," he gasped, trying to balance on his tail, almost falling over.

"What about him?" Gordon demanded. "I looked for him before we went to bed, but couldn't find him."

"I know how he did it." Krillen sounded incoherent, almost babbling.

"How he did what?' Mahree asked.

"How he killed Waterston. The glider... it was the glider..."

"What? How?" Mahree demanded.

"Beloran hid the glider aboard the jumpjet before he hid

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himself," Krillen said, still swaying. "Then, after Waterston was dead, he carried the glider out of the jumpjet, climbed up onto the hull of the craft--

leaving the scratches we found--and unfurled the glider. Then he glided away, over the mesa, down to the nearest river port, where he took a barge back to Spirit. He had it all planned." Krillen gasped with pain and held his left leg. "I found him outside Etsane's tent at daybreak."

"Etsane's tent!" Gordon said, looking around worriedly. "Where is she?"

Krillen flinched as lightning struck nearby. "Beloran had her in his grasp, dragging her off toward the landing field. When I tried to stop him, he shot me with a pulse gun. I almost passed out, but then I saw you two."

Mahree felt her stomach grow cold as the rain. "Etsane! Was she injured?

Shot?" she yelled at Krillen, her voice rising above the thunder.

"Alive!" he said loudly. "But not fully conscious. As if she'd been struck."

Gordon cursed. "If he's hurt her--"

Krillen fixed them both with a terrified stare. "Beloran is completely mad, Mahree. You and Gordon must rescue Etsane before he kills her. He said he would."

"No he won't!" Mahree said tightly. "If Beloran is heading for the back country, then he'll take his skimmer. To escape on the Royal Road. No one could find them in this storm." Except me, she thought fiercely. I know where the Royal Road goes.

Gordon nodded. "Head for the landing field! Maybe we can catch him before he reaches the Great Ramp."

"Right," Mahree said, letting go of the Investigator. "Krillen, go to the Lab.

Greyshine is in charge until we return. He'll get everyone out in the shuttle if the baffles fail to stop the flash-flood."

"What about you two? The floods could drown you!" Krillen hissed, the boom of thunder battering her ears.

"We'll take that gamble!" Mahree yelled, then started forward. She tripped and barely saved herself from falling. Her boot had caught in something outside Etsane's tent. She

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picked it up as Krillen limped toward the Lab. Rain-soaked and slick, it was a length of tanned leather. Etsane's sling!

"Bring it," Gordon ordered. "There are times when the old weapons are useful, as Etsane has shown us."

Together, they headed for the landing field at a run.

Gasping for breath, sliding in the wet sand and from the quivering of aftershocks, Mahree nearly fell several times. Gordon reached out to her, giving her his hand, and that helped.

They raced along together, Mahree's heart pounding more in fear for her friend than from the exertion.

When they reached the landing field, they found Beloran's skimmer gone.

Gordon turned to the camp skimmer and jumped in. "Come on! We'll try to head him off!"

She tumbled into the front seat. He gunned the vehicle and they roared ahead, the fans straining, the gyros whining in protest as they fought to keep the craft level. Gordon sent the craft skimming over boulders at a speed Mahree would never have dared.

Surely, she thought, he's a much better driver than Beloran, who only learned to drive a few months ago. But can we make it across the creek?

"Can you see them?" Gordon yelled, slewing the skimmer around a huge, house-sized boulder. "We're coming up on Flat Rock and the creek crossing."

See them? In this storm? Mahree thought incredulously.

She stood up, gripped the windshield rim, and peered into gray sheets of rain. Gordon piloted the skimmer with precision, but his hands were too tight on the control yoke, knuckles white. It had only taken them a moment to prepare the vehicle and start after the murderous Na-Dina, but the feeling in her heart was that they must already be too late. She hefted the pulse-gun that Gordon had handed her and then reholstered it, wondering if she'd have to use it.

She searched ahead for some sight of Beloran's skimmer. They'd passed Pokeel and the Guards and Khuharkk' coming in as they headed out, and now they'd just crossed over Flat Rock. The formerly tiny creek they'd so casually swum

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in now raged two meters deep and five meters wide. She'd never seen anything this fiercely primal, this much the image of Nature unleashed.

Quake, thunder, lightning, and soon, flood. On Ancestor's World, they were the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

The skimmer shook and rattled as its fans sped them over scattered rock debris of all sizes. The day began to lighten, but rain still pounded them.

Mahree scanned the broken landscape unfolding before them again and again, but saw only rock of every shape and degree of erosion.

"Look!" Gordon pointed ahead and to their left, at the side canyon. "There's his skimmer!"

"After him!" Mahree cried, then almost fell as the skimmer bounced off a hidden obstruction.

"We could rip out the fans if we keep on like this!" Mahree swayed as the skimmer hit again. "We've got to save her!" She would not lose another person to this alien lunatic.

Lightning flashed ahead of them, illuminating their quarry. Beloran's skimmer had made it past the first side canyon and now headed for the second and last side canyon, with its arroyo crossing. If he made it across, he'd be home free and able to get up the Great Ramp before they could catch him. Mahree pounded on the windshield. "Faster! Faster!"

Gordon looked at her as if she were crazy, but obediently increased speed.

Mahree was raging, bloodlust filling her mind and heart. Murderer! Beloran had killed one of her own students, one of the best Interrelators they'd ever had. If she'd had him in the sights of the pulse-gun, she'd have shot him without a moment's hesitation.

"He's slowing, getting ready to cross the arroyo."

"No!" Mahree pulled out the pulse-gun, leaned her elbows on the top of the windshield and, bracing her feet, aimed the gun's open ring-sight at the shiny silver rectangle of the skimmer.

"Mahree!" Gordon shouted. "It's two hundred meters to them! And you might hit Etsane."

She knew that. But she also knew that if she didn't act,

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the alien would get away, would flee up the Great Ramp and disappear into this storm, never to be found again. She squinted, lining up the sight. "I told you ... I was ... a good shot..." she gasped, and then held her breath. She felt time stretch, felt her ears shut off, felt all her attention focus on the ring-sight and the gleam ahead. For a brief instant, it all lined up.

"There/"

She fired.

The blue bolt shot forward like a ball of lightning, moving so fast she could hardly see it, splashing against the rear of the skimmer. Metal shrieked.

Black tendrils of smoke rose from the engine compartment. The craft swerved to the left, heading up the last side canyon.

"You got the fans!" Gordon cried out.

Mahree sagged down onto the bench seat. "Oh, God. He's going to crash."

"No, he's not," Gordon said. "He's on the auto-descend landing sequence.

We've got them!"

"Watch out!" she yelled to Gordon.

Their skimmer swayed as they crossed over the raging floodwaters of the first side canyon. Briefly, they hovered above five meters of open air.

Momentum and fan power carried them over to the other side. The skimmer's rubber skirts squealed as they scraped rocky ground, then went silent as Gordon controlled the bounce, lifting them into half-steady flight. Beloran's skimmer had disappeared around the edge of the canyon wall.

Mahree stood up again, careless of the storm or the wildly swaying skimmer.

Give me just one shot, she begged the Revered Ancestors. Just one. Let me get him!

"There they are!" Gordon pointed as they rounded the brown sandstone wall, coming into a clear view of the side canyon.

"Where?" She looked up the curving canyon, searching the creek bottom, then scanned the boulders piled up against the canyon walls. "Yes! They're down, crashed onto those boulders." She pointed. "Beloran and Etsane are moving. They're alive!"

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Gordon nodded grimly. "Alive and ... watch out!" He swerved the skimmer and reached out to push hard against her chest, forcing her to sit.

Blue light flashed against the front of their own skimmer. She cried out, throwing up her hands. And they went down...

Gordon shook his head, half stunned from the auto- descend emergency landing. Their skimmer had crashed perhaps fifty meters downcanyon from the rain-slashed wreckage of Beloran's skimmer. Mahree! He turned in his seat.

She looked up at him, a bruise purpling under her right eye. "Gordon!"

"Mahree!" He grabbed her and held her tight. "You okay?"

"I think so," she said shakily. "How about you?"

"Yeah." Turning to look ahead, he spit out the rain that had gathered in his mouth.

Mahree looked ahead. "We've got to save her, Gordon." She made to stand up. The skimmer's crumpled metal floor defeated her efforts. She fell back to the rain-soaked bench seat with a gasp.

Gordon looked around for the pulse-guns, but his holster was empty. He couldn't find Mahree's, either. Lost in the crash, most likely.

Desperate, he grabbed Etsane's sling, then climbed out of the skimmer, his boots slipping on the rain-slick boulders that had piled up against the vertical wall of the side canyon, making a small ramp that reached halfway up to the high rim of the canyon. Gordon shook his head when Mahree tried to follow.

"Stay here! Find one of the guns! This is high enough to escape any flash flooding, and with that gun you can prevent Beloran from escaping this way.

Please?"

She looked at him rebelliously, her anger and her need filling her face.

"Damn it!" Mahree sagged back onto the bench seat. Then she looked upcanyon. He did too, seeing as if through a gray veil. Etsane struggled now in the grasp of Beloran, trying to keep him from dragging her out of 277

the skimmer. Mahree's words came to him clearly, despite the roar of new thunder. "Gordon, are there flood baffles in this canyon?"

He thought of lying to her, then didn't. "No. The old Na-Dina ones were washed away centuries ago." He turned from her, picking his way down the boulder ramp, trying to keep to the side of the canyon.

She called after him, her voice full of pain. "Don't die!"

He didn't plan to.

Keeping to the sheltering safety of boulders washed off the canyon rim, Gordon walked, slipped, stumbled, fell and yet still made progress toward his objective. Through the gray sheets of rain, Etsane saw him coming, a red welt showing through her slashed blouse where Beloran's tail had struck her. Not giving away what she saw, she lifted up her feet and kicked forward at Beloran, catching him in the chest. The alien staggered back, his arms flailing. The pulse-gun fell from his grasp, skittering to a stop on a boulder below the skimmer.

Now!

As Beloran turned to climb down and retrieve his weapon, Gordon rushed over the intervening space between him and Etsane.

Twenty meters.

The rain slashed his face, numbing already chilled flesh.

Fifteen meters.

Lightning flashed high overhead. Thunder instantly deafened his ears.

Staggering as another aftershock shook the rocky ground, Gordon crouched, grabbed three small rocks, then rushed on.

Ten meters.

Beloran was out of sight below the skimmer, halfway between the craft's crumpled wreckage and the creek at canyon bottom. Muddy-brown waters surged out of the narrow confines of its sandy bottom, rising upward slowly.

"Astamari!" cried Etsane as he reached her.

He stuffed sling and rocks inside his shirt, then grabbed at her bonds, tearing at them with cold-numbed fingers. "Damn!" He turned, grabbed a metal fragment, and sawed

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at the bindings. The girl's feet were unbound. If he could just free her
hands ...

"Sky Infidel!"

Beloran's scream of fury made him look over the side of the skimmer. Five meters below, the rain streamed off the alien's blue-scaled body. The Liaison's taloned feet were propelling him quickly up the boulder pile on which the skimmer had crashed. The alien raised his pulse-gun, aiming at Gordon. He ducked.