Beast Master's Planet: Omnibus of Beast Master and Lord of Thunder (Beastmaster) (40 page)

He swung over the lip of the drop with Hosteen following. Their boots thudded into the loose soil as they fell free for the last foot or so and found themselves in one of the walled patches where the barriers were at least ten feet tall. Had it not been for broken areas, they might not have been able to make their way from one pocket to the next, for what remained of the walls was slick-smooth.

Twice they had to form human ladders to win out of pens where the boundaries were still intact. And in one of those they discovered another bony remnant from the past—a skull topping a lace of vertebra and ribs, the whole forming skeletal remains of a creature
Hosteen could not identify. There was a long, narrow head with a minute brain pan, the jaws tapering to a point, in the upper portion of which was still socketed a horn, curving up.

Logan caught at that and gave it a twist. It broke loose in his hand, and he held aloft a wicked weapon some ten inches long, sharp as any yoris fang and probably, in its day, even more dangerous.

“Another whatsit.”

“Someone was collecting,” Hosteen guessed, walking around that rack of bones. He thought that was the reason for the pens—the water. Just as the Cavern of the Hundred Gardens had represented a botanical collection culled from at least a hundred different worlds for their beauty and fragrance, here another collection had been kept—reptiles, animals—who knew? This could have existed as some sort of zoo or perhaps stockyard. Yet where the gardens had flourished over the centuries or eons after the disappearance of the gardeners, this had not.

“We ought to be glad of that,” was Logan’s quick reply to the Terran’s comment. “I don’t fancy bein’ hunted when I can’t do any markin’ up in return. This would make a good huntin’ trophy.” He balanced the horn in his hand, then thrust its point deep into the empty sheath where his knife had once ridden. “Bet Krotag’s never seen anythin’ like it.”

“Those broken walls—” Hosteen sat side by side with his half-brother on the unbreached one of the skeleton enclosure. “Suppose whoever was in charge here left suddenly—”

“And the stock got hungry and decided to do somethin’ about it?” Logan asked. “Could be. But just think of things that could smash through somethin’ as tough as this!” He slapped his hand on the surface under him. “That would be like seein’ a crusher alive, wild, and rarin’ to blast! Glad we came late—this would be no place to ‘first ship’ when that breakout was goin’ on.”

They kept on their uneven course over walls and through pens. The tablets of emergency rations they had chewed from time to time gave them energy and put off the need for sleep. But Hosteen knew that there was a point past which it was dangerous to depend upon that artificial strength, and they were fast approaching the limit. If they could find refuge in the building ahead, then they
could hole up for a space, long enough to get normal rest. Otherwise, the bolstering drug could fail at some crucial moment and send them into helpless collapse.

On top of the last wall they paused again, while Hosteen turned the beam of the torch on the waiting building. Between their present perch and that there was a line of slim, smooth posts set in the earth. But if they had been put there to support a fence, the rest of that barrier had long since disappeared. And as far as the two explorers could see, the way to the wedge-shaped door in the massive two-story structure was open.

Slipping from the wall, they were well out toward those posts when Hosteen halted and flung out an arm quickly to catch at Logan. Memories of safeguards on remote worlds stirred. Because one could not see a barrier was no reason to believe there was none there. If the creatures confined back in the pens had burst through the walls, the keepers of this place must have possessed some form of defense and protection to handle accidents. A force-field now, generated between those poles, he warned. Logan nodded.

“Could be.” He caught up a stone and hurled it through the space directly before them. It struck with a sullen clunk on the wall beside the door of the building, passing the pole area without hindrance.

“If it ever was there—it must be gone now.”

The evidence was clear, yet a part of Hosteen walked in dread as they advanced. Instinct, rained and tested many times in the past, instinct that was a part of that mysterious inborn gift making him one with the team, argued now against this place. He fought that unease as he stepped between the poles.

His hands went to his ears. He cowered, threw himself forward, and rolled across the hard ground in an agony that filled his head with pain, that was vibration, noise, something alien enough so that he could not put name to it! The world was filled with a piercing screaming, which tore at his body, cell by living cell. Hosteen had known physical pain and mental torment in the past, but nothing had ever reached this point—not in a sane world.

When he was again conscious, he lay in the dark, huddled up, hardly daring to breathe lest that punishment return. Then, at last, he moved stiffly, levered himself up, conscious of light at his back.
He looked over his shoulder at a wedge-shaped section of gray. Wedge-shaped! The door in the building! He had reached the building then. But what had happened? He forced himself to remember, though the process hurt.

The pole barrier—a sonic, a sonic of some sort! Logan—Logan had been with him! Where was he now?

Hosteen could not make it to his feet; the first attempt made his head whirl. He crawled on his hands and knees back into the open and found Logan on the ramp that led to the doorway, moaning dully, his eyes closed, his hands to his head.

“What was it?” They lay side by side now within the first room of the building. Logan got out the question in a hoarse croak.

“A sonic, I think.”

“That makes sense.” Sonics were known to frawn herders, but the devices were not in general good favor. Such broadcasters had to be used by a master and were not easily controlled. The right degree of sound waves could keep a herd in docile submission, a fraction off and you had a frenzied stampede or a panic that could send half your animals to their deaths, completely insane.

“Still working—but it didn’t kill us,” Logan commented.

“Tuned in for a different life form,” Hosteen pointed out. “Might not kill them either—just stun. But I don’t want another dose of that.”

Their experience of crossing the barrier had wrung the last of their drug-supported strength from them. They slept, roused to swallow tablets and drink from the canteens they had filled at one of the pen springs, and drifted off to sleep again. How long had lethargy lasted they could not afterwards decide. But they awoke at last, clear-headed and with a measure of their normal energy.

Logan studied two sustenance tablets lying on his palm. “I’d like me some real chewin’ meat again,” he announced. “These things don’t help a man forget he’s empty—”

“They’ll keep us going—”

“Goin’ where?”

“There must be some way out of here. We’ll just have to find it.”

They had explored the building. If the keepers of the pens had left in such a hurry that they had not had time to care for the future
of their captive specimens, still they had taken the contents of the rooms with them. No clues remained among those bare walls as to the men or creatures who had once lived here. That the building had been a habitation was proved by a washing place they found in one room and something built into another that Hosteen was sure was a cook unit. But all else was gone, though holes and scars suggested installations ripped free in a hurry.

When they reached the top floor of the building, they found a way out onto the flat roof, and from that vantage point they studied what they could see of the surrounding cavern.

At the back of the structure there were no pens. A smooth stretch of ground led directly to a passage-opening in the cave wall—a very large one.

“That’s the front door,” Logan observed. “Straight ahead—”

“Straight ahead—but with something in between.” Hosteen pivoted, surveying the surrounding terrain. He was right; the posts marking the sonic barrier made a tight, complete circle about the building. To reach the tempting “front door” meant recrossing that unseen barrier. And to do that—

Also, why did he keep thinking that there was a menace lurking out there? The only living thing they had seen in any of these burrows was the feefraw that had somehow found its way into this deserted world. The bones of the creature that had once been penned here were old enough to crumble. Yet whenever he faced those walled squares, his flesh crawled, his instincts warned. There was some danger here, something they had not yet sighted.

“Look!” Logan’s hand on his shoulder pulled him around. He was now facing the entrance to the big passage. “There,” his half-brother directed, “by that side pillar.”

The sides of the passage opening had been squared into pillars, joined to the parent rock. And Logan was right; here was a dark bundle on the ground at the foot of one. Hosteen focused the distance lenses. The half light was deceiving but not enough to conceal the nature of what lay there—that could only be a man.

“Widders?” Logan asked.

“Might be.” Had that crumpled figure stirred, tried to raise a
hand? If that were Widders and he had crossed the sonic barrier, he could have been knocked out only temporarily.

“Come on,” Hosteen called, already on his way from the roof.

“Make it quick,” Logan answered.

That could be their best defense—a running leap with impetus enough to tear a man through the beam. Hosteen knew of no other way to cross without the shields they did not possess. Having tested the straps of their equipment, they toed the mark just beside the outer wall, then sprinted for the pole line.

Hosteen launched himself, felt the tearing of the sonic waves as he shot through them, landed beyond, to roll helplessly, battling unconsciousness. Logan spiraled over him with flailing arms and legs and lay now beyond.

Somehow the Terran fought to his knees. It seemed to him the shock this time was less. He crawled to Logan, who was now striving to sit up, his mouth drawn crooked in his effort to control his whisper.

“We made it—”

They crouched together, shoulder touching shoulder, until their heads cleared and they were able to stand. Then they headed for the man by the pillar.

Hosteen recognized the torn coverall. “Widders! Widders!” He wavered forward, to go down again beside the quiet form. Then his eyes fastened on one outflung hand unbelievingly.

Skin over bone, with the bone itself breaking through the tight pull of the skin on the knuckles! Fighting his fear of the dead, the inborn sense of defilement, he took the body by one shoulder, rolled it over on its back—

“No—no!” Logan’s cry was one of raw horror.

This thing had been Widders, Hosteen was sure of that. What it was now, what anyone could swear to, was that it might once have been human. The Terran thrust his hands deep into the harshness of the sand, scrubbed them back and forth, wondering if he would ever be able to forget that he had touched this—this—

“What did—that?” Logan’s demand was a whisper.

“I don’t know.” Hosteen stood up, one hand pressed to his heaving middle. His instinct had been right. Somewhere here lurked a
hunter—a hunter whose method of feeding was far removed from the sanity of human life. They must get away—out of here—now!

He grabbed for Logan, shoved him toward the passage Widders must have been trying to reach when he had been pulled down. There was a horror loose in this place that had not died long ago in those pens—if it had ever been confined there.

They ran for the open passage and sped into the dark mouth of the tunnel. And they fled on blindly into that thick dark until there was a band of tight, hard pain about their lower ribs and the panic that had spurred them could no longer push their tired bodies into fresh effort. Then, clinging together, as if the touch of flesh against flesh was a defense against the insanity behind, they sat on the floor, dragging in the dead air in ragged, painful gasps.

T

He was right. There was nothing to prevent that which had hunted Widders from prowling into this dark tunnel. Perhaps even now it lurked in the dim reaches ahead.

The arm Hosteen had flung about Logan’s heaving shoulders tightened spasmodically. He must not let panic crowd out reason—that would deliver them both over to death. They had to keep thinking clearly.

“We have the grenades and the torch,” he reassured himself as well as his companion. “Widders did not have his equipment—no light or weapon. It was a miracle he got even this far.”

The shudders that had been shaking Logan were not so continuous.

“Scared as a paca rat caught in a grain bin!” The answer came with a ghost of the old wry humor Logan had always summoned to front disaster. “Never broke and ran like that before, though.”

“That was enough to make both of us bolt,” Hosteen replied. “You didn’t see me holding back any, did you? But now I think we are past the trapped paca rat stage.”

Logan’s hand tightened on Hosteen’s forearm in a grip of rough affection and then fell away. “You’re right, brother. We’ve moved up a few steps in the panic scale—maybe now we’re on the level of a frawn bull. But I want to be a tough yoris before we face somethin’ alive and kickin’.”

“Two yoris it is,” Hosteen agreed. “I’d say keep straight ahead, but at less of a scamper.”

He fingered the atom torch indecisively. If he switched that on, would the beam signal a lurker? But the advantage of light over dark
won. With the enemy revealed in the light, they would have a chance to use their grenades.

As the passage continued to bore ahead through the stuff of the mountain, Hosteen marveled at the extent of the under-the-surface work. More than just the first mountain must be occupied by this labyrinth. He was sure they were well beyond the height up which the Norbies had originally driven their captives.