Retief! (58 page)

"Sure. I can't walk up a vertical wall, and it wouldn't be convenient to go down and look for another route."

"Can you be serious, poor earthbound grub? Would you indeed trust life and limb to me?"

"Most Quoppina will keep their word to a harmless stranger. Why should you be any different?"

"A curious rationale," the flyer said, "and yet, withal, a most refreshing one. I'd come to think of crawlers all as timid things, who cling and whimper out their fear when I come on them here among the lonely peaks. And now here's one who speaks as boldly as a flyer born!"

"Just put me down anywhere in climbing range of Rhoon country," Retief suggested.

"A strange anomaly is this: A wingless one who dares to come among the masters of the sky!" The flyer whirled its rotors, lifted, drifted, hovering, toward Retief. "I'll put you to the test then, groundling! Perhaps you'll weight me down, and then together we'll go tumbling toward our death below. But if my rotors hold, I'll bear you up, my life upon it!"

"Fair enough." Retief sheathed his sword, squinting against the down-blast of air. He reached for the steel-hard grapples of the flyer, gripped, held on. Air screamed as the whirling blades raced, biting for purchase; then he was lifting, floating up, wind screaming past his face, the mountainside dwindling away below.

The flying creature rose swiftly for a hundred feet; then it slowed, gained another fifty feet, inched upward, its rotors laboring now. A gust of wind tilted it, and it dropped, then righted itself, struggled upward again, paralleling the smooth face of rock at a distance of thirty feet, Retief estimated. A small white flower growing from a crevice caught his eye; slowly it dropped below him as the flyer gained altitude foot by foot. Above, Retief could see a tiny ledge where the vertical face ended, and above it a long sweep, only slightly less steep, to a lone spire thrusting up another five hundred feet against the darkening sky.

"How say you, groundling?" the laboring flyer's voice rang out, "will you trust me to press on, or shall I give it up and place you safe below?"

"Just a little way now," Retief called. "You can do it, old timer."

"I like the groundling's spirit, wings or no!" the Quoppina shouted into the wind. "We'll hazard all . . . and win or die . . . and none can say we quailed before the test!"

"You'd better save your wind for flying," Retief called. "We'll stage a self-congratulation session after we get there."

The wind whipped, buffeting. The cliff face moved past with agonizing sloth. Retief's hands were numb from the strain; the ledge was still twenty feet above, inching closer. The Quoppina's breathing was loud, wheezing; the sound of the rotors had changed timbre. They seemed to flutter now, as though the blades were loose. Then another sound was audible—a sharp whirring, coming closer . . .

Retief twisted his head. A second flying Quoppina had come up from the port beam; it hovered, studying the situation with alert oculars.

"That one's too big to eat, Gulinda!" it called. "I'll wager he's as tough as Wumblum wheel rim!"

"I'll place him . . . safe above . . . or die . . ." Retief's flyer got out.

"Ah—then it's a wager! Well, I suggest you waste no time. A Rhoon has seen you now, and half a minute hence he'll be here."

Retief's flyer grunted a reply, settled down to steady pulling. Ten feet more, five, three . . .

There was a deep thrumming, a beat of wind that bounced the flyer closer to the cliff face. Retief craned, saw the huge-bodied shape of a fast-descending Rhoon silhouetted against the vast, glittering disks of its spinning rotors. With a final, gear-screeching effort, the smaller flyer surged upward the final yard, banked toward the ledge. "Farewell!" it screamed. Retief dropped, slammed stony ground, fetched up against the rising wall above as the Rhoon pounced, hissing, its fanged eating jaws wide. Retief rolled away as the Rhoon struck out with a barbed hind leg, missed and struck again, sent stone chips flying. A narrow crevice split the rock a yard distant; Retief dived for it, wedged himself in just as the disk of Joop cut off the blackish sunlight like a snapped switch. Long Rhoon talons raked against the rock, sending a shower of bright sparks glimmering against the sudden dark. Then, with a hoarse scream, the Rhoon lifted away; the beat of its rotors faded. Retief leaned back in his cramped refuge, let out his breath with a long sigh, alone now with the stars that twinkled in the false night of the eclipse and the moaning wind that searched among the rock crannies.

Retief rested while Joop edged across the bright corona of the distant sun; the glowing halo bulged, then burst into full light as the transit was completed. He scanned the sky; a pair of Rhoon circled far above, light flicking from their rotors. He squeezed out of his hideaway, looked over the edge of the two-foot shelf on which he stood. Far below, the ledge from which he had hitched the ride to his present position showed as a thin line against vertical rock—and far below that, the jungle stretched like a varicolored carpet across low hills to distant haze.

He looked up; striated rock loomed, topped by a rock spire that thrust up like a knife blade a final hundred feet. Retief turned back to the cranny in which he had hidden. It narrowed sharply into darkness—but a steady flow of cold air funneled from it. He went to hands and knees, pushed through the first narrowing, found that the passage widened slightly. Above, the sky was a bright blue line between the rising walls of rock. He rose, crunching brittle debris underfoot, braced his back against one face of the chimney, started upward.

Halfway up, Retief found an outthrust shoulder of rock on which to rest. He ate half a food bar, took a swallow of water—the last in his canteen. Then he went on.

Once the cleft narrowed, then widened out into a near-cave, from which a cloud of tiny gray-black Quoppina no bigger than hummingbirds swarmed in alarm, battering at his face, uttering supersonic cries. Again, the black shadow of a Rhoon swept across the strip of sky above, momentarily blacking out the meager light. The armor chafed, cutting into his back; his hands were cut in a dozen places from the sharp-edged rock.

The crevasse widened again ten feet from the top. Retief made the last few yards in a scramble up a deeply scored slope half-choked with weathered and faded fragments of Quoppina exoskeleton and sun-bleached organic gears looped by tangles of corroded internal wiring. The Rhoon, it appeared, were messy eaters.

Keeping in black shadow, Retief studied the open sky; a thousand feet above, two Rhoon wheeled lazily, unaware of the intruder in their domain. He stood, dusted himself off, looked around at an oval platform fifteen by twenty feet, backed at one side by a spear of rock that rose ten feet to a needle point, edged on the remainder of its periphery by a void that yawned across to a stupendous view of high, lonely peaks, only a few of which topped his present vantage point. Closer at hand, a heap of round boulders caught his eye: Butter-yellow spheres eighteen inches in diameter. He went to them, tapped the smooth surface of one; it gave off a hollow, metallic bong. There were six of them—Rhoon eggs, piled here to hatch in the sun.

Retief glanced toward the monster parents circling above, still apparently serenely ignorant of his presence.

The big eggs were heavy, unwieldy in their lopsidedness. He lifted down the topmost spheroid, rolled it across to the cliff's edge, propped it, delicately poised, just above the brink. The next two eggs he ranged beside the first. Two more eggs formed a short second rank, with the final orb positioned atop the others. Retief dusted his hands, resumed the helmet and gauntlets he had laid aside earlier, then posted himself squarely before the gargantuan Easter display and settled down to wait.

A cold wind whipped down from the deep blue sky. Retief watched the mighty Rhoon elders wheeling in the distance, tireless as the wind—a description which, he reflected, did not apply equally to himself.

Half an hour passed. Retief watched the high white clouds that marched past like gunboats hurrying to distant battles. He shifted to a more comfortable position leaning against a convenient boulder, closed his eyes against the brightness of the sky . . .

A rhythmic, thudding whistle brought him suddenly wide awake. A hundred feet above, an immense Rhoon swelled visibly as it dropped to the attack, its giant rotors hammering a tornado of air down at him, swirling up dust in a choking cloud. The Rhoon's four legs were extended, the three-foot-long slashing talons glinting like blue steel in the sunlight, the open biting jaws looking wide enough to swallow an ambassador at one gulp.

Retief braced himself, both hands on the topmost of the pyramid of eggs as the flying behemoth darkened the sun—

At the last possible instant the Rhoon veered off, shot past the peak like a runaway airliner, leaving a thin shriek trailing in the air behind it. Retief turned, saw it mount up into view again, its thirty-foot propellers flexing under the massive acceleration pressures. It swung in to hover scant yards away.

"Who comes to steal Gerthudion's eggs?" the great creature screamed.

"I want a word with you," Retief called. "The egg arrangement is just a conversation piece."

"High have you crept to reach my nest, and slow was your progress," the Rhoon steam-whistled. "I promise you a quicker return passage!" It edged closer, rocking in the gusty wind.

"Careful with that draft," Retief cautioned. "I feel a sneeze coming on; I'd hate to accidentally nudge your future family over the edge."

"Stand back, egg-napper! If even one of my darlings falls, I'll impale you on a rock spike to dry in the sun!"

"I propose a truce; you restrain your violent impulses and I'll see to it no accidents happen to your eggs."

"You threaten me, impudent mite? You'd bribe me with my own precious Rhoonlets?"

"I sincerely hope so. If you'll just perch somewhere, I'll tell you what it's all about."

"Some reason must there be for such madness under the morning sun! To hear the why of it, I confess I'm curious!" The Rhoon mother swung across the platform, settled in at the far edge in a flurry of dust, clinging to the rock with four jointed legs like lengths of polished gray pipe. Her yard-long head reared up a full fifteen feet to stare down at Retief, the shadows of her rotors flicking across her horny features as the blades slowed to a leisurely wind-driven twirl.

"Mind you don't twitch, now, and send what remains of your short future tumbling down into the abyss," the huge flyer admonished in a voice that boomed like a pipe organ. "Now, tell me: Why chose you this peculiar means of dying?"

"Dying isn't exactly what I had in mind," Retief corrected. "I'm looking for a party of Terrans—Stilters, somewhat like me, you know—and—"

"And you think to find them here?"

"Not exactly; but I have an idea you can help me find them."

"I, Gerthudion, lend aid to the trivial enterprises of a planet-bound mite? The thin air of the steps has addled your wits!"

"Still, I predict you'll take an interest before long."

The Rhoon edged closer, stretching its neck. "Your time grows short, daft groundling," she rumbled. "Now tell me what prompts you to dare such insolence!"

"I don't suppose you've been following recent political developments down below?" Retief hazarded.

"What cares Gerthudion for such?" the Rhoon boomed. "Wide are the skies and long the thoughts of the Rhoon-folk—"

"Uh-huh. I'm a long-thought fan myself," Retief put in. "However, a brand of mite called the Voion have been cutting a lot of people's thinking short lately—"

"How could any petty dirt-creeper cut short the thoughts of a free-born Rhoon?"

"I'll get to that in a minute," Retief promised. "Is it true that you Rhoon have keen eyesight . . . ?"

"Keen is our vision, and long our gaze—"

"And your wind's not bad, either. Too bad you're too big for a career in diplomacy; you could keep a round of peace talks going for a record run. Now, tell me, Gertie, have you noticed the smoke columns rising from the forest over there to the north?"

"That I have," the Rhoon snapped. "And lucky for you my eggs you're embracing, else I'd tumble you over the edge for your impertinence!"

"Those are tribal villages burning. The Voion are setting out to take over the planet. They have very specific ideas of what constitutes a desirable citizen: no Quoppina who isn't a Voion seems to qualify—"

"Get to the point!"

"You Rhoon, not being Voion, are going to have to join the fight—"

"A curious fancy, that!" the Rhoon bassooned. "As though the lofty Rhoon-folk would stoop to such petty enterprise!"

"I wonder if that keen vision of yours has detected the presence of a number of Rhoon cruising around at treetop level over the jungle in the last few days?"

"Those did I note, and wondered at it," the Rhoon conceded. "But a Rhoon flies where he will—"

"Does he?" Retief countered. "Those particular Rhoon are flying where the Voion will."

"Nonsense! A Rhoon, servant to a creeping mite who'd not a goodly swallow make?"

"They have at least two squadrons of Rhoon in service now, and unless someone changes their plans for them, there'll be more recruits in the very near future. You, for example—"

"Gerthudion, slave to a verminous crawler on the floor of the world?" The Rhoon spun its wide rotors with an ominous buzzing sound. "Not while I live!"

"Exactly," Retief agreed.

"What mean you?" the Rhoon croaked. "What mad talk is this . . . ?"

"Those Rhoon the Voion are using are all dead," Retief said flatly. "The Voion killed them and they're riding around on their corpses."

Gerthudion sat squatted on folded legs, her stilled rotors canted at non-aeronautical angles.

"This talk, it makes no sense," she tubaed. "Dead Rhoon, their innards to replace with wires imported from a factory on another world? Power cells instead of stomachs? Usurping Voion strapped into saddles in place of honest Rhoonish brains?"