The Iron Breed (43 page)

They ate, of ship's rations which tonight seemed even less satisfying and tasteless. Would they find fruit, or perhaps other food they could stomach here? She would be a party on the second or third trip—to be sure no ghost of disease lingered. She would have to go muffled and clumsy in a protect suit, but that she had practiced on Elhorn.

“Tan—Ayana.” Massa's voice over the com and the excitement in it made Ayana reach for the blaster on her discarded belt. “Look at the screen!”

Windows were alight! The dark ringing the ship was not complete. Apparently Massa had set the pickup on the move again to give them the changing view. There was one lighted tower and then another. Not all were alight. Ayana managed to be objective after her first startled reaction. There were blocks of lights, then again scattered single ones. Some buildings were altogether dark. Such uneven lighting hinted of inhabitants. There were people there—there had to be!

“Tan—do you see?” Ayana's question was a kind of plea against his plans for tomorrow. He must not take off alone, cross that grim, watching place, in the light flitter. That had a shield, of course, every protect device they could give it. But above that giant, and she was sure hostile, pile—

Those lights, surely Tan would accept them as evidence of life. They could lift ship, find one of those all-dark cities they had marked from space. That was only sensible. But she knew she would not have a chance to argue that when Tan answered:

“Doesn't mean a thing. Do not worry, Big Eyes. Those are probably automatic and some circuits have long gone. Anyway, I have the force shield.”

Even his use of the private name he had for her (which she cherished because of the sweet intimacy it stood for)—even that hurt. It was as if he deliberately used it to scoff at her concern. Ayana closed her eyes to those lights, tried to find sleep and perhaps dream of the safety of Elhorn before this wild venture became her life.

11

The sudden clamor outside this new corridor was one Furtig had heard before, which set fur erect along his spine, flattened his ears to his skull, parted his lips to hiss. He caught an echo of that hiss from Ku-La. Yet in a second or two both realized that this was not the hunting cry of a Barker pack.

No, it held pain and fear rather than the hot triumph of the hunter upon his quarry. Furtig, belly down on the floor of the corridor, wriggled forward to peer through the transparent outer wall.

There was the Barker, threshing wildly about, one foot—no, a foot and a hand caught in something. He was in such a frenzy that he snapped with his well-fanged jaws, striving to cut what held him. Then his head was caught! His flailing body fell, or was jerked, to the ground. Seconds later he was so trapped in the substance which had entangled him that he could not move save in spasmodic jerks, each of which worsened his plight. His baying came in muffled snorts.

They came running from concealment where even Furtig's sharp sight had not detected them. Rattons—a gray-brown wave of them. They piled on the Barker, seeming to have no fear of what had felled him, and began to drag the captive away.

Toward this building! Furtig hissed again. He had not smelled Ratton, seen Ratton, heard Ratton, since they had come through that break in the wall into these corridors. But if the Rattons were towing their catch into this structure, it was time to be gone.

He crept back to Ku-La, reporting what he had witnessed.

“A stick-in trap. They coat the ground with something you cannot see or scent, but it entangles you speedily,” the other said.

“Yet they went to the Barker, handled him without getting stuck—”

“True. We do not know how they are able to do that. Perhaps they put something on themselves to repel the trap. We only know—to our sorrow—how it works on us!”

“A Barker in the lairs—” Furtig picked up the bag of tapes, was ready to help Ku-La on. “A scout?”

“Perhaps. Or they may also seek knowledge.” Ku-La gave an involuntary cry as he pulled himself up. He was limping very badly, keeping going by will alone, Furtig knew.

His admiration for the other's determination and fight against pain had grown. No longer did he wonder why he had endangered his mission to rescue Ku-La; he accepted him as a comrade like Foskatt.

“If they bring the Barker here,” Furtig began warningly. It seemed cruel to keep urging Ku-La on, but Furtig had lately picked up the homing signal in his mind, knew their goal, and also that they dared waste no time in these dangerous corridors.

“True. Though Rattons seem to have little liking for going aloft,” Ku-La commented, drawing small breaths between words. “They keep mainly to the lower ways.”

They rounded a curve in the wall. Furtig stayed close to the inner wall; that long expanse of almost invisible surface on the outer made him uneasy. Today that feeling was worse as the wind and rain beat hard in gusts which vibrated in the walls about them.

But—as they rounded that curve, looked out upon a new expanse of open, Furtig came to a halt—Light—a moving light!

It rose from the ground, soaring high as if a flying thing carried a huge hand lamp. Now it danced back and forth erratically in the sky, swooping out and away. And through the curtain of the rain Furtig could not follow it far.

Ku-La made a sharp sound. “A sky-ship—a sky-ship of the Demons!”

Furtig did not want to accept that. In fact at that moment he discovered he had never really believed in Demon return. But there was such conviction in Ku-La's identification that belief was now forced on him.

The return of the Demons! Even in the caves of the People such a foreboding had been used as a horrible warning for the young. But as one grew older, one no longer could be frightened so. Only enough remained of the early chill of such tales to make one's blood run faster at such a time as this.

One ship—a scout? Just as the People sent one warrior, two, three, ahead to test the strength of the enemy, the lay of the land, how it might be used for offense or defense before a clan moved into hunt?

Such a scout could be cut off. And, with small clans, the loss of a warrior was warning enough. They fell back, sought another trail. No tribe was large enough to take the loss of seasoned warriors as less than a major calamity.

Only, in the old tales the Demons had been countless. Cutting off a single scout would not discourage a migrating tribe with many warriors. Gammage might have an answer; he was the only one among the People now who would.

“We must hurry—” Furtig said, though he still watched for that light marking the Demon ship. He leaped back toward the inner wall. No light, yet something had almost brushed the rain-wet outer wall—something far larger than any flying thing he had ever seen. Luckily there were no wall lights here, nothing except the wan daylight. Perhaps they were lucky, and the flying thing in its swift passage had not seen them. For Furtig had the dire feeling that it might possess the power to smash through the transparent wall, scoop them out, were such action desired.

“Move!” He shoved Ku-La with his free hand. The other needed no urging; he was already hobbling at the best pace he had shown during their long, painful journey. As if the sight of that Demon thing had spurred him to transcend the wounds he bore.

They reached a second curve in the corridor, and this time Furtig gave a sigh of relief. For that transparent wall which made him feel so vulnerable vanished, there were solid barriers on either side.

That relief was very short, for they came soon to one of those bridges in the air. Furtig crouched, peering into the outer storm, his hands cupped over his eyes. What made his disappointment the greater was that they were now close to their goal. For he recognized the tower at the other end of the bridge as the building in which he and Foskatt had tested the communication box. They need only cross this span and they would be in their, or Furtig's home territory.

Only, to cross, they must go along that narrow and slippery way, under not only the beating of the wind and rain, but perhaps also the threat of the flying thing. He thought he could do it—the People were surefooted. But Ku-La—

The other might be reading his thought. “What lies there?” His throaty voice was near a growl.

“The lair where my people hold.”

“Safety of a kind then. Well, we can do no less than try to reach it.”

“You are willing to try?” Surely the other could see his danger. But if he chose to go, then Furtig would do what he could to aid him.

He pulled out that cord which had served them so well, was preparing to loop them together belt to belt. But the other pushed his hands aside.

“No! I shall take the way four-footed. And do not link us—better one fall than both, the second without cause.”

“Go you first then,” Furtig replied. He did not know what he might be able to do if the other, unlinked, did slip. But he felt that if he could keep Ku-La before his eyes during that crossing he might be able to help in some fashion. And four-footed was surely the best way for them both.

Not only would it make them more sure-footed, but it would also make them less distinguishable to the flying thing. If they were unlucky enough to have that return.

The rain hit them like a blow, and Ku-La moved under its pounding very slowly. While Furtig wanted nothing so much as to be free to leap over that creeping shape before him and run with all possible speed to the promised safety of the far doorway. Yet he crawled behind Ku-La, the bag of record tapes slung about him, the water soaking his fur and trickling from his whiskers. He did not even raise his head far enough to see the doorway; rather he concentrated on Ku-La.

Twice the other halted, went flat as if his last strength had oozed away with the water pouring on him. But each time, just as Furtig reached forth a hand to try to rouse him, he levered up to struggle on.

They had passed the halfway point, though neither of them was aware of that in the agony of that slow advance, when the sound came. It was warning enough to flatten them both to the bridge, striving to give no sign of life as the thing drew closer.

It did not scream as one of the preying flying things, nor give voice in any way Furtig recognized. This sound was a continuous
beat-beat.
First to the left as if it hung in open space viewing them, then overhead. Furtig's nerve almost crumbled then. He could somehow see in his mind giant claws reaching out—coming closer—ready to sink into his body, bear him away.

So intent was he on that fearful mental picture that he was not even aware that the
beat-beat
was growing fainter, not until it had vanished. He lay on the bridge, unharmed, able to move. And the thing was gone! Had—had it taken Ku-La then, without his knowing it in the depths of his fear?

But when Furtig raised his head the other was there, stirring to life, creeping—

If they had time now before the thing returned—! For somehow Furtig could not believe that it was going to let them go so easily. There was a menace in it which he had sensed. And that sense he trusted, for it was one of the built-in protections of his kind and had saved lives many times over. The flying thing was to be feared, perhaps as much, if not more, than anything he had ever in his life faced before.

* * *

Tan ran a finger approvingly along the edge of the recorder. Got a good taping there. Tan's luck again. He smiled. Tan's luck was something which once or twice had made a real impression on the trainees back on Elhorn. He had managed so many times, usually through no reason he was aware of, to be at just the right place at the right moment, or to make the right move, even when he had no idea whether it was right or wrong.

So—with all those faint life-readings he had picked up in this pile but nothing in the open where he could get a visual record, it was his luck to catch that thing—or things (in that poor visibility they had looked like blobs as far as he was concerned)—right out in the open. They might have posed to order so he could get a good tape.

Blobs—certainly they did not look like men. He had sighted them edging out on the bridge and they had wriggled along there, almost as if they were crossing on their bellies. Nothing about them to suggest they were of his species at all. Tan tried to picture men crawling on hands and knees. Would the blobs resemble those? Could be. Except they were smaller than men—children?

But what would children be doing out alone in such a storm as this, crawling from one building to the next? No, easier to believe that they were something else, not human at all.

Tan was no longer smiling. After all, they had never discovered what had sent the First Ship people to Elhorn. It had been a very strong motive, not only to force them to take the perilous trip across space, but to leave them so intent thereafter on suppressing all they could of the world of their origin and the reason for colonizing another.

Tan had picked up some dim life-readings here, but not, oddly enough, in the buildings which had shown the greatest wealth of lights at night. No—they were widely scattered. And the readings varied. Enough that Ayana ought to be able to make something out of the variance. Such would not show up so plainly just because the pickup carried over unequal distances. It was more as if the life forms themselves varied. At least he had a reading and a picture of the blobs to turn in and that would give them a beginning reference.

And—there was not a single one of these life-readings which touched the proper coordinate for man on the measuring scale. That was what had made him buzz lower and lower, hang between the towers in a reckless fashion, trying to pick up as many registrations on the tapes as he could.

Men had built this place. Tan knew enough from his race's own fragmented records to recognize the form of architecture of his ancestors. But if there were no readings for “man” here—what did live within these walls?

The enemy of which they had no records? Only surmises presented by their imaginations? If the former, then the enemy was those blobs, and the quicker they were identified the better. Tan turned the flitter, swept out and away from the structures, heading for the ship with the small scraps of knowledge his first scouting flight had gained.