Down to a Sunless Sea

11 The Dish

The long hours of Brant’s watch passed slowly, but without event. In time, timid little Suoli came riding out to take her turn as sentinel. He gruffly informed her that he had seen nothing at all worthy of note, and sternly warned her against falling asleep on duty. After all, the lives of them all might depend upon her alertness and vigilance.

Returning to camp, he turned in and caught a couple of hours of badly needed sleep. But he had determined to rouse at the time it was Agila’s turn to be awakened for guard-duty, for he meant to have it out with the fellow before the night was done. While Agila was certainly entitled to his own privacy, and to the secrets of his heart, that privilege must yield when it might involve the lives and safety of all the others.

Brant had lived long enough in the wilderness of Mars to have developed that “inner clock” by which a man may wake himself at any particular time. The mental mechanism did not always work that well, depending, as it did, upon the extent of his exertions and the degree of his fatigue, but he relied upon it now to awaken him when it was time for Agila to get up in order to relieve Suoli,

This done, Brant fell at once into a deep, dreamless sleep from which he awoke a couple of hours later, refreshed and alert. The air was bitterly cold, the stars a blaze of diamond fire across the velvet heavens. Both moons were aloft at this period, but neither was at all visible, due to their extremely low albedo.

Brant rose and looked about him warily, closing the pressure-seams on his insulated suit. His inner mechanism had awakened him exactly at the right time, for a light was on in the small tent where Agila and the older scientist slept, and by its dim luminance, Brant saw the lean silhouette of the native guide as he donned his own garments. The big Earthsider strode on swift and silent feet to the double tent and opened the flap.

Agila shot him a swift, sharp, nervous glance. Harbin, roused by the lighting of the lamp, blinked curiously as Brant entered the tent and strode abruptly to the guide’s bedroll. Agila uttered a short cry and his hand darted toward the blankets. But Brant’s left hand closed upon his wrist with crushing force that wrung a squawk of pain from the other.

With his right hand, Brant dipped into the blankets and found a flat, hard, circular object closely wrapped in oiled silks. It was even as the Martian woman had informed him.

“What is this thing that you hide against your bosom when you sleep?” Brant demanded of Agila.

Hot resentment flared in the amber eyes of the native guide, but then he swiftly mastered the emotion, and presented a bland, smooth gaze free of emotion.

“It is a private matter and nothing that need concern the fyagha,” he muttered in sullen tones, dropping his gaze to Brant’s boots.

“Everything is of concern to me, because I am the leader of this group of chance-met strangers—and I need to know why those people are pursuing us,” growled Brant. Then he carefully began to unwrap the silk covering from the flat object.

Agila whined a curse, and one hand dipped to the knife scabbarded in his boot after the native custom. But Brant had expected that, and his power gun appeared almost miraculously in one capable fist. The cold stubby barrel of the weapon was aimed directly at the heart of Agila. Its cold black eye stared at him. Agila licked thin lips with a pointed tongue.

“Don’t try it,” Brant advised.

“My boy, would you mind awfully if I asked what all of this is about?” inquired Harbin querulously.

As he removed the wrappings from the discoid tiling, Brant made his explanation in brusque terms.

“I see,” mused the scientist. “Well, let’s see what we’ve got here—”

Brant unwrapped a circular object of pale metal, slightly concave, like a ceremonial dish. The pallid gleam of the metal made his eyes narrow: it was “Martian gold,” and the metal was rare and precious. There was writing on it of some sort, and a curious design of curving, meandering lines—both of which were meaningless to him.

With an expression of inquiry, Brant handed the gold dish to the older man, who examined it curiously, turning it from side to side so that the markings upon it could be seen in the dim light of the lamp.

“Well, Doc?”

Harbin cleared his throat uncertainly. “Old work; very old,” he said tentatively. “Dozens of centuries, at least. Perhaps, dozens of millennia. No … millions of years, surely! See how the writing is worn almost to the point of illegibility? And the styling of the characters … that ancient variant of the written tongue was already very old when the oceans died.”

“But what does the writing mean?” demanded Brant harshly, still covering Agila with his gun.

The older man shrugged helplessly.

“I haven’t the faintest idea! Not my period at all. I am a specialist in Late Imperial and Early Dynasty Princedoms. Very little of this writing has ever been found, and even less has been translated. Even then, the translations were purely conjectural—informed guesswork little more.”

“Well … is the thing valuable?”

“Beyond any question, very valuable. The sort of treasure that might well become the precious racial heirloom of a clan chieftain, even a prince,” said Harbin flatly.

They both looked at Agila. The guide cringed, licked dry lips again, then straightened to face them defiantly.

“The dish is mine!” he stated.

“Sure, if stolen property can be said to belong to the thief,” grinned Brant. The native flinched.

He dropped his eyes again. “Mine,” he repeated, but there was no conviction in his voice.

The two Earthsiders exchanged a glance.

“Old and valuable enough to be the treasured heirloom of a clan chieftain, eh?” muttered Brant grimly. “Which would explain why he’s come hunting for the man that took it!”

Doc nodded slowly. “Now we know,” he whispered. “At least, it’s the easiest, and the most logical, explanation.”

“Maybe we can beg a parley, and offer to return it,” suggested Brant. “Along with the thief himself, of course.”

“No! Masters! He will kill me—slowly!” cried Agila, his swarthy features whitening with fear.

The two Earthsiders grinned at each other.

“That’s what I think the legal eagles would call an unforced admission of guilt,” observed Will Harbin.

“All right, man, start talking,” growled Brant. “Exactly who does the gold dish belong to? I mean, who is the man you stole it from?”

The defiance and bravado had drained out of Agila. His head was lowered and he rubbed his wrists with trembling fingers, for the strength of Brant’s grip had bruised his flesh.

“His name is Tuan,” muttered the thief. “Once he was a great hereditary chieftain, high in the councils of the Prince of the Moon Dragon Nation. He was defeated in war against a rival chieftain and his people were decimated. Long since, he became a homeless fugitive, an outlaw, with only a small band of warriors to follow him. …”

“But still retaining a lot of pride,” guessed Brant. “And this heirloom is the only one of his hereditary treasures he held onto, right?”

“It is even as you say, f’yagh,” Agila said in low tones.

At that point, Will Harbin spoke up.

“Jim … I’ve got a feeling that it wouldn’t be enough to salve Tuan’s injured pride, just to return the dish to him and to hand Agila over to his crude justice.”

“Why not? What else could he want?”

“You forget that we’re the hated f’yagha—the greedy Outworlders who have invaded and robbed and despoiled this world. And Tuan will know, or guess—or force Agila to admit—that we have seen and handled the heirloom. Profaned it with our eyes, with our touch, as he would probably put it.”

“So … it’s fight or run, then, eh? Or be destroyed,” growled Brant.

“I’m afraid so,” admitted Will Harbin. “Since we all pretty much agree that you’re in command here, well—which is it to be? Fight, run, or die?”

“Run,” said Brant briefly. And he nodded at the dish and at the thief. “But we leave these two—things—behind us when we do.”

Agila squeaked and began to beg for mercy in a frenzied babbling voice, which both men ignored.

Doc stepped near. “Jim, what good will that do? I know the People, and as I’ve said, Tuan will be after us, no matter what we leave behind.”

Brant grinned wolfishly, a hard baring of white teeth.

“Maybe,” he grunted. “But dealing out his ‘justice’ to Agila will slow him up. Let’s get packing!”

Even as they left the tent, bearing with them the precious golden dish and the knife which Agila had carried in his boot, a thin, far call came to their ears.

“Suoli!” exclaimed Brant. “She’s on guard-duty right now—come on!”

Zuarra, having heard some commotion, emerged from her tent to look questioningly at Brant. Leaping into the saddle, he handed her one of his power guns, briefly instructing her to stand watch over Agila. Then he and Harbin, sharing the saddle, loped off in the direction from which the warning cry had sounded.

When they reached the dunes, Suoli came sliding down to point to the ridgeline.

“They are come, O Brant!” she wailed.

Brant studied the ridge through the binoculars. There fourteen of them, by now. He swore under his breath.

“Yes, and it looks like they have reinforcements.”