Down to a Sunless Sea

3 The Dragon

They broke their fast that next morning with a frugal meal, for Brant was anxious to conserve the food supplies that remained to them. He could not know when he next would make a kill, for the plateau was bleak and inhospitable to life in any form.

They moved on, ever south, then angling east, for it seemed to Brant that there was a greater chance of finding game on the crumbling edges of the ancient continent, where plants and lizards thrived in the crevices of the cliff.

The women made no objection to this plan, so they went on as they had done the day before, with weak little Suoli riding in the saddle while Brant and Zuarra walked afoot.

Very few words were exchanged between them. Brant was in a surly mood, and neither of the women felt overly communicative. From time to time, as they walked together, Zuarra stole a sidewise glance out of her emerald eyes at the tall Earthsider, but sensed his dour mood, and addressed him seldom.

From time to time, during rest halts, Brant consulted the Survey map. He heartily disliked a journey like this, that had no clear or definite destination. “The farther they wandered into the south, the colder and more barren the land would become. They would have ever increasing difficulty in finding the fat-leafed, knee-high plants that, cooked in the pressure still, would provide them with water and with fodder for the beast.

There was no colony between here and the pole, he knew, and even if they were to chance upon an encampment of the People, they would be as hostile to one of the accursed f’yagh as they would to the two outlawed women who rode with him.

A cave in the cliffside, however, would afford them shelter and a certain measure of security. With such a place as their base of operations, he and the women could venture forth to forage for water-plants and for game.

They rode on, into the east.

It was like riding to the edge of the world, the emptiness, the vast and cloudless sky above, where no birds flew. The rocky plateau was sterile and featureless, scoured by the fine sand the wind stirred. There were no vivid colors to break the eye-aching monotony of dull purple sky, dark stone, cinnamon sand. There were no sounds to speak of to relieve the dead silence, just the creak of saddle leather, the padding of the loper’s splayed feet, the faint, far moaning of a weary wind.

The women felt it too, and grew restless and uneasy at the silence and the dead land over which they plodded. After a time, little Suoli whimpered plaintively that she was weary of riding in the saddle and that its hard leather was chafing her raw.

“I would rather walk for a time,” she whined. Brant shrugged and helped her down. When he offered the seat to the tall woman, she refused it curtly, so Brant climbed astride the beast himself and rode awhile, watching the two women narrowly as they walked along together, side by side, whispering to each other in tones too faint for him to distinguish.

It was a relief to ride in relative comfort after so long afoot. The muscles of calf and thigh ached with fatigue, and the swaying gait of the reptile was comforting. After a little while, Brant dozed, retaining his seat with the automatic responses of one who has spent years in the saddle. The women did not disturb his brief rest, talking in low voices to each other.

Suddenly, Suoli shrilled, pointing into the east, and Brant snapped out of his doze, clawing his power gun from its worn holster. Then he relaxed, muttering a curse, for it was only one of the moons that the little woman had spied low in the sky near the horizon.

He grinned, though. In truth, the twin moons of Mars were a rare sight to see and you could go a year or more without ever glimpsing Deimos or Phobos. The reason for this was simple, for, although both moons ride closer to the surface of their primary than does Earth’s satellite, they have a very low albedo—so low as to render them virtually invisible to the eye most of the time. You have to know precisely where to look—and when—in order to see them at all, except by accident.

Now that Suoli’s cry of delight and surprise had roused him from his rest, he offered the saddle to Zuarra, but she dismissed the gesture impatiently.

“Ride on and rest further, O Brant,” she said in clipped tones. “You are weary, but I am young and strong.” Was there a trace of scorn in her voice? Brant shrugged, caring little.

Both women walked wrapped in the burnous-like robes, he noticed, for the air was chill here at the edges of the plateau, bitterly cold, from the air currents which came across the antarctic barrens from the southern pole. Brant thumbed the dial of his heated suit to a higher setting.

In another hour they had come to the very edge of the ancient continent. Here the dry rock was cloven asunder by a thousand narrow crevices, and the footing was treacherous with loose rock. He dismounted and led the loper forward cautiously, testing his footing every few steps.

The problem was, simply, how to get down to the dead sea bottom? They were a hundred yards above the level plains of the dustlands, and a loper is bad at climbing. For a time they skirted the brink, looking for safe ways of descent, and at length they discovered that for which Brant had been watchful—a series of crumbling ledges of rock strata, like a great stair.

They began going down, taking great care, guiding the loper, who hissed and squealed with alarm, not liking the descent very much.

Zuarra clambered down on lithe and limber legs, with the agility of an acrobat, assisting the nervous Suoli from ledge to ledge, while Brant and the loper took up the rear.

He led the restive beast down, cautious step after cautious step, wary of the treacherous ground under his boot heels. Once, eons before, this had been the continental shelf, washed by the waves of one of the lost, age-forgotten oceans of primal Mars. Here and there, between the mineral outcroppings, the Earthsider spied fossil shells, strange and unearthly in their shapings, but unmistakable.

He wondered briefly if, a billion years from now, the seas of his distant homeworld would dry to sterile deserts, and the shores of Europe and Africa and the two Americas would resemble this crumbling, time-eroded cliff. …

Shortly thereafter, Suoli screamed. There was stark terror in her tones, that were very unlike the cry of pleasure with which she had greeted her rare glimpse of the hurtling moon.

Brant had his back turned to the dustlands and was trying to urge the reluctant reptile down from one broken ledge to another, when that shrill cry rang out. Growling a startled curse, he tried to turn, but thin plates of rock broke beneath him and he came down on his backside and would have perhaps fallen farther had not his hand been tangled in the loper’s reins.

The stubborn reptile planted its forefeet firmly, and in so doing, broke Brant’s impending tumble into the abyss.

Struggling to free his gun-hand from the tight reins, Brant looked beneath him … and the marrow froze in his bones at the sight that met his gaze.

Wriggling from its hidden lair between two ledges of rock strata, a hideous form emerged to their view.

It was the dreaded rock dragon; he should have known this tier of crumbling ledges made a perfect hiding place for the deadly reptiles.

It must have measured fifteen feet from fanged, gaping maw to wriggling, barbed tail. Its scaly length—the middle parts as big around as the Earthsider’s upper thigh—was mailed in thick, overlapping scales of the same dull, liver-color as the rocks amidst which it made its home.

Zuarra was directly in its path.

As for Suoli, the frightened girl cowered on the far corner of the ledge, uttering piercing squeals, fluttering her plump little hands foolishly at the serpent, as if hoping to shoo it away.

It was not a true serpent, the rock dragon, for while its slithering length was serpentine, three sets of short, bowed legs, armed with birdlike claws, sprouted at even intervals down its length.

Zuarra was frozen, facing the deadly thing. And her hands were empty of weapons.

Sharp claws clutching and closing upon the thin ledge, squealing under its fierce clench, the dragon reared above her, jaws agape. Its jaws bore retractable fangs, hollow like hypodermic needles, and as the dragon extruded them into view, all three of the travelers saw the oily, colorless fluid that dribbled out.

The bite of a rock dragon contains no poisonous venom, true; but those fangs inject into living flesh a substance that causes instantaneous paralysis. Once those fangs closed upon Zuarra, she would be helpless to resist while the mud-colored thing wound a loop of its scaly length about her torso, to drag her down into its hole to be devoured at leisure.

And Brant could not free his wrist from the entangling reins.