Down to a Sunless Sea

8 Watching Eyes

When they rose with dawn and left their tents to scan the ridgeline far above, it was empty. Whoever it had been that had spied upon their camp the night before had evidently moved on. Perhaps they had been mere travelers, after all.

But somehow Brant doubted it. Pessimist that he was, he had always found that when you anticipate the worst you are seldom surprised. But he said nothing of this to the others.

They busied themselves with the morning tasks, tending to the lopers, preparing a meal. And they were an oddly uncommunicative group, Brant had to notice. Agila performed his duties in a sullen manner, avoiding all eyes; Zuarra seemed lost in her own thoughts, while little Suoli kept timidly to herself and stayed out of her “sister’s” way as much as possible.

Even Harbin had little enough to say. He became lost in the pleasant occupation of fossil-hunting in the loose shale which lay heaped at the foot of the crumbling cliffs, and that afternoon he kept to his tent, sorting and classifying his finds.

Taking the lopers, Brant and Agila went hunting. It took them an hour and a little more to find a rock lizard, which they slew and skinned before returning to their encampment. While they were doing this, Brent scanned the ridgeline—it had become a habit, almost automatic, to do this by now.

And he saw four watchers. They were trying not to be seen, crouched low on the ridge, dark hooded robes blending with the harsh stone. Perhaps he would not have seen them at all had not the sunlight momentarily reflected from a glass lens.

The watchers were using binoculars… .

All the rest of that day Brant felt the nape-hairs on his neck prickle under the scrutiny of those watching eyes far above. If the unknown watchers were raiders, outlaws, enemies of whatever nature, from the vantage of their height they could pick the members of the encampment off one by one with a laser rifle.

If they were armed with energy weapons, that is. Which they undoubtedly were. Brant’s thin lips twisted in a slight, sour and cynical grin: Colonial Administration law made it the highest of crime to sell guns to the natives, but the law was difficult, nearly impossible, to enforce. And Brant had run guns to more than a few of the native princelings in his time.

It would be a bitter irony if one of those guns were to slay him now, he thought with grim humor.

The women had prepared the evening meal earlier than usual. After they were through eating and had tended to the beasts, Brant sought out Harbin for a conference. He found the scientist still hunched over his fossils, examining them through a lens and from time to time making a brief entry in the small black notebook he carried.

“Doc, you got a minute?” he asked.

“Certainly. As a matter of fact, I could use a break,” the older man remarked, rubbing his eyes tiredly. He gave Brant a shrewd glance. “What’s up?”

Brant shrugged. “Small council of war,” he said. Then, as the older man listened without comment, Brant told him about the watchers on the height.

“Four of them now,” grunted Harbin, rubbing his lean jaw. “Who do you suppose they are, Jim?”

“No idea,” Brant admitted. “But they’re up to no good, that’s for sure. Ordinary travelers wouldn’t have hung around ever since last night, just to keep an eye on us… .”

“Well, they could hardly be the authorities, because we’re doing nothing illegal,” mused Harbin reflectively. “And, besides, I’ve never heard of the police riding the Highlands— don’t they usually use aircraft?”

Brant nodded.

“So … they must be natives. But what could they possibly want from us? They must have their own lopers, so they shouldn’t be all that interested in stealing ours … true, the tents and weapons are of value, but—d’you suppose they could have seen the women? In those voluminous robes, a woman doesn’t look much different from a man. …”

“You’re thinking they might be slavers?” Brant said slowly. Of course, the same possibility had occurred to him. The older man nodded, then shrugged.

“Anything’s possible, here in the Drylands,” he remarked. “And they have to be after something!”

Brant shook his head slowly.

“It’s hard to believe even slavers would risk a fight with three armed men, just for a couple of women. Especially since they can’t have gotten a clear enough look at either of them to know whether they’re young and attractive. After all, for all they know Zuarra and Suoli might be a couple of old crones we fetched along just to do the cooking.”

Harbin chuckled quietly at that. Then, sobering:

“Well, Jim, what do you think we ought to do about our nosey friends on the ridgeline?”

Brant had been considering that problem all day. “We’ve got three possible courses of action,” he said. “In the first place, we could simply sit here pretending we don’t know they’re there, while keeping on the alert, of course. That way we force them to make the first move … or give up and ride away.”

“But that means giving the initiative to our unknown friends,” Doc pointed out. “And if they mean to attack us, why should we give them the advantage of picking the best time—and ground?”

Brant nodded in agreement. “Right; so the second course would be to climb the ridge and confront them—taking them by surprise, sirice I don’t think they realize that we know they’re up there.”

“But they would see us climbing, and if they mean to pick a fight—for whatever reason—they could hardly wish for a more perfect opportunity. It’s hard to fight back when you’re hanging on to the wall of a cliff.”

“Yeah, there’s no question about that,” growled the younger man. “So … only thing left to do is sneak out under cover of darkness and put as much distance between us and them as we can, before they find out next morning that we have skedaddled.”

“So what’s your plan?” inquired Harbin.

“We make ‘em think we’re all bedded down for the night. Leave the tents up and some light going. Then we take the bedding, the supplies, mount up and ride out.”

“The nights get damned cold in these parts,” the scientist observed. “And they’ll seem a lot colder without the insulation of the tents.”

“I know, but they’ll have somebody keeping an eye on us, and if they see us striking the tents and packing our gear, that’ll be a dead giveaway. If they’re planning to pick a fight, they’ll have to do it then and there, before we put too much distance between us.”

He paused, rubbing his jowls.

“On the other hand,” he mused thoughtfully, “that might not be a bad idea. It’ll be to their disadvantage to fight us in the dark, because it would be next to impossible to climb down the cliffs by night. And if they fire on us, we can aim at the flare of their guns. There’s plenty of fallen rocks and boulders around here for us to use as shields against their weapons, and we can keep moving from spot to spot between shots, so they’ll have a hellova problem figuring out where we are at any given time.”

Harbin thought it over, and agreed it looked like the best course of action open to them.

“They won’t dare try to get their lopers down the cliffs in the dark, so don’t you think it likely—unless they decide to fire on us after all—that once they know we’re moving out, they’ll ride along the ridgeline, hoping to keep up with us?”

Brant grinned. “They’ll have a hard time figuring which direction we’re going, north or south. So they’ll have to split up, two of ‘em going one way, the rest in the other direction.

If nothing else, it’ll cut their numbers in half and double our chances of winning, if it comes to a fight!”

They talked the plan over, looking for loopholes that hadn’t yet occurred to them.

They found none. It would be touch and go, but the only alternatives to taking that risk looked even riskier.

“So when you suggest we make our move?” inquired Harbin.

Brant grinned wolfishly.

“Right now,” he growled.