Sargasso of Space

CHAPTER NINE: BLIND HUNT

Once more Dane put on his field equipment, making a fervid promise to himself as he adjusted his helmet that this time his com would be on—all the time. No one had said anything to him about his slip-up in the valley. He had thought that his carelessness would condemn him to the side-lines. Yet here he was being given a second chance, merely because he had been lucky in the drawing. And no one had challenged his right to go out. So it was up to him to prove that their confidence was not misplaced.

Since the fog was as heavy as ever there was no day or night outside. They ate a hot and nourishing meal before they tramped into a gloom which their watches told them was mid-afternoon.

With the weight of the blaster resting unfamiliarly against his thigh, Dane followed Rip as Shannon tagged Wilcox’s heels down the ramp. Kosti and Mura were already busy at the crawler.

There was room for one man, two if they crowded, on the flat surface of the small vehicle. But since the platform had no sides and there was nothing to cling to in order to keep from sliding from its fog-slick surface on the rough terrain, the party was content to be infantry, attaching themselves to the guide by lengths of rope.

Kosti triggered the starter and the crawler ground forward, its treads crushing gravel and bits of porous stone. The pace was that of a walk and none of them had any difficulty keeping up.

Dane looked back. Already the Queen had vanished. Only a radiance high in the mist marked the searchlight which under ordinary conditions could be seen for miles. It was then that he realized what it would mean to lose touch with the crawler, and his hand tugged the rope which tied them together, testing its safety.

Luckily the ground was fairly even and only once did they have to slip and scramble over one of the rivers of slag. The man who had piloted the crawler across the waste on its first trip to the ruins had chosen the best path he could find.

But they became aware now of another peculiarity of the fog—the noises. Whether those were the sounds they made, flung back and magnified, or some other natural change, they could not tell. But several times they paused, Kosti snapping off the crawler, and listened, sure that they were surrounded by another party moving confidently through the murk, that they were about to be the focus of an attack. But when they so halted the sounds ceased, and it was only when they plodded on once more that the sensation of being dogged by unseen travellers grew strong again. After those two stops, by mutual and unspoken consent, they ignored the noises and pushed on, seeing each other as shadows, the ground under their boots visible only for inches.

The moisture which trickled down their helmets and clothing was an added discomfort. It had, at least to Dane’s sensitive senses, an unpleasant smell and it left the skin feeling slimy and unclean. He tried wiping his face vigorously, only to discover that such motion apparently smeared it deeper.

Nothing interfered with the steady advance of the crawler. Though the men who followed it could no longer see the ship, nor sight the ruins for which they were bound, the machine’s electronic memory guided them unerringly. They were about three quarters of the way across the waste when they heard a new noise—not raised as an echo of their own passing.

Someone or something running!

And yet that thudding was not the pound of space boots, the rhythm was oddly different—as if the creature who passed had more than two feet, Dane thought.

He faced into the gloom, trying to gauge the quarter from which that sound came. But in the mist the compass points were lost. It could have been speeding towards them or away. Then his guide rope tautened and pulled him on.

“What was that?” the voice was muffled, but it was unmistakably Rip’s.

“Your guess is as good as mine.” Dane could no longer hear that pattering. Had it been one of the globe things?

A dark object rose out of the fog and then Dane was startled by a shout. His boots rasped from gravel and sand to smoother flooring. He was standing on a square of pavement and that shadow to the left was a jaggered wall of ancient ruin. They had crossed the waste!

“Thorson! Dane—!”

Rip’s summons was imperative and Dane hurried to answer it. Kosti must have stopped the crawler for his rope did not tug him forward. Then he came upon the astrogator-apprentice bending over a sprawled form.

It was Rip’s own chief, Wilcox, who had taken that misstep and now lay partly in the crevice which had clamped knee high on his leg.

In the end it took all four of them to pry the astrogator loose. And it was at least a half hour before he sat on the crawler, nursing his leg where the tough material of the age-old building had punched a jagged hole through the calf of his high boot and drawn blood. They applied first aid, but from now on Wilcox would have to ride.

They closed in a tight escort about the crawler as it moved on. Wilcox sat with a drawn blaster balanced on his good knee. The scraps of ruin became whole walls, sections of oddly shaped structures. And yet they saw nothing which had any signs of a Terran camp.

Here among the relics of an older and alien life Dane felt again that sensation of being spied upon, that just beyond vision limited by the fog lurked something else, something to which these drifting mists were no sight barrier. The treads of the crawler crackled on rock and an eerie silence wrapped them about. The smooth walls ran with dank water, it gathered in puddles here and there. But the liquid was tainted, noisome, with an evil metallic smell clinging about it.

They came into a region where the buildings appeared to be untouched, with roofs and walls still guarding pitch dark interiors. The last thing Dane wanted to do was to explore any of those fetid openings.

But the crawler was not pausing anywhere along the street, instead crunching on over buckled strips of pavement. Perhaps the walls banked off some of the fog, for Dane now found it possible to see not only the forms but the faces of his companions. And all of them, he saw, had a tendency to look over their shoulders, and to stare into the interior of every structure they passed.

It was Rip who made the first find. He had taken out his hand torch and was using it at pavement level. Now he centred that ring of light on a dark splotch which marked a wall a little above ground surface. He tugged a signal to halt and went down on one knee beside his find as Dane joined him.

The cargo-apprentice found the other smelling that splotch, sniffing as if he were some hound on a muddled trail. But to Dane it was only a dark blot.

“What is it?”

Rip’s light swept from the stain on the wall to move over the pavement as if in search. Then it centred on a brownish wad. But though Rip inspected that with care he avoided touching it.

“Crax seed—”

Dane had been stooping. Now, in instant reaction to those words, he straightened. “Sure?”

“Smell it.”

But Dane made no move to follow that suggestion. The less one meddled with crax seed the safer one was.

Rip got to his feet and hurried on to the crawler. “There’s a cud of crax seed been spit out here. Fairly fresh—maybe this morning—”

“Told you—poachers!” Kosti broke in.

“So—” Wilcox gripped his blaster more firmly. Crax seed was one of the Galaxy wide outlawed drugs. Those unwise enough to chew it had—for a period of time—an abnormal reaction speed, a heightened intellect, a superman control. What occurred to them later was not pretty at all. But to come up against a crax chewer was to face an opponent who at his peak was twice as wily, twice as fast, twice as strong as yourself. And it was not an assignment to be lightly undertaken.

Save for that betraying wad of crax seed, in spite of the search they now made in the vicinity, they could find no other indication that any life but themselves had walked this way since the forgotten war had blasted the city. If Dr. Rich had begun any archaeological excavations, the site of the investigations was still to be found.

Wilcox set the crawler on the lowest speed and started on. Nor was he the only one to travel with his blaster ready. All four of the rest took the same precaution.

“I wonder—” Dane had been surveying the broken line of roofs. “The fog,” he added to Rip, “doesn’t it appear to be thinner ahead?”

“It’s been thinning out ever since we made that last halt. Good thing, too. Just look at that, man!”

What, in a deeper murk, might have been a death trap gaped before them, a vast crevice slicing the pavement, opening a pit large enough to swallow both the crawler and the men escorting it. But the machine was prepared for that. Ponderously it altered course eastward, pulling up over a mound of rubble while Wilcox had to re-holster his blaster and cling with both hands to keep his seat. The machine reached the top of the mound and began to crawl down the opposite side, a crawl which became a slide as the earth gave way beneath its weight.

Surely that rumble was enough to rouse any of Rich’s men. But though those from the Queen took cover and waited out long minutes, there was nothing to indicate they had been heard.

“They can’t be here,” Kosti said as he crept out of cover at Wilcox’s signal.

“Probably haven’t been here for some time,” Rip observed, “I knew he wasn’t a real archaeologist!”

“What about Ali’s com?” cut in Dane. Tang had got that faint fix from this general direction—though it was true that the ruins had not been pinpointed as the source of the faint cast-beam.

Wilcox made a long survey of their surroundings. Before them the gap in the ground had been filled in with wreckage until a bridge of uncertain stability faced the crawler. Its “memory” had brought them there so it must have crossed here during the trips to carry Rich’s supplies. They would have to take the chance and go on if they wanted to know what had become of the archaeologists.

The astrogator started the motor and then clung with iron fingers as the machine under him bucked and heaved over the loose bridge stuff. Once the treads hit a pocket and the crawler canted to the left. A foot more and it would have spilled its passenger down into the black depths of the gulf.

Kosti went next, both hands on the rope which still tied him to the machine. He took tiny steps in the middle of the bridge, and beneath his helmet drops of sweat washed the fog slick from his cheeks. The others picked their way slowly, testing each step. The fact that they could not see the bottom of the crevice on either side did not make the trip any easier.

Beyond the crawler picked up speed again and made a quick turn back to its original course. The lifting of the mist was even more apparent—though it did not vanish entirely. But their range of vision, from a foot or two about their persons, had increased to half a block.

“They did have bubble tents,” Dane said suddenly, “And regulation camping gear.”

“So—where’s the camp?” Rip sounded almost peevish. Since he had found the crax cud his buoyant good humour had vanished.

“They wouldn’t camp in the city,” Dane was convinced of that. There was about these ruins an alien, brooding atmosphere which dragged at one’s spirits. He had never regarded himself as a particularly sensitive person, but he felt this strongly. And he believed that the others did also. Little Mura had hardly spoken since they had sighted the ruins, he had dragged back on his guide rope, his eyes darting from one side of the street to the other as if at any moment he expected some formless horror to dash at him out of the murk. Who would dare to set up a tent here, sleep, eat, and carry on the business of daily living fenced in with the age old effluvium which clung to the blasted and broken dwellings—dwellings which perhaps had never harboured human creatures at all?

The crawler drew them on through the maze until the structures which still had a semblance of completeness were behind them once again and only broken walls and shattered mounds of blocks and earth made obstructions around which their machine led them in the pattern it must follow.

It was halfway around one towering mound when Wilcox brought it to a quick stop by smashing his hand down on the control button. That gesture and the frantic haste in which he made it were not lost on the others. They dived into hiding and then began working forward to edge in behind the crawler.

From a cleared space arose—though its lines were still blurred by the fog—a bubble tent, its puffed surface slick with the moisture. They had reached Rich’s camp at last.

But Wilcox gave no order to advance. Though they had nothing but suspicion against the archaeologist, the attitude of the astrogator suggested that he was about to reconnoitre a position held by open enemies.

He tightened his helmet strap after adjusting his throat mike. But his orders did not come audibly—instead he gestured them out to encircle the sealed bubble. Dane crept to the right with Rip, automatically keeping cover between them and the tent.

They had gone a quarter of the circle when Rip’s hand came down on Dane’s arm and the astrogator-apprentice motioned that Thorson was to remain where he was while Rip crawled on to another vantage point in the circle they were drawing about Rich’s headquarters.

Dane studied the lay of the ground between his station and the bubble. Here the rubble had been levelled off, packed down, as if the men who camped here needed room to accommodate either crawlers or flitters. But as far as Dane could see, and he was frankly ignorant of the archaeologist’s trade, there was no indication of work on uncovering the ruins. Vague memories of items he had seen on news tapes, and Rip’s briefings, were his only guides. But surely they should have come across excavations, things waiting for study, maybe even crates ready to pack with transportable finds. But this place had rather the stripped look of a field headquarters for some action team of pioneers or Survey. Could it be left by Survey and not Rich’s camp at all?

Then he saw the crawler come into sight, Wilcox on it, his lame leg drawn up so that the fact that he was inactive would not be apparent to anyone watching from the bubble. The crawler crunched on towards the tent without rousing any sign of life within.

But to the astonishment of Dane and the surprise of Wilcox— judging by his expression—the machine did not come to a stop at the level space before the tent. Instead it changed course to evade the bubble and kept steadily on until Wilcox halted it. The astrogator stared at the tent and then his voice whispered in Dane’s earphones:

“Come on in—but take it slow!”

They converged on the bubble, slipping from cover and racing across the clearing to new protections. But the tent might be deserted for all the attention their actions aroused. Mura reached the structure first, his sensitive fingers searching for the sealing catch. When the flap peeled down, all of them stared in.

The bubble was only an empty shell. None of its interior partitions had been put into place, even the tilo-floor was missing, so that bare rubble of the field showed. And there was not a box or bag of all the supplies which had been brought from the Queen present in that wide space.

“A fake!” Kosti spluttered. “This was set up just to make us think—”

“That they were still here,” Wilcox finished for him. “Looks that way, doesn’t it?”

“Passing over here in a flitter,” Rip murmured, “we’d believe everything was just as it should be. But where are they?”

Mura resealed the bubble’s flap. “Not here,” he announced as if that were a new discovery. “But, Mr. Wilcox, did not the crawler attempt to proceed past this area? Perhaps it knows far more than we have given it credit for—”

Wilcox fingered the throat strap of his helmet. About them the fog was fading—though far more slowly than it had descended. His eyes went from the bubble to the mist beyond. Perhaps if Ali had not been involved he would have ordered a return to the Queen. But now, after a pause, he switched on the crawler’s motor once more.

The machine circled around the bubble and kept on. There were clumps of vegetation appearing now—the tough grass, the stunted bushes. And knobs of rock slanting up signalled their approach to the foothills.

Here the fog which was thinning on the plains curdled again, shutting down until they bunched about the crawler in a tight cluster, each man within arms-distance of his fellows.

That feeling of being spied upon, of being dogged by something they could not see grew strong once more. Underfoot the ground became rougher. But Kosti pointed out other tracks, rutted in the soft patches of soil, indications that they were on a road the crawler had used before.

As the mist thickened they strained ears and eyes—but they saw nothing but each other and their machine guide. And what they heard they could not believe.

“Look out!” Rip grabbed at Dane, jerking him back just in time to avoid a painful meeting with a rock wall which loomed out of the fog. From the echo of their boots on the ground they gained the impression that they were entering a narrow defile. Linking hands they spread out—to discover that the four of them marching at arms-length could span the road they now followed.

Once more Wilcox slowed to a halt. He was uneasy. Marching blind this way, they could walk into a trap. On the other hand those they hunted must believe that the crew of the Queen would not attempt to travel through the fog. The astrogator had to weigh the possibility of a surprise descent upon the unseen enemy against the chance that he was going into an ambush.

And being imbued with that extra amount of caution which made him an excellent astrogator. Wilcox was not given to snap decisions. Those with him knew that no argument could move him once his mind had been made up. Therefore they sighed with relief when he started the crawler once more.

But the strange solution to their chase came so shortly that it was a shock. For, within feet, they were fronted by towering rock, rock against which the crawler stubbed its flat nose, as its treads continued to bite into the ground as if to force it into the solid, unmoving stone.