The Seed of Earth

CHAPTER TWELVE

The coming of daylight revealed Carol to him. She was lying near him, a pathetic little bundle sprawled on the sand. She was still asleep, her knees drawn up into her body, her hands tucked under one cheek.

And, off to one side, he saw that Cherry also slept her clothes disheveled, her bright blonde hair streaming every which way.

His body ached; every muscle throbbed, his bones were chilled by the damp and cold, and he felt a general lassitude, the weariness of a body not yet accustomed to the hard mattress that was the floor of the cave.

Noonan was awake already. Dawes saw him far back in the cavern, over to the left on the side away from Carol.

He was sitting up, arms clasped in front of him across his knees, looking amusedly at Dawes. With one easy gesture Noonan pushed himself to his feet and ambled down the cavern toward Dawes, who stood waiting.

'These women will sleep through anything,' Noonan chuckled. His eyes narrowed as he saw Dawes more closely. 'Christ, you look awful. Green in the face.'

'I'm - pretty tired out.'

'You getting sick?'

Dawes shook his head. 'I just feel washed out.'

'You look sicker than just being washed out.'

'How am I supposed to feel?' Dawes demanded. 'Who knows where the hell we are? What are these aliens planning to do to us? We may be stew by lunchtime, Noonan', Dawes' voice sounded thin and high in his ears.

'I doubt it,' Noonan said casually. 'But let's take a look.'

Together they strolled forward to the lip of the cavern.

Dawes gasped.

They were at least a hundred feet above the flat, dullbrown surface of Osiris. The cave was inset in an almost vertical rise of cliff. Above and below them were flat walls of black stone, gleaming faintly in the morning sun.

And down below, on the distant ground, a few of the aliens moved in aimless patterns as if standing guard.

Dawes pointed out past the thickly forested area.

'Look there. That must be the colony, in that clearing all the way out there!'

Noonan nodded. 'A good ten miles or so. And we can see it easily. This is the damnedest flat world I ever saw, except for these cliffs.' He gestured downward, at the aliens. 'Nasty bunch down there.'

Dawes looked out and down. The aliens, at this distance, appeared to be nothing but yellow-brown splotches against the deeper brown of the soil. They were heavily furred, he saw, neckless, thick-bodied. He thought he could make out the bluish-purpleness of the suction-pads on the palms of their broad hands.

Dawes stepped back from the rim of the cave mouth, remarking with a levity he hardly felt, 'It's a long drop.'

He glanced at the bigger man, who grinned and said, 'Damned right it is. I'd say we were stuck here a while.

We'll just have to make the most of it.'

Dawes nodded bleakly and turned away, to survey the interior of the cave.

The cavern was long and deep, deeper than it was wide; it slanted back downward, vanishing into a wall of rock at the rear beyond the penetrating range of the sunlight.

Far to the back of the cave the little stream gushed forth out of the live rock, coursed along the cave floor for a space, and dropped below the surface again, puddling up into a small fast-flowing narrow lake. The morning air was cold and brisk; the wind wailed past the open mouth of the cavern in relentless pursuit of itself.

They were a hundred fifty feet above ground, in a cold little alcove in the side of a steep cliff. They had fresh water. They could survive here indefinitely, if—

Hunger gnawed at Dawes' middle. He said to Noonan, 'Suppose we're left here to starve to death? What if they don't bring us food?'

'We'll eat each other,' Noonan said amiably. 'Women and children first.' He yawned, showing sharp, strong white teeth, and Dawes half thought he might be serious.

There was never any telling what idea Noonan might put forth as a serious suggestion.

Yet he was glad Noonan was here. The older man radiated strength and competence and courage, all of them attributes that Dawes knew he himself conspicuously lacked. Noonan was an adventurer. He had been a volunteer. That took a kind of courage Dawes could hardly begin to understand, and he respected Noonan for it.

'Let's go wake up the womenfolk,' Noonan suggested.

'We might as well,' Dawes agreed.

He headed to the back of the cavern, where Carol slept. Looking back, he saw Noonan stooping over Cherry, shaking her urgently from side to side.

Carol still lay curled up in a ball-like position. She seemed so soundly asleep that Dawes regretted having to wake her. He knelt by her side, listening for a moment to the untroubled rhythm of her breathing, and wondered how she could be so calmly asleep in a place like this.

He put his hand lightly to her shoulder. 'Carol. Wake up, Carol.'

She stirred, but her eyes remained shut - as if she did not want to wake, Dawes thought; as if she preferred the security of her dream. He shook her more energetically, and she began to awaken. 'Carol? Are you up?'

'What - oh - Mama, yes -1 must have overslept—'

Her eyes opened and she sat up. For an instant she stared at Dawes, at the cave, with blank incomprehension. Then her dream of home faded and reality returned.

'Oh - I was dreaming. I slept so soundly all night. I thought you were going to come to me, but you didn't, did you? You—'

'Come,' he said quietly. 'Let's go down to the others.

It's morning.'

Cherry had awakened by this time; she stood stretching, knuckling her eyes, adjusting her clothing. Noonan, nearby, stood with arms folded. Dawes and Carol went toward them, and Cherry nodded at Carol, smiled at Dawes. For a long moment the four of them stood apart and looked at each other. Just looked. And Dawes saw suddenly that life in the cave was going to be complicated.

'We're not going to have much privacy in here,'

Noonan said at last, breaking a silence so taut it creaked.

'You can say that again,' Cherry offered.

'I won't. But some of us are going to have to change their ideas a little. And I don't know how long we're going to be stuck up here, either - but I'd guess we don't get out until someone gets us out.'

'You don't figure there's any way we can get out ourselves?' Dawes asked.

Noonan hunched his shoulders into a somber shrug.

'I don't have any snap ideas. It's a long way down, that's all.'

'Those aliens,' Carol said in a hesitant voice. 'They're down there just watching us?'

Noonan nodded. 'There's a bunch of them outside, in the valley at the foot of the cliff. We're penned up here, and they can come get us any time they want. But we can't get out.'

'And I don't suppose the colony is going to come rescue us,' Cherry Thomas said. 'They won't give much of a damn about us. Chalk us off as lost, I guess. They'll be too busy defending their stockade.'

'There isn't any defense,' Carol said. 'If they can walk up the side of a cliff, they can climb over a twenty foot fence, can't they?'

Dawes said, 'The colonists won't rescue us. They can't.

They don't even know where we are. If there still is a colony, that is.'

Noonan shook his head in agreement. 'That's a point.

The aliens may have everybody cooped up, four to a cave. Or they may have just snatched the four of us.

There's no way of telling.'

'Well, we're stuck here,' Cherry said. 'But what are we going to do about food?'

Noonan shrugged. 'We can't eat sand. Maybe the aliens will be nice about it and bring us something we can eat. Or maybe they won't.'

'Suppose they don't?' Carol asked.

'Then there are three things we can do. We can sit around in here and wait to starve to death, or we can take turns eating each other, or we can simply jump out the front of the cave.' Noonan laughed cavernously. 'I'd recommend the last idea. It makes for a quicker death, that way.'

That put a finish to conversation for a while. The four prisoners separated; Noonan stretched out to sleep, Cherry headed to the back of the cave to try the drinking-water, and Carol let herself sink down crosslegged to stare hopelessly at the front of the cave.

The morning slipped by. It was getting close to noon, Dawes figured, and he was awfully hungry. The wind had not let up its furious keening, and the sun was high overhead. He felt too dismal to say anything to anyone.

After a while he walked to the lip of the cavern and peered down the vertiginous height. He was stunned to see alien faces peering upward at him. There were about twenty of the aliens halfway up the side of the cliff, making no attempt to move closer, looking upward at him.

Their blunt heads were almost entirely covered with short bristly yellow-brown fur, from which dark blue eyes, piercingly intense, stared out.

Dawes turned away. Suddenly, he heard a thump behind him.

Surprised, he whirled and caught a glimpse of the purple suction-pad of an alien as it flashed and disappeared. A bundle lay at the mouth of the cave. Dawes ran to the edge of the cave and looked out. An alien was scampering down the side of the cliff to rejoin his fellows below.

Dawes returned to the bundle. It was a package about the size of a man, wrapped in a reddish-yellow animal hide that was shaggy and rank. Frowning, Dawes undid the coarse twine that held the uncured hide together and lay back the wrapping.

His eyes widened. Rising, he cupped one hand to his mouth and called out to the others.

'Hey, food! Come here, all of you! The aliens brought us food!'

As Noonan and Cherry and Carol came crowding around to see, Dawes spread out the provisions. The largest item in the bundle was a freshly-killed animal, small, foreshortened, vaguely pig-like, with a hairless black skin. A stiff little tail about six inches long thrust out sharply at them. There was a deep gash in the animal's throat, but otherwise it was whole, from its tail to its flattened snout and glassy yellow buttons of eyes.

Strapped to the beast by a crude length of twine was a short, sharp knife made of some shiny gray material very much like obsidian.

The bundle also included several clusters of milk-white fruits the size of large grapes, and some oblong blue gourd-like vegetables with coarse, knobby skins. Dawes' mouth watered.

'So it looks like they intend to feed us,' Noonan said.

'That may be good, or maybe it isn't. I hope they're not fattening us for a sacrifice.'

'We'll find that out soon enough,' said Dawes. 'We'll know whenever we get fed again. If they don't throw us any more for a week, we can figure that the fattening idea is wrong.'

'How did the bundle get here?' Cherry asked.

'An alien climbed up the side of the cliff and tossed it in the entrance,' Dawes said. 'Then he beat it. He looked like a big brown spider skittering down the rock wall.'

Using the blade, Noonan sliced into the animal, while Dawes and the women watched. Dawes was fascinated with Noonan's surgical precision. The roughly flaked stone knife was razor sharp, and the big man had a ready way with the beast; he carved with the skill of a professional butcher. He laid the animal open speedily, pulling back flaps of its dark red underbelly skin, and scooped out the warm entrails. He dumped them to one side; they were slimy, oozing with blood.

'At least,' Noonan said, 'the alien blood is the right color.' He efficiently carved chunks of meat from the small creature. 'Maybe this meat is poison and maybe it isn't, but at least the blood's right.'

Carol shuddered. 'I've never eaten raw meat. Isn't there some way we can make a fire?'

Noonan paused to glance up at her. 'No, there isn't,' he said emphatically, 'I know you didn't want to come on this trip, girlie. But you're here, now. You'd better be ready to eat plenty of raw meat - and worse things.'