Treasure Of The Stars

Chapter 3

For the next three days Blade tramped steadily downstream, never more than a hundred yards from the riverbank and never that far from the cover of the trees. He didn't risk a fire, but there was plenty of food to be eaten raw. He found berries, edible mushrooms, a small reddish fish, and something like a rabbit-sized squirrel with long floppy ears. None of them tasted very good, but together all of them kept him alive. After the second day he had enough skins from the squirrel-rabbits to make himself sandals and a loinguard.

The winged-disk jet planes passed low overhead at least once each day. Sometimes they carried the gray cylinders, at other times large yellow tanks. Twice Blade saw the vapor trails of other jets flying too high to be identified, and once he heard something that sounded vaguely like a helicopter. Once he heard a more ominous sound in the distance, a series of echoing roars like explosions.

On the fourth day Blade reached a point where the river broke through the foothills of the mountains, forming a rugged canyon. He had an all-day struggle to get through the canyon. Several times he ended up clinging by fingers and toes to sheer rock faces with long drops to the rapids below him. Both his grip and his luck held. By late afternoon he was out of the canyon, facing the wooded lowlands beyond.

A plane flew overhead as Blade made camp that night, lower than usual and cruising slowly so he was able to make out the insignia. The plane bore a green triangle with a red border and golden wings, not the insignia of the Russlanders or any of their allies. This was a new Dimension with a new, unknown people. Blade slept better that night than he'd done the first three nights, because of the good news and because it was warmer down here in the lowlands. Sandals and a fur loinguard didn't do much to keep off the night breezes.

He was on the move before dawn the next day. As it grew light he bathed and caught three fish for breakfast. An hour after breakfast he reached open ground. An hour farther on, much of the relief he'd felt at learning he wasn't in Russland suddenly vanished.

In front of him lay a crater, half a mile across, more than a hundred feet deep, outlines softened by erosion and long grass but quite unmistakable. Once, long ago, an atomic bomb had exploded here.

How long ago? The grass was thick and looked healthy enough, while bushes and even small trees grew on the very lip of the crater. Long enough for most of the radioactivity to be gone, it seemed.

Blade walked in a wide circle around the crater, finding bits of metal, black, twisted, half-melted, chunks of stone and concrete, blobs of glass, slabs of what might once have been a road leading down to the river. He couldn't even guess what might have stood here before the bomb. Whether or not it hit its intended target, it did a thorough job where it struck.

Blade wondered if the rest of the bombs that must have gone off in that long-ago war had done an equally thorough job. Probably not-this civilization still had enough sophisticated jet planes to fly them over this wilderness every day. However much they'd mangled themselves, they weren't a bunch of cavemen.

What else were they? Blade wondered as he made his way across the open ground. He kept low, his eyes searching the sky, ready to dive under the nearest bush or into the nearest patch of long grass at the first sound of a plane. The only way to find out more about these people was to push on until he met them, but he still didn't want to be spotted by one of the planes. It would be hard to prove he was friendly by waving at the pilot, and hard to survive if the pilot decided he was an enemy.

Blade left the open ground behind well before dark. The next day he found himself in the woods again. It was no longer virgin wilderness, but second growth on land which had once been farms. Every mile or so he passed traces of stone walls, farm buildings, bridges over streams, even a road. No traces of violence, though. Had nature covered them over, or hadn't there been any? Perhaps the people of the area simply packed up and left after the war, or perhaps they died from something that left their homes and walls intact. Radiation, disease, chemicals, starvation, radiation-induced sterility?

Blade found himself more and more reluctant to push on with no weapon but his rough club. He tore off a length of tough vine, then went down to the riverbank and picked out a handful of rounded stones, each about half the size of his fist. With a little practice he had a fairly useful sling. It might not slay Goliath, but he could hit a man in the head with one of the stones at twenty-five yards. After the stones were gone, the vine was tough enough to use as a strangling cord. Blade made a belt out of another length of vine and a pouch out of the hide of one of the squirrel-rabbits. Then he dropped the stones into the pouch and moved on.

If they could only work the bugs out of getting some equipment into Dimension X along with him! He wouldn't ask for much, just a few essentials like boots, a canteen, emergency rations, and some sort of weapon. He'd even be happy if the scientists would let go of his old commando knife, which had made the round trip with him. The scientists insisted they still needed it for further study, Lord Leighton supported them, and against that combination even J's protests couldn't do anything.

That evening the planes seemed to be coming overhead in squadrons. Blade was careful to get well under cover, and when he started off the next morning he moved more cautiously than before.

It was a good thing he did. Just before noon he saw nearly a dozen planes diving on something only a few miles ahead. Then he heard a steady crashing of explosions. After a few minutes the explosions died away, the planes flew off, and several new flying machines came whirring in over the treetops. They looked like immense gleaming sausages with lift propellers in the wings and drive propellers in their high tails. When one of them hovered, then landed a mile ahead, Blade decided to get out of sight. He was at the base of a tree when he heard the soldiers approaching. By the time they came in sight he was thirty feet up, hard to pick out even if they'd thought of looking.

When the soldiers passed, he still wasn't completely sure he ought to try meeting them. They looked as if they were on a combat mission, they might be rather trigger-happy, and if they were they were carrying enough firepower to make themselves thoroughly deadly to Richard Blade. Slings and clubs against automatic rifles wasn't his idea of safe odds.

However, these soldiers didn't seem to have much idea of how to handle themselves in the woods. He could almost certainly follow them anywhere, without having to meet them if he didn't want to.

So he climbed down the tree and set off on the trail of the soldiers.

The soldiers not only moved noisily, they moved slowly. Blade's main problem at first was not overtaking them and being seen. After a while he realized that wasn't going to be much of a problem either. The soldiers' training hadn't included anything about how to move cross-country in hostile territory. They marched looking mostly ahead, occasionally to the side, never above or behind.

Unless there was a second patrol following this one, guarding their rear? Blade thought he'd better check. He dropped back, hid under a bush, and waited, listening to the first patrol tramping off, then listening for the approach of a second.

Eventually he decided the first patrol really was being as careless as it looked and set off after them again. When he came in sight of them, they were still tramping along as casually as before. Some were beginning to sweat and most of the uniforms were no longer quite so crisp and clean. Otherwise they still looked as if they were parading in front of their own barracks. Blade began to wonder if this was just an exercise, where even the worst sort of carelessness would earn the soldiers nothing more than a chewing-out from some sergeant or officer.

He'd just completed the thought when there was a thunderous explosion not far ahead. Even through the treetops Blade could see a mountain of gray smoke towering against the sky. The ground heaved, birds screeched, small animals dashed about in terror, twigs, leaves, and birds' nests showered down on Blade. Most of the soldiers threw themselves on the ground.

A yellowish-brown animal the size of a small deer burst out of the undergrowth to Blade's right, plunging toward the line of soldiers. One of them rose on his elbows, aimed his rifle, and squeezed off a burst. Whatever the rifle fired, it hit hard enough to not only blow the animal's head off but cut down a couple of small trees behind it. The headless corpse collapsed, spouting blood, and the trees dropped on top of it.

Before the animal stopped twitching, the burst of rifle fire was echoed from ahead and to the left. Bursts alternated with single shots and the noise steadily increased. Blade heard grenade explosions, shouts, and once the unmistakable shrieks of someone in agony.

So much for the notion that he'd wandered into some harmless maneuvers! He began to wonder if the best thing might not be to wander out again while the soldiers were fighting their battle. He didn't see any particular point in getting his head blown off like the animal's.

Then suddenly running feet thudded and bushes crackled to the right of the soldiers. Five running figures burst out into the open. Four of them were men, one a woman with long pale silvery hair. All of them were carrying rifles or pistols.

Both sides were paralyzed with surprise for a moment. Then the paralysis ended and the forest exploded with a deafening roar of gunfire as both sides let fly. Blade flattened himself on the ground. For the moment he could tell what was happening without seeing it, and he didn't want to be drilled by any of the stray bullets whistling in all directions like mad bees.

A grenade went off, followed by several screams and the crash of a tree going over. Then more bursts, mixed with a few single shots, a sizzling sound, the woman's voice crying out something high-pitched and incoherent, and several men shouting what must have been curses. Finally there was silence, except for the gurgling and moaning of the wounded.

A few inches at a time, Blade crept to where he could get a better view of the scene. By the time he'd finished moving, the survivors were getting themselves sorted out.

The clearing looked like a crude slaughterhouse, with hacked carcasses lying about and blood everywhere. Blade counted eight of the soldiers either dead or so mangled he hoped they were dead. Three men of the other side were also dead, and one was groaning with a bloody arm and shoulder. The woman was sprawled on her back, her clothes torn in a couple of places and her face smoke-blackened. Otherwise she seemed unhurt.

Some of the surviving soldiers were gathering up the undamaged weapons and ammunition from the bodies. Others, including the officer with the pistol, surrounded the enemy survivors. Blade saw the officer bend over the man.

«Your name?» As usual, the passage into Dimension X had altered Blade's brain so that the officer's language came to him as English.

A groan from the man.

The officer kicked the man in the ribs. He screamed.

«Your name?»

A wordless muttering. This time the officer kicked the man in the groin. He doubled up gasping, without the breath to scream.

«Your name, you filthy wild swine!»

This time the man said something Blade couldn't catch, but was obviously insulting: The officer's face twisted and turned dark. He gripped his pistol and squeezed the trigger. It was a laser, and the beam seared across the man's cheek, leaving a charred mark and destroying one eye. The officer fired several more times, until the man's face was a ruin of charred flesh and blackened bone. Then the officer signaled to one of the soldiers, who finished the man with a bayonet thrust in the ribs.

Blade found himself itching to have a gun in his hand and its sights on the officer. He'd seldom met people in any Dimension who'd so quickly convinced him he wasn't going to be on their side. He wasn't sure what side the soldiers' victims belonged to, but it had to be a better starting point for this Dimension than the soldiers!

He was considering what to do next when the problem was solved for him. One of the soldiers bent over the woman, opened his canteen, and emptied it onto her face. She twitched, gasped, choked, and tried feebly to sit up. Four other soldiers grabbed her arms and legs and began ripping off her clothes. Blade watched, disgusted but also noting strange details revealed as the woman was stripped.

Her skin was reddish-brown where it wasn't dark with smoke, dirt, and bruises. It was totally unlike the soldiers, who were mostly about Blade's complexion. Both the long hair on the woman's head and the tight triangle between her legs were white with a faint, barely visible silvery sheen.

She was long-limbed and so slender it was hard to detect the normal female curves in her body. Yet she didn't look starved or masculine. She was simply more slender than any human woman Blade had ever seen. There was an ethereal quality about her, like a fairy woman.

Then one of the soldiers jerked off the man's shirt the woman wore under her jacket, leaving her completely naked. This lifted one arm so that the hand was silhouetted in the air. Blade had a clear view of a hand with six long fingers on it, each finger with an extra joint.

Humanoid, Blade thought, but definitely not human. No question of who to help. Even if the soldiers hadn't behaved like sadistic thugs, this woman had to be helped. Blade needed to know who she was, where she came from, and what she was doing in this Dimension of otherwise normal human beings. To even ask her these questions, he'd have to get her out of the hands of the soldiers, and he couldn't see any way of doing that peacefully.

So now he knew what had to be done next. The question left was: how?