Dance and sing, we are eternal. . . .
—JOHN DAVIDSON
*
In the deeps of the planet, the creatures without name observed the arrival of the others. There was a certain pleasure in the knowledge that what they'd so long awaited was coming to pass. In the darkness and quiet they lay, listening to the creak of stone, and to the trickle of water, and to the footsteps of the violators of their world. They listened to the voices from among the stars and despised what they heard; they felt the fear of the others, smelled it, as surely as though they were all closed up together here in the dank, dead air of the caverns.
They savored that fear and uncertainty, and waited until the world above was clothed in the same fine darkness that ever lay within . . .
The stars were out in the night sky, and that was some comfort to Senslaaevor and his people, who had little else to comfort them. Senslaaevor had vetoed a fire, even though dry brush existed in the ravine below their camp. Anything that might lead their enemy to them was a luxury they could not afford.
They remained in their suits, but only one crew member at a time was permitted a closed helmet and temporary relief from the harsh, reactive atmosphere. It was essential to conserve their stored gases, since there was no knowing how long they might be stranded or whether they might yet face a fight. The engineering-mate was still tinkering with his suit communicator, trying to boost the range, trying to make contact with the (fleet) again. He'd succeeded once, briefly, long enough to describe their situation; but they'd lost the contact before plans for a rescue could be conveyed. Perhaps the (fleet) had gotten enough of a fix on them to send a lander; perhaps not.
Occasionally now they could see elements of the (fleet), points of light gliding across the star field. If the mate could coax a sufficiently directional signal . . .
Senslaaevor sat suddenly, stiffly upright. He expelled a breath of air and signaled the others to be still. He had felt something. Slowly he drew in another breath, extending his senses. There it was again. Something in the air. Not a physical smell. A thought-smell. It was closer now. The enemy?
He wished he had a seeker in his crew. A seeker could tell him what this was; a seeker could make contact, or track the enemy; a seeker could give counsel for a fight. Without a seeker he could only guess; he might as well be blind.
"Take caution," he told the others. "Do you smell it? Something comes."
"I sense it," the navigator said. "Nearby." He rose and paced the perimeter of the camp.
"To the flanks," Senslaaevor said, motioning to the tracker and the gunner. The two crew members obeyed, and crept away in silence, in opposite directions along the edge of the ravine. "Mate. Progress on the unit?"
The engineering-mate closed the case of his communicator. "Ready to try." He looked up into the sky, searching for one of the Ell(fleet). Minutes passed; then a point of light appeared over the western horizon. The mate aimed, tracking the (ship). A moment later: "Contact, Senslaaevor."
Senslaaevor strode to the mate's side and spoke into the unit. He relayed their position, and reported a possible dangerous presence in the area. Before he could finish, the signal was broken—but not before he was assured that rescue was already en route. "Well done," he said to the engineering-mate. He turned to his sentries at either end of the camp. "Anything felt?" he called.
The gunner signaled in the negative. The tracker did not answer. He was standing rigidly still. Senslaaevor called again. There was something unnatural in the tracker's stance—a stiffness, not quite balanced. Senslaaevor felt a chill in his thoughts.
He crossed the campsite, motioning to his navigator to follow. He approached the tracker. "What have you felt?" There was no answer, only a momentary flutter in the tracker's membranes. The El was staring out over the ravine; he appeared to have fallen into a meditative trance. Senslaaevor could see nothing where the tracker's gaze was fixed. He tapped the crew member sharply on the shoulder.
The tracker did not respond. His eyes appeared unfocused; his breathing was shallow, his membranes scarcely moving. Was it the air? Senslaaevor snapped the tracker's helmet closed and turned on the gas flow. He did the same to his own suit and ordered the others to do likewise. "Do you hear me now?" he said over the suit communicator. There was no change in the tracker's expression; it was as though he had, for no reason, bent his thoughts inward to the torhhatt and closed off not just his strategically vital memories, but all of his memories.
Senslaaevor gazed across the ravine to the plain beyond and deliberately extended his senses to their greatest range. He saw little in the dimly starlit darkness except . . .
Startled, he refocused his eyes. There was something there, something moving. Something faintly luminous. He reached inward to his own icy center and anchored himself and opened his thought-senses again.
Something like a cold, wet wind sluiced into his thoughts. Before he could react to identify its source, it turned gritty and harsh inside his head and caught at his inner defenses as though it knew exactly where to look for them. He barked in protest and struggled to close off his thoughts. He could not; the wind howled up inside him, stinking of decay, gagging him. It drove a sickening pain into the center of his consciousness—and then vanished, leaving him dizzy and breathless. He blinked his eyes back into focus. The navigator was crouched on fours beside him, growling. He ventilated his membranes until his thoughts cleared. He saw all of his crew in pain; he was not the only one under attack.
He must identify the source.
A weapon of the enemy? Almost certainly. Which meant that the enemy was near, or that they had a very long reach, and they knew exactly where the Ell camp was. And yet . . .
There was something about that touch that had seemed almost . . . familiar. Something about the way it had slipped into his thoughts with such precision . . .
"There—on the plain," whispered the navigator, barely breathing. His eyes strained, as though a struggle raged in him still.
Senslaaevor gazed with terrible urgency, and caught sight of a luminous figure, or several—blurry phantasms floating over the plain. They moved toward him, becoming more distinct as they approached; but their distinctness, far from reassuring him, shook him terribly. There was no word for these figures coming toward him, except . . . demons. They were elongated creatures of light—one moment drifting suspended over the land, and the next swirling and swooping through the night air with a dizzying and impossible swiftness, as no physical presence could move. They were Ell-like in their shape, but grotesque and distorted and luminous in a sickly way, like the phosphorescence of decay. Demons were something he could not have known about, except from the remotest of legends; but the images, the understanding leaped into his thoughts. If this was an attack by the enemy, it was an uncanny one; he couldn't protect himself except to shield his thoughts—but that wasn't going to work, not against these. He saw all of this in an instant—and then it was stripped from him by the howling of that hideous wind back into his mind.
Around him, his crew were groaning, and he turned to them dumbly, but stumbled as he felt something no El should feel: Fear. Not cautious apprehension, but deep, sickening terror. The creatures howled in the air and spiraled dizzyingly about his head—and they spiraled in his head, too, all light and sound and cold, like blades of death whirling and slicing through the sinews that held mind and body and spirit together.
He screamed. It was a shocking, hideous sound, but Senslaaevor scarcely heard his own voice. It was not just his own scream, but also those of his crew reverberating in his helmet. Even that was drowned out by the thunder of blood in his skull, the beating and trembling of muscles that he couldn't control, the flapping of his hands in the air in useless, involuntary movements. His vision filled with the sight of the creatures howling before him; they were in his eyes, they were racing through his optic nerves, his own senses were no longer his to control.
If time passed, he was unaware of it, until something else leaped into his consciousness: a presence moving within the figures of light in his mind, a presence that controlled them. And that was when he saw, when he knew, if only for an instant, that this was no Outsider attacking him. In astonishment, he recognized himself in the presence; it was an Ell consciousness that was destroying him, or something that had once been Ell—and it knew him for what he was. It knew him and hated him, hated everything Ell. And it was destroying him, slowly and with relish. It was the Lost Ell; and he knew in that instant that the rediscovery mission was a failure, with or without the Outsiders. And he could not move a muscle to voice the knowledge.
A time came, and it might have been moments later, or far into the night, when something broke the terrible spell and the demon grip loosened. He blinked back to awareness and found himself crouched, beating his hands uselessly on the ground, and there was a slick wetness in his suit, and he wondered stupidly what it was until he became aware of the dull pain in his mouth, and his blurred vision, and he realized that he was bleeding from mouth and eyes and forehead. He raised his head, struggling to blink away the blood from his aching eyes. It was still night, but there was a brilliant light shining over him and a roaring in his ears. He fought to refocus, and then he saw what it was: an Ell lander(ship) hovering, its landing lights flooding the campsite, and in his ears there was the barking of his rescuers.
At last, he thought—at last! And then: NO! You'll die! And he muttered, gasped uselessly, trying to voice his thoughts. "Go!" he whispered. "Go away!"
"Senslaaevor, what is your condition?" The (ship) was keeping its distance, circling.
Lost Ell, Senslaaevor whispered. Flee! Dimly he realized that he had not actually gotten the words out; his voice was gone. In the light of the lander, he saw his crew, sprawled and scattered about the site. The navigator looked dead; the engineering-mate was in a rigid half-crouch. Senslaaevor tried to whisper to him, but couldn't. At the edge of the ravine he saw the tracker struggling to his feet—and then, caught up by a swirling streak of light, the tracker was lifted off the ground and tossed—and torn apart in midair by invisible hands, limbs from body, and dropped into the ravine like so much garbage.
Senslaaevor turned away, raised his head. Hear me! he cried to the lander overhead, or tried to. Warn them it's not safe! The Lost Ell!
Whether he was heard or not, he never knew. He felt the demons in his mind again, and in a savage stroke his power to even think was chopped from him. Then an invisible vise closed over him, flattening his breathing membranes, choking him . . . then squeezing his nervous system, his blood pumping so hard it was spurting from his ears, down his neck, into his suit. The creatures of light were screaming around him now. He felt the ground leave his feet; and he was flying, and in the dimmest part of his mind he was aware of the lander's lights cutting off and its engines blazing, and the lander shooting skyward into the night, and him helplessly, impossibly, chasing it.
And then the creatures streaked away and left him to fall, tumbling. His paralyzed gaze turned upward one last time, giving him a final vision—the lander exploding silently, a brief sun in the sky—before darkness closed upon him and he fell, one more lifeless bit of tumbleweed, to the plain below.