Heavy rains had fallen in the area again overnight, and any visible tracks around Station Three had been washed away before morning. But the Galestrals had brought along a device with which they expected to be able to follow both Farquhar's trail and that of the biped. Jill Hastings explained it briefly to Crowell while Ned Brock registered the biped's pattern on it in the main room. "He's screening out all but the strongest readings here and discarding the ones connected with human beings and nonliving materials," she said. "The biped's scent will be the most definite one left. Once it's registered, it can be picked up again anywhere. So can biped trails then as a class. Farquhar's individual pattern already is on record in the biotracker."
Guy Hansen had been flown back to the Star Union Base meanwhile, to keep an eye on developments in Crowell's continuing absence. There had been a moment of barely perceptible hesitation on the Galestrals' part when Crowell said he would accompany them on foot in their search for Farquhar. But they didn't argue the matter. He'd decided to carry one of the shock guns which had been part of Station Three's defensive equipment. Even for a man of his strength, they were awkwardly heavy weapons; and they had neither the sustained charge of energy guns or much range. But at close quarters their jolt supposedly would put almost anything that walked at least temporarily out of action.
Ned Brock's biotracker picked up Farquhar's trail readily outside the Station entrance. They set off up the slope. Ilken and the Base operator would attempt to accompany the ground party in Crowell's car, keeping close to the forest roof. Half a mile up, the crew of a second guncar was to scan the wider area for indications of anything that might be of significance, while another operator would follow with the Galestral car, his job being chiefly to keep the vehicle aloft and ready for use.
The invisible spoor led to the forest, turned there into a narrow game trail. It was more open under the trees than Crowell had expected. The thick canopies were frequently interlaced, but around the trunks the undergrowth was sparse. There were signs of minor life, small voice sounds near and far, sudden scuttlings, and bursts of whirring flight. The Galestrals moved silently, rather like searching hounds, Crowell thoughtNed Brock in the lead with the biotracker, Crowell some twenty-five feet behind him, and the other two on Crowell's right and left. After a few minutes, Crowell realized this was a formation into which he'd been quietly fitted, and that the purpose of the formation, however much it shifted because of the growth through which they passed, was to ensure that Ned Brock was covered at all times by the Suesvant of one of the others, while he himself remained covered by both. He felt a momentary flush of annoyance at the last, told himself to forget it. Personnel of the Galestral Space Exploration Corps reportedly received a lengthy conditioning among the formidable denizens of their planet's wildlands. His companions had some reason to regard him as an amateur in this business.
Ned Brock checked abruptly, slid the tracking device into a pocket. Crowell, stopping almost as abruptly, brought up the shock gun. Grant and the girl were immobile. A wide thicket of denser growth lay ahead and to the left, some forty feet away, a matted gray-green tangle, sodden from the rains. Crowell watched it, wondering what they had noticed. Ned had raised his Suesvant, and Jill was drawing off to the left, edging in toward the thicket. She stopped; and Ned was in motion, closing up on the growth from the right, while Grant came past Crowell. Crowell had a momentary impulse to join that stealthy advance, and again told himself to forget it; they were moving with absolute stillness, in a manner beyond his ability hereif he stirred, he might spoil their game. And if something did break from the thicket, he could get into the action from where he stood.
Moist coolness touched the back of his neck. Wind shift-blowing now toward the thicket. The Galestrals stood still.
Then the tops of the thicket shook; there were crashings inside the vegetation. Crowell had a glimpse of a large chunky body scuttling on four short legs away from the thicket on the far side of Jill. It was followed by another. In moments, both beasts had disappeared in the forest.
Crowell let his breath out with a sigh.
He realized he was drawing approving glances from the Galestrals as they resumed formation; and he felt curiously pleased.
Some ten minutes later, they found Farquhar's Suesvant rifle. Ned Brock again was leading the way, along an animal trail which followed a small stream. The forest was relatively open here, and Crowell had occasional glimpses of his car moving overhead. Evidently they were registering in the scanners frequently enough to be followed without difficulty. On the far side of the stream a steep bank rose to a height of around twenty to twenty-five feet above them; and Crowell was aware that Grant and Jill were giving the upper edge of the bank a good deal of attention.
Ned said quietly, "Here's where it got him!"
Farquhar's body wasn't there. But that this was in fact the place where he'd been killed became quickly obvious. Rocks had been the biped's weapon againtwo large rocks hurled with what must have been remarkable accuracy from the top of the bank beyond the stream. Deep marks in the side of the bank showed where the creature had come sliding down then to finish off Farquhar if he hadn't been killed outright. It had left its footprints in the mud. The Suesvant lay nearby, barrel twisted and action smashed.
Ned cast about with the biotracker, and the story grew clear. Having drawn Farquhar here and killed him, the biped had gone to Station Three, done its work and returned to this point by another route to pick up Farquhar's body and carry it off.
They set out again. Crowell felt renewed tensions growing in him. The biped might not be far away, though it had been almost ten hours since it passed through here. This seemed to be its territory; they could come on it at any time. Ned lifted the tracker now and then, moved it along the bushes they were passing and checked the readings. Crowell realized he was picking up scent traces left by the biped or Farquhar's body where they had brushed against the growth. Then Ned glanced back, announced, "Open ground ahead!"
The trees thinned out. They emerged on a shallow rocky plateau leading to a wide, rushing stream. Ahead and to the left, on the far side of the stream, rose forested mountain slopes. On the right was a glacier lake, deep cold blue, perhaps two miles across.
"It headed straight for the stream," Ned said.
And in the stream the trail was lost. The biotracker couldn't pick up scent traces half a day old from a swiftly moving body of water. The car crews had nothing to report. For the next hour, Ned Brock moved up and down both sides of the stream, covered by two car guns. But the tracker's readings showed neither human nor biped traces.
To the west, the stream poured out of a narrow mountain gorge, crowded with luxuriant vegetation. To the east, it emptied into the quiet lake. "What do you think's happened?" Crowell asked Grant Gage. They were by themselves at the moment, standing at the edge of the stream.
Grant shrugged. "The thing's either followed the water back into the mountains or into the lake. If it wasn't attempting to cover its trail, it may be naturally amphibious. It may have carried Farquhar's body on with it or buried it under rocks in the stream."
"In either case," said Crowell, "we're not very likely to recover the body now."
"No, we're not."
"You'll abandon the search?"
"No," Grant said, "we won't abandon the search."
Crowell was silent a moment, said, "If the particular biped we were following is located and killed eventually, its body may show indications that it's stopped previous radiation charges. That would prove it was in fact a biped which attacked Station Three and probably killed Hays before that. But we can already say as much. What else could be proved by continuing the hunt?"
"I don't know," said Grant. He rubbed his jaw reflectively. "We tried to contact you two days ago.
"I know. I was off-planet and out of communication at the time, getting the swimmer ship rounded up. We managed to do that. I came back early this morning because I'd been told Farquhar was in Station Three. So I went there to talk to him before he'd disappear again."
"Yes, I understand. The reason we were trying to contact you is that we thought we might have got a clue to the Kulkoor Mystery."
"What was that?" Crowell asked.
Grant told him about the vanished Zuron camera and their speculations. Mountain mists had covered the areas where the big fliers had been observed previously; they hadn't so far been able to kill and examine one. "If it was one of those creatures which broke off the camera, and if it was done deliberately," he said, "we've had, within a few days, demonstrations of calculated hostility against human beings by two different Kulkoor species."
Crowell was frowning. "A biped couldn't have taken the camera?"
"Not unless it was walking on air. Ned went over the surrounding area thoroughly with the biotracker. Whatever took the camera left no trace of itself."
"The biped certainly has given evidence of considerable intelligence," Crowell remarked.
"Yes. Perhaps at the level of the primitive human savage. Perhaps more than that."
"And if your flier is at a similar level of intelligence"
"Then we seem to have a biologically unstable situation on Kulkoor," Grant said. "One of the two should be the planet's dominant species by nowand a relatively and obviously numerous one. The other should be extinct, or nearly so. Particularly here, where the fertile land forms something like a linked chain of large islands around the equatorial zone, surrounded by desert. There's no room for two competing intelligent species, unless there's something like an instinctive alliance or truce between them."
"As I understand there was among some of the more advanced native life forms on Galestral," Crowell said.
"Something like that. On Galestral it was hardly a truce since they preyed on one another. But they did maintain a balance and apparently had been doing it for a very long time. And they united against the human intruder."
"You think that might be happening here?"
"It could explain what's happened so far," Grant said. "Kulkoor's intelligent life may be trying to frighten us off, get rid of us, without revealing too much about itself."
Crowell said slowly, "If that's the case, it could delay large-scale operations for quite a while."
"Yes, it could," Grant said. "Here's how the situation will look to the Galestral Company. Before we left the ship, we sent off a drone to report Farquhar's disappearance and the general circumstances under which it occurred. We'll report now that we have evidence of his death. We've told you that we're stationed here as Farquhar's backup team. The fact that he didn't choose to make use of us in his work, and refused to give us any information about it, doesn't change that. We'll pick up where he left offand, of course, we have new material to work on now. We'll report at regular intervals to the Company, which appears to be as much in the dark about any actual progress made by Farquhar as we are. So long as it seems that we might be able to solve the problem, the Company will wait. If we stop reporting, or if they hear from you that we've failed, they'll make their next move."
Crowell said, "Meaning they'll send out somebody else?"
"Yes. Who'll be sent and what the new group will be equipped to do is something I can't say."
"By failing you mean that the three of you will have been killed"
"Yes. Since we don't know what we're up against, that's certainly a possibility."
"How will I know you've failed, and how would I get word to the Galestral Company about it?"
"We'll be in contact with you. If the contact is broken and you're unable to reestablish it, you can assume failure. We'll leave a message drone, set to Company coordinates, at your Base. Tell them as much as you can and dispatch it."
Crowell was silent a moment. "The Base setup is mainly a defensive one," he said then. "But I'd like to take a more active part in this. I'll have this general area and the one around the mining campsite kept under aerial surveillance. Can you think of anything else?"
"Not at present," Grant told him. "We'll be trying to find the biped, and a small hunting party is more likely to be successful in that than a large one. We don't want to drive the thing into hiding."
"Yes, I see." Crowell felt dissatisfied. Grant added, "The dangers of the situation aren't all here, of course. Kulkoor has become too valuable a prize. If the matter isn't cleared up quickly, there'll be new suspicions raised."
"No doubt there will be," Crowell agreed. "But there's no reason so far to start thinking in terms of a superbeast that might have been imported from Galestral."
"Not yet," said Grant. "There's no Galestral superbeast that matches the description of the biped. But that could be difficult to prove."
"Are there any that could account for the missing camera?"
"Several." Grant hesitated. "Captain Witter, we're aware that though you represent Cencom here, you haven't always found yourself in accord with Cencom's policies."
Crowell smiled briefly. "Lieutenant Tegeler told me your sick bay is equipped with a very effective truth drug."
"Yes, it's a dependable one. We're Galestral Company shareholders and we work for the Company. But that also doesn't mean that we'd necessarily be in agreement with specific Company policiesor informed of them."
Crowell nodded. "Not when the stakes are large enough. I realize that. We'd better not tie ourselves down to any one theory . . ."
"And now," Ned Brock said as the survey team's car started back to their ship, "what will be the procedure? If the thing wanted to lose trackers, it picked a good place for it. It could go upstream or down. If it's at home in the water, the lake was less than half a mile away. If it likes the rocks, it had the mountains right there. Trying to pick up its trail again could turn into a long chore."
"So we won't try to pick up its trail," said Grant. "It was first seen in daylightit's diurnal when it feels like it. When we get back, let's look around by car generally. We still might get a glimpse of the thing or another of its kind today. If we don't, we'll change tactics. Judging by what we know of it now, this is a creature which waits and watches quietly until it has the advantage. Then it goes in to kill. It doesn't bluster or bluff."
Ned said, "I see . . . and we know its general territory."
"And that it hates aircars," Jill added. She nodded. "If we make a nuisance of ourselves around the territory long enough, it should start looking for an opportunity to get to us."
They sent a drone report to the Galestral Company from the ship, returned to the Star Union Base with another drone for Crowell's use, if required, and, by mid-afternoon of the planet day, were back above the stream where the trail had been lost. They moved downstream and on along the fringes of the lake. For the most part, the lake walls were steep and rocky, but here and there forest growth spread to the water's edge. They saw assorted forms of animal life but nothing resembling a great brown biped.
Presently they came back, moved up the stream past the point where the biped's trail had entered the water. A mile on, the stream cascaded out of a deep narrow gorge in the mountain. The car slipped into the gorge. Luxuriant vegetation crowded the walls on both sides. Spray misted the air. There were endless hiding places here for even quite large creatures, and a man on foot would find difficult going. They lifted out of the gorge finally. The car circled above the area enclosing Station Three, the stream, the flanks of the mountains.
"All right, let's start being obnoxious," Grant said. "We'll be thorough about it! Then we'll give the thingor thingsan opening."
They went on shift from then on, one handling the car, one watching the scanners, one sleeping or resting. The car drifted about, almost aimlessly. It floated along open ground, hung close above the tops of trees, sometimes nosed in below the forest canopy for a few hundred yards. Repeatedly it visited the gorge, the edge of the lake, circled slowly about Station Three. Now and then they saw a Star Union aircar moving through the sky above them.
The day wore on.