Nik raised his head from his forearm. It was full day, and the steaming heat brought visible curls of vapor from the recently drenched soil until there was a mist lacing the rocks. Back in the shallow cave hole he guarded, Vandy was sleeping in a small measure of coolness. But how long could either of them continue to take the surface atmosphere of Dis?
Both their boots were covered with a red fur of growth, which appeared in patches also on Nik's belt and the ornamental tabs of his tunic. Even though they had washed in pools of rock-held rain water, they could not free their skins from a greasy feel, which carried the sensation of perpetual filthiness. And there was never any chance to be really dry! Clothing continued soggy and almost pulpy to the touch.
The mist was nearly as hindering to the vision as the loss of the cins might be, Nik thought dully. Anything or anyone might be creeping upon them now within its twisting, curling envelope. And he believed that his powers of hearing were also distorted.
So far, their occupancy of the barrier crevice had been challenged by only one creature—a thing of long, jointed legs, the first pair of which had been armed with claws of assorted sizes. Stalked eyes had sighted them and brought the thing scuttling in their direction, but a blaster beam had curled it up wriggling, to kick away its life at the foot of a nearby rock. And since its floppings had subsided, smaller things had cautiously ventured forth to sample a feast they had never expected to enjoy so opportunely.
Its attack had taught Nik the need for wariness. Only there was a limit to endurance, and he had reached it, nodding now into unquiet dozes from which he roused with a start of warning. He would soon have to wake Vandy, to trust the boy not only with a blaster but also with the cin-goggles when he went on sentry duty. And dared Nik do that? What had happened back in the ruins when Vandy had taken off on his own was still in Nik's mind. Had he made plain to the boy the danger of trying such a run? Luckily, Vandy had not shown any interest in the nature of the pursuit Nik expected. But suppose Vandy did believe that those were his father's men back at the refuge. Would he try to return?
Did he believe Nik's explanation of a fight among the men there—a rift in the Guild forces? Vandy had witnessed the landing of the spacers, which could have been the enemy. To place the boy on sentry-go was the same, or could be the same, as inviting him to desert.
However, if Nik waited until he went under from sheer exhaustion, then Vandy would have an easy opportunity to leave, which he might not be so inclined to do if his companion shared some of the responsibility with him. It all depended now on how much of the Hacon influence remained. Vandy had shown signs of breaking with his fantasy several times lately. On the other hand, he also clung to Nik, appealing for help and comfort. Would Nik remain Hacon if Vandy faced in their pursuers someone he knew or would he turn on Nik for what he was now, a kidnaper and an outlaw.
There were two choices, and his brain was too tired to make a clear-headed selection. Either way, Nik might be choosing his own end. But wearily he turned and reached to touch the sleeping boy's leg.
Moments later, blind in the eerie dark of non-goggle sight, Nik stretched out in the hollow between the rocks. He could not even be sure that Vandy was in the lookout, ready to obey orders and arouse Nik at the first sign of any native creature or off-world searchers. He sighed, unable to raise again his weighted eyelids. His last awareness was of the blaster, about the butt of which his fingers tightened.
Muddled dreams haunted him, of which he could remember only a sense of frustration and terror. He came out of them groggily at some urging he was not able to understand at once.
"Hacon!"
Nik sat up, obeying the pull at his shoulder, blinking into a dark broken here and there with feeble touches of a pallid luminescence. Vandy leaned above him.
"Over there!"
But "over there" was still a mystery in the dark for Nik, trying to assemble some measure of wits.
"I can't see—" he protested dully.
"Here!" The goggles came into his hand. He put them on and faced in the direction Vandy indicated.
It was disturbing to have sight return instantly with the aid of those lenses. The reef was clear, sharp as it would be under normal sunlight. Nik looked for what had excited the boy.
"Where—?" he began, and then he saw it! Or rather—them!
Issuing from a rock-bordered crevice well along the reef, fronting what must once have been the waters of the vanished sea, was a trio of creatures. They stood very still, heads aloft, as if facing into the wind and spray of the past. Nik brought up the blaster and sighted on the nearest of that trio, before he noted that there was no stir in their position, that no pull of breath moved their monstrous sides, that the wind did not disturb the thick manes that lay about their massive shoulders.
The watchers were not alive; yet the long-forgotten artist who had created them had given such a semblance of reality to their fashioning as to make deception easy.
In form, they were not unlike the creatures that had surrounded Vandy in the ruins save that they were much larger, majestic in their stance. The black of their bodies was stark against the lighter gray and red of the rocks, and Nik caught a glisten of eye in the one he had originally marked as a target, as if some glittering gem gave it the necessary touch of realism.
Guardians of the coast, symbolically erected to warn off invaders in times past, he wondered? Monument to some ancient feat or victory.
Then Nik started. There—there was something—someone behind the watchers!
A shadow of rock overhung that spot, so that his line of vision was obscured. But, he knew after a moment of study, he had been right—there was something behind the statues. And to see it clearly, he would have to leave their crevice refuge and work his way farther along the reef. He said as much to Vandy.
"But the animals—" the boy protested.
"They look alive, but they are just statues. It's what's behind them counts now—"
"I'm going, too," Vandy declared.
These rocks were nothing to cross without cins, but Nik could not order him to remain. He gave the goggles back for a time, made Vandy survey the stretch they must negotiate, and then resettled them over his own eyes. With Vandy linked by a hold on his belt, Nik began a creeping advance along the weathered reef.
Now, he should be able to see from here—unless the lurker had moved in turn. With caution, Nik braced one arm against a spire of stone and leaned well back to look up at the watchers.
He jerked up his blaster and then hesitated. Again the supreme art of the sculptor or sculptors had deceived his off-world eyes. There was something standing behind the watchers, yes, but it, too, was stone.
Nik blinked, almost gasped. Just seconds earlier there had been no head there! Now there was a black furred one, gazing from that point straight out over the drained sea bottom with much the same fixity of stare as the three giant watchers. But the static pose of that head did not remain. It changed position, turned on the green shoulders, and Nik knew that what he saw was one of the hunters from the ruins mounted on the broken figure as if on lookout duty.
A scout for the hunting pack? If so, this might be the most dangerous perch he and Vandy could have. To be caught among the broken rocks by those hunters could be disastrous. Did the creature hunt by sight or scent? And how many of its kind would follow it?
Nik flattened himself against the rock spire, whispered a warning to Vandy, and stared about him. Every shadowed crevice was now suspect. But, if they went out into the open sea bottom where there was no cover for the enemy, then he was sure he could hold off any rush by blaster fire. He remembered how the ambush had been set up in the ruins—those eyes that had betrayed the hunter creeping on Vandy from above. Yes, get out—get away from the rocks, which could cover an attack.
But to strike out into the sea bottom itself—As long as they kept the shoreline for a guide, they would not be lost to the general neighborhood of the refuge. Their supplies were gone. The rain pools could provide water, but they had to have food—and Nik had clung to the faint hope that there might be some chance of getting that from some dump at the Guild base. Yes, they could take to the open of the sea bottom but not out so far as to lose contact with the shore as a point of reference.
He glanced again at the figure behind the watchers. Once more the green shoulders were headless. And that fact drove him into action. With Vandy holding to his belt, guided by his instructions, they climbed over the reef and headed out toward the open, where the low growing vegetation could provide no cover for an attack.
Once off the skirts of the reef, the walking was easier, and they moved faster. Nik kept looking back to check their trail. A good view of the watchers and their headless companion could be had from this point, and he had been right about the eyes of the former—they flashed now and then as if they were lighted within. But the shoulders of the green man were bare; the furred scout had not returned.
Luckily, much of the mist and steam that had drifted from the ground earlier had been diffused, and Nik judged the extent of visibility gave him a present advantage over any trailers—from Dis or from the refuge—always providing the latter were not airborne. He set a course that kept to the bottom land just a little to shoreward of that second sharp drop to another one-time sea level.
Below, the runnels of water had fed a lake of some size, though the streamlets themselves were dwindling fast, many leaving only cuts as reminders of their flood courses. And on that lower level the vegetation was even scantier. Hillocks of rock sprouted from the lake's surface, one such rising to a respectable height, and Nik guessed that its crown had once been a true island.
He did not stop his inspection of their back trail. And it was on the third such pause for careful survey that he thought he detected a hint of movement at the base of the reef, as if what lurked there was taking care not to be sighted. The pack on the hunt? Or even an off-world scout of his own species?
"Hacon, is there something to eat?" Vandy waited quietly, not losing his hold on Nik's belt. "I'm hungry."
Nik licked his own lips. The supply tins were back in the tunnel cut. What dared they use of Dis to answer the demands of their bodies for sustaining fuel? He gagged at the thought of attempting to mouth any of the growing stuff about them. Meat—one of those thin-legged, clawed creatures such as had stalked them on the reef? Or one of the furred hunters that might be trailing them? Or something such as that fisher in the dark of the ruins? When it was a choice between life and starvation, a man could stamp down repugnance born of appearance.
"We'll find something." He tried to make that reassuring and knew that he would have to fulfill that promise soon.
There was a screech torturing to his off-world ears. Vandy cried out, his eyes straining to pierce the dim, but Nik saw clearly. Not so far ahead there was a commotion on the verge of the rain lake below. Winged things flapped and fought over a surface that was ruffled and dimpled in turn, as if some life form wallowed and swam. One of the fliers made a dive into the center of the disturbance and arose, uttering harsh squawks of what might have been triumph, since it carried in its claws writhing, scaled prey.
Two of the flier's fellows followed it aloft, harassing it as if to make it drop its capture, rather than trying a catch on their own. The successful hunter dodged, screamed, and skimmed just above the surface of the higher level, while its tormentors harried it with determination.
One soared and then made a sudden swoop, deadly intention in every beat of its sustaining leathery wings. The attacked made a futile effort to evade and crashed into the companion pursuer. There was a squawking, screeching whirl of fighting fliers falling fast to the ground. The prey the first had raped from the lake was loosed.
The airborne battle had swept close to the place where Nik and Vandy stood. And the twisting, turning captive fell only a little away. That third combatant, which had delivered the attack from above, avoided the struggling fighters that had also struck the ground and were still clawing at each other. It swooped above Nik as if some of its fury had been transferred to the man.
Almost in reflex action, he fired the blaster, catching the flier full on. The force of the ray blast carried the creature back so that it fell, already dead, over the cliff to the lake level. Then weapon still in hand, Nik strode forward to inspect the cause of battle.
It was still flopping feebly, but even as he came up, it straightened out and was still. Though its body was weirdly elongated, it bore some resemblance to a fish, enough so that Nik picked it up.
One of the battlers had left the other and came scuttling across the ground screeching, its long neck outstretched, its narrow head darting back and forth with a jerky vehemence. One wing was held at a queer angle, and there was blood smearing its torn body.
Nik jumped to the left, and the creature sped on, seemingly unable to change course—to plunge over the cliff like the flier before it.
"Hacon! Hacon, what was it? What are those things? What are they doing?" Vandy's voice was shrill. To him, the struggle must have been frightening, carried on in the dark.
Swiftly Nik explained. He was still holding the fish, and now he let Vandy examine it by touch.
"Is it good to eat, Hacon?"
"It could be." Nik hesitated. Anything put in their mouths on Dis might be rank poison, but they had to start somewhere, and perhaps that was here and now.
"How do we cook it?" Vandy continued.
"We don't," Nik replied shortly.
"Eat it—like this?" Vandy faltered. He almost dropped the limp body.
"If we have to, yes. But not here and now." Nik was hungry, and even the thought of eating a Disian fish raw did not diminish that hunger. But he had no intention of consuming it here, when they could be the focus of attack from other predators. He took the fish from Vandy and hooked it into one of his belt attachments, one that was free of any phosphorescence.
As they skirted the cliff, they saw other turmoil in the lake and witnessed the fishing of other fliers. The winged creatures appeared reluctant to touch water in taking their prey. Only a few dared that, as if the lake held some menace they feared.
The lake itself stretched along the second cliff edge, lapping the outcroppings of the irregular ground. The surface on which Vandy and Nik traveled was sloping down with indications of eventually merging with the lower level, while the cliffs of the one-time shore were rising.
Nik made another cast behind. And this time the pursuers were not so careful to keep concealed. A furred hunter stood over the flier killed in combat by its fellow. It nosed the body and then began to eat.
"Hurry—!" Nik caught at Vandy, pulling the boy along. Ahead he could see one of the island hillocks, though this must have been a mere dot of island in the days when the sea washed this land. The light was less than it had been when they had left the reef. Nik did not doubt that the day's end was coming. And at night that hillock might mean safety. Perched up there, they would have defense against anything that would climb to attack.
Another glance showed him that a second hunter had joined the first at the feast. Unlike the fliers, the first did not attempt to drive off or attack his fellow but moved a little to one side, allowing the newcomer a chance at the food. This was odd enough to make Nik wonder. Cooperation in feeding, as well as hunting, suggested a higher form of consciousness than the fliers, who tore each other for the prey. The hunters were smaller editions of those three magnificent watchers on the headland. They had been esteemed by the original natives of Dis to the point that infinite care had been taken to establish highly artistic representations of their species on a prominent place before the city. Animals that had been sacred to the one-time rulers of this world? Pets—protection?
"I can't go—so—fast—" Vandy stammered. He stumbled and nearly fell.
Nik, eaten by the need for some form of shelter before the coming of what was a double dark, caught him up and kept on. They were directly below the island hill. He struggled up and on, finally pulling out on an expanse of rock ledge below a sharp crest. He pushed Vandy back against that crest and looked back.
There were the furred hunters, still eating, and still only the two of them in sight. If they were scouts for a pack, the rest had not yet caught up. Now, Nik got to his feet and turned slowly to get a good look at what lay about them. To his right was the rain lake, to his left a dip and then the cliff of the old shore.
Anything trying to reach their present perch must either swim the lake and then wind up an almost sheer drop or come up the same way he and Vandy had used, to be met by blaster fire. They had their refuge for the night, as safe a one as he could devise.
Nik sat down and unhooked the fish from his belt. Methodically, he cleaned it and cut the whole into portions. They would now try the provender of Dis.