Nik tested the current of the flood on the downward slope by lowering himself to stand with it washing about his boots while he held to the ledge. The water was glassy; its dark surface rippled now and then. Sometimes those ripples ran against the current as if life fought a passage upward. But the wash came no higher than Nik's ankles, and the force of it was not enough to impede wading.
At his assurance, Vandy dropped down, keeping a hold on Nik as he had when they had faced the hunters. Then they splashed toward the outside.
There it was still raining steadily, but the wildness of the wind had abated. The rain flowed by every depression to the edge of the drop the ruins lined, cascading over in countless small falls. There was something about that abrupt drop—could this city once have been a port on a long-vanished river or sea? But the mystery of the ruins was not their problem. To get back to the tunnel was.
"Keep hold," Nik ordered Vandy as he pushed into the open under the pelt of the rain.
Now—that was the window through which he had climbed! He boosted Vandy up and scrambled after. They were in the dry again, and Nik looked for the supplies. He triggered the heat-and-open button on one of the containers, holding it with care lest some of the precious contents spill. When the lid sprang up and the steam made his mouth water, he gave it to Vandy.
"Eat it all, but slowly," Nik ordered and took up another tin for himself. Rationing might be more sensible, but it had been a long time since their last meal. Nik felt they needed full stomachs for the job ahead. Once back in the refuge, there would be chances to get more supplies.
The humidity, which had been so choking before the storm, seemed even worse in the narrow passage. The smallest effort left Nik gasping. His clothes, soaked in the rain, had no chance of drying, but he made Vandy strip and wipe down with one of the blankets, doing the same himself, before huddling into their soggy clothes once more.
"My boots—they're shining," Vandy observed suddenly.
Nik glanced down. There was an odd luminescence outlining the boy's footgear—his own, too. He examined them more closely. A furred substance was there. Nik had a dislike of investigating by finger touch. With a blanket edge he wiped Vandy's boot toe. There was a slimy feel to the smear, and the blanket came away phosphorescent as had their tracks upon first entrance to the refuge. Their boots were growing some form of vegetation!
Quickly Nik surveyed the rest of their clothing. His belt—yes, that had the same warning glow, and so had parts of the ornamental harness Vandy had dreamed up for Hacon's uniform. But, save for the boots, Vandy appeared free. Neither of them dared to discard those boots and venture bare-skinned across Disian earth. Whether they were now carrying some deadly danger with them, Nik did not know. He could only hope that the weird growth would not root on their skins.
There had been vegetation in the tunnel, but where the roof break had admitted it, and it had not spread far from that point. Perhaps the cool current of air always flowing through the refuge was a discouraging factor. All the more reason for getting back there.
With their remaining supplies repacked, Nik steered Vandy down the passage. They had reached the other door of that way and were near to the cut where the tunnel entrance lay when Vandy cried out. But Nik saw it, too, and there was no mistaking that kind of fire. A small ship was riding tail flames down for a landing, probably on the same field where the LB had finned in. That must be Leeds!
"There's another!" Vandy cried. "And—"
Two ships—a third! Leeds couldn't be leading a fleet! Was Vandy right? Were those his father's ships, a father who was not dead but lured here with Vandy for the bait? But if that was true, where did Leeds stand? Nik halted the run that had brought him to the edge of the cut.
The rain was pouring into the bottom of that hollow. It must be curling in turn into the tunnel. Their back door might not even be practical—if they still wanted to use it. That if was important, and its answer could only come by learning the identity of the planeting ships.
There was noise—not one of the great thunderclaps of the Disian storm, but a shock through the ground under them. Vandy screamed and tumbled forward into the cut. Nik tried to grasp him. One hand caught a hold, and then the two of them were sliding down. Nik brought up against a rock with painful force, but that anchored them against a farther tumble. There was a second shock in the ground, and out of the tunnel break air exploded, carrying with it bits of rock and soil.
Down in the refuge, there had been an explosion. Had Orkhad taken some drug-twisted way out of trouble by blowing up his own stronghold? Or had the refuge been forced from without and was it now under attack? At any rate, to drop into those depths at present was asking for worse trouble than they had faced so far.
"Got—to—get—away—" Nik panted. "Whole thing might collapse under us here—"
One of his arms and one side were pinned to the ground by Vandy's weight and the boy had neither spoken nor moved since they had landed there.
"Vandy!" Nik edged his head around.
Closed eyes, a trickle of blood across the forehead—Vandy must be unconscious. Nik strove to wriggle free. His movements brought an answering throb of pain. That slam against the rock had not been the easiest landing in the world. But Vandy, the boy might be seriously injured—
Their anchoring rock had seemed to give a little when Nik moved. He began to claw at the soil under him, loosening enough so that he could squirm around and put his head and shoulders upslope. The trails of rain were still flooding down. Splashes from one struck them. Vandy moaned and tried to move, but Nik was quick to pin him down. Another wriggle and they both might be on their way to the bottom. Luckily, there had been no more quakes or explosions or whatever had stirred up the earth hereabouts.
With Vandy a dead weight, Nik was defeated when it came to climbing, and he feared to descend. That explosion of air and rock must have blown a larger hole in the tunnel. To fall into whatever might be in progress down there was more danger than he cared to face.
A sidewise progress upslope—yes, he could make that—but not carrying Vandy. Could he leave the boy there, wedged in behind the rock, while he went to the top and devised some method of raising Vandy in turn? The boy was half conscious now but not alert enough to understand their predicament and cooperate by remaining quiet. Left, he could well fall into the tunnel hole.
The wet slope was a slippery way at best, but Nik still had the small pack of blankets and supplies. The blankets themselves? Nik tried to think coherently and purposefully.
He moved with infinite caution, dragging Vandy across his thighs so that the boy lay face up behind the rock. Then Nik unfastened the blanket roll and pulled it around.
Somehow, he managed the next move. One of the blankets was wrapped around Vandy, confining his arms and legs, the belt made fast, and the other blanket used again as a rope. From this point, the climb seemed mountain high, but Nik knew from their first journey out of the cut that it was not. If he could make the effort, they would win.
He chose to tackle the slope between two water streams where the earth was relatively dry, if any stretch of ground on this bedeviled world could be deemed that. Now he straightened cautiously and drove two of the supply containers into the yielding surface with all the strength he could muster, hanging his weight on each as a test.
Anchorage for a gain, now use the last two above those! Nik crawled face down against the slimed earth. It was time to loosen the lower containers—but only one would come free as he leaned at an almost impossible angle to struggle with it. Well, that one would have to serve. Drive it in above—crawl—
Then his clawing hand was over the edge where a portion of the cut wall had earlier collapsed. Nik strained with the effort to rise and rolled over into a puddle of rain.
He heard a moan from below and edged around. His arms were like heavy weights. Nik was not really certain that his overtaxed muscles would obey his demand for more effort. His breathing came in snorts, which did not supply enough air to his laboring lungs, but he grasped the end of the blanket rope and began to pull.
The package that was Vandy slipped around, and for once the slick ground surface served rather than thwarted. Nik pulled with a desperate need for getting this over and brought Vandy upslope into the same puddle where he knelt.
Now, only a few feet and they would be at the top. Nik did not have enough energy left to lift Vandy. Pushing the boy before him, he crept up the incline and lay there, the humid air thick in his nostrils, seeping with difficulty into his lungs.
It was then that the third and last shock came. For one desperate instant, Nik thought they would slide back. He flung out an arm to roll Vandy on and kicked himself away from the slipping earth. So they were saved from being carried down once more.
As soon as that upheaval ended, Nik began to crawl, pulling Vandy, determined to get away from the danger point, not really caring in which direction, so long as it was not down. They were in the open among the ruins, and the sheets of rain continued to sweep over and about them.
Nik headed for the passage from which they had emerged only a short time earlier, desiring nothing now but to be out of that torrent. He was almost under that cover when he heard, above the rain, a sharp crack that he could not believe was part of the natural noise of the storm. He hunched around, his hand to his blaster.
Out and up from somewhere near the landing field it soared, not one of the winged Disian creatures but a flier—and a planet atmosphere craft, not a spacer.
It skimmed through the rain like a black shadow, seeking no great altitude, rising only far enough to clear the heights that roofed the refuge. Then it headed out across the ruins of the ancient city.
Tracers of fire followed that flight, shooting angry lashings into the storm. Nik was not familiar with the tricks of evasive action, but he sensed that the unknown pilot was making a masterly escape from whatever fate had overtaken one party or the other in the storming of the refuge. That the fleeing man or men in the flitter were of the Guild he had little doubt which meant that the invaders were in control below and on the landing strip.
But who were the invaders? Forces of Vandy's people? Leeds' men forcing a showdown with Orkhad—though Nik hardly believed that. Could Leeds have mustered three ships, which he estimated had been used to break into the refuge? Law in the persons of the Patrol?
He crouched there, watching the shadow of the flitter weaving back and forth, flying low in the rain. At least the invaders were firing only ground-based missiles, not making chase by air.
There was a splash of fire to the right. One of the missiles had fouled with a fire ray and exploded with a clap of sound. Then one of those fire spears touched a fin wing on the flitter. The craft whirled, fluttering back and forth. Nik tensed, imagining the frantic fight of the pilot to keep the machine aloft or sufficiently under control to land it safely.
The flitter sideslipped to Nik's left. It was falling rather than landing under control. But before it was quite out of sight, it steadied. If it did make a landing, it would be down in the gulf of the drop below the ruined city, perhaps on the bed of what seemed a one-time sea.
And those who had aimed the lucky shot that finished it—they would be moving out to hunt the wreckage, which meant they would come in this direction! Nik chewed on that unhappy reflection. If he remained where he was, he would be detected. If this was the Patrol or any official expedition hunting Vandy, they would be equipped with any number of devices to locate another human on Dis. He had heard a lot of stories about such mechanical man-hunters. And to be scooped up now by either party would mean his own death warrant, as he well knew. The squadron that had used such force to break into the refuge would not be tempted to argue out a surrender. Nor could he be sure they were on the law's side.
Orkhad had hinted at two parties in the Guild. This could be a jack job. If he only knew!
What Nik did know, however, was that this was not a good place to stay.
"Hacon—" Vandy wriggled in the blanket roll, striving to throw off his bindings. "What—what happened?"
"A lot." Nik knew a small surge of relief. If Vandy was conscious and able to go on his own two feet, their flight would be easier.
And flight it was going to have to be! There was a smoldering, sputtering patch of fire on the heights where a ray had ignited vegetation. The highly inflammable stuff seemed able to burn even in the rain, and the smog of that burning carried through the thick air as a stifling gas.
Nik pulled the wrappings from Vandy as they both choked and coughed. To return to the ruins would do no good. Not only were there the things that lived in the shadows there, but also the gas of the burning settled thickest in that direction. They should get down to a lower level. And that would take them in the general direction of the vanished flitter, along the very path pursuit would come, but they were cut off on the other three sides.
Nik leaned over Vandy. "Can you walk?" He asked the immediate question.
"I think so—"
He hoped that was the truth. But when he helped the boy to his feet, Nik kept his arm about those small shoulders. Then, half guiding, half supporting Vandy, he started on through the ruins to hunt some way down the cliff the city edged. And, with Vandy lacking cin-goggles, Nik's sight had to do for them both.
Their first break of better fortune came when the rain actually began to slacken. That needling force of water was now a drizzle, and the streams finding their ways across the broken and earth-drifted pavement were thinning visibly. By the cin-fostered sight, it was now as light as cloud-gloomed Korwarian day, and Nik was thankful for that.
They threaded a path along the verge of the cliff, and Nik sighted piles of tumbled blocks that might once have been wharfs for the convenience of surface shipping. One of those they used as a stairway down to the first level below the city surface, where the oily vapors of the burning had not reached.
Nik's throat was raw with coughing, and Vandy was sobbing as they came to the end of that tough scramble. There was a large pool there filling a depression but already draining through a channel toward the outer reaches of the onetime sea. Nik went down on one knee beside it and put his hand into the liquid.
So far they had managed on the supplies from the refuge, but those were gone. Now they would have to chance the water and what food they could find on Dis, and that chance would be only one more danger in the many they faced.
Nik scooped up a palmful of the water. It had no scent he could detect. And they had inadvertently swallowed some of it in the form of rain on their lips and faces ever since they had been caught in the first gusts of the storm. He licked up some of the moisture greedily, and it relieved the parching of his mouth and throat.
"Water, Vandy!" Nik cupped his hands and filled them, lifting the trickling burden to the boy's lips and supplying more a second and third time.
How long this water would last, Nik could not tell, but it was now a wealth all about them. And their path at present would take them along the foot of the old shoreline cliff, away from the refuge. What their goal was, Nik could not have said, except shelter of some kind until he might gain some idea of the forces now ranged against them. How he was going to make that identification without walking directly into the enemies' hands, he had no knowledge, either.
The same fungoid vegetation that grew thickly above straggled here, but not in such profusion or size. Nik avoided the patches whenever he could, remembering how their boots had left trails of shining prints before. The rain was coming to an end, and the measure of daylight increased. It was hard for him to recall that this was still black night for Vandy. He kept reminding himself of that fact, keeping his hand on the boy's shoulder as a guide.
Vandy was not going to be able to keep up this travel for very much longer. Nik could carry him for a while, and he would, but there would be a limit to that also. They must hole up somewhere for a rest, and yet, for all their efforts, they were still so close to the refuge, so easily tracked by any pursuers.
The ruins of the old wharves were well behind. When Nik looked up at the one-time shore, he saw that there had been an increase of height there, as if the ancient city had been walled on this side by small mountains. And the cliff to his right soared higher and higher. Its surface was broken by the dark, ragged patches of cave mouths. This once must have been a wild place when the sea battered along those walls. Ahead and not too far away, an arm of the cliff stretched out to bar their present path with a wall of rock, which must mark an old cape dwindling to a reef. And that was a barrier they could not pass in their present fatigue. Somewhere along the broken length of that Nik must find them a temporary refuge which he could turn into a fortress against pursuit.