“And you say that’s the same radiation ahead?”
“By the reading on this, yes.”
But what he might have added to that was never said, for the flitter gave a sudden downward swoop. Meshler cried out and wrestled with the controls—to no purpose. He could not wrench the craft from the force pulling it earthward.
“Crash aid!” Dane sensed rather than saw the pilot’s hand swing out to hit the panic button. He did the same on his side of the cabin. How much time did they have? Enough? The ground was only a dark mass, and he had no idea of how fast they were falling to meet it.
He felt the soft spurt of safe-foam on his body, curdling around it in the protective device of the flitter. It twined and coiled as he sat. Now it was as high as his throat, about his chin. He followed crash procedure, settled back in his seat, and shut his eyes as the protective covering jellied in around the three of them and the brach. Dane should have warned the brach, but he had forgotten all about the creature, who had been so quiet, and now it was too late.
Relax. His mind fought his nerves. Relax, leave it to the protective jelly. Tense up and he would delay the safety factor in that. Relax. He set his will to that now.
They struck. In spite of the safe-foam, it was a jar that knocked Dane into semiconsciousness. He did not know how long it was before he regained his senses enough to grope for the release catch on the cabin door to his right. He had to fight the pressure of the jelly to do that, but at last his fingers closed on the bar, but his half hold was torn loose as the door was opened with a sharp jerk. The jellied foam slipped toward that opening, carrying him with it as he struggled feebly to break free.
The safe-foam was being torn away. A great scarf of it fell from his head and shoulders. He opened his eyes into a blinding glare of beamer and blinked, unable to see, nor as yet able to understand what had happened. They had crashed and then—
Hands pulled him free of the foam with no care or gentleness. Speed seemed to be the thing desired. When he could stand, he was jerked to his feet, the beamer still so centered on him that he could not see who held it or the faces of the men who stripped off the jelly. There were two of them, and when they had done, they swung him expertly around and applied a tangler to his arms and wrists behind his back. Now he was as safely their prisoner as if they had encased him from shoulder to waist in plasta of the quick-drying sort.
Having made sure of him, they gave a shove that sent him staggering forward until he bumped against a surface with painful force. With that to steady him, he edged around. The bedazzlement left by the beam straight in his eyes was wearing off. He could see, though the men who were working on Tau remained only shadowy figures.
Dane never knew how many of them there were, for he was sure some of the party kept out of sight, using the beamer as a cover, but they worked with such efficiency that one could believe this was an action in which they had been drilled.
They had all three from the flitter under control. But they had not brought out the pack with the brach! Didn’t they know about the animal, or didn’t they consider the alien important?
The jelly, once exposed to the air, would disappear as the strips pulled from the prisoners were already doing, so that the brach would be freed shortly by himself. But the alien might be so terrorized by the crash and the jellied foam that—Dane did not know what he expected of—or for—the brach. Then he heard the crashing of what could only be a crawler in progress toward them, and he hoped the alien would escape notice.
A line snaked out of the dark into the path of the beamer, was hooked fast to the fore of the flitter, and that mass of wreckage began to move, complainingly, under the steady pull of the crawler. Dane was not to see its eventual destination. A hand caught his shoulder, dragged him away from his support, but continued to
push him along over a very rough path, where he stumbled and would have gone down several times if the unseen guard and guide had not kept his hold.
They came at last into a clearing, where a rock ledge jutted out to make a roof over a camp. There was a portable cooker there and other gear piled under the overhang, enough to suggest their captors had been there for some time and were well equipped.
There was also a diffuse lamp, which gave a subdued light. It had been set on lowest level, as if the campers begrudged the need for it at all.
In that glow Dane was able to see the three men who had brought them in. They wore regulation one-piece hunting suits with the instrument- and tool-hung belts of those venturing into the wild on a planet not native to them. All three were Terran or Terran colonial stock. But the one who rose from beside the lamp at their coming was not.
He was of a species strange to Dane, very tall, so that he had to hunch his shoulders and incline his head under that roofing ledge. In the light his skin was yellow (not brown-yellow, as one of ancient Terran Oriental stock might be, but a brighter hue). And his eyes and his teeth as he opened his mouth gave off fluorescence—the eyes being ringed with some glowing substance.
His hair was scant and grew in ring patches, with even spaces between, about a skull that rose to a cone- dome at the top. But his body, save that his arms and legs appeared too long for the size of his torso, was like that of a Terran and covered also by a hunter’s suit.
Dane wondered if Tau, with his greater knowledge of X-Tees, could name the species. From whatever world he came, it was plain that the alien was in command of the camp. He did not speak but gestured, and the three from the flitter were shoved on, back against the rock wall, then pushed down, to sit facing out into the night, while the tall alien hunkered down beside the lamp. What he held in his hands, curiously limber hands—his fingers moved as if they were boneless tentacles—was a com. But he did not speak into it. Instead, he used the tips of two of those squirming fingers to beat against the mike in a swift clicking.
None of the men spoke to the prisoners, nor did Meshler ask questions. When Dane glanced at the ranger, he saw that the man was studying the scene with an intentness that suggested he was making a mental listing.
The strangers wore hunters’ clothing. Their equipment was that Dane had seen used by sport hunters on other worlds. But if they had legitimately entered the wilderness on Trewsworld with that excuse, they would have been licensed and had with them a guide. There was no sign of any guide. Nor did they hear again the crawler that had dragged away the flitter. Dane deduced that the party was larger, and there might be a reason for the others to keep out of sight.
Having sent his click message, the tall alien brought out a long, hooded cloak, wrapping it well about him, and went to curl up at the other end of the camp under the ledge. He was followed shortly afterward, not to the same place, but into slumber, by two of the three Terrans, none of whom had so much as glanced at their prisoners since they had herded them in. The third man remained by the fire and held an unholstered tangler across his knee.
Dane knew little of electronics, but in this camp he saw nothing like the box from the Queen. Nor was there anything to suggest that the powerful force that had brought down the flitter had its source here. The puzzle that had enmeshed the Queen gave hope of clue now and then, but none such led anywhere.
He was tired, but in his present uncomfortable position he was not so fatigued that sleep came. Nor, when he looked at Tau and Meshler, had they succumbed either. The sentry by the fire now and then arose to walk back and forth, dividing his attention between a quick glance at the captives and a longer look into the dark beyond the very limited light of the lamp.
He was on one such beat when Dane caught a flicker at the other end of the campsite. Something moved there, and with caution. It was far too small for even a creeping man. The brach! Though why he expected the alien to have tracked them here, Dane could not say. The creature would be more likely to run away from the threat of a party who had so easily taken men prisoners.