The blaster still continued to discharge fire along the rut, and the two Terrans made a careful detour by that ribbon of radiance as they ran to join the ranger. Tau paused by the first of the crumpled figures. He did not stoop to touch the man, only sniffed and then hurriedly drew a succession of quick breaths to clear his lungs.
“Sleep gas,” he said to Dane. “So he did have a weapon.”
“And used it brilliantly!” Dane was willing to give credit. But what if only one of those in the crawler had had time to really aim? Meshler could easily have been crisped. He went down on one knee, caught at the discharging blaster, and thumbed it off. With the failure of that light, he had to feel his way from one body to the next, collecting the rest of their weapons.
But in spite of recklessness, Meshler had made his venture pay off handsomely. They had the crawler, plus four blasters, though one was close to power exhaustion, transportation, and arms.
Only Meshler was not yet satisfied, it seemed, when the Terrans joined him. The crawler had come to life again and was slowly edging around. The ranger only grunted, as if thinking of something else when the Terrans congratulated him on his success.
“Clear them off the road, will you,” he said when the machine was turned to face its source. “Stow them well up on the ridge. They’ll sleep it off.”
“But where are you planning to go?” Dane demanded.
“You know how fast one of these moves?” There was a shade of contempt in that question. “We can take it, sure. And then they can retake us, long before we reach Cartl’s. We need a flitter, or a shuttle flier—”
“You believe we can just ride into their camp and pick out the kind of transportation we want?” snapped Dane.
“Won’t know until we try, will we?” Meshler sounded reasonable, but reason and what he suggested had no common base. “Crawler came out with their men in it—crawler comes back. Who’s to know it isn’t their men coming back? And you have blasters—”
Oh, it was all logical in an insane kind of way. The Terrans could pull the blasters on Meshler, but the ranger probably knew they would not. And the crawler was slow transport.
“Light two prayer sticks to Xampbrema,” Tau commented. “Beat the drum, summon the seven spirits of Alba Nuc—” He might have been reciting one of the spells he had culled over the years. “He’s mad enough to try it. We might as well aid and abet him.”
Together Dane and Tau carried the sleepers to one of the ridges, stretching them out to await dawn or whatever waking hour the gas allowed them, while, under Meshler’s guidance, the crawler waddled past the scene of the ambush.
Anyway, he did, as Meshler had pointed out, now have a blaster, thought Dane, as he climbed into the cabin. And the—the brach! In the push of late events, he had forgotten the brach. Somewhere the alien must be—they could not pull out and leave him.
What the crawler, following its own rutted trail, brought them to was a basin, oval in shape. But when they stared down, Dane shook his head and rubbed his eyes. There was something there—
“Take it in quick!” Tau gave that order sharply, as if they were confronted by danger.
The crawler’s nose dipped. There was a strange feeling of disorientation, almost akin to that one felt on entering hyper. But they were not on board ship now.
Dane had closed his eyes almost involuntarily to keep out that queer feeling. Now he opened them, realizing the crawler was descending a steep slope.
What lay before them was no longer affected, or else he was not affected, by the dizzying blurring that had struck moments earlier. There were diffuse lamps out, none of them on high, yet strong enough to have provided a beacon reaching above the level of the basin’s rim. Only they had not seen them. They had been in the dark until they slipped through that thing which acted as a lid over the valley basin.
“A sight-distort,” Tau murmured. “A wide-scale distort. This place could not be seen by a flier.”
But Dane was more interested now in what lay ahead. The lamps marked four bubble structures, the usual shelters carried by any scouting camp. Beyond those were two buildings that looked, so low were their walls and those roofed with earth, as if they were more excavated in the ground than built above the surface.
What was more important now was a vehicle park to one side. There was another crawler there, and beyond it a flitter, and farther still—Dane gave a muffled exclamation, for the surface of the ground had been hollowed out and in that large pit, balanced on its fins, was a spacer. The diffuse lamps near the rim showed the glassy, congealed earth, proving that the ship had planeted here more than once. Many blastoffs and setdowns, with the pilot riding in on deter rockets, had built up that burn.
“The flitter—” Meshler nodded as if he had known all along their amazing luck was going to hold.
But the camp was in nowise deserted. Men were hurrying to the other crawler. Dane distinctly saw in the light the long barrel of a disrupter, though what such a weapon, forbidden for civilian use, was doing here was just more of the puzzle. Also, from one of the earth-roofed buildings rose a rod shining metallically in the light. That was a power com send, by its length able not only to reach the port in the north but also perhaps to beam messages into space.
Meshler kept the crawler at its steady pace. They would have to pass close to the other vehicle in order to reach the flitter, and he made no attempt to swing wide. Perhaps he thought their bluff would hold.
The other machine, which had started up, ground to a halt as they approached, and a man leaned out of its cabin to shout at them. Meshler waved his hand through the window. Perhaps he hoped that ambiguous gesture would buy them a little more time. The bulk of the crawler and its walls would protect them for a little. But once they left it to run to the flitter—
Dane’s blaster was ready. He measured the distance yet remaining, and then Meshler brought the nose of the crawler around, aiming it so that its body would provide them with shelter. The shouting from the other machine grew louder, more insistent. Then a vicious spat of blaster fire cut the ground warningly before their hose in a signal to stop.
Tau slammed the door open. “Now!” He was out and running for the flitter.
14.CARTL’S HOLDING
From time to time the ranger tried the com, only to meet the crackle of interference. But suddenly he indicated an ice-edged river.
“The Veecorox!”
“You’ve seen that before?” inquired Tau.
Perhaps, thought Dane, the medic was now as uneasy as he over their very vague route.
“An expedition got this far last year.” Meshler settled back in the pilot’s seat with a relaxation that could have been relief. The ranger must have been just as disturbed as they about their unknown course.
“We have only to follow this to where the tributary, the Corox, feeds in, then turn east. That is the beginning of Cartl’s land.”
He banked the flitter and turned to follow the river. The land under them showed no signs that men had ever ventured this far.
“Your southland is largely wilderness then,” commented the medic.
“It is hard to clear land—to import machinery is wasteful. We cannot keep bringing in fuel and techs to service the machines or repair parts. And horses or duocorns from Astra or any of the off-world draft animals do not do well here—not in the first generation, anyway. They have been trying to breed some at the Ag stations, to develop a strain that can live here without being constantly cared for. There is a native insect, the tork fly, which goes for their eyes. So far we haven’t been able to build up any immunity in imports. There are no native animals that can be used for heavy labor. The result is that the holdings have machinery in community ownership and move the pieces from place to place for clearing. Then in some dry seasons they try a burn-off; only that must be controlled, which means an army of men on the job.”