"Come on — get up!" he was urged.
Stiffly he pulled his aching body into sitting position. Three men stood about him, and one of them held his bleeding head in his hands. Six Terrans had entered that grove and four rode out, leading an extra gu. Of the other two, they never saw one again, and the other they had had to leave as they found him, buried except for an outflung hand, under the tree he had chosen — the tree which had not survived this storm.
Would any of them last to the end of this journey, Kana speculated, as he clung to his mount by will power alone? Could they even keep on riding at the pace Hansu set?
But the rocky defiles of the coastline were cut by a river before the time to take shelter arrived once more. And in the cup of fertile land in the delta they chanced upon a Llor village. Trading on the custom of Fronn they knocked on the nearest door and asked for protection of the guesting room.
Within, stretched on thin pads, the Combatants dropped into a sodden slumber almost before they gulped down their rations. And when they roused the blow was over and the native household had come to life. Hansu returned from an interview with their Llor host and some of the shadow was gone from his eyes.
"That was the last of the big blows — anything after this won't be any harder to face than something we could weather on Terra. And we're heading right! There's been two crawlers through here — bound for Tharc."
"What" — Larsen was gingerly fitting his Mech helmet over his bandaged head — "do they think we're doing here?" He pointed to the inner section of the house. "Any questions, sir?"
"They believe that we're from the ship. I told them that we were caught in a storm and our crawler wrecked — that we're trying to get back. To them all Terrans look alike, so they've accepted that. We only have to worry when we meet Mechs — if we do."
They were across the farm land in an hour, making their way around and through the debris of the storms. Before them now lay a stretch of twisted rocks, scoured clean by the wind, over which they traveled guided only by the compass in Hansu's hand (which might not be accurate at all) and the map the Venturi had given them. Gashed chasms which could not be descended led to detours and they camped that night in a crevice of bare rock while the wind screamed in their ears, much as it had in the badlands beyond the mountains. Only the threat of the Cos was missing.
And twice during the gray day following they were forced to take shelter to escape the buffeting of blasts which could have swept them to destruction among the towers of stone. A lengthy detour brought them on an arduous climb down to the sea strand where they beat a path through piles of slimy weeds thrust up in bales by the waves.
Hansu was almost thrown from his seat as the gu he was bestriding reared and screamed a shrill whistling defiance, lashing out with its clawed front feet at a shape floundering sluggishly in the shallows. Jaws, seemingly large enough to engulf both beast and rider, gaped. Kana, with one instinctive movement, raised the rifle he carried across his thighs and fired into that open gullet.
The creature's head snapped up and back as if it were turning over in a somersault, as the water boiled about its finned limbs. A horrible mixture of crocodile, snake, and whale was all the recruit could think of as Hansu sent another shot into the writhing monster.
Its struggles took it away from the shore, deeper into the sea, and the Terrans hurriedly backed up the slit of beach, putting as much space between them as possible, the nervous guen threatening to bolt at any moment.
It was Larsen who found the way through between two giant rocks which brought them away from that cove and out of sight of the struggling water dweller. Before them now was a wide space of open sand, matted with torn weed and other wreckage of the waves, including a battered metallic object which bore some resemblance to one of the small Venturi craft. A draggle of carrion birds hung about that and the Terrans did not halt to examine it. They fitted their pace to their Commander's, heading due south across the first good riding country they had found since the river delta.
The next gust of storm caught them in a narrow gorge. Sea water driven by the wind curled about the feet of the guen but Hansu kept doggedly to the trail and his persistence was rewarded with the discovery of a fragment of crushed stone marking the passing of a crawler. Heartened by this, he yielded and allowed them to hole up against the wind.
A steel gray sky had arched over them for most of the day and the coming of night only meant a general darkening of the gloom. But this time the dark served them better than light. It was almost as if the enemy had set a beacon to guide them. And that was no blue Llor flame which beckoned them, but the strong yellow of a Terran camp light.
Leaving the guen in Larsen's charge, Kosti, Kana and the Blademaster scouted ahead, dropping at intervals to crawl, alert for the slightest sign that those in the makeshift camp had posted sentries. At length the three lay on the rim of a small gorge staring at a splotch of light in which the tail fins of a small ship could be easily distinguished. No figures moved in the gleam and there was no sign of life there. It was Hansu who was ready with an order.
"Stay here!" Before they could object he had slithered away in the dark.
They shivered in the bite of the night wind, cringing from the salt-laden air. And below the sigh of that they could hear quite clearly the distant boom of surf. But nothing moved about the ship.
It seemed a very long time before Hansu rejoined them. And when he did it was only to order them back to where they had left Larsen and their mounts. There, as they huddled behind some rocks, he outlined his discoveries.
" — small ship — general outlines of a Patrol cruiser," he told them. "There're guards. Can't tell much more in the dark. We'll have to wait until daybreak and light before we make any plans."
Kana dozed off for broken snatches and he guessed that the others did too. Uncomfortable as they were, long service in the field had given them the power of taking sleep where and when they could find it. And dawn brought a lighter sky than they had seen since the beginning of the big blows.
The guen were secured by their head ropes in a side gully, though Hansu gave orders that they were not to be fastened tightly. And he did not need to advance his reasons. This was one venture from which the Terrans would not return. Either they would blast off in the ship — or they would no longer care about guen or anything else on Fronn.
They took the same way up the cliffs, working along the broken rim to look down on the hidden camp. In the light of day the beams of the lamp had paled and the ship was distinguishable from the black and white stone of the walls. It had been set down with the skill of an expert pilot in the center of a small, almost flat-floored canyon. And as Hansu said, it looked like a fast cruiser such as were built for the use of the Galactic Patrol.
In fact the Combatants were not greatly surprised when the daylight revealed Patrol insignia etched on its space-scoured side. Needle slim, it would accommodate a crew of not more than a dozen. And if it had brought in a cargo of crawlers, the living quarters must have been even more reduced.
"That's what we want, all right." Larsen breathed hardly above a whisper. "Only, how do we take her?"
Under a slight overhang of the canyon wall across from them was the plasta-cloth bubble of a temporary camp. And now a man crawled out of its door vent to stand stretching at his ease. His uniform was that of a Mech, and, as far as they could see, he was a fellow Terran. But a moment later he was joined by another, who, though he wore the blue-gray of a Legion man, was physically an alien. Those too long, too thin legs, the curiously limber arms, as if the limbs possessed an extra joint — To Kana's trained eyes they betrayed his non-Sol origin at once, although the recruit could not, without a closer examination, have said which star he did claim as his native sun.