John Maddox Roberts - Space Angel (17 page)

"Are you coming back, Ham?"

"It's too late to make it back by nightfall, Gertie. Also, I'd like to get a look at those settlements to see if whoever's making the- smoke snatched Lafayette. We'll split up into two parties in the morning and check them out."

"Achmed thinks he can have the AC back in operation by late tomorrow," the skipper informed them. "Send me your position when you're together again and I'll send it out to pick you up. Now, get some rest." Her transmission clicked off.

"As if we needed orders for that," muttered Ham. "All right, people, get your sleeping gear and your rations out. We all stand watch tonight; Sergei, you take first watch with me, Tor, you take second with Kelly, Michelle third, and Finn and Nancy get fourth. You Vivers split it up as you like, I'm not familiar with your sleep patterns. Homer, do you sleep at all?"

"Not after the nesting stage. I think I will go explore the other buildings here. I see quite well in this light."

"We are not as slothful as you soft persons," said K'Stin. "I shall take the first half of the night, and

B
'Shant shall take the second. We shall watch from the top of this temple or observatory or whatever it is. The roof is too steep for you to stand on, so I suggest that your sentries stay on the terrace. Actually, with such as we standing guard, your feeble senses will be superfluous, anyhow."

"We'll all stand guard, just the same," said Ham.

The party inflated their sleeping-cocoons, then turned their attention to supper. Kelly took a packet of freezedrys from his pack, giving it a squeeze to break the water bladder inside and let the food soak while the packet heated the contents. When ready, the packet popped open and he fished out the enclosed spoon. Numbly, without appetite, he began to eat. The others were doing the same. Too exhausted to speak, they were eating as quickly as possible and rolling into their cocoons, except for Ham and Sergei, who slung their rifles and marched out, followed by K'Stin.

It seemed a mercilessly short time before Kelly was shaken awake. It took several seconds for him to focus on the face above him and recognize it as Torwald's, a few seconds more to remember where he was.

"Time to be up and about," Torwald said cheerfully. Groggily, Kelly rolled out of his cocoon and lurched to his feet- Torwald thrust a rifle into his hands and herded him outside. Kelly began to waken quickly when he stepped onto the terrace. Even with a filtering atmosphere, the night sky was gorgeous beyond belief, the crowded stars shedding a light of about the same intensity as that of a heavily overcast day on Earth. Through the atmospheric filter, the nebulae flickered and twinkled, and some of the variable stars flashed and dimmed like warning lights.

Below, the jungle was making a tremendous racket —squeaks, roars, barks, tweets, rattles, squawks, and many other sounds that defied description. It seemed as if the night life of the jungle relied on sound instead of color to make itself known.

Torwald adjusted Kelly's rifle sling, then added, "It hangs horizontally. The strap goes over your right shoulder and the rifle hangs under your right arm, at about elbow level. You only sling it behind you when you're marching." He looked up. "How's the night, K'Stin?"

"Very dull," the Viver replied. "Sometimes I can see the light of fires from the direction where we saw smoke earlier, but nothing else of importance. Some big flying predators flew by, but not close enough to be bothersome." The big Viver was standing easily on the steep-pitched roof cradling his heavy forcebeam, his eyes darting restlessly here and there independent of one another.

Kelly began pacing the terrace, idly counting his circuits, until he realized that it was lulling him into a trancelike sleep. He turned his attention instead to his surroundings. In the distance, he could make out a faint fireglow at one of the other platforms. His eyes traveled beyond, then suddenly jerked back. He had seen something move. He looked carefully, then saw it again. Something reflected the fireglow and it was hovering about fifty meters above the platform. For a moment, lights flashed around the thing, then it settled from view.

"Torwald, K'Stin! Look over there!" The boy pointed to where he had seen the phenomenon.

"What do you see?" Torwald asked. Kelly described what he thought he had seen.

"Might have been one of those flying predators K'Stin was talking about." Torwald shrugged.

"What about the lights?" Kelly's anger was mounting.

"Reflections from the fires, or maybe they signal like a lightning bug."

"Or maybe the little one doesn't see so good." K'Stin snorted. "Sentry duty should be left to those with senses sharp enough for it."

"No, I think the kid saw something. Anyhow, as long as the thing doesn't get close, there's no sense worrying about it until morning."

For the rest of his watch, Kelly kept turning his eyes toward that far spectral stone platform, but he saw no more of the hoverer. He knew that he had seen something, though, and that it hadn't been an animal. He was sure that it had been a mechanical device, and that didn't help his peace of mind at all.

They rose early, wanting to reach the other ruins before the worst heat of the day hit. They were not much refreshed by the night spent in the stifling, bug-ridden humidity. Something had bitten Sergei, swelling one side of his face painfully, and Michelle had injected him with anti-allergens. It was decided that, to save time, they should split into two teams.

"Tor," said Ham, "you're in charge of the B team. Take Finn, Kelly, Nancy, and B'Shant."

"We do not separate!" said K'Stin, "Never!" Both Vivers began fingering their weapons truculently and looking very deadly.

"Well, then, Tor," said Ham, "it looks like you just have to get along without a Viver. Why don't you take Homer instead?"

"Fine with me. Homer's a better conversationalist, anyway." He looked over his team for a moment, then signaled for them to follow him out onto the terrace. "Now we'll get a chance to see if you really spotted anything last night, Kelly." Torwald turned and recorded a bearing on the platform with a directional indicator.

They descended the pyramid and crossed the platform in the direction of their goal. A sizable section of the masonry had fallen away at that point, leaving a precipitous but negotiable route to the ground. Without enthusiasm, they headed into the jungle once more. There were more open trails than they had found the day before, but dense areas were frequent, and they had to resort to the machetes. Without the Vivers to wield the big jungle knives, the work was slow and exhausting. First, Tor and Finn chopped away, then Nancy and Kelly took their places. Torwald demonstrated how to use the tools with greatest efficiency, but it was excruciatingly hard toil. At first, all did half-hour stints with the knives. Then they worked for twenty-minute spells. Finally, none of them could work much more than ten minutes at a time.

Just after midmorning, Torwald called a halt in a small clearing. "We'll break here for an hour. We don't have far to go now, and there's no sense killing ourselves." They flopped to the ground of the small clearing, reaching for their water packets. They drank slowly, swallowing salt tablets, replacing the moisture and salt they had lost through excessive perspiration.

"A fine lot of intrepid explorers we look," Finn commented while eying his bedraggled companions. "Did Columbus have such a crew? Or Amundsen? Was stout Cortez followed by such a ragtag lot? If we ever get back, who'll believe that we've been to the places we've been to, or seen the sights we've seen? There's not a single clean-cut, government-issue explorer among us."

"They'll have to believe us," Torwald replied. "We're making a visual record. Besides, according to my reading, explorers tend to be a pretty scrubby lot as a rule; misfits who're always looking for a place to fit in."

"That's us, all right," Nancy said ruefully.

Homer, who had been resting with his multitude of legs folded beneath him, suddenly shot to his full height of about two-thirds of a meter. Several of his antennae were pointing tov/ard their destination and quivering. "I hear sounds of activity, not animal but organized."

"Well, we were pretty sure there were intelligent inhabitants there," said Torwald. "We did see smoke and lights from their fires—and
somebody
has Lafayette."

"These sounds carry tones of discord," said Homer.

"A battle?" Kelly volunteered, "Maybe two villages are fighting it out."

"I think not. There is sorrow, and anguish, and something I cannot place."

"Well, let's go take a closer look," Tor suggested. "Everybody on your feet and move out, but slowly and very quietly."

They picked up their packs and their weapons. Back in the jungle, they now tried to edge around tangled spots instead of hacking through them. Soon, they came to cleared land, like paddy fields sprouting tall brown stalks. The exploring party skirted the fields, keeping to the trees. They were almost within sight of the platform city when they saw the first natives.

About twenty of them were working in a field, tall and angular, body surfaces dull-green articulated plates. From the neck down, they rather resembled Vivers, but their heads were antlike, with a double-domed cranium bearing a deep crease down the middle. The crease was surmounted by a stubby crest, and they had four eyes apiece.

"Well, now we know who built the cities," Finn said. "Technologically speaking, they seem to have come down in the world. Are those stone tools they're using?"

"We can't be sure of that," Nancy whispered. "The builders might have chosen to portray one of their deities or demons with these people's features. What do you think, Tor?"

"This subject fascinates me no end. Let's get moving along. We just want to scout out the area, look for signs of the kid, and head back. Let's just go and get a closeup view of the city."

They passed the fields unseen and soon were in sight of
a
village built against the side of one of the great stone platforms. Taking to a deep ditch, they crept forward until, screened by reeds, they had a closeup view. The settlement was composed of about a hundred reed huts on stilts, thatched with broad leaves. The villagers were more interesting. A large party of them were working under the eyes of watchful guards, and the guards did not appear to be of the same species as the workers.

The new aliens had large, high-domed heads with broad, almost square snouts set with needle-pointed teeth. Three eyes were set above and to either side of the snout. Their upper torsos had four arms, the upper pair stout and muscular, the lower pair thin and delicate. Their legs were short and bent at the knee joints, the thighs thick and gnarled with muscle. The feet resembled an eagle's but had a large central pad for walking purposes. They sported long tails that appeared to be prehensile. Most disturbing of all, the beings carried efficient-looking weapons, rifles of some sort cradled in the upper pair of arms, and numerous smaller hand weapons hung on the harnesses that crisscrossed their bare torsos. Several carried swords as well as knives and clubs.

"Homer," Torwald whispered, "do you recognize those beauties?"

"Quite clearly. Those are Tchork. They had an extensive empire of nearly a thousand worlds—their policy is one of pillage and enslavement. As soon as they have exhausted a planet's easily lifted resources, they usually leave for better pickings, at least until the population has produced another stealable supply. They are a savage race who made it into space by serving as soldiers for more-civilized peoples. Once they had mastered the skills of spacefaring, they simply mutinied, stole the ships they had been serving on, and went into business for themselves."

"Just the kind of folks we needed to run into while our ship's disabled," sighed Tor. "Now, what do you suppose they are doing in this backwater?"

"They seem to be looting that city," Finn suggested. "Reasonable enough, when you consider that we had thoughts of doing just that ourselves not so long ago."

From where they stood, Torwald's group could see that a rickety system of zigzag ladders and platforms reached from the village to the top of the platform, and two files of natives, one ascending and one descending, were using it. Those going up carried empty baskets, and those coming down were bent under full ones. The natives dumped the contents onto a pile growing in the center of the village. One of the Tchork appeared to be keeping a tally of what was dropped. The heap seemed to consist mostly of glittering metals, but there were also gemstones and objects not identifiable at a distance.

One of the natives staggered under the weight of his basket and lurched into the tallykeeper, spilling his basket in the process. The Tchork gave vent to a series of shrill barks and slapped the native so powerfully that the arthropoid nearly fell to the ground. When the native began to chatter in protest, the Tchork drew a heavy, cleaver-shaped blade and sheared through the creature's thin neck with one swipe. Sheathing the blade, the Tchork kicked the head across the village clearing and returned to his task. The line resumed its endless toil.

"Sweet people," Torwald commented. Nancy and Kelly looked ill.

"I suggest that we leave this place, and speedily," said Finn.

"No argument, there," Torwald said. "Now, very, very quietly, I want you all to turn around and start heading back the way we came. Stay Sow, keep your eyes open, and keep moving. If you see or hear something, use hand signals instead of talking. Maintain five-meter intervals." That last instruction reinforced the seriousness of their situation. The five-meter interval was an ancient footsoldier's practice to prevent having one shot or explosion kill two or more men.