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“And we’ve still got that devilish ledge to cross,” he said aloud. He began unfastening his belt; tugged briefly at Larry’s. Larry, curiously, watched him buckle them together and slip the ends around their wrists.

“Shame you can’t use your left hand,” he said tersely. “Too bad they found out you were left-handed. Now, we’ll start across. Let me lead. This is a hell of a place for your first lesson in climbing this kind of a rock-ledge, but here it is. Always have at least three things all together hanging on. Never move one foot without the other foot and both hands anchored. And the same with either hand.” His unfinished sentence again was perfectly clear to Larry:
 
Both our lives are in his hands, because he’s the weakest
 
.

For the rest of his life, Larry remembered the agonizing hour and a half it took them to cross thetwenty-foot stretch of rock-strewn ledge. There were places where the least movement started showersof rocks and snow; yet they could only cling together like limpets to their handholds and to the face of therock. Above and below was sheer cliff; there was no help there, and if they retraced their steps, to findan easier way, they would never get across. Half a dozen times, Larry slipped and the belt jerking themback together saved him from a very long drop into what looked like nothingness and fog below. Halfway across, a thin fine powdery snow began to fall, and Kennard swore in words Larry couldn’teven begin to follow.

“That was all we needed!” Suddenly he seemed to brighten up, and placed his next foot more cautiously. “Well, Larry, this is it—this has got to be the worst. Nothing worse than this could possibly happen. From now, things can only get better. Come on—left foot this time. Try that greyish hunk of rock. It looks solid enough.”

But at last they were on firm ground again, dropping down as they were in the snow, exhausted, tobreathe deep and slow and gasp like runners just finished with a ten-mile race. Kennard, accustomed tothe mountains, was as usual the first to recover, and stood up, his voice jubilant.

“I told you it would get better! Look, Larry!”

He pointed. Above them the pallid and snowy light showed them the pass, less than a hundred feetaway, leading between rock-sheltered banks—a natural walkway, deeply banked with the falling snow,but sloping only gradually so that they could walk erect.

“And on the other side of that pass, Larry, there are people—my people—friends, who will help us.

Warmth and food and fire and—” he broke off. “It seems too good to be true.”

“I’d settle for dry feet and something hot to eat,” Larry said, then froze, while Kennard still moved toward the pass. The terrible, creeping tension he had felt just before their capture by the trailmen was with him again. It gripped him by the throat; forced him to run after Kennard, grabbing at him with his good arm, holding him back by main force. He couldn’t speak; he could hardly breathe with the force of it. The wave surged and crested, the precognition, the foreknowing of terrible danger…

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It broke. He could breathe again. He gasped and caught at Kennard and pointed and heard the olderboy shriek aloud, but the shriek was lost in the siren screaming wail that rose and echoed in the rockypass. Above them, a huge and ugly craning head, bare of feathers, eyeless and groping, snaked upward,followed by a huge, ungainly body, dimly shining with phosphorescent light. It bore down upon them,clumsily but with alarming speed, cutting off their approach to the pass. The siren-like wailing screamrose and rose until it seemed to fill all the air an,d all the world.

It
 
had
 
been too good to be true.

The pass was a nest of one of the evil banshee-birds.

XII

«^»

FOR AN INSTANT, in blind panic, Larry whirled, turning to ran. The speed with which the bansheecaught the change in direction of movement paralyzed him again with terror; but during that split secondof immobility, he felt a flash of hope. Kennard had begun to run, stumbling in helpless panic; Larry tookone leap after him, wrenching him back, hard.

“
 
Freeze
,” he whispered, urgently. “It senses movement and warmth! Keep perfectly still!”

As Kennard struggled to free himself, he muttered swiftly, “Sorry, pal,” swung back his fist and socked Kennard, hard, on the point of the chin. The boy—exhausted, worn, defenseless—collapsed into thesnowbank and lay there, motionless, too stunned to rise or to do more than stare, resentfully, at Larry. Larry flung himself down, too, and lay without moving so much as a muscle.

The bird stopped in mid-rush, turning its blind head confusedly from side to side. It blundered back andforth for a moment, its trundling walk and the trailing wings giving it the ungainly look of a huge fatcloaked man. It raised its head and gave forth that terrible, paralyzing wail again.

That’s it, Larry thought, resisting the impulse to stuff his hands over his ears. Things hear that awful noiseand they run—and the thing
feels them moving
 
! It’s got something like the electrostatic fields of the
kyrri—
only what it senses is their movement, and their smell.

In this snowbank…

Very slowly, moving a fraction of an inch at a time, fearing that even the slightest rapid motion might alertthe banshee again, he scrabbled slowly in his pocket for his medical kit. It was almost empty, but theremight just be enough of the strongly chemical-smelling antiseptic so that they would not smell like anythingalive— or, he thought grimly, good to eat.

“Kennard,” he whispered, “can you hear me? Don’t move a muscle now. But when I slop this stuff around, dive into that snowbank— and burrow as if your life depended on it.”
It probably does
 
, he was thinking.

The smell of the chemical was pungent and sharp; the banshee, moving its phosphorescent head againstthe wind, made strange jolting motions of distaste. It turned and blundered away, and in that moment Larry and Kennard began to dig frantically into the snowbank, throwing up snow behind them, scrabbling

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it back over their bodies.

They were safe— for the moment. But how would they get across the pass?

Then he remembered Kennard’s earlier words about the banshees. They’re night-birds, torpid in thesunlight. The phosphorescence of their heads proved that they were no creatures of normal sunlight.

If they could live through the night…

If they didn’t freeze to death…

If some other banshee couldn’t feel their warmth through the snow around them…

If the sun shone tomorrow, brightly enough to quiet the great birds…

If all these things happened, then they just
 
might
 
live through their last hurdle.

If not…

Suddenly all these
 
ifs
 
, coming at him like blasts of fear from Kennard, stirred fury in him. Damn it, there
had
 
to be a way through! And Kennard seemed to have given up; he was just lying there in the snow,silent, apparently ready for death.

But they hadn’t come so far together to die here, at the last. Damn it, he’d get them over that pass if hehad to burrow through the damned snowbank with his bare hands…

The banshee seemed to have gone; cautiously, he lifted his head, ever so slightly, from the snowbank. Then, thinking better of it, he plastered the freezing stuff over his head before lifting it up, quicklysurveying the pass above them. Less than a hundred feet. If they could somehow crawl through the

snow…

Urgently, he shook Kennard’s shoulder. The Darkovan boy did not move. This last terror had evidentlyfinished his endurance. He muttered, “Right back where we were— when we left Cyrillon’s castle—”

Larry’s fury exploded. “So after dragging me halfway across the country, within sight of safety you’regoing to lie here and die?”

“The banshees—”

“Oh, your own god Zandru take the banshees! Well get through them or else we won’t, but by damn we’ll
 
try
 
! You Darkovans—so proud of your courage when it’s a matter of individual bravery! As long as you could be a
 
hero
 
”—he flayed Kennard, deliberately, intently, with his words—“you were brave as could be! When you could make me look small! But now when you have to work
 
with
 
me, you konk

out and lie down to die! And Valdir thinks he can do anything with your people? What the hell—his own son can’t shut up and listen and cooperate! He’s got to be a goddam hero, or he won’t play, and just lies down to die!” Kennard swallowed. His eyes blazed fire, and Larry braced himself for another outburst of that flaying, dreadful Alton rage, but it was checked before it began. Kennard clenched his fists, but he spoke grimly, through his teeth.

“I’ll kill you for that, some day—but right now, you’ll see whether a Terran can lead an Alton on his own

world. Try it.”

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“That’s the way to talk,” Larry said, deliberately jovial to infuriate Kennard’s despairing dignity. “If we’re going to die anyhow, we might as well do it while we’re
 
doing
 
something about it! To hell with dying with dignity! Make the. blasted beast fight for his dinner if he wants it—kicking and scratching!”

Kennard laid his hand on his knife. He said “He’ll get a fight—”

Larry gripped his wrist, “
 
No
! Warmth and movement are what he senses! Damn you and your heroics!

Common sense is what we need. Hell, I know you’re
 
brave
 
, but try showing some brains too!”

Kennard froze. He said through barely moving lips, “All right. I said I’d follow your lead. What do I donow?”

Larry thought fast. He had pulled Kennard out of his fit of despair, but now he had to
 
offer
 
something. Ifhe was going to take the lead, he had to lead—and do it damned fast!

The banshee sensed warmth and movement.

Therefore, it must be something like the
 
kyrri;
 
and the only way to outwit it was with cold, and stillness.

But they could freeze to death and it could outwait them. Or else—

The idea struck him.

“Listen! You run one way and I’ll run the other—”

Kennard said, “Drawing lots for death? I accept that. Whichever one of us he takes, the other goesfree?”

“No, idiot!” Larry hadn’t even thought of that. It was a noble Darkovan concept and honorable, but it seemed damned unnecessary. “We both get free—or neither. No, what I’m thinking about is to
 
confuse
 
the damned thing. I move. He’s drawn off after me. Then I stop, burrow in a snowbank, stay still as a mouse—and while he’s trying to scent me again,
you
 
start running around. Somewhere else. He’ll start to move in
 
that
 
direction. Then you freeze and I start again. Maybe we can confuse him, keep him running back and forth long enough to get across the pass.”

Kennard looked at him with growing excitement. “It just might
work
 
.”

“All right, get ready—
freeze
!”

Larry jumped up and started running. He saw the huge lumbering bird twitch toward him as by atropism, then come speeding. He yelled to Kennard, dived into a snowbank, scrabbled frantically in andlay still, not daring to move or hardly to breathe.

He felt, rather than seeing, the great bird stop short, clumsily twitch around, jerking in irritation. How hadits prey gotten over
there
 
? Kennard dashed about twenty yards toward the pass, shouted and dived. Larry jumped up again. This time he tried to run too far; the evil creature’s foul breath was actually hot onhis neck and his flesh crawled with anticipation of the swift, disemboweling clawing stroke. He fell intothe snow, burrowed in and lay still. The siren wail of the confused bird rose, filling the air with screamingterror, and Larry thought,
 
Oh, God, don’t let Kennard panic again
 
…