Close to Critical (2 page)

Besides, looking at the hilltop shouldn't take too long. The robot waited until the native was well out of sight, and then moved up the hill toward the gully. This, it turned out, led into a shallow crater, though the hill bore no resemblance to a volcano; on the crater floor lay perhaps a hundred ellipsoids similar to that which the native had just left there. They were arranged with great care in a single line, and except for that fact were the closest things to loose stones that the men had yet seen on Tenebra. Their actual nature seemed so obvious that no effort was made to dissect one.

At this point there must have been a lengthy and lively discussion. The robot did nothing for quite a long time. Then it left the crater and went down the hill, picked its way carefully out through the "mine field" on the trail of the native, and settled down to travel.

This was not quite as easy as it would have been in the day time, since it was starting to rain and visibility was frequently obstructed by the drops. The men had not yet really decided whether it was better, in traveling at night, to follow valleys and remain submerged or stick to ridges and hilltops so as to see occasionally; but in this case the problem was irrelevant. The native had apparently ignored the question, and settled for something as close to a straight line as it could manage. The trail ran for some ten miles, and ended at a clearing before a cave-studded cliff.

Details could not be seen well. Not only was the rain still falling, but the darkness was virtually absolute even to the pickups of the robot. More discussion must have resulted from this; it was two or three minutes after the machine's arrival at the clearing that its lights went on and played briefly over the rock. Natives could be seen standing inside the cave mouths, but they made no response to the light. They were either asleep, in more or less human fashion, or had succumbed to the usual night-torpor of Tenebra's animal life.

No sign of anything above a stone-age culture level could be seen anywhere about, and after a few minutes of examination the robot cut off most of its lights and headed back toward the hill and the crater. It moved steadily and purposefully. Once at the hilltop, several openings appeared in its sides, and from some of these armlike structures were extended. Ten of the ellipsoids were picked carefully from one end of the line - leaving no betraying gaps - and stowed in the robot's hull. Then the machine went back down the hill and began a deliberate search for booby traps. From these it removed the stone blades, and such of these as seemed in good condition - many were badly corroded, and some even crumbled when handled - disappeared into other openings in the lump of plastic. Each of these holes was then covered by a lid of the same incredibly stable polymer which formed the body of the machine, so that no one could have told from outside that the storage places were there.

With this task completed, the robot headed away, at the highest speed it could maintain. By the time Altair rose and began turning the lower atmosphere back into gas, the machine, the stolen weapons, and the "kidnapped" eggs were far from the crater and still farther from the cave village.

I. EXPLORATION; EXPECTATION; ALTERCATION

NICK pushed through the tall plants into the open, stopped, and used several words of the sort Fagin had always refused to translate. He was neither surprised nor bothered to find water ahead of him - it was still early in the morning - it was annoying, however, to find it on each side as well. Sheer bad luck, apparently, had led him straight out along a peninsula, and this was no time for anyone to retrace his steps.

To be really precise, he didn't know that he was being followed, of course; but it simply hadn't occurred to him to doubt that he was. He had spent two days, since his escape, in making as confused and misleading a trail as possible, swinging far to the west before turning back toward home, and he was no more willing than a human being would have been to admit that it might have been wasted effort. True, he had seen not the slightest sign of pursuers. He had been delayed by the usual encounters with impassable ground and wild animals, and none of his captors had caught up; the floating animals and plants which it was never safe to ignore completely had shown no sign of interest in anything behind him; his captors during the time he was with them had shown themselves to be hunters and trackers of superlative skill. Taking all these facts into account, he might have been excused for supposing that the fact of his continued freedom meant they weren't following. He was tempted, but couldn't bring himself to believe it. They had wanted so badly to make him lead them to Fagin!

He came to himself with a start, and brought his mind back to the present. Theorizing was useless just now; he must decide whether to retrace his steps along the peninsula, and risk running into his ex-captors, or wait until the lake dried up and chance their catching him. It was hard to decide which was the smaller risk, but there was one check he could make.

He walked to the water's edge, looked at the liquid carefully, then slapped it vigorously. The slow ripples which spread up the edge of the lake and out over its more or less level surface did not interest him; the drops which detached themselves did. He watched as they drifted toward him, settling slowly, and noted with satisfaction that even the largest of them faded out without getting back to the surface. Evidently the lake did not have long to go; he settled down to wait.

The breeze was picking up slowly as the plants awoke to the new day. He could smell it. He watched eagerly for its effect on the lake - not waves, but the turbulent hollows in the surface which would mark slightly warmer bodies of air passing over it. That would be the sign; trom then on, the surface would probably drop faster down the lake bed than he could travel. The breeze should keep the air breathable, as long as he didn't follow the water too closely - yes, it couldn't be long now; the very point where he was standing was below the surface level of some parts of the lake. It was drying up.

The difference increased as he waited, the edge of the water slipping back in ghostly fashion. He followed it with caution until a wall of water towered on either side. It began to look as though the peninsula were really a ridge across the lake; if so, so much the better.

Actually, it didn't quite reach. He had to wait for a quarter of an hour at the ridge's end while the rest of the lake turned back to air. He was impatient enough to risk breathing the stuff almost too quickly after the change, but managed to get away with it. A few minutes more brought him up the slope to the tall vegetation on the east side of the erstwhile lake. Before plunging among the plants, where he would be able to see nothing but the floaters overhead, he paused a moment to look back across the dry bottom to the point where he had first seen the water - still no pursuers. Another floater or two were drifting his way; he felt for his knives, and slightly regretted the spears he had lost. Still, there was little likelihood of danger from a floater behind him as long as he traveled at a decent speed - and that's what he'd better be doing. He plunged into the brush. Travel was not too difficult; the stuff was flexible enough to be pushed out of the way most of the time. Occasionally he had to cut his way, which was annoying less because of the effort involved than because it meant exposing a knife to the air. Knives were getting somewhat scarce, and Fagin was rather tight with those remaining.

The morning wore on, still without sight of pursuers. He made unusually good speed much of the time because of a remarkable lack of wild animals - par for a forty-mile walk being four or five fights, while he had only one. However, he more than lost the time gained when he ran into an area rougher than any he had ever seen. The hills were sharp and jagged instead of rounded; there were occasional loose rocks, and from time to time these were sent rolling and tumbling by unusually sharp quakes. In places he had to climb steep cliffs, either up or down; in others, he threaded his way through frighteningly narrow cracks - with no assurance that there was an opening at the other end. Several times there wasn't, and he had to go back.

Even here he left a trail, the local plant life being what it was; but with that area behind him he found it even harder to justify the feeling that he was being pursued.

If his ex-captors really followed through that, they deserved to catch him! But still, however often he let his attention cover his rear, no sign of them appeared.

The hours passed, Nick traveling at the highest speed he could maintain. The one fight he had scarcely delayed him at all; it was a floater that saw him from ahead and dropped nearly to ground level in time to intercept him. It was a small one, so small that his arms outreached its tentacles; and a quick slash of one of his knives opened enough of its gas-bladders to leave it floundering helplessly behind him. He sheathed the weapon and raced on with scarcely diminished speed, rubbing an arm which had been touched lightly by the thing's poison.

The limb had ceased to sting, and Altair was high in the sky, when he finally found himself in familiar surroundings. He had hunted before this far from the home valley; rapid as changes were, the area was still recognizable. He shifted course a trifle and put on a final burst of speed. For the first time, he felt sure of being able to deliver a report of his capture, and also for the first time he realized that he had not tried to organize one. Just telling what had happened to him, item by item, might take too long; it was important that Fagin and the rest get away quickly. On the other hand, it would take a pretty complete explanation of the state of affairs to convince the teacher of that fact. Nick unconsciously slowed down as he pondered this problem. He was dragged from this reverie only by the sound of his own name.

"Nick! Is that really you? Where have you been? We thought you'd slept out once too often!" At the first sound, Nick had reached for his knives; but he checked the movement as he recognized the voice.

"Johnny! It's good to hear proper talk again. What are you doing this far out? Have the sheep eaten everything closer to home?"

"No, I'm hunting, not herding." John Doolittle pushed through the undergrowth into clear view. "But where have you been? It's been weeks since you went out, and since we stopped looking for you."

"You looked for me? That's bad. Still, I guess it didn't make any difference, or I'd have known it sooner."

"What do you mean? I don't understand what you're talking about. And what did you mean about it's being good to hear 'proper talk'? What other kind of talk is there? Let's hear the story."

"It's a long one, and I'll have to tell everyone as quickly as possible anyway. Come along home; there's no point telling it twice." He headed toward the valley they both called "home" without waiting to hear any answer. John "trailed" his spears and followed. Even without Nick's implication of trouble ahead, he would not willingly have missed the report. Fresh as he was, thpugh, he had difficulty keeping up with the returned explorer; Nick seemed to be in a hurry.

They met two more of the group on the way, Alice and Tom, who were herding. At Nick's urgent but hasty words they followed toward the village as fast as their charge would permit.

Five more of the group were actually in the village, and Fagin was at his usual station in the center of the ring of houses. Nick called the teacher by name as he came in sight.

"Fagin! We're in trouble! What do we have for weapons that you haven't shown us yet?" As usual, there was a pause of a couple of seconds before an answer came back.

"Why, it's Nick. We had about given you up. What's all of this about weapons? Do you expect to have to fight someone?"

"I'm afraid so."

"Who?"

"Well, they seem to be people just like us; but they don't keep animals, and they don't use fire, and they use , different words for things than we do."

"Where did you run into these people, and why should we have to fight them?"

"It's a long story, I'm afraid. It will be better if I start at the beginning, I suppose; but we shouldn't waste any more time than we can help."

"I agree; a complete report will make the most sense to all of us. Go ahead." Nick settled his weight back on his standing legs and obeyed.

"I started south as we decided and went slowly, mapping as I went. Nothing much had changed seriously out to the edge of the region we usually cover in farming and grazing; after that, of course, it was hard to tell whether anything had changed at all recently, or in what way.

"The best landmark I saw by the end of the first day was a mountain, of quite regular conical shape and much higher than any I had ever seen before. I was tempted to climb it, but decided that detail mapping could be accomplished better later on; after all, my trip was to find new areas, not evaluate them. "I passed to the east of the mountain shortly after sunrise the second day. The wind was remarkably strong in that region and seemed always to blow toward the mountain; I called it Storm Hill on the map. Judging by tile wind, there ought to be a lot of night-growing plants there; any exploration should be planned to get off the hill before dark.

"As far as travel goes, everything was about as usual. I killed enough in self-defense to keep me in food, but none of the animals were at all unusual that day.

"The third morning, though, with the mountain out of sight, I got involved with something that lived in a hole in the ground and reached out an arm to catch things going by. It caught me around the legs, and it didn't seem to mind my spears very much. I don't think I'd have gotten away if I hadn't had help."

"Help?" The startled question came without the pause characteristic of the teacher's remarks; it was Jim who asked it. "How could you have gotten help? None of us was down that way."

"So it wasn't one of us - at least, not exactly. He looked just like us, and used spears like ours; but when we finally managed to kill the thing in the hole and tried to talk to each other, his words were all different; in fact, it was quite a while before I realized that he was talking. He used the same sort of noises we do for words, but mixed them with a lot of others that we never learned from you.