The Game of Stars and Comets (34 page)

Diskan squeezed into that crack. It was a very tight fit, and his cocoon cloak caught on projections and tore yet more, as he took some painful scrapes. Then a last jerk brought him out in the open at what must be the top of the valley wall.

Wind had swept the snow from the more exposed positions, and the animal prints held only in the hollows. The surface of this upland was broken, all spires and points. Diskan could look down into the lowlands, where there was a wide sweep of bog, the blue of mud lakes startlingly visible against the gray and white of the rest of the country.

Food—Diskan thought of his stomach for the first time since beginning the climb. There might have been something worth hunting in the valley. Up here there was nothing at all. To go down now into the bog country would be a wise move. He started to pick a path along the heights.

A flash drew his attention to the left, away from his goal. It was something not natural to this rocky land. He could not have told why he was sure of that. Not fire—what would fire be doing here unless he was not alone in his occupancy of this planet? In spite of his hunger, he turned away from the slope that ended in the bog country, to hunt down the source of that flash.

Pattern—those blinks were coming in a pattern! Diskan broke into a trot as he came to a relatively level space. Pattern meant a signal!

He skidded out onto a small open square and stood looking up at the thing that had drawn him. Sometime—very long ago, he thought, as he noted the weatherworn edges of the stone—someone, or something, had chiseled and cut one of the natural rock pinnacles into a squared column. At a little below its crest, an oval of white opaque substance gave forth, at intervals he could time by counting, flashes of clear light.

Five counts, then a flash, three counts, flash, ten counts, flash, eight—then the whole pattern over again. This was a signal. The why Diskan could not tell—for some long vanished aircraft, for communication between distant points of land? But it was very old, and it was the work of intelligence.

So, it could be that he was not alone, that more than his animal visitor had once moved with purpose along this rocky spine.

Diskan walked around the column. In a patch of snow on the other side was a single clawed footprint, a signature and a signpost. And beyond, as timeworn as the columns, were the traces of a way, cut here and there through the rock, leading along the crest of the heights.

It was stupid to turn away from the bogs with their promise of food, as stupid as anything he had ever done, Diskan told himself. But his boots had already trod on that pawmark, and he knew that he was going to follow that very ancient road.

At times in the growing twilight
, Diskan could not be sure that he was still following any path at all. But then he would sight a marker, a side of rock smoothed to make the passage easier, a flattened length under foot. And the road was descending, not along the bog side of the ridge but on the left where lay higher ground. He sighted other valleys like that which held the lake, level bottoms covered with banks of snow, a few with groves of the red-leaved trees.

It was into the widest of these valleys that the ancient road curled. And the end of that path was marked by two pillars, squared as the one that had borne the signal light. On their crests were lumps, the meaning long since battered away by time. And beyond lay nothing but unbroken reaches of snow. To the left and right, running along the base of the ridge, was a tangle of vegetation, a promise of shelter.

Diskan saw tracks there, not those of the clawed feet, but smaller and rounded as if what made them walked on a foot close to a hoof. Only he was not to follow that, for out of the still air a voice spoke.

The words were unintelligible, but they were words, and that they were meant to catch his attention, Diskan did not doubt. Almost on reflex, he threw himself into the cover of the brush, hugging the earth, staring out into the dusk. He was sure that the call had come from before him, somewhere out of the valley, and not echoing down from the rocks at his back.

There was silence, twice as deep. Diskan lay, watched, and waited. Half unconsciously, he began to count under his breath, as he had with the light flashes on the heights. He had reached thirty when again that spoken sound rolled across the open. On the third repetition, he was sure of one thing—that each time the sound had been the same, that the strange words had been repeated and the tone was mechanically level, as if some machine rather than any living thing had voiced that warning or greeting or summons.

Which of the three it might be had vast importance. To disregard a warning might be high disaster. To answer a summons could be going into peril. But a greeting was something else. And was that broadcast as old as the beacon above? The words were spoken with a crisp, sharp authority. Diskan could not connect it in his mind with the evidences of age at the signal pillar and along the road.

Here was a screen of brush. He could move behind it along the valley wall. If he had been sighted and that voice directed at him, sooner or later that which spoke would come hunting. Diskan moved, his club-spear to hand, his attention fixed on the open.

The broadcast continued to sound at the same intervals as he worked his way from one piece of cover to the next, and it did not vary. But Diskan's uneasiness was not lulled by that fact. The words might be mechanically produced, but that did not mean that he could be sure he was not under observation.

It began to snow again, and he welcomed that together with the dark. Both made a curtain behind which he could move faster. The wall of the valley was curving, and he believed that the voice sounded closer.

He rounded a spur and looked out into another stretch of open. But here there were no bushes, save for some withered stalks very close to him. And the look of those—Diskan pushed out his club and caught the nearest stalk. At a very slight pressure on his part, it snapped, and he pulled it to him.

Burned! It had the same appearance as the seared vegetation he had seen near the crash of the spacer. He rubbed the charred stick between thumb and forefinger and eyed that open space narrowly. Level—unusually level—more so than any other site he had seen in this new world. A good place to plant a ship. Was that it? Could this be where a spacer had finned in and then lifted again? Snow covered any rocket scars, but it was just possible his guess was right.

Once more that unintelligible message rang through the still air, though now it sounded somewhat muffled, as if the falling snow deadened the broadcast. Diskan stood up, daring now to take the chance.

He plunged forward, across the narrowest end of the open expanse, blundering into more burned brush on the far side. Then he saw through the dim light a half bubble that was a familiar thing from his own past. That was a temporary shelter such as he had seen in the tri-dee tapes. It was windowless and doorless, but somewhere along its surface, an entrance would yield to the heat and pressure of a hand. This was a rescue cache, established as a refuge for the survivors of some ship crash. Perhaps more than one spacer had fallen into a mud bog on this unknown world.

And Diskan could understand the need for that broadcast now, even if he did not know the words. It was a set signal to draw any survivors to the refuge. And surely, since the call still sounded, the cache cabin was not in use.

With numb fingers and his teeth, Diskan ripped the cocoon windings from his hand and set it against the surface of the cache at waist level, slipping it along the bubble as he began circling the shelter. Unlike a more permanent erection, any seal would be attuned to the general body heat and not to a palm pattern of an individual man or men. When he found the lock, it should yield to him. Then, food, clothing, arms—perhaps everything he needed—would be his.

How long had this stood here broadcasting its call? And why had it been left? A ship downed here, sending out an SOS—then arrival of a rescue force, perhaps a Patrol cruiser—unable to find any survivors, but evidence that such had existed, had they set up the cache and blasted off, expecting to return later? He could string those guesses together into a plausible explanation—except for the fact that the broadcast was
not
couched in Basic, as it should be for a Service rescue cache.

Diskan had a poor education, but Basic, as well as native planet speech, was hypo-taught to every child as soon as he began to talk. And there were no spacegoing people now, human or nonhuman, who did not use Basic as the common tongue, though it might be necessary for some aliens to resort to mechanical means for translation. So, why not Basic for the beacon call of a cache?

His questing hand suddenly slipped into a hollow his eyes could not distinguish in the fabric of the cache. It did not feel large enough, that hollow, but he pressed his bare palm as tightly as he could into the narrow space. He had found the lock—now for the unlocking.

A slow glow spread up the walls. Then, as abruptly as a snap of fingers, a narrow slit opened before him, and Diskan edged through—into light, heat, smells. The wall closed behind him as he stood looking about the refuge.

Food—he wanted that first. Diskan took a step or two away from the now resealed door, and then his legs gave out, and he swayed and fell. The light was dazzling; it hurt his eyes. He levered himself up on his hands, to blink at the array of containers jumbled all together, as if hastily dumped.

Pulling himself to the nearest, a broad cylinder, Diskan forced up the snap lid. More containers, rammed in carelessly. Among them he recognized one, pried it out of the confusion, and triggered the small button on its side.

Minutes later he was gulping a reviving liquid that tasted like a richly flavored stew and that was intended, Diskan knew, as Sustain food for survivor use. Having finished its contents, he returned to the unpacking of the cylinder. But as he handled each tube, can, and box he pulled from that inner disorder, his surprise grew, and with it an uneasiness.

Some of these supplies he knew, but most of them he did not. Not only that but the unknown items varied among themselves, too. He was sure that the strange identification symbols differed greatly, so that he might now be sorting over rations for a score of races, even of species. Did that mean that the survivors these were intended to succor had been a mixed lot—alien, human, and grades in between? But only a crack liner would carry so widely differing a set of passengers on just one voyage.

And the loss of such a liner would have been news reaching even to Vaanchard. Or—Diskan frowned as he set out that bewildering array of containers—or had such a crash occurred as he voyaged in freeze through space?

But a liner carried a thousand or more passengers. This cache could not contain supplies for that many. Had one lifeboat with a highly mixed crowd set down here? That might be it. Only—why not then broadcast in Basic? It did not fit.

And none of the rations he did know bore the seal of the Patrol—which they surely would have done had this been a Service cache. The way they had been slung into this cylinder, not packed, but crammed—Diskan began to sort them. Surely there was more than one unknown tongue on the labels. He pressed the heat-serve button on a second tube and ate its contents slowly, while he studied the display. When he had finished, he restored the unknown rations to the cylinder.

Then, methodically, he began to rummage through the other containers of the cache—to discover that all but three of those were palm-sealed to a personal print code! Then this could not be a Service cache or all contents would be free to anyone managing to make the shelter! This was a cache, right enough, but intended not for any survivor of a space disaster—no, for some special survivors.

Some of the things he had uncovered he could use. There was a parka-coat of Orkanza hide with an inner stuffing of insulating Corn moss—a little tight across the shoulders, but he could wriggle into it. Boots of the same Orkanza hide made watertight by sal-fat grease were too small. Regretfully, he had to set those aside. Pushed down under them was a tunic. Diskan spread that out across his knee, and his uneasiness sharpened.

This was a dress tunic, a refinement of Ozackian spider silk—or something quite close to that fabulous, and very expensive, fabric. There was a tracery of embroidery about the high collar and around the breast latches that made a lacy pattern composed of hundreds of minute gems threaded on the silk. Only a Veep would wear a garment such as this. Yet there was a spot on the front, a stain that was greasy to the touch, as if food had been carelessly spattered there.

Diskan folded the tunic and put it with the boots. He found two sleep bags, both too small, but which, put together, would give him a better bed than he had known in many days. But—there were no weapons, no tools, unless both were in the locked boxes. He had food, a new coat, and a big puzzle.

He tried to pry open one of the sealed boxes, using the sharpened point of his improvised spear, only stopping when the wood seemed likely to crack. Primitive as that weapon was, it had to serve him, since the cache could not offer better. Diskan padded the two bed rolls together and then set about moving some of the containers so that anyone entering the shelter would take a tumble to announce his arrival. He stretched out on the bed with a sigh of satisfaction.

In spite of the light still glowing in the walls, he slept—but not to wander in a dream city. Outside the core of warmth, the snow continued to fall, blotting out his own tracks to the cache.

But in the night, others were astir; communication traveled, but not by spoken word. Forces met, moved, parted. Impatience, anger colored the discussion. And then watchers settled into place around the cache and what it held—so important to their purposes.

Diskan stirred, rolled over, blinked at the shaky pyramid of boxes of which he had made his alarm. The light of the walls remained the same—but something was different. He sat up and looked around the bubble with more sharply focused attention. As far as he could remember, it was the same. Surely no one had tried to enter, or that box pile would have fallen.