The Game of Stars and Comets (44 page)

But, were they in the city? Diskan looked around, striving to find some landmark. The black bulk of the ruins was there, but now about them—between that and their present perch—was a stretch of blue mud-spotted marsh. Before them a kind of causeway, rough and broken, ran to a ridge. The same ridge that had brought them to Xcothal? Diskan could not be sure of that. They might have gone clear through the city and come out on the other side for all he knew. But the ridge, if they could reach it, promised some form of shelter. And the square of stone on which they stood under the whip of the wind was not a place to linger.

"We have to keep going—" Diskan moved to Zimgrald's side.

Julha half supported the Zacathan. She looked at Diskan with hostility. "He cannot!" she retorted. "Do you want to kill him?"

"I don't," Diskan replied shortly. "But this wind could—or those after us. We have to get up there"—he pointed to the ridge—"and as fast as we can."

The Zacathan nodded. "He speaks the truth, little one. And I am not finished yet!"

But he was close to it, Diskan knew, and that causeway was no easy path. He put the stunner away to leave both hands free and stepped forward, drawing the alien's arm about his shoulders.

"Down here." Diskan half carried Zimgrald to what looked the easiest way. "Keep right behind me," he flung at the girl. And those were the last sounds he made, except grunts, during that grueling journey. For once, the body hardened by years of labor did not fail him with awkwardness. He went slowly, but he made no missteps, and he moved Zimgrald along, even when more and more of the alien's weight sagged against him.

The trick was, Diskan speedily learned, to keep your eyes on the space immediately before you, to shove out of your mind all thought of the length of the track ahead or that at any moment the Jacks might explode onto the platform behind you, with you providing a fine target for a stunner—to freeze you until the enemy could collect you at their leisure. No, Jacks must be pushed totally out of mind, and the world
had
to narrow to the steps just ahead.

He was breathing heavily now, Zimgrald a dead weight. Under Diskan's ribs was a band of pain; his legs and back ached—Push that out of mind, too. Now, up the stone—there—Here was smoother walking. Now, up the next one—two strides—up the next step—Steps? Diskan's memory moved sluggishly. For the first time he allowed himself to look farther than the footing immediately ahead.

Rocks all around, and there was a line of steps before them—two, three—before another smooth stretch. They had reached the ridge!

"In here!"

Dimly Diskan saw the girl waving vigorously up ahead. He staggered on, the pain under his ribs eating him, Zimgrald's weight almost more than he could support. Once more he made the effort and brought them up and between two rock pillars into a pocket where the wind did not reach and where Julha was brushing out the drifted snow.

He tried to lower the Zacathan to the ground but stumbled and fell with his burden, the alien sprawling half over him. Then for a time Diskan simply lay until jerks at his arm brought him back to a greater degree of consciousness. Julha leaned over him. Her eyes were fierce, as hating, he thought dully, as they had been at their first meeting.

"Get up! You must get up and help me! He is worse—help me!" She slapped Diskan's face with force enough to rock his head painfully against the frozen earth. Then her fingers hooked in the hood of the parka as she tried to tug him up.

Somehow he got his arms under him and braced his body off the ground, but the effort left him panting. He rolled back against the cold rock and blinked stupidly at the frantic girl.

The Zacathan now lay on his back with a plasta-blanket from one of the packs pulled up about him. His beak-sharp nose jutted out from a face where most of the flesh seemed to have melted away, so that the bone structure was sharply defined. His eyes were closed, and he was breathing through his mouth in small gasps.

Close beside him was one of the hand-port heat units—and its broadcast, though aimed directly at the Zacathan, also reached to Diskan, so that, half unconsciously, he moved his stiff hands into that welcome warmth. The pack the girl had carried and his own were open, their contents strewn around as if she had plundered both in a hurried attempt to find what she needed. And a medic-aid container was there.

"I tell you"—her hands were at her mouth, her eyes very large and fixed—"he is worse! I have no more Sustain. And he needs Deep Sleep and build shots. I don't have them!"

Diskan continued to blink. The warmth and the drugging fatigue, which made every movement an effort almost too great to bear, put a hazy wall between him and Julha. He could hear her words; they made sense in a dim way, but he did not care. He wanted to slip down, to let his leaden eyelids close, to just rest, rest—

The sharp sting of another slap brought him part way back.

"Don't you sleep! Don't you dare sleep! I tell you—he'll die unless he has help. We have to find it for him!"

"Where?" Diskan got out that one word dully.

"That cache—you said there was a survivor cache. There would be medic supplies there, all kinds. Where's the cache?" Her hands clutched the breast of the parka. She shook Diskan.

Cache? For a second the mist cleared from Diskan's fogged mind. He remembered the cache. There had been a lot of things there. Yes, there could have been a medic kit; he had not been looking for one when he explored. But the cache—he had no idea where that was now or where they were either.

He reached out, scraped up snow from a rock hollow, and rubbed it across his face. The chill of that on his skin brought him further awake.

"Where is the cache?" Her impatience needled him.

"I don't know. I don't even know whether we are on the right ridge or not."

"Right ridge?"

"We may have gone completely under the city and come up on the other side. If that's true—"

She sat back on her heels, her expression very bleak. "If that is true, he has no chance at all, has he?" Reaching out, she drew the blanket closer about the Zacathan's throat. "But you aren't sure of that?"

"No."

"Then make sure! Get up and make sure!"

Diskan grimaced. "Have you a packet full of miracles to shake out for us? I don't know this territory at all. It could take days of exploring to find out where we are. And, frankly, I can't get on my feet—not right now."

"Then I will!" She jumped to her feet, only to sway and catch at one of the rocks. She clung there, and her eyes filled, the tears slipping out to make runnels down her face.

"To collapse when he needs you?" Somehow Diskan summoned sense enough to point out to her what should already have been obvious. "We can do nothing, either of us, until we have rest, food—That may be hard for you to accept, but it is the truth."

Julha turned her head away and wiped at her cheeks with the back of her hand.

"All right!" But her agreement was delivered like a curse. "All right!"

On her knees again, she rummaged among the packs until she had found the ration tubes. One she tossed in Diskan's general direction, and he eyed it for several long seconds until he could muster enough strength to reach for it. Then he held it a space longer before he triggered the heat-open button. But once the tube did open and the aroma of its contents reached his nostrils, he found it easy to raise it to his lips.

It was hot, it tasted good, and it began to do its work against the haze of fatigue. When he had swallowed the last drop, Diskan looked around far more alertly. And it was only then that one thing about their improvised camp registered. One of their company was missing.

"The animal—where's the animal?" he demanded.

Julha was attempting to drip bits of the ration into Zimgrald's mouth. She shrugged impatiently.

"The animal? Oh, that has not been with us since we came across the stones to the ridge."

"Where did it go?" Why it was important to Diskan he did not know, but to learn that the furred one had left him gave him a curiously naked feeling, as if some support he had come to depend upon had been snatched away.

"I don't know. I haven't seen it since we came here. Does it matter?"

"It may, very much—"

"I don't see how."

"It brought us out of the city. It might be depended upon to help find the cache—"

"But I haven't seen it. It never came to the ridge."

Had it returned underground, Diskan wondered, considering some duty done when it had brought them into the open? And what of the Jacks on the trail behind? Julha might have been reading his thoughts, for now she said:

"The Jacks—what if they come here? We can't move him—"

Diskan brought out the stunner.

"The blaster charge is exhausted, and this is just about gone, too. But it is all we have. Let's see—"

Somehow he was able to pull to his feet and make a slow inspection of their present hole-up. He had to admit the girl had chosen well when she had guided him into it. There was only one entrance, a narrow slit that could be defended forever if one had proper weapons. And while the space was open to the sky now graying into dusk, the rocky walls were twice his height.

He lurched to the entranceway. The rock outside was bare, which stilled his fear of tracks. What snow Julha had brushed from the pocket had been spread away by the wind. They need not have a fire with the porto-heat unit. Yes, there was a good chance that in the night they would escape notice by any trailers.

"Listen!" He swung around. "I have the device they could have used to track you. What about Zimgrald. Can they now have one on him?"

"Not unless he wished it. I checked with Zimgrald, and Zacathans broadcast on another beam; their personality pickups can be intentionally scrambled, ours cannot. He scrambled his as soon as we knew what was happening."

Diskan was grateful for that information. The Jacks no longer had the girl's device; they had none tuned to him and none for the Zacathan—which meant they would have to do any tracking on the same level as a primitive hunter. And night was coming fast. Diskan did not believe that the Jacks would risk a scramble through this wilderness of rocks in the dark. He said as much to Julha.

"So we may be safe from
them,
" she countered, "but the High One must have help!"

"There is nothing we can do tonight. A fall here could mean broken bones, and injuries for either of us would be fatal. In the morning I'll climb to higher ground and scout. If I can sight any landmarks I know and we are on the ridge land of the cache, then we can make plans."

She eyed him levelly and then picked up the stunner. "Well enough, or—not well, but what must serve. Do you sleep for a while; then I shall—"

Diskan wanted to protest, but common sense told him she was right. In his present state, he would fall asleep on watch. So he lay down in the heat of the beam near Zimgrald and was asleep even as his head turned on the ground.

When he roused again, with Julha tugging at him, there were no moons racing across the sky but a heavy roofing of clouds from which snow fell. The flakes hissed into drops on the warmed stones and ran in small streamlets down the rocks.

"How is he?" Diskan leaned close above the Zacathan. The shallow, gusty breathing continued. To his eyes, there had been no change in the alien's condition.

"He is alive," Julha said thinly. "And as long as he lives, there is hope. When he grows restless, put a little snow in his mouth. It seems to give him relief." She pulled the hood of her suit up and settled down beside the Zacathan.

Diskan held the stunner she had passed to him, watching the falling snow. If this was the beginning of a really bad storm, they might find themselves prisoners in this rock cleft in the morning. And yet Zimgrald manifestly could not last much longer without aid, aid that might or might not be found in the cache.

It was apparent that the Jack ship had returned—or had it? The party that had hunted them through Xcothal might have been left here to make sure of Zimgrald and the girl. If so, then the cache was for their convenience. But then Diskan did not understand the need for the broadcast that had guided him there. It certainly seemed that it had been set to pull in strangers. Who? Any of the archaeological expedition who had escaped the initial attack of the Jacks, as had Julha and Zimgrald? Or had the Jack ship, plus the spacer they had taken over from Zimgrald's people, both lifted so swiftly they had not been able to pick up all of the Jack crew planetside?

In any event, now that cache could well be the bait for a trap. The Jacks would expect desperate survivors to make a try for it. Thus, there was no chance at all for him to do as Julha wanted, to get in and out with medical supplies, escaping all detection. On the other hand, his thoughts flinched away from that alternative—that they must sit here and watch the Zacathan die, knowing all the time that there was a chance they were too prudent to take.

Diskan knew that there would be no arguing with Julha. Either he would make the try or she would. Of course, they might be so far from the right ridge that there would be no question of locating the cache at all. Diskan stood up, made one of his periodic tramps to the cleft entrance, and stared out into the dark—not because he expected to see anything there but because the action kept him awake and alert.

When he came back to the circle of heat by the unit, there was a small movement from where the Zacathan lay, and Diskan hurried to him. The alien's eyes were open and his lips moved. Hurriedly Diskan scooped up snow and strove to put it in Zimgrald's mouth. He did that three times before the Zacathan turned his head, refusing more.

"Julha?" The whisper was very faint.

"She is asleep," Diskan whispered back.

"Good. Listen carefully—" The labor of that speech was so intense that Diskan shared it vicariously. "I am—going—to—will—hibernation. I am very weak—so this may be self-killing—but it is—one—way—"

Hibernation? Diskan did not know what the Zacathan meant, but he dared not interrupt with any question.