The Space Guardian (6 page)

The precaution seemed unnecessary. In a few minutes Vurn was back with an invitation to the Landlord’s presence. He had taken the liberty, he said politely, of bringing her drink to the audience chamber. If she did not wish to ingest in public, a privacy screen could be arranged. Lahks disclaimed any eating or drinking taboos and followed him readily, so close at his heels that she had to step sideways near the door. The motion of the fingertip that removed her device was infinitesimal. The gesture that replanted it on the door of the audience chamber was equally unnoticeable.

Landlord Vogil was an older, stockier version of Vurn, magnified by an aura of authority. Only an enormous amount of interbreeding, Lahks thought as she repeated the tale of the loss of her brother and described finding him in Fanny’s hotel, could account for the great similarity of appearance of these people. Stoat was more likely to be right about the need for off-planet women than the Cargomaster was about the baggage. There was plenty of evidence of imported luxuries, but Lahks had not seen a single woman since she had arrived. Women were therefore terribly scarce or kept in purdah.

The expression in the Landlord’s eyes was enough to bring certainty on that score. Yet Vurn had only seemed mildly admiring, not hungry. Lahks lowered modest eyes to keep the amusement at her own stupidity hidden. Vurn knew she was Landlord’s meat as inaccessible as the stars. In so rigidly structured a society, it would take great, perhaps suicidal, daring to covet Landord’s meat.

For a moment Lahks allowed herself the luxury of imagining her capture and the Landlord’s subsequent fate. This so tickled her fancy that giggles rose in her throat, making her voice quiver and tears mist her eyes. Seldom had a sister seemed more emotionally involved with her brother’s disaster. Still, it was no part of Lahks’ mission to drive a Landlord mad and disrupt a whole community. Wumeera had enough troubles without Guardian interference. Surreptitiously, she began to massage the ball of her fourth finger with her thumb. From its flesh-colored sheath implanted under her nail, a tiny transparent needle slid forward and locked into place. It would be enough, if necessary, to convince the Landlord that she was repellent and had better be sent away.

“The longer the damage remains,” she concluded, “the harder it is for the surgichems or the psychs to repair. Can you help me get a ship? You have a Carroll radio, don’t you? Could you call a ship?”

The Landlord shook his head. “I have the radio, and I would be glad to oblige you, but it would be no good.”

Had she misjudged the situation, Lahks wondered as she protested in a trembling voice, “But surely a ship would answer an emergency call. I would be willing to pay passage plus the off-course penalty.”

The Landlord should have said he would call, should have offered to send for her brother, offered the hospitality of his house. Once the fly was in his web, he could do as he liked—but he was shaking his head again.

“We have no port. Only ships with self-landing, self-lifting craft could stop. That would be Patrol or Free Trade. The chance of Patrol being in the area is very small indeed. This is a peaceful stable planet.” He laughed softly. “The next FreeTrade ship due to set down here will be half a year from now.”

“You mean no ship will come to this planet at all for half a year?” Lahks’ voice rose with fearful incredulity.

“No, no, Beldame. I mean at this cup. A ship is due a month or three weeks from now at Landlord Tanguli’s cup.”

“You could call, tell the ship to make another landing here, couldn’t you?”

“I could. I doubt the Free Trader would do it. The fuel expenditure is so great. Doubtless it would mean he would be forced to forgo another stop. I doubt you could recompense him for the loss. Sometimes there are even delivery penalties.”

“But what am I to do?”

“It is not so far to Landlord Tanguli’s cup, although one must cross a desert flat and a range of hills. With a guide . . . I would call Tanguli and tell him you were coming so that he could inform the Cargomaster that there would be passengers.”

He went on to describe the needs of such a journey, but Lahks was seeing and thinking about the plan he was truly formulating. Stoat and Fanny had mentioned the new cooperation among the Landlords. Probably if Vogil tried to keep her now, there would be an accounting of some kind with his peers. If she set out across the desert and was “lost,” Vogil could easily disclaim responsibility. Once she was immured in his inner rooms, who was to say she had been abducted rather than having died in the lonely wastes?

Flexing her hands in a nervous gesture, Lahks sighed, “I don’t know. I don’t know. I must get him home, and yet the danger would be so great. I must think it over.”

“As you will, Beldame,” Landlord Vogil replied patiently. “I can furnish you with a guide, but there are plenty of men in the town who would go. It is not a particularly dangerous trek. It is done often.”

Stoat was not happy. His eyes flickered restlessly and his lips were thinned so that his long canines peeped through. They were safe enough for the moment in Stoat’s stilltent, crammed into a shallow scrape of a cave. It would only be hours, he suspected, before the hunt started. His sidelong glance slid over Shom to the sleeping girl.

Hunter and hunted, Stoat had developed the fatalism of an animal. He knew by some inner instinct when he would be successful and when he would fail. Neither mattered much; the hunt was all, because in the end there was only the final failure, which was the final victory. He was of the old one-God faith, His Power, the unnameable Yahweh, was immutable Justice weaving through irrational paths, and Its sign was the six-pointed star.

But the girl had upset his balance. He could not read the end of this venture, and he suspected it was because he was no longer willing to accept the falls of fate. He did not want this woman to be held in the inner courts of a Landlord. Because he wanted her himself? His eyes slid away from the dim, quiet form. There had been so many women; usually he was sure of his own intentions within minutes. But this Trader’s daughter heated his interest more than his body—if she was a Trader’s daughter.

“You do not think we can escape.”

The voice was so quiet, so much a part of his thoughts, that Stoat’s sensitive nerves did not quiver. He replied as quietly, almost as if he were talking to himself. “This range is very narrow and so close to the cup that it can be searched thoroughly. Besides, it is useless for our purpose. So close to the town, it was long ago hunted empty.”

“But we never intended to stay here.”

The utter calm of her voice, Stoat found, was making him sleepy. Trader’s daughter? Trader’s daughter? Alarm bells rang in his head and his eyes narrowed. Nonetheless, he spoke only of immediate practicalities. “But then I thought we would arouse little interest until after we had found or taken. I knew Vurn would report you and thought that if Vogel wanted you he would have taken you at once. Now I see the rationale in what he is doing.”

“You are very protective.” There was real warmth, perhaps even invitation, under the gentle laughter in Lahks’ voice.

Stoat replied with a brief but picturesque obscenity, which he explained. “My own hide, and Shom’s too, for that matter, are involved. Would it be safe for the Landlord to let us live?”

Lahks was silent for a bare moment, then said, “I have a comcov. Will that help?”

The hiss of breath drawn sharply between teeth described Stoat’s surprised relief. The outgoing breath, however, was a discouraged sigh. “I doubt it. I don’t think the Landlord has detection devices, but the droms will give us away unless you have a unit that will cover a lot of space.”

“The droms? Do they work for the Landlords? Do you know anything about them?”

“No one knows anything about them. They stick out like a sore thumb on this planet, just like the heartstones; they don’t belong here. Everything else on Wumeera is designed for the single purpose of killing something else so it can stay alive itself. The droms don’t kill anything; at least no one has ever caught one at it. Yet they are indestructible.”

“They would have to be, under the circumstances, wouldn’t they? And their physical characteristics certainly mark them as indigenous. The skin. . .”

“You haven’t really looked. The scales are set differently, the. . . Take it from me, they don’t belong here. The important thing is that they follow people around. Helpful devils! Whenever anyone wants to go anywhere, the droms are there. No one knows how they know. No one knows how to call them or send them away. When we are ready to leave tomorrow, they will be there. And out in the flats, their presence will betray us.”

“If we do not move, how long will the search in this area continue? After all, we are in no hurry.”

Stoat’s eyes flicked at her and flicked away. “And your brother?”

“It will delay his rescue longer if I am caught than if I wait . . . how long?”

“A day. . . two. . . I would let the parties pass twice. Even then they will circle the desert for days longer, but with luck. . .”

“Will we need to use the comcov tonight?”

“Not at night, never.”

“But. . .”

“At night the heat-seekers walk: the crabs and silverfish in the deserts, the dragons in the hills. Why do you think we sleep in a stilltent?”

Lahks did not reply to the question because the answer was self-evident. If Wumeera predators hunted by detecting body heat, the stilltent, which conserved every calorie to be used for distillation of waste and exhaled moisture, was a superb camouflage. She reached into the small sack that held her personal belongings, then set the comcov between herself and Stoat.

“It needs only to set the projector and push the red button in.”

It was unnecessary to say more. Whoever awoke first or heard something unusual first would activate the device. Stoat stared at it, all his suspicions alive, his nerves quivering anew. No comcov he knew was so small and compact.

The next two days were quiet. Stoat spent the time describing the local fauna, hunting techniques, and the most likely places for discovering heartstones. From time to time they fell silent as Landlord Vogel’s men passed near enough to be heard or seen, but none of the searchers thought it necessary to test what seemed like a solid hillside for reality. On the third day the area was quiet. Toward afternoon, Stoat slipped out. Just before dark he returned to report that there was no sign of Vogel’s men in the area. Lahks sat cross-legged, silent, her sudden need for activity as demanding as an itch.

“Tell me again about dragons,” she said suddenly.

“They are large reptiles, carnivorous, hunt by temperature discrimination, are nocturnal. . . What do you want to know? I never counted their teeth or checked on the color of their eyes.”

“Do they hunt singly or in packs?”

Stoat laughed harshly. “A single one is quite enough. Packs would eat each other. The only known association is during the breeding season, and even then only one of them usually walks away.”

“There are three of us.” Lahks considered, nodded. “Then we can move tonight.”

The eyebrows shot upward on Stoat’s lean face. “On the Russian principle of throwing one to the wolves when they get too close to the sled? One of us would hardly be a cavity-stopper to those little dears. All three of us might barely constitute an appetizer.”

Lahks laughed and explained her idea. Stoat could not help grinning himself. “It might work,” he mused. “I could fudge something.” Suddenly his shoulders shook. “Trader’s daughter, you are a lift to my spirit. I have walked a bitter round too long, doing the same thing in the same way. I had nearly forgotten a very old adage: There is more than one way to skin a cat.”

“Will the droms come at night?” Lahks asked.

“Does it matter? They are no help against the dragons. They just stand and grin, And we will not be hunted by men at night.”

“Skin a cat. . . skin a dragon. Contingent merchandise,” Lahks reminded him. “We need transport for the hide.”

Slowly Stoat shook his head. “This is no time to be a Trader. First, it is a full day’s work to skin a dragon, even with the laser. Second, a dragon hunts alone, but the heat and maybe the smell, too, of the skinning would bring others of its kind down upon us.”

As if to indicate that he would not argue the subject, Stoat moved across to where Shom sat silently, smiling vacuously at his companions. He opened a box containing explosive shells and another of small wireless detonators. These he fixed together, showed Shom, and told him to make others. Lahks immediately saw one reason why Stoat clung to his comrade. The idiot was extremely quick and deft. Before Stoat had finished cannibalizing an extra hotpak, a dozen small wave-controlled bombs were ready. Carefully, Stoat added a single heating element, showed Shom again what he wanted.

Lahks had not sat idle. When the booby traps were ready, everything was packed except the stilltent. Dressed in stillsuit under windsuit, each strapped on four bombs. Stoat stood for a moment, however, considering the last one.

“Perhaps I should go back along the trail and set this up to. . .”

“No,” Lahks said firmly, not realizing until after the word was out of her mouth that, although there were good reasons for rejecting the idea, she had not been thinking of them. Her “no” had only protested against Stoat going alone into danger.

He frowned, then nodded agreement and hooked the bomb to his belt. “You are right, doubtless. There would not be time enough between the setting and the heating to take down the tent and get far enough away.”

Lahks and Stoat shrugged into their packs, glanced briefly at each other, and slipped out of the tent. Outside the huge, low moon of Wumeera stood full in the sky. So near the desert, cloud cover or rain was not likely. Lahks was startled by the way the windsuits shone bright and suddenly understood why Stoat had laughed when she suggested night glasses. They would be visible from above for kilometers, she thought. She hoped Stoat had been right about the reluctance of the cup-dwellers to be abroad at night. She hoped, too, that the dragons would be more attracted to heat than to movement. Nonetheless, she trotted rapidly away to her lookout point, only taking the precaution of shrinking into the shadow of an overhanging rock. She made no attempt to watch behind and above her. That was Stoat’s job, as it was hers to keep lookout behind and above him. Between them Shom stolidly collapsed the tent and folded it into a backpack.

The old world was so still that Lahks could see the air shimmer as the heat unabsorbed by the tent escaped. Shom stooped, placed the first bomb, and triggered its timer. Lahks strained her ears and eyes, although she knew that Shom’s footsteps would cover any more distant sound, her laser ready. Their plan depended upon the dragons being far enough away to take at least fiveamin to get to the heat stimulus the tent had released. By then the bomb would be warm enough to attract. If they were as unintelligent, as responsive to instinct as most reptiles . . .

A twinkle at the curve of the depression in which they had sheltered themselves drew a bitter expletive from tense-tight lips. The laser beam, which cut steel like butter, broke into a coruscating blaze of visible light. Where it touched unbroken, rock glowed. Before the word had left her lips, Lahks had released the trigger. Unharmed, indifferent, three droms ambled placidly after Shom, bobbing their silly, grinning heads.

“Sorry,” Lahks muttered contritely as she joined Stoat a few steps behind Shom. “I’m green and your horror stories seem to have sunk in deeper than I thought. Will that hot rock bring them any faster?”

A pointed canine caught by an errant shaft of moonlight glittered briefly under Stoat’s face plate so that Lahks knew he was smiling or laughing. “It still depends on the distance they start from. Perhaps it’s as well. I don’t think you really believed that laser wouldn’t touch these devils. Now you know.”

“I still don’t believe it. I’ve seen it, but. . . Should we ride the droms since they’re here?”

“No. You can’t hurry a drom. If we run, they will keep up—Yahweh knows why—but you can’t prod them into moving faster on their own. We might. . .”

His voice checked. Shom had stopped, head cocked to the side. His hand rose, pointing a little to the left up ahead. Lahks knew her responses were swift, but Stoat reacted like his namesake. He was off to the right, where a splotch of darkness promised rocks. Shom, surprisingly quick for his bulk, was not far behind. Lahks took to her heels, her trained body making nothing of the distance between them. They dropped into the shadow simultaneously. The droms stood for a moment as if confused, then ambled slowly toward them.

Lahks repeated her expletive more softly, but with equal fervor, then added, “Damn them, they’ll attract...”

Stoat laid his free hand on her arm and shook his head. The laser in his other hand pointed steadily in the direction from which Lahks could now identify the very faint crunch and slither of a large moving body. She had thought her ears were good but Shom’s were far better, or else he had a sensitivity that went deeper. Stoat now turned his head toward the idiot, speaking softly but with single-word distinctness.

“Shoot it in the mouth, Shom. When it opens its mouth only. Right in the mouth.”

A soft breath exploded from between Lahks’ lips, and her body shook. The feral face whipped back toward her, and the free hand moved with the swiftness of a striking animal, but Lahks had already dodged slightly. She caught Stoat’s wrist.

“Sorry,” she murmured, “it struck me funny. I’m not hysterical. Sure we shouldn’t wait for the whites of their eyes?”

The shadows of hood and face plate were too deep to see into, but Lahks felt wary eyes check the rise and fall of her breathing, the steadiness of the laser in her hand.

“They don’t have any whites.”

The remark could have been a flat statement of fact, but Lahks again got the clear impression of laughter. She giggled silently, then gestured toward the droms squatting in a semicircle around them grinning, bobbing their heads, and at times reaching forward to prod them gently with a snout. But Stoat paid no attention. He was straining forward, peering between two drom hulks. Lahks judged angle and distance, picked up the flicker, then the shine of moonlight on the body coming around a curve of hillside some distance away. Her breath hissed out again—but not with amusement.

Brontosaurus, but lean and agile-looking, with a horrible Allosaurus’ head perched atop a thickened, yet still sinuous, neck. But, blessedly, that head was not raised and swinging. Neck thrust out, black-pitted heat sensors wide, seemingly blind to all else, the hunter was headed toward the trap. That was good and not so good. They had run off to the right, but the path they had originally traveled had curved slightly to take advantage of easier ground. As the monster came closer, even Lahks’ practiced eye could not determine whether it would walk right into them or go by a hair’s breadth on the left.

Instinctively, all shrank deeper into the shadow, but the rock was convex rather than concave and offered no shelter. Lahks thought she could feel the ground tremble, although she knew the beast was not that large. Five hundred meters, three hundred. . . Now it was impossible to tell whether the outthrust head was still seeking the heat trap or was fixed upon them, so direct was its angle. One hundred meters. . . Three elbows braced simultaneously on three knees; three laser pistols lifted across three wrists, as in a well-rehearsed ballet. Six eyes unaware of the harmony of motion stared, waiting for the glimmer of silver teeth in a mauve cavern, watching for the split-second when three fingers could trigger a burning light to discourage?, drive away?, wound?, kill? an invincible enemy.