Invaders of Space

CHAPTER EIGHT

AN hour later it began to rain. By that time the Theban's cook was on his way back to the tramp ship, half stripped of his garments which the constrictor beast had torn in the struggle of its mouths to feed. The cook was gashed here and there by the beast, and he'd been nibbled on by the infant monstrosities riding in their parent's pouch. But he was essentially unharmed.

Equally important, he was rich. Horn had given him such a large quantity of interstellar credit notes that he could not stuff them in a pocket. He could hardly carry the whole amount on board the Theban except a little at a time. The cook also had painstaking instructions for the astrogation of a lifeboat to the planet Wolkim. The Theban had spaceboats. With his written instructions, the cook could take one of the boats and have a really fair chance of making port. He'd have probably as good a chance as anybody could have in a spaceboat. And if he did get there, he'd be a free man with a pocket full of money. It looked as if Horn were insanely offering immunity and riches to a man who was at least accessory to piracy and the intended murder of the Danae people. But Horn had kept the cook's blast rifle. It doubled the armament of his followers.

"You," said the Danae's captain heavily, as they moved later along a flooded trail, "have assumed full responsibility for this, Mr. Horn!"

They waded nearly waist deep in water, surrounded by the trees of a jungle turned to swamp. There came a rumbling from the west.

"Of course," said Horn curtly. "It's the only thing to do."

"I have co-operated against my better judgment, Mr. Horn!" said the captain fretfully. "I fear it will be hard to explain."

"It's perfectly simple," Horn told him impatiently. "The cook's gone back to the Theban with fifty thousand credits in his pocket. If anybody finds it out, they'll kill him for it. Any one of them."

More rumblings from the west. Horn cocked an ear, but did not comment. He waded on. The Danae's captain considered solemnly. He looked as dignified as any man could when surrounded by water to his middle, plus the eccentric vegetation of the planet Carola.

"In that event," pronounced the captain, "he will keep it a secret. And nothing will have been gained. I fear I have made a mistake in consenting to this, Mr. Horn."

"Maybe he'll try to keep it secret," agreed Horn as impatiently as before, "but already the different crewmen have found different amounts of money, and those who have the least don't like it. Even those who have the most are suspicious that somebody else has more than they have. They're watching each other. The cook knows it. He can't act naturally. There's no natural way to act! He'll know they suspect him. He'll try to allay their suspicions, which will make them even more suspicious. Then he won't dare sleep. He'll go psycho from fear. He'll give himself away. Then the others will suspect each other more than ever! And there's the spaceboat bit."

The captain shook his head sorrowfully. "I doubt very much that he will attempt to make Wolkim in a spaceboat, Mr. Horn. A lifeboat journey is risky. We had no choice. We had to try it. But I do not think a common spaceman will do it for money. No, I do not think he will do it."

There was a sudden, angry growling in the west. It was thunder. Horn looked up and behind him. Clouds could be glimpsed above the jungle roof. There was a flash of lurid lightning, which doubled the brightness of the day. Horn shook his head annoyedly.

"He won't think of it as done for money," he observed. "If he does it, it will be because he thinks of it as his only hope of living. Which it may be! But like yourself, I doubt he will do it."

He turned into a branching jungle trail, towards a shallower part of the water. The Danae's captain followed him.

"Then I don't see what -"

"The Theban can't lift off without me," said Horn, "and presently they'll find out that the beacon has been telling all passers-by just exactly what's happening here. So if they stay here, money or no money they'll be caught and executed for various crimes. So they can't stay here. But they can't leave here via the ship without me, and I'm not available. But that does leave the boats. We've just reminded the cook of the boats by telling him how to use one. Presently all of the crew will be worrying that some of their number may get away in the boats and leave them behind. They'll all realize acutely that if Larsen has to choose between abandoning his crew and escaping, his crew will be in bad shape."

There was a bellow of thunder almost overhead. It was like the crack of doom above the treetops. It rolled and rumbled and reverberated. Horn looked up and said wryly, "I'm afraid we're going to get it. I hoped the rain would hold off a day or two more. But it's not far to the camp."

He mended his pace a little. Here the water was not quite up to his knees and offered less impediment to walking. The booming of the thunder went on, going down perceptibly in pitch as the farthest of the rumblings arrived at Horn's cars.

Far, far away there was a roaring sound, deep-toned and steady. Horn stared up at the sky again. He could see it only in patches, but a good half was still clearest blue, like the skies on all oxygen-atmosphere plants. The rest was dark. A cloudbank moved across the sky, with writhing fingers of vapour reaching on before it. The clouds were thick beyond conception, and grey instead of white, almost to their edges. They darkened as they advanced, and halfway to the horizon they were very nearly black.

The faraway roaring sound grew nearer. It was rain drumming on scores of square miles of jungle roof. Horn shook his head. 'The feeble attempt at a shelter in the clearing would be of no use against a downpour amounting to six or seven inches of rain in an hour. But he hastened. The Danae's captain strode dignifiedly in his wake.

There were small jungle noises about them as they reached the edge of the water. They went along the game trail whose flooded part they had been following. There were more jungle noises. Horn saw something small climbing swiftly up a tree, saw a burrow beside the trail, broken open from below. Something that had lived underground was aware that the rains were here. It had come out of its habitation to take refuge among the branches overhead. All the ground creatures seemed to be climbing. The two men came to the tiny clear space they and the other castaways had made two days earlier. Ginny smiled brightly at Horn. The women, including Ginny, were working feverishly to enlarge and improve the shelter. Ginny said confidently, "It looks like rain!" The stout businessman brought more foliage to be added to the shelter's thatch. The younger of the Danae's officers aided him. The hypochondriac passenger huddled in the most protected corner of what had so far been built. The four spacemen from the Danae sat stolidly still. If ordered by somebody, they would probably have worked also, but without orders they simply sat. The two children were more active. Horn ran his eyes over the group. "Where's the little man?" he demanded. "The Theban's engineer?" A crash of thunder came at the instant. It was literally deafening. When it ended, one of the four crewmen said stolidly that the engineer had gone down the game trail an hour before. He'd carried something with him. Horn said sharply, "One of these?" He pointed to the parcels, not unlike food packages in appearance, which contained the shipment of interstellar currency. The crewman nodded. The little engineer had suffered from lack of his bottles. Among the castaways there was nothing to help him. So, desperately seeking relief from anguish, he'd taken some of the currency to get himself a welcome and a bottle on the ship. And, being what he was, he wouldn't intend to, but he couldn't refuse to guide Larsen's men to the hiding place of the castaways and the money shipment. The roaring in the distance became louder. It drowned out the sound of Horn's voice as he called wrathfully, "Everybody up! Everybody up! We've got to move! He's gone back to the Theban to make a deal to sell us out for drinks. Everybody up!" The roaring of the onward-sweeping rain became louder still. Horn furiously roused the Danae's crewmen, and loaded them. They looked questioningly at the captain, and submitted to be burdened. The Danae's junior officer took his full share of foodstuffs and money. Ginny went to the women. In the manner of females, they gave the children foliage to use as partial - very partial - shelter from the coming downpour. The stout businessman took up his load. They started off. The hypochondriac wrung his hands. To go marching off, with rain approaching.... There were a few drops of rain overhead. Then bigger raindrops, the size of pebbles, hit the nearer topmost leaves. Then with a rush, a rattling, and a booming sound, the rain arrived. Horn finished wrapping cloths about the safeties of the two blasters the castaways now possessed. The most modern of blast weapons shared a drawback that only flintlock rifles of centuries earlier had been subject to. They had to be protected from wet. Even with safeties on, a sufficiently heavy rain could make them heat up through a high-resistance layer of moisture. Horn carried one weapon. He'd given Ginny the other. He trusted Ginny to use her brains, whereas he had seen no evidence of such an ability among the others. The rain beat down overhead. The air filled with a fine mist of spatterings. For minutes, though, and long enough for the party to get in motion, there was only a thin semidrizzle at the ground level. The castaways moved away from their hiding place. They had previously gone from one spot to another along trails that were flooded, submerged; now Horn led them away from the swamp. He led them inland, uphill.

Then the rain broke through the jungle roof. It came flowing down treetrunks in glistening, rippling layers. It flowed down branches to their lowest point and then poured like compact streams from hoses. It ran into the trail they tramped. In minutes the sodden bare soil was half an inch deep in running water. And more rain kept coming down.

To march in such saturation was like walking under a waterfall. Garments filled with water to the limit of their capacity to absorb. The burdens the fugitives carried were made heavier by water. The trail surface became slippery, and it was difficult to keep one's balance.

A woman slipped and fell, and Horn helped her to her feet. A child fell down, and Ginny lifted it. The child grinned. Walking in the rain is a pleasure of childhood which few parents will allow. The two children enjoyed being castaways. No one else did.

The journey through this downpour was exhausting. The water fell at close to ten inches per hour. Movement was seemingly meaningless and altogether unpleasant. Streams of water descended as if thousands of faucets had been turned on above the castaways' heads, and there was nothing to do but blunder on below them. Leaves dropped steady, threadlike trickles. Splashings formed water droplets so small that they did not fall but floated in the air between the treetrunks. And the trail became a stream a full inch in depth, and then two inches, and then three.

The Danae's castaways could not have been seen from a hundred feet away. If there had been anyone to watch their progress, Horn would have been seen first, heavily burdened and with streams of water pouring from his elbows, his chin, and the corners of the pack he carried. He'd have seemed to approach through a film of falling water, with a torrent falling on him full blast. Ginny came close behind; then the stout businessman, doggedly trudging with more than his share of the castaways' few possessions. Then came the two women and their children, and then the four crewmen of the Danae, burdened and somehow squat in appearance, marching deliberately under spoutings and streamings of water. After them the Danae's captain. After him the hypochondriac and the Danae's mate. The passenger tried hopelessly to dodge the falling water. He was convinced that he was catching his death of cold.

The air was full of sound. There were splashings, but only nearby. The drummings of rain upon leaves made a monotonous uproar which blotted out all others. The jungle was deeply shadowed, as if in late twilight. But from time to time monstrous and malevolent lightning flashed. There were occasions when lightning flashes followed each other in such rapid succession that the people, marching in the downpour seemed to move jerkily, mechanically, as if they were clumsily made robots or hastily made vision animation. The thunder bellowed. It was useless to try to talk. One could only bend one's head against the downpour and walk, and slip, and walk and slip again.

This went on for hours. Then Horn saw where a monster tree had fallen. It was hollow at its base and with an entrance to its rotten heart like the doorway of a cathedral. The hollow side was down. It formed a roof of sorts, with side walls and a floor. It was a shelter. Horn halted his followers and went to examine it. The others waited, drooping in the flood from the sky, till Horn came back and waved them in. The tree had been a full twenty feet in diameter, vastly larger than the average and huge even among the others of its thick-barked kind.

It seemed strange to be in shelter. There was a curtain of dripping water across the hole by which they'd entered, and inside was darkness, but once within they could smell ancientness and decay and, of course, the overwhelming wetness from without. But in the fallen monster tree it was actually dry. Horn even found rotted punk which, with sufficient encouragement, would smoulder without flames and might be shielded so no light would invite nocturnal beasts after nightfall.

Horn made the fire and the castaways settled themselves. They had, of course, left no footprints on the torrent-drenched game trail. They'd marched at random among the winding, crisscrossing paths. Under the conditions of their flight, they could not keep track of compass directions. Horn didn't know where he was, except that he was somewhere on the upraised spur of land on which the beacon stood. They might be half a dozen miles from the beacon and the Theban. On the other hand, they might be very near.

When that thought occurred to him, Horn prepared to post himself on guard. He got a blast rifle ready. It was warm to the touch. Despite its wrappings and its safety, moisture, which might have been the mere wetness of the air, was developing heat. On the trail he could have done nothing. Here he wiped the rifle, but everything was damp. He needed something dry.

He got interstellar credit notes out of a sealed parcel and used them for drying rags. He dried his own blaster and the other, then returned the notes gravely to the Danae's captain, who had watched him with an expression of as much alarm and shock as he could permit himself.

"Even money," said Horn, "has its uses occasionally."

The captain said with dignity and some reproach, "I am not sure, Mr. Horn, that I should have agreed to your measure. It was bad enough to attempt to cause dissension by the use of credit notes planted for those pirates to find, but that had some reason. This action has none."

"But it has," said Horn. "It keeps us armed a few days longer. Now that the rains have come, I can't spread any more money or manna for your would-be murderers. In two days or three we'd have won them over. They'd have begun to desert to us because it was too dangerous to be on the Theban, and safe and restful and happy to be with us. That was what I hoped for. But the rains have come. We have to start over."

He casually placed himself on guard, looking out into a grey semidarkness with curtain after curtain of falling water. He could see really close trees with fair clarity, but those twenty yards away were mere outlines in a mist. Beyond a hundred feet he could not see at all.

Ginny came to sit beside him. She looked at his expression. "It's bad?"

"Very bad," said Horn. "I've got to think of something new to do. If the rain had held off just a couple of days more, or if that poor devil could have gone a little longer without a drink.... But he'll have told Larsen everything he knows about us. Everything. That's bad!"

Ginny watched his face intently. "Do you - really think we're going to - get out of this?"

"Of course!" said Horn. "It's just going to take longer than I thought. If none of us gets sick, we'll make it. Larsen can't take frustration. We're frustrating him. If the rain keeps up, he can't hunt us. If he can't hunt us, his men will realize that they can't leave in the ship. Presently they'll realize that they can't leave at all except in the boats. Then they'll see that when the Danae's only a few days overdue, some sort of ship will make routine calls on all the beacons along her route.

"If they stop at Hermas they probably won't find the Danae, but the smashed food and fuel caches will tell them something's wrong. When they come on to Carola they'll find the Theban, and the wreckage of the Danae's boats. But before that they'll have picked up the beacon signal, which will post them pretty thoroughly on what's happened. All this, of course, is assuming that no ship comes along the space lane earlier and picks up the modified signal the beacon's broadcasting now to blow the whistle on Larsen."

He was deliberately encouraging. It sounded very promising indeed. Ginny said reflectively. "It really looks -"

"I could end our troubles tomorrow," said Horn sombrely, "if I were willing to let Larsen get away. But he tried to murder you, Ginny. He was willing to have you die just so he could steal some filthy credit notes to spend on beastliness!"

Ginny said, "But how -"

"I could give him the money he's after," said Horn sourly. "I could dump it out in the clearing for him to find. He would, or he'd know instantly if anybody else found it. And then he'd set his men to murdering each other, maybe with a little help from himself. Ultimately he'd leave with the money in a Theban lifeboat. And we'd be in pretty good shape."

"We're going to try to get the children dry," Ginny said. "That rotted wood you found burns a lot like charcoal."

Horn nodded. He continued to watch out of the opening of the hollow tree.

The rain stopped rather more suddenly than it began. One instant all the world was filled with the drumming sound of water pouring down in masses, the next instant the drumming noise retreated. There remained only the sounds of water running here, and dripping there, and pouring furiously downwards at another place.

In minutes the sky could be seen, and the clouds were visibly less dark grey and less menacing than before. The giant tree in whose trunk they'd taken shelter had pulled down much of the jungle roof in its collapse. Masses of vapour overhead could be seen to twist and writhe as if struggling not to retreat from the area they'd overwhelmed. But they'd emptied themselves for the moment. In three hours they'd sent twenty-some inches of rain down to the ground around the castaways' retreat. Thunder still rumbled over the jungle. Now and then, not too often, lightning flashed. And wetness glistened everywhere. Leaves still dripped. Treetrunks still drained away water from their trunks. And the trail by which they'd come here remained a babbling rivulet.

Horn continued to regard the world outside this shelter with a certain weariness. Presently he saw animals again. At first they were mere flickerings of motion, too small and too quick to be identified. Then something writhed across the game trail. It was greyish green, and it seemed to be a disc of flabby and unwholesome mould or fungus. Presently a deerlike creature with large, soft eyes appeared and went away again.

The women attended to the children. Some of the men wrung out their garments. The Danae's captain supervised the operation. He moved about the shelter, confidently surveying the scene and the matters about which he was qualified to give orders. Ginny came back to Horn.

"I don't like sitting still," said Horn annoyedly. "I think it's unwise to give Larsen time to make plans of his own. We've kept him busy with what we were doing to him, after a fashion, but with the rains coming things tend to turn his way. It's time he got a shock. He's had several, but he needs a few more. Frustrating shocks. We need to keep him off balance."

Ginny looked uneasy, but she waited. After a moment Horn said, frowning, "Every game trail has had all its spoor washed away. My guess is that Larsen may start patrolling between rains, to try to find man tracks and locate us that way. It would be wholesome for him to find he can't."

"But -"

"There are some new tracks," said Horn. "I've seen one animal like a deer since the rain. There'll be others. I think I'll give Larsen some evidence that the web he began to weave can close in on him."

"If you mean to go away somewhere," said Ginny uneasily, "I wish you wouldn't. Everybody depends on your decisions."

"This is one of them," said Horn. "I don't like leaving you, but you certainly ought to be safe here. And it isn't wise to let Larsen plan a new campaign. I'd rather make him plan some new defences."

"If - if I could go with you," said Ginny wistfully. "I'm always so uneasy -"

"I'll be making you safer," he told her.

He stood up and went through the shelter. The Danae's captain now wore an air of infinite calm confidence, somewhat marred by drippings that still fell occasionally from his uniform. He did nothing in particular, but gave an impression of supervising everything. The young officer of the Danae was busy getting more dry punk to keep the tiny fire going. The stout businessman wrung out his clothes again. The four crewmen from the Danae sat.

In the completely technical operation of a space liner from this port to that, every action of its officers and crew was routine. One did this at this time, and that at that. In between one did nothing. The Danae's crew was now operating out of routine, but with the routine habit of doing nothing but what was specifically commanded. The women were busy with the children, by the small, red-smouldering but smokeless fire. The hypochondriac was visibly despairing of his health.

Horn called the Danae's captain aside and explained curtly what he intended to do. The captain gracefully accepted responsibility for the group during Horn's absence. He was even cordial about it.

"Now," he said with amiable dignity, "we have something like a suitable shelter and we have hope of rescue because of your change of the beacon's message. While you are gone, Mr. Horn, I will get things snug and shipshape. Everyone will feel better if we are living as nearly as possible like civilized people while we wait for help. Tidiness makes for morale."

Horn wasn't altogether satisfied. He said curtly, "The important thing is no noise and a careful watch. But I think that what I'm intending will discourage Larsen and his men. They ought to realize that their best chance is to take to the boats, but they don't like it. I've got to nerve them up to it. Maybe I can."

"And the rest of us having something constructive to do - preparing to remain here until help comes - will be good for everyone," the captain said warmly. "Ah, yes, Mr. Horn! I'll have everything snug and tidy and self-respecting when you return."

Horn cast a glance around the shelter. The ceiling was rotten wood that hadn't fallen yet. The walls were similar stuff. The floor was dirt, its occupants were still soaked and still bedraggled folk who looked quite unlike the passengers and crew of a crack space liner. They didn't look as if they had ever shuttled neatly along space lanes from one civilized port to another. The men, Horn included, were badly in need of shaves. One of the women was already trying to do something with her still-wet hair. The Danae's captain would have much to do to make this refuge tidy. But it was true that attempting it might be good for people who'd thought constantly of fear for a few days past.

Horn fastened on the bark, track-making devices he'd used before. He tried to smile at Ginny as he left the shelter.

The sounds of the jungle were muted now. Water still dripped from leaf to leaf and branch to branch, with tapping noises. There were few animal cries. The jungle trail here was still a narrow running stream. That was an advantage.

By the time it came to a junction with another trail, Horn had mastered an art it had occurred to him might be useful. A man walks confidently and forthrightly on any path, in a city or a jungle or whatever. His footprints are an even distance apart and he walks in the middle of the way. A wild animal doesn't. Unless in headlong flight, a wild creature meanders. He is listening. He is watching. He will hesitate here and pause there. The trail of any wild creature shows that he is acutely and fearfully conscious of everything about him. A man is apt to become lost in his own thoughts.

Horn worked out a way to walk. For one thing, he took steps only half the usual length, in order to seem four-footed instead of two. He meandered. He paused. After a few yards of this he examined the result. It was convincing. He became confident that nobody from the Theban, seeing tracks like these, would suspect that they were human-made.

He watched the ground ahead, though. And suddenly, where another jungle path joined his own, he saw new, fresh, multiple human tracks. They came out of a trail leading more or less towards the space beacon. They went down towards the spot where the tiny temporary clearing with the thatched shelter had been - the place Horn had made them abandon when the Theban's engineer turned up missing. The footprints went down that way, then came back. They'd retraced their steps towards the ship.

This was plainly the doing of the engineer. His need for stuff in bottles had overcome his sure knowledge that sooner or later he'd be killed on the tramp ship. He'd carried a money parcel to the ship as a peace offering. He'd offered to show where the fugitives were hidden, in exchange for the liquid he craved. And he'd tried to carry out his offer.

Horn heard himself growling. He stopped and studied the trail. Returning footprints overlaid the others. Some were wider and some were longer, and at least one was of a patched shoe which was distinctive. It looked as if as many returned as had gone towards the abandoned shelter. In any case, after the cook's experience with a grey-green beast it wasn't likely that any other Theban crewman would be willing to stay alone in a Carola jungle.

Horn debated for a long time. Then he went on. He followed the tracks towards the abandoned camp. They were largely trampled over by the tracks coming away from it again, but Horn was cautious. Intensely so. It took him a long, long time to get back close to the campsite. Then he heard a thread of sound. It was unmistakable, but it was unbelievable. It was Dauda music, the past year's craze in orchestration. It took a seventy-man band to play Dauda music acceptably. Now it swelled and pealed through the jungle on Carola, where human footprints in mud led towards its source and then away from it. It came to a wrenching, dissonant stop and a moment or two later it began again. Horn suddenly understood. He kept his blast rifle ready, of course, but he went forward.

The music came from the clearing the castaways had made and used for one night only. The shelter they'd been building was washed to trash, trapped and lodged among the treetrunks downhill. There were footprints everywhere in the clearing. The Theban's men had searched it minutely for possible left-behind treasure. But there'd been nothing. The men were probably led by the red-haired mate, and they'd received orders to search with infinite care. They didn't find anything to take back with them.

They left two things behind. One was the walkie-talkie, playing music provided it from the control room of the space tramp. Its purpose was to let Larsen open negotiations with the castaways.

The other thing left behind was the wizened little engineer. Larsen had used him to board the Danae in empty space. Before that he'd meant to flog him to death on Hermas. Since then he'd deserted Larsen and returned to him, and he couldn't hope for more than a bottle or two, or really expect less than murder. But he'd been willing to be murdered if he had the bottles first.

He lay limp and still in the small clearing, horribly mutilated by the blaster bolt that had killed him. It was all perfectly clear. He'd led the party from the Theban to where he believed the fugitives would be. The party had kept in touch with the ship by walkie-talkie, which wasn't unlike the system Larsen used when he sent his mate to try to arrange for instant repairs in the Formalhaut spaceport. Obviously, today, when the engineer led the way to an abandoned camp rather than the treasure Larsen wanted, Larsen was angry. He'd flatly ordered the engineer killed.

Then Larsen gave another order. He was no longer confident that the castaways must ultimately make a bargain with him for food. And Horn's various manoeuvreings had turned the Theban's crew into a nerve-racked pack of suspicious and dispirited cowards. They feared him, and each other, and that the treasure would not be found, and that it would. They were afraid to try to lift off in the Theban, and equally to try a lifeboat journey. They'd begun to realize that the Danae's being overdue must cause a landing at the Hermas and Carola beacons by a ship sent to check such items. And then the Theban's company would be doomed.

So Larsen had ordered the walkie-talkie left, and it played cheerful, brilliant, lively tunes to call attention to the fact that Larsen wanted to make a deal with the castaways or with Horn.