Postmarked the Stars

10.THE TRAP

This was no time to stop to explore wreckage, Dane protested silently. With that lamp blazing behind, the hunt must be up. And who piloted the crawler that had dragged the flitter here? Those extra members of the enemy party might well be closing in on them now!

He remembered the brach’s ability to trace by reading emotions. Surely that cast off by a hunting party would be strong enough for the alien to detect.

“Do others come?” he murmured into the translator. Dane felt the brach shift its position against him and knew that the alien was turning his head as if the long nose were the pickup of some super radar.

“Behind, not elsewhere—”

Rocket blast and beam burn Meshler! They had to get out of here, and the ranger had left them more or less trapped while he went nosing around the useless wreck. It was a fact—it must be—that those who had taken them captive would not have left weapons down there. Or would they? Suppose they were trying to make the whole mess seem an accidental wreck. Then surely they would not have looted it. But a wreck needed bodies—

A chill threaded along Dane’s spine. Bodies had been to hand, ready for when they were needed to complete that cover-up. Perhaps they had wanted information first, before they were ready to turn live captives into dead bodies. And the longer the three lingered here—the four, Dane reminded himself (for the brach had proved so far the most useful member of their party)—the more certain it was that the plan on the part of the enemy might just be successful.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” He stated the obvious to Tau. “What’s the use of his prowling around down there? They’ll catch up with us soon.”

“Do you want to try it on your own?” queried the medic. “It’s apparent Meshler has night sight to a surprising degree. Unless those jacks share it, he can cut a trail they can follow only slowly.”

“Jacks?” Dane caught the one word that should not have surprised him as much as it momentarily did, for this was plainly an illegal group operating under cover, though jacks did not usually go in for elaborate planning. Strike and get away was their general pattern.

“What would they want here?”

“Who knows? Maybe Meshler does, or he ought to. Listen!”

They froze. Dane felt the medic tense as they stood, shoulder touching shoulder. That sound did not come from behind; it was from below. Meshler climbing up? Dane hoped fervently that was true.

“Let us go.” Meshler’s voice sounded from almost at Dane’s feet. The Terran started back and felt the belt jerk and tauten in his hand. And then, towed as he had been before, Tau’s hand on his shoulder, Dane followed the ranger. At intervals, Meshler whispered some terse direction to follow, but he did not say what he had found at the wreck, though a bundle slung over his shoulder now and again bumped against the hand with which Dane held the belt.

They made better time than Dane had hoped, though he was so confused by the dark that he could not have told in which direction they were now headed. If they were on their way back to the grounded LB, there must be several days of tramping before them. So perhaps Meshler’s search of the wreck for supplies was necessary.

Time meant nothing. At intervals Meshler halted to give them a breather. Dane and Tau took turns carrying the brach inside their jackets. The small alien no longer shivered but felt warm and relaxed when it was Dane’s turn to assume his weight again, so the Terran hoped he had taken no ill from his period in the night’s cold.

Dawn found them in a place of rocks, which were wind and erosion carved into weird and amazing shapes. Block masses of apparently great weight were supported on conical pillars. All of the large outcrops were riddled with holes and crevices, some almost the size of a small cave. It was an excellent place to take cover for longer than a breathing halt, and apparently Meshler selected it for that very reason.

Dane had not realized how tired he was until he hunkered down in the place the ranger chose, a niche between several rocks. Tramping in space boots was not an exercise he would recommend. While there was no more tough and sturdy footware to be found on any world, the weight of their magnetic sole plates made tired feet feel as if they had a massive bracelet of iron soldered about the ankles.

“Loosen the seals.” Tau leaned forward to snap up those on his own as he spoke. “But don’t take them off—not if you want to get them on again in a hurry.”

Even the loosening of the tight seals gave a measure of relief that made Dane sigh. Meshler opened the bag he had brought from the flitter. Now he drew from it a single ration tube. Dane could have squeezed all its contents into his own mouth, but good sense told him that Meshler was right as the ranger measured it in fours, carefully sucking only the first quarter before he passed it to Tau. The medic squeezed the second portion out on a rock, from which the brach, shooting out a long, pale tongue, licked it in two passes. And having taken his own part, Tau passed the now almost flat tube to Dane, who finished it off as slowly as possible, hoping to feel less hungry when it was down.

Of course, E-ration was highly sustaining. A man could keep going on a portion of a tube such as they had just shared out. But it was like a taste of a dish when one wanted to scoop the whole of its contents onto one’s plate,

“We’re heading north. How far back is it to the LB or to that holding you spoke of?” Dane wanted to know when he was sure there was no infinitesimal bit left in the tube.

“Too far—both—to make without transportation,” was Meshler’s daunting reply. “We can’t go on foot with very limited rations and no weapons—”

“I thought you said there were no really dangerous animals,” Dane argued. He dared not accept the ranger’s dark point of view.

“We are hunted men,” Tau reminded him. “Very well, if we can’t strike north, what do we do?”

“The crawler—” Meshler fastened the bag. “Also, this—” He held out something to Tau, and Dane recognized the detect with which Tau had picked up the radiation when they were helpless in the beam- controlled flitter.

“Does it still work?” the ranger asked.

Tau inspected it carefully and then pressed a button on the top. Straightway the needle came to life and spun to point directly at the man who held it.

“It works. Now, in which direction was that camp? I am so turned around that I don’t know north from south.”

“There—” Meshler stabbed a finger to Tau’s left with such confidence that they had to believe him.

“Then the source of the radiation is not there.”

“No equipment in sight,” Dane observed.

“That box was compact. They could have had something like it buried. But this says that direction—” The medic motioned over his own shoulder.

“No way of telling how far away?” Meshler asked.

“No, except the beam is stronger.”

The ranger leaned his head against the rock behind him. “We cannot make it on foot, even as far as Cartl’s holding. And that is the southernmost outpost.” He might have been thinking aloud as he imparted that gloomy information. “A crawler is slow and heavy, and it is not normally used far from a base camp, where it can be maintained.”

“Those prospectors had a crawler,” Dane broke in.

“They must also have had a camp,” Meshler returned heavily. “And this one, under the ledge“—he came back to the present problem—”is a temporary one only. Therefore—”

“We head straight back into their hands?” flashed Dane. “Are you space-whirly, man?”

“I am ranger trained.” Meshler showed no annoyance at Dane’s impatience. “Those men in hunters’ clothing—I do not think they were hunters.”

“We have no weapons,” Tau reminded him. “Or did you pick some up at the flitter?”

“No. It is my belief they would have been put back on us when we were returned to the scene. These men will be after us, yes, but they will expect us to head north. If we go south and get that crawler—or other transport—we have a chance. Otherwise—” He did not finish that sentence. His eyes closed, and Dane suddenly realized that the trip through the night must have been a double strain on the ranger playing eyes for three men.

“I take first watch?” Tau looked to Dane.

He wanted to say no, but he could not pull that denial out of the weight of fatigue that deadened his body. “First watch,” he agreed, and as he settled back against the stone, much in Meshler’s position, he was already half asleep.

When Tau aroused him for sentry duty, the pale winter sun was high overhead, and there was actually a mild sensation of warmth. By chance or design, Meshler had chosen their pocket stronghold well. It faced northwest—the direction from which they might logically expect their pursuers to come. And the only way anyone could get at them was up a narrow strip of open climb, steep enough so that a couple of well-placed boulders could be rolled down it. Only, such boulders did not exist nearby as Dane discovered when he crawled stiffly out of the half cave and stretched his arms and legs, though keeping in the shadow of the rocks.

Some flying things cruised the air, soaring and dropping on spread wings that flapped only once in a while, but those were clearly native to this land. At ground level nothing moved. Dane longed for a pair of distance lenses—they should have been in the flitter, but now they might as well be in one of the pockets on Trewsworld’s well-cratered moon for all the good they did him.

Meshler’s proposal to go on into the heart of what might be enemy territory apparently made sense to the ranger, but Dane was dubious. Now as he squatted at the entrance to their shelter, the brach crawled out from between Meshler and Tau, where he had been cradled in their warmth, and came to Dane, sitting up next to the Terran.

“Are there any below?” Dane said to the hood mike.

The long head turned in a slow swing right to left and back again.

“No one comes. Hunter there—” The alien indicated one of the wheeling winged dots. “It hungers, it waits—but not for us.”

Dane had confidence in the brach’s senses, but not enough to lead him to forsake his vantage point and watch on the land below.

“There have been—” the brach continued.

“Been what?” Dane prodded.

“Been men here.”

“Here!” Dane was startled.

“Not in this place, below—there—” Again the brach pointed, downslope to the left.

“How do you know?”

“Machine smell.” It seemed to Dane that long nose raised in a gesture of distaste. “Not now—but once.”

“Stay here—watch,” Dane told the brach. He could see no tracks of any machine. But if the crawler had passed this way, then it would have left some and a trail they could follow. Better than just striking off into the blue with Tau’s detect as their only guide.

He took all precautions, working his way downslope, though, he thought with a wry grimace, doubtless to one of Meshler’s training he probably made every mistake in the manual. When he reached the point to which the brach had directed him, he discovered the alien was right. There were deep indentations of a crawler’s tread—and on a rock a smear of oil, which must have alerted the sensitive nose of the alien.

Allowing for the twists of a passage made to take every advantage of any ease on the very rough ground here, the trail did run to the south, not quite in the same direction as Tau’s detect, but enough so to suggest that end of trail and radiation had a common source. He traced it only a short distance, having no mind to be spotted by any jack traveler. Dane was not long back in position at the opening of the shelter before Meshler roused. He moved out to join the Terran. Dane reported his discovery, only to see the ranger slink down with caution, returning shortly thereafter.

“Not a regular road,” he said as he reached for the pack to bring out another ration tube. “The thing only went through there once, and it was in difficulties.”

“The oil smear?” Dane asked.

“That—and one of the treads had a frayed edge. It might well have been heading in for repairs, taking a shortcut.” He again measured off four sections on the tube, being meticulously just.

Having eaten his own portion, he squeezed out one for the brach before handing the tube to Dane. And the Terran, finishing his share, put the tube near Tau’s hand for his awakening.

“Nothing else?” the ranger asked.

“No. He agrees to that.” Dane indicated the brach, licking his muzzle with his long tongue.

“We go on, in the dark.” Meshler lifted his head much as did the brach when sniffing. “Clear tonight—a fuller moon—”

Not that that would make much difference, thought Dane. Meshler might declare a night to be clear, as it probably was for him, while it remained dark to the Terrans.

It was late afternoon, and Dane had dozed off again when he was roused by Tau. Once more they shared a ration tube, and then Meshler signaled a move. The sun was halfway down behind some sawtoothed mountains, and already shadows were reaching out in dusky advance.

Relying on the brach’s warning, Dane carried the alien within his jacket, though having to leave it unsealed to do so meant that some of the warmth was lost. They started out along the track left by the crawler.

Before the light had entirely gone, they came across one place where the chewed-up soil suggested the machine had stalled, to be dug loose. The scuffed marks left by boots were too badly blurred to let them guess how many passengers the vehicle had carried.

The detect in Tau’s hand continued to point in the same general direction. However, the medic reported that the amount of radiation was not mounting. It was the brach who about midnight or thereabouts gave them their warning.

“Things—” Its pipe sounded in Dane’s hood mike. “Danger—”

“Men?” he asked quickly.

“No. Like dragons—”

Dane repeated that to his companions. Meshler was in the van. Again his head went up as Dane could see in the thin light of the half-moon; again he seemed to be sniffing. “That stink!” The word burst out of him.

Dane turned his head, coughed, and choked. Stink-stench was right! Far worse than the bad odor of the things hatched from the embryo containers, or even the smell of the antline—and so thick that they might be standing on the verge of an offal dump.

“There’s a force field there.” Tau held out the detect, and they saw that the needle quivered back and forth. So warned, Dane was able to make out the faint blue haze that formed a wall directly ahead. What faced them now was a dark, tangled mass of vegetation, but between them and it was the force field, and for that Dane was secretly glad. To plunge into that mass in the dark was more than he cared to do, whether Meshler could pilot them or not. And the stench plainly came from that direction.

“Crawler tracks turn left.” Meshler followed them. Dane reluctantly did the same, Tau falling into step beside him. The Terran guessed that the medic was no more pleased with this than he was.

By now there was a road of sorts, or at least a way beaten flat by the treads of crawlers. Either one had made this trip many times, or else more than one had gone so. They paralleled the haze, which gave a wan and very ghostly light to the road they followed and the growth behind it. Light enough to—

Dane did not utter that gasp. Meshler, for all his familiarity with the wild, had voiced it, stopping short, as if the force field had swung out a sudden arm to restrain him. But Dane was as frozen.

There had been movement behind the haze. Now they looked up at something that, in that very limited light, was enough to send any sane man flying. Only for a second did they see it, and then it was gone. Dane could not be sure now he had really seen it at all. There was no sound, no movement, now. Only it was something so alien that even a star voyager flinched from facing it.

“Was it—?” Was it really there, Dane wanted to ask.

But Meshler was moving on, taking long strides so that the Terrans had to hurry to catch up, slipping and stumbling in the rutted road. It was as if the ranger was denying what he had seen, or might have seen, by that dogged advance. Nor did any of them speak. Even the brach hung quiet, a growing weight.

The haze of the force wall curved to the right, but the road kept on. Then Meshler halted again and flung out his arm as a barrier against which Dane ran. They were standing on the top of a small rise. Below them the slope grew steeper, descending to where there came the sound of water running in the night. But across the stream was a bridge, and there were very discreetly shielded lights placed at either end to mark it, diffuse-set on lowest beam. As far as the three on the height could see, there was no sentry there, which did not in the least mean that there was none in existence. Dane spoke to the brach.

“Men there?”

“No men,” the brach replied promptly.

“We’ll have to chance it,” Meshler commented as Dane passed that along. “Chances are there is no other way of crossing the stream, or they wouldn’t go to the trouble of bridging it. A crawler can usually pass through a fordable body of water.”

Dane felt very naked and vulnerable as they hurried downslope, crossed the bridge, and dashed on into the welcome shadows ahead.

“We are very close to the radiation source,” Tau said as they trotted along the crawler road. “But it is more to the left.”

As if his words had been an order, the path also swung left. They could still see the haze, though there was a distance between them and it at this point, a fact for which Dane was grateful. The road was now a narrow alley between two dark, looming walls of brush. It had been roughly cleared. There were the remains of roots and sapling trunks crushed and broken—wretched footing. They had to go slow here and depend once more on Meshler’s night sight and his ability to lead them around trip-traps.

Here they could not see the haze, but that did not prevent Dane’s imagination picturing the idea of that behind the growth. His half glimpse of it, he thought, was really worse to remember than perhaps a full confrontation might have been.

The track curved again, and they saw ahead diffuse lights as if on guides. Once more the brach, appealed to, stated there was no guard. But Dane hesitated and found Tau joined him in that. To the Terran, to go blundering on with no better idea of what they might face was rank folly. He said as much firmly.

“Machines,” piped the brach, “machines, yes—men no.”

“There you are,” Meshler retorted when Dane reluctantly relayed the alien’s comment. “We get in, take a crawler, and get out—if he continues to warn us.”

Tau was moving the detect slowly from side to side. “If they have a snooper rigged,” he said, “the other radiation covers it.”

“We can’t be sure they haven’t,” Dane persisted. The feeling that they were on the verge of a nasty trap had grown so strong in him that he could not yield to Meshler. “I’ll scout ahead,” the ranger returned.

“Stay where you are.”

They could see him as a shadow between them and the lamp glow. Then he fell to his knees and seemed to be running his hands over the rutted ground. So feeling his way ahead, he crawled to the open space by the lamps. He did not rise to his feet there but crawled back the same way.

“No ray alarm.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Fresh damar tracks. It went through that gate. If there is any alarm, it is set for something going on two feet, or at least larger than a damar.”

Dane had no idea what a damar might be, probably an animal. But Meshler was sure of his facts. And he himself, with the brach reporting nothing ahead to be feared, could not hold back on a hunch alone.

So he found himself crawling on his hands and knees between the lamps, though he expected at any moment to hear some alarm, feel again the constriction of a tangle loop shooting out of the dark to bring him down. In fact, he was so sure that would happen that he could not believe they had made it, but crawled on until he nearly ran into Meshler, standing again.

“You’re safe.” Was there a shadow of contempt in the ranger’s voice? If there was, it did not lash Dane’s pride. Safety first on strange worlds was so much ingrained in any Free Trader that an accusation of cowardice would not set his hand seeking a stunner for reply.

With the brach still in his hold, he found it rather hard to struggle up—and was still on his knees when what he had so constantly feared happened. It was no alarm to shatter the night quiet, no physical assault from ambush.

There was a sudden flash on his left. And then, as Dane slewed around, ready to run back the way they had come, he saw the haze rise between him and the lamps, between them and the freedom that lay ahead.

They stood in a narrow corridor, walled by a force field on either side, a blind corridor, and that was beginning to close in, forcing them down the only open way—to the right, buckling in upon itself and closing, to become no corridor at all now but a wall, yet sweeping them before it as if they were in a net and that net was being drawn in by him who had cast it.