As Dinan climbed, I squatted on the small ledge, my arm around Dagny. Her moans had grown fainter. Her eyes were half closed; beneath those drooping lids no pupils showed, only white arcs. The second rod I had taken from the cache lay across my lap, but I pressed my free hand against the still seeping wounds on my chest. The chill was bad. We should keep moving to stimulate circulation. But Dagny was a dead weight, and I was too weak. Also, I had killed two of the monsters, but that was not to say that more were not lurking among the ice pillars.
My thinking slowed, grew muddled. I was sleepy now—so sleepy. Yet some small spark within me sounded alarm. No sleep—that was the way to extinction. I fought to rouse, to listen. It seemed to me I could hear even from here the sound of the buried river.
River—water had to flow somewhere. Suppose we could trust to that stream for a road out? I knew of no major river in the lava lands. But that section of Beltane had never been fully explored. In latter days when men had been so few, and the majority of those engrossed in the labs, there had been little curiosity as to what lay outside the settlements. Only the Reserves of the animals had been patrolled to any extent. I believed that we had been the first to come this way since Butte Hold was closed.
So for all the evidence we had one way or another, the river could be our way out. And if we discovered no other, it would have to be.
Dagny's weight against my good shoulder became heavier as time passed. I had forgotten to mark the hour when Dinan had left and had called from the crest that he was safely up and over. So looking at my watch told me nothing. The road back was straight—if he did not meet another blind prowler!
But he was a small boy, chilled, tired. I could not reckon his speed by the same effort I would put into that journey. I fumbled one-handedly with the ration bag and brought out a stick of Sustain. In the light I saw Dagny's face was smeared with traces of the same food. Dinan must have tried to feed her. But when I attempted the same thing, she allowed the nourishment to slip from her slack mouth, and I saw it was no use.
I sucked away. The stuff had a strong, unpleasant taste, but it had been meant to fortify a man through physical effort, and I forced myself to finish the bar. Still Dagny moaned. And time crawled with no real passing at all. A man could believe endless day-night drifted by.
The need for being alert was a constant spur. Finally, I learned to press tightly against the claw wounds. The pain from that touch broke through the haze in my mind. Yet as time went on and on and I heard nothing from above, though I warned myself that it was still far too soon for a rescue party to arrive, I lost heart. Would Dinan see that they would come with the right equipment? Why had I not made plain our needs before he left? I should have given him definite orders, outlining our needs. I could not trust to Dinan to know—
In that, though, I was wrong, for when they did come, I found that he had wrought better than I expected. They had the climbing ropes we had used to bring Lugard down the ledges. And Thad came down to adjust a sling about Dagny, climbing beside her inert body as those above drew her aloft.
When I tried to move, I found I was so stiff and giddy that I could not help myself much, so I had to huddle where I was until Thad made the return journey and slipped the same looping over me. That pressed against my wounds, and I cried out until, with pushing and tugging, we got the support lower.
What I could do to aid myself, I did, but that seemed little enough, and I progressed so slowly that I thought they must find me as much of a burden as Lugard had been. At last I was over the lip and lying face down, which was agony against the wounds until somehow I managed to roll over.
They had brought one of the large beamers with them, and the wash of light from that was all about me, harsh and blinding in my eyes. So I closed them while hands searched out my wounds, pulling from them the rags I had used to stop the bleeding. I felt coolness, a blessed soothing on those painful cuts, and knew that they used plasta-heal from an aid kit. The relief was so great that it left me weak and shaking, but I opened my eyes to look at Annet and Thad. A little beyond, Gytha sat on the floor, Dagny lying across her lap, while Pritha wiped that loose, drooling mouth and tried to dribble water between the uncontrolled lips.
"Can you walk?" Annet asked slowly, spacing her words as if she had need to reach the understanding of someone not quite of her world.
It was not a matter of what I could do, I thought, but rather what I must. To burden them with my weight even on a level surface was impossible. Time was of the essence for Dagny. And, since they had tended my wounds, a certain amount of strength flowed back into my misused body.
What Thad and Annet steadying me, I got to my feet, though that was difficult. Once up again I found I could walk, waveringly, but I was sure I could make it.
"Take her"—I nodded to Dagny—"on. She needs attention."
Annet gathered the little girl out of her sister's hold. That even her loving care could do anything for Dagny now I doubted, but she would have the best Annet could give her I knew. Perhaps that and time would heal—unless we might get top-world to the real attention she needed, again always supposing that the port and its people still existed. Would the enemy war against a child—a sick child?
I found Gytha by my side. As she had done once for Lugard, she raised my good hand and put it on her shoulder, offering a support I did need. Of the rest of that journey I have only scanty memory until once more I awoke in the barracks.
This time the bunks around me were occupied with sleepers. Someone moaned, another muttered, both sounds born out of dreams. I felt cautiously across my body. My tunic was gone. My fingers slipped over the covering that healed and protected my wounds, and that light pressure raised no tingle of pain. We could thank such fortune as still smiled on us that medical supplies were at hand. I knew that under that coating I was well on the way to healthy scarring.
However, I was hungry, and that hunger moved me, so I crawled to hands and knees, eased up to my feet, and reached the mess section, leaving my blankets behind. There was a dusk here. The hut had been darkened for sleeping, but it was not the complete black of the caves. I could see the cook unit and the cans of ration and other supplies ranged on a shelf against the wall. I crossed to those.
Opening a ration tube bothered me. Though my wounds were better, I was still almost one-handed. So I twisted off the cap with my teeth and waited for the heat to be released in the contents. The stuff smelled so good that my mouth watered, and I did not wait for full heating but sucked it avidly.
"You—"
I turned at that exclamation and saw Annet in the doorway, a blanket draped around her shoulders. Her eyes looked puffy and her face haggard, and she was no longer a girl but a woman who had hard days and perhaps worse nights behind her.
"Dagny?"
She shook her head and came into the room, closing the door carefully behind her. Then, as one doing one thing but thinking about another, she swept one hand over a plate in the wall and the light became brighter.
"There's caff—on the unit," she said in a tired voice. "Press the button."
I put down the empty tube and did that, then picked up two mugs and set them on the table. She made no move to help me but sat down, putting both elbows on the table and resting her head on her hands.
"Perhaps—at the port—they can do something—" But she sounded very doubtful. "What about the passages, Vere?"
One-handed, I poured the caff into the mugs, surveyed her critically, and added to each two heaping spoonfuls of sweet cane crystals. And I stirred hers well before I put it down to deal with my own.
"Both stoppered. We haven't the equipment, or at least I haven't seen any yet, to open them."
She stared unseeingly before her, not noticing the mug or me. I felt a stir of concern. Her expression at that moment was far too near Dagny's withdrawal.
"I found something else, in the ice cave—"
"I know—the rod. Dinan showed it to us."
"It controls a force like a laser. Perhaps we can cut through. There is a river, also—"
"River," she repeated dully, and then with a spark of interest. "River?"
I sat down opposite her, grateful for having broken through her preoccupation. Between sips of caff, I told her of the fall of rock wall in the cave and the finding of the river.
"But with the rods you can burn a passage through one of the other tunnels," she observed, dropping her hand to the mug. "That's better than trying to follow a stream that leads you don't know where. And if you brought down the wall of the cave with that one, it ought to work in the passages as well."
I had to admit her logic was sound. Yet somehow my thoughts kept returning to that waterway, though I agreed to try the alien weapon or tool to burn our way out.
I did try, but to no purpose, for I discovered that, as with the laser we had found, it was a matter of power lack. I must have used all that remained in the ancient charge when I fought the monster in the ice cavern. When I tried it on the sealing of what seemed the better of the two blocked tunnels, it flared for several moments and then vanished. And all my working of its simple controls could not produce another spark, while the second one I had taken from the chest answered with only one quick burst. I made the trip back to the cache and brought out the other two, but neither responded in the least.
Whatever else was hidden behind that murky wall of ice was as well kept from us as if we had an ir-wall between. We could chip at the ice, and we tried. But the chill and the slowness of that labor showed us that was a task requiring more time than we had—for Dagny's sake.
With infinite care and effort, Annet managed to get enough food and water into the child to keep her alive. But beyond that she could do nothing. At last she agreed to try the river, since a return up the way we had come proved that at least one more cave-in had closed that path also.
By testing we discovered that the stream behind the wall was about waist deep, but the chill of the water, plus the fact it had a swift current, argued against wading. Under our beamers the liquid was so clear that you might step into it by mistake, thinking that some stone on its bottom was above the surface and not below it.
We drew on the supplies and set about constructing a raft that would ride high enough above the water to protect us and the packs we must take. In addition, we could make use of some pieces hacked free from the installations in the "missile" hut to serve as poles for guiding and for braking against too swift a forward sweep, while the climbing cords could provide anchors.
Of course there was always the dark chance that we might come to passages ahead completely water-filled. For that we had an answer in a roll of water-resistant plasta-cover, though whether it would make the raft and its passengers waterproof when carried under a surface, I could not be sure until we tried.
During our labors we lost all count of time. We ate, slept, and worked when we were hungry, tired, and refreshed. I forgot to check my watch, and the number of days we had been underground we could now only guess at. In fact, the very mention of that subject was apt to cause arguments, until, by Annet's suggestion, it was forbidden.
But at last we had the raft ready, which was as secure a method of transportation as all suggestions could make it, and we loaded it with supplies we would need for the trails above, if we were ever fated to reach the surface of Beltane again.
I counted heads in the bunks on our last night in the base. One was missing. Once more I made that silent roll call, this time using my forefinger to number each.
Gytha! But where—?
I had my bedroll by the door, but I had visited Annet in her curtained cubby to see if she needed aught for Dagny. Her sister could have slipped out then. Where? Surely after the adventure of the twins she was not trying exploration on her own!
No calling yet. No need to rouse the camp until I did some searching on my own. I slipped out to look about. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dark, and then I caught the faint glow of a belt torch as if radiating from some place among the rocks at the foot of the ledged cliff. With irritation at her recklessness, for we could never be sure, though we had found no more traces, that there were no more monsters in the caverns, I started after.
I planned to speak my mind sharply when I caught up with her, but as I saw where she stood, I paused. The shadows thrown by the debris were thick there until she went to work, for Gytha held in her hands one of the rods from the cache, its point to the cliff wall. From the point came a series of flashes, feeble indeed when compared to the blaze it had produced in my fight with the monster.
"Gytha!"
She turned her head, but she did not drop the rod. And there was a stubborn determination in her face, which at that moment clearly showed her kinship with Annet.
"You said these were no good for what you wanted," she returned defiantly, ready to justify her action. "But they'll work for this."
She was using the two rods, first one and then the other, to incise letters on the rock. Reading tapes have for so long been in use that manual writing had been almost forgotten. But on Beltane the lack of supplies had revived some of the ancient forms of record keeping, and Gytha had taken with enthusiasm to such learning.
"'Griss Lugard.'" She read what she had already set there. "'Friend'—It is true; he was our friend. He did the best for us that he knew. And I think he would like that said of him more than to list his rank or tell other things."
I took the rod from her, and why I did it, I cannot tell to this day, but below the rather shaky letters of her "Friend" I nursed every spark from that rod and the other to add five other letters.
Gytha read them one at a time as I set them into the rock.
"P—i—p—e—r—Piper. Oh, he would have liked that to linger in memory, too. It is just right, Vere! I couldn't go away and leave him without any marker at all!"
Romance learned from story tapes, some would have said. But I knew she was right, that this was what must be done. And I was glad she had thought of it. As a fitting finish I thrust both of the now exhausted rods into crevices of the pile so they stood upright, staffs without pennons, markers that perhaps no living creature would see again but that we would remember down the years.
As none had marked our going, so none witnessed our return. Nor did we mention it again, even to each other, but went directly to bed.
In the "morning," if morning it was above the layers of rock and soil between us and the open, we made a last check of our kits. We had drawn on the supplies Lugard and the earlier sojourners here had left. I now wore a Service tunic from which I had stripped rank badges that had no meaning. The one that fitted me best had carried a captain's shooting star, and I wondered who had left it here and what had happened to him on or between other worlds.
We made the descent into the ice cavern easily enough, having done with Dagny as we did earlier with Lugard, immobilized her in blankets and an outside wrapping of plasta that would protect her once we were afloat.
We had left the raft by the broken wall, and on it were already lashed the heavier of our packs. It cost effort to launch it and then hold it steady for embarkation. When I got aboard and loosed one of the hooked lines while Thad threw off the other, I had a moment of faint-heartedness and apprehension concerning the unknown that might lie ahead, wondering if we had chosen the best solution after all. Yet I also knew that we dared waste no more time if we would save Dagny.
Luckily, the current was not as swift as I thought, just strong enough to carry us along. One of the big beamers had been mounted on the prow (if a raft can be said to have a prow) so we would have a warning of dangers ahead. And Thad and I took the poles on either side to ward off any swing against the walls. The air remained cold, but as we were pulled away from the ice cave, it grew less frosty and finally became more like the temperature of the camp cave.
I turned to my watch again as a check upon our passage. We had left at twelve, but whether that marked midnight or noon I had no idea. By fifteen hours we were still in passage, and while once or twice the roof had closed over us so that we had to lie on the raft's surface, we had not had any real trouble.
We were ten hours on that voyage, and I had no way of figuring how far the waters took us. But suddenly Emrys cried out and pointed up, his hand outlined against the back rays of the beamer—
"A star!"
At the same moment the beamer showed us a bush that certainly could not have grown underground, though we still passed between rock walls. We were aware then of fresher air to fill our lungs, not conscious of the underground taint of what we had been breathing until it was gone. So we were out of the caves, but since it was night, we had no idea of where we were.
I crawled forward and loosed the beamer so that I could swing it a little from right to left. Bushes, but they were small and stunted-looking. Rocks, among them pieces of drift that argued that at times the river must run higher here than it did at present.
Then the canyon, or whatever it was in which we floated, widened out, and a long spit of sand ran out into the water. The raft made one of its half turns, since Thad was alone at the pole, and grounded against that sand bar with a thump that rocked us all. I swept the beamer to pick up a sandy beach with tufts of coarse grass growing farther up. A good-enough refuge to hold us until daylight. I said as much, and the rest agreed.
We were stiff and cramped from the voyage. Thad and I fared the best because of our employment at the poles. We tumbled out onto the sand bar, and then all turned to drag our craft out of the pull of the current until we could be sure that it would not be tugged away, leaving us marooned.
So we made camp, and then I looked at the compass that had been among the supplies. The second map showed nothing of the river. That must have been hidden from the mapper. But according to the compass, we had come southwest—which meant we must be over the mountains, in the general direction of the large Reserves. This was all wilderness if I was right. But there were the Ranger stations, and if I could sight some known landmarks in the morning, I thought we might find one of those. Even to be out under the stars gave me such a feeling of relief that I suddenly had no doubts that all would go better from now on.
We ate and unrolled our beds. Fatigue settled down as might another blanket. I put Thad at one end of the camp, with his stunner to hand, while I took the other. I did not think that either of us was in shape to play sentry, but we must do the best we could.
Sound woke me. A loud squawk was repeated. I opened my eyes to sunlight, blinked, and saw a bird walk into water and the river close over its head. A guskaw! We might have alarmed it by our presence here, but the fact that I saw it at all meant we were in the wilderness. I sat up to look around.
None of the other blanketed bundles stirred. It was quite early morning, the light grayish, and we were in a canyon. I looked back the way we had come and saw my landmark, one large enough indeed. Whitecone, a former volcano that now wore a perpetual tip of snow. So we had come over the mountains by underground ways.
With Whitecone in that direction, this must be the Redwater, though the clear stream lapping the sand only a couple of arms' lengths away had none of the characteristic crimson tinge it wore in the Reserve. I knew of no other body of water as large in this direction, and since my ambition had been to be a Ranger here, I had pored over aerial survey maps of this area.
If this was the Redwater, and I was sure it was, we need only continue our voyage and we would reach the bridge on the Reserve road. Then Anlav headquarters was only a short distance north from the bridge. I gave a sigh of relief. It was good—almost as good as sighting the com tower of Kynvet.
I set about getting breakfast, using the portable cook unit. Warm food would mark our triumph over the dark and the caves. One by one the others roused, as eager to press on as I now was. There would be a flitter at the station. If we could not all crowd into that, why Annet could take Dagny and as many others as possible, and the rest of us could wait on a second trip. My plans spun ahead, and then I remembered. We might have come out of darkness into light, but what had been happening here? It could be that we were no safer really than we had been at the cave camp.
So I warned them that we must move warily still. I did not think they all agreed with me, however, and I made it plain by an order, though whether I could enforce that I did not know.
"We do not know what has happened. For our own safety we must be sure just who or what we face. There is a chance that any trouble at the port or the settlements would not have reached here. I hope we can get help at the Anlav headquarters. There will be a com there, and with it we can learn more. But we must go carefully."
Some of them nodded. I had expected a protest from Annet, but that did not come. Then she gave the ghost of a smile and said, "Well enough. To that I agree. But the sooner we do find out, the better."
I had wondered at her change of position. Had she at last, to herself, admitted that Lugard had been telling the truth and that we returned to danger and not to aid and comfort? But I had no opportunity to ask her.
Once more we floated the raft and repacked it. But here the current was not enough, and Thad and I stood and poled until we grew too tired to push. Then Annet handed Dagny to Pritha, and she and Gytha took my place, Emrys and Sabian, Thad's. In spite of doing the best that we could, dark came and we still had not reached the bridge. The river, now running between banks of red soil, had taken on the color that made it a proper landmark.
Once more we camped, rose with the dawn, and bent to the poles. It was midmorning when the bridge came into sight. We forced the raft ashore, made a cache of most of its cargo, and took only trail supplies. Gytha, Annet, Dagny, Ifors, Dinan, and Pritha settled into hiding at the end of the bridge where there was a good cover of brush, and three of us went on, Sabian taking sentry go at the other end of the span.
There were no marks of any recent traffic on the road. Ground cars were in general use here. Hoppers too often frightened the animals. And there had been a recent storm, which had left patches of red mud drying and cracking under the hot midday sun. No marks across that, save here and there a paw or hoof print where some creature had gone.
That unmarked road was disturbing, and I found myself drawing my stunner—the one that had been Annet's—looking from right to left and back again as if I feared sudden attack from the walls of brush.