4 
4
Snow cascaded through the opening to engulf him. Now he could hear the scream of wind through the broken fangs of the peaks, a shriek of ravening hunger. He fought the snow with his hands, kicked his way out, until he sat on the side of the half-buried jumper.
It had been evening when he loaded that machine back at the road station. Now the sky was gray, he judged the hour early morning. The jumper had been jammed by a slide into a narrow valley, he could sight the scars of its passage down the mountain.
Joktar set to work digging, laboring to uncover the driver’s compartment. A half-hour later, breathing hard, he had that wreckage clear. The driver and the guard might have died before the fall, for it was plain from the evidence that the jumper had been first smashed by the wing of an avalanche. From the dead he must take the means of keeping himself alive.
The sun was up, awaking glitter on the snow field, when Joktar inventoried his new wealth, reckoning his supplies as weapons in his fight for survival and freedom.
Over his thermo suit he now wore furs, the coat a little large, as were the warmly lined boots that reached to mid-thigh. The driver’s blaster had been crushed, but the guard’s weapon was now belted around him. He had found the emergency rations, eaten a full meal. And now he set about making up a pack of necessities, a force axe, food, a map ripped from the stereo-case of the vehicle.
Among the cargo, there must be other things he could use, but the amount he could pack was strictly limited. Maybe, after he explored and found a base to hole up in, he could return and loot again, if the rescue force from the company had not located the wreck.
Joktar’s efforts had kept his mind fully occupied. Only when he had his pack assembled and stood up to search for the best path out of the valley did the full force of his present loneliness strike. In spite of his lack of any close friends on the streets, Joktar had never before been totally removed from the physical presence of human beings. In the pens of the E-station, aboard the jumper, there had always been others, even if he had known them to be inimical.
Now he stood alone, buffeted by a moaning wind. To hunt out his own kind was to choose to return to the very imprisonment he fled. He had to face this as he had always faced any danger, with a core of stubborn determination based upon every ounce of will. With Fenris’ wolf’s breath at his back, he plunged into the drifts of the valley.
But he was not through the end notch before he began to doubt the wisdom of his course. The sun, shining when he left the wreck, was covered now by a mass of clouds, driving the darkness of twilight down upon the half-buried landscape. Storm! And the horror stories of the port were warning that he must find shelter.
Joktar rounded a mass of boulders imbedded in frozen earth and snow, the debris of an earlier avalanche. Something now showed through the murk, a line of smoke whipped by the wind. His mittened hand went to his blaster, holding the weapon against the thick fur of his new coat. Did that smoke mark another hole? But he was no longer unarmed, and he had to find cover. Joktar floundered on towards that tenuous beacon.
Only no dome showed above the drifts, nothing to suggest any human camp site. And the wind puffed to him a smell ripe with rottenness that lacerated the inner lining of his nostrils and throat. Joktar retched and coughed. Some of that reek had been filtered by his face mask, but he was still sickened by it.
Now he knew how wrong he had been in his guess about the smoke’s source. Instead of a human outpost, he had been steadily approaching one of the major perils of Fenris, a poisonous hot spring where the melting snow seeped through porous rock to issue forth again as lethal steam. Men and animals, trapped in such country while seeking warmth, ended as piles of bones to warn off their kind.
Joktar collapsed in the snow as another coughing bout racked him. He tore off his mask, rubbed the white stuff he snatched up in both hands across his gasping mouth. Still on his hands and knees, he crawled away from that whipping banner of steam, plowing head first into a mat of spongelike brush, the very impetus of his charge carrying him over the initial rubbery resistance.
So he tumbled head first into a deep crease in the floor of the valley. Brush snapped back over his head, roofing out the snow and most of the fury of the wind. After some moments he realized that by blind chance alone he had found the shelter he needed as the storm hit with a hammer blow.
The wild rage overhead was deafening, beating out coherent thought, the power to do anything except endure for the length of the fury. Joktar squirmed against the hard earth, drew up his legs and arms into the loose folds of his outer furs, rolling ballwise. The shriek of the wind began a throb in his head, a beat in his blood. This was beyond anything he had ever known, and at last he retreated numbly into unconsciousness.
His rousing was as dazed as the process of revival at the port. He stretched cramped limbs, felt the pain of renewed circulation. And he had no idea that he was the first man since the Terrans had landed on Fenris to survive a blanket storm in the open. A subconscious will to live continued to direct his struggles. In spite of the brush roof, a quantity of snow had drifted around him and he beat free of this covering.
Sitting up in the hollow the twisting and turning of his body had made, Joktar fumbled with his pack, found food in the form of a self-heating can of stew. The top fell from his shaking fingers, some of the contents slopped across the back of his hand. But he ate, and the warmth of that specially prepared nourishment soothed mouth and throat, gathered comfortably in his middle. He had resolution enough to cap the container before he finished the ration. Then, as he chewed on a wafer of concentrates, he hunted for a thin section in the brush wall. The howl of the wind had died, only the rustle of his furs, and the creak of snow under him could be heard.
To break through the brush was so difficult he was tempted to use his blaster as a cutter. Only the knowledge that he did not have an extra charge was a deterrent, and the same was true for the force axe which must provide him with a reserve weapon. A last bull’s rush, his arms protectively over his face, carried him out.
Overhead the sky was gray, but there were no thick clouds. He could see with sharp clarity the barriers of cliff walls making a girdle about the valley. Believing it must be close to evening he began a hunt for better shelter.
Underfoot the snow creaked. The eerie stillness was somehow more nerve-twisting than the onslaught of the storm. He was one small living thing in that white cup where only the poisonous flag of steam waved. And that quiet brought down on him once more the sensation of loneliness. Were there no birds, no animals, nothing else alive here?
The temptation to return to the wreck pulled at him so strongly that he started back. As he gained the foot of the break leading into the smaller valley sound rent the air, a rumble as of thunder, magnified and echoed from the peaks.
Out of the narrow cut he had been about to enter, puffed a cloud of white as the roar died away. Avalanche! Another snow slide that built in seconds a wall between him and the jumper.
Shaking his head dazedly, Joktar retreated down valley, no goal in mind now. There was the brush masked cut, but he wanted no more of that. His head ached, his snow-caked boots and coat weighed him down. He headed for the cliff to his left.
Another rumble back in the peaks. Tons of snow and earth must have cascaded down that time. Perhaps the jumper was now completely buried. He was sobbing a little as he wavered along, reeling against a pinnacle of rock half-detached from the parent cliff. Steadying himself with one hand, Joktar blinked at what that stone sentry guarded, a black break in the wall. Maybe it was a cave!
The Terran lurched toward the pocket of dark, his free hand out to it in a gesture close to supplication, his other gripping the blaster. And because he had that weapon ready, he did not die.
For, without any sound of warning, hideous death launched from the cave, aiming for his head and shoulders. Sheer instinct brought the barrel of his blaster up, set his finger to the firing button, as a slavering weight bowled him back through a crusted reef of snow.
Claws caught and tore with convulsive jerks at the loose folds of fur, and the excess material protecting his body. For the thing which attacked him was dead before they hit the ground together, the stench of its burned fur and scorched flesh marking the success of his blaster bolt. He lay under the weight of the beast, too shaken to struggle free, hardly daring to believe that he was not seriously injured.
When he did throw off the mangled carcass, he examined it. This was no “lamby,” the evil-tempered ruminant which was certainly no “lamb” to its hunters, though its fine, velvety fur with the tightly curled overcoat was accepted as legal tender on Fenris. This fur was not lamby; where it was still unblackened, it was white with an undercoat of faint blue, a perfect match in shade to the snow drifts. There were no hooves, but large paws on all four limbs, which were heavily furred and had retractable claws. The width of those feet suggested their owner could prowl over crusts that another might break through. The head was wide, showing a double row of fangs; the mark of a meat eater. And above that blunt muzzle were set two oversized eyes which Joktar studied closely.
They did not resemble any proper animal eyes he had known, for the balls were collections of myriad lenses, each equipped with a minute lid of its own; some were now closed, others wide open, as if the beast could use all or just a fraction of its seeing apparatus, as it pleased. And in contrast to the size of the eyes, the ears were unusually small and well-hidden in the thick fur. A cat, or a bear? Anyway it was sudden death on four feet.
Joktar stood up, trying to pull his tattered fur coat into place. The rank smell of the creature filled the air. With caution he approached the hole from which it had sprung to attack. Dropping to one knee, he snapped the blaster on to a wave pattern and aimed it into the cave. There was an answering puff of fire, from the bedding of the beast he discovered when he at last crawled in to kick out the noisome smoldering mass.
Using his belt knife, he tore at the brush for firewood, dragging a mound of the stuff back to the cave. The scorched smell still hung about the stiffening carcass of the cat-bear, but now he no longer found that odor revolting. Instead he turned upon the body, knife in hand.
Hacking off the loose hide he found a layer of yellow fat and haggled that free in chunks, his untutored butchery a messy job. But Joktar got what he wanted, fresh meat, which appealed to him more than the concentrates and scientifically balanced rations of the emergency supplies.
The chunks of meat he spitted and tried to roast were charred rather than cooked, but he chewed them down avidly. The animal’s fat answered some inner craving and he gorged on it. Washing his hands and face with snow, he huddled back into the cave to total up assets and debits with the cool caution born of his past employment at the gaming tables.
He was alive, in spite of some narrow escapes. He was armed, though he would have to conserve the voltage clip of the blaster. There were the supplies he had looted from the jumper. Also, the map.
Joktar unfolded that in the flickering light of the fire. The thick mark, curling between wavering lines which must represent mountains, could be the road from the spaceport to the mines. And the smaller, dotted lines should be trails to the holes. A red cross on one suggested it was the outpost where he had unloaded cargo. But he could not be sure. There was a second red cross, only they had never reached this second stop on their trip. Perhaps somewhere between those two marks the jumper had gone over the cliff. He shrugged, this was all just guessing.
The glaring truth which he had to face was that there could be no shelter on Fenris for off-worlders except at the port or the mines. And if he ventured into either he would betray himself. Yet he was also sure he could not continue to live off the country.
Suppose he struck due west to the main road. But, he could only follow that to Siwaki and there a newcomer in a small community would be a marked man. The port, the mines, the road stations—all traps for the escapee. But what about the prospectors’ holes? He was handicapped by his lack of knowledge. How many men to a hole? How often were they visited by supply jumpers? What form of communication with the mines did they have? And could he even hope to locate one of them in this white wilderness?
As he curled up behind his barrier of fire, Joktar knew a certain renewal of confidence, perhaps induced by his full stomach and the fact that so far he had managed to beat the odds. There was tomorrow in which to act, and he was still alive.
The night was not quiet, for the half-butchered carcass proved bait for other inhabitants of Fenris. There were weird cries of protest and warning, snarls of battle, eyes gleaming across the flames at him. At last he sat up, blaster on his knee, straining his eyes in an effort to make out the forms he sensed waited out there for his fire to die.
When the morning dawned the calm held, not even a cat’s paw of wind dabbed across the snow dunes. Joktar shrugged on his pack and tried to pick out a goal. The jumper lay to the north, at least he believed that the choked valley which held its wreckage lay to the north. He began to walk in that direction.
The banners of poisonous steam ascended unruffled, marking a stretch of bare rock mottled with yellowish encrustations. But his path away from there was not easy. The snow had been sculptured into banks as desert sand is driven into dunes, each bank given a knife-sharp coating. To venture would leave him thigh- or waist-deep in soft snow. So he wove a trail back and forth.
In all the white immensity, he was the only moving creature. No bird quartered the sky, and if any animal skulked there, Joktar could not spot it. Loneliness ate into him and he redoubled his struggles to reach the cliffs. Right beyond a single barrier might lie the road which the jumper had traveled.
He paused, fought for control. To venture further down that path of thought was to end pounding at the door of some mine dome begging to be taken into its slave gang! More than just the active horrors the emigrants had been shown at the port might keep a man fast in bondage, the stark emptiness of Fenris itself worked for the companies.
Joktar reached the cliffs, squatted in the lee of a boulder to eat of the fat he had seared in his morning fire; he followed those greasy mouthfuls with a concentrate tablet. Weariness weighed on him like an extra pack on his shoulders, but his determination to keep going set him to climbing.
He dragged himself up on a plateau where the wind had swept away the snow which so encumbered the valley. To reach the other edge of that table land and see the new valley below was relatively easy. There was one thing about this snow-buried country, when the wind was dead there was no way to hide a trail. And below he could see one.
Trees here were much taller than the stunted brush which had sheltered him from the storm. And into a grove of them wound that trail, coming out again and striking off at right angles.
Those tracks drew Joktar. He fought, he crawled, he staggered on until he reached those two smoothly packed strips which hinted at a vehicle of some kind, the spoor running between them which might mark a man’s passing. He trailed it among the trees, out into the open, turned northward again toward the crags.
The pale sun was well-down, evening was closing in. Joktar tried to quicken pace. The tracks led into another narrow valley. He guessed that he was perilously near the end of his strength. His body ached, his breath came in sharp, panting gasps and the snow slope before him dimmed and brightened in rhythm to the pounding of his heart.
Lurching from side to side, unable to keep his feet, he crashed against a wall, clung there, staring blearily ahead. This trail could have been made any time since the end of the last storm, the traveler could be a day or more ahead.
Here was no cave, but he hollowed out a small burrow in the shelter of a bush and choked down food. Tonight he must sleep. And once more rolled into a ball, Joktar met the cold and the dark as he had met the fury of the storm.
Sound broke the silence of the mountains. Joktar started up. But that had been no roar of avalanche. He blinked at sun on the snow, stirred sluggishly. What had awakened him? A man’s shout? An animal cry?
He hunted for food, realized that his supplies were now low. The last can of self-heating stew had been finished the night before. Now the trail in the snow was his only hope of being guided to shelter or more food. Once more he shambled into the open, and began to trudge on.
A new fear arose to haunt his mind. What if he were traveling in the wrong direction? Had the traveler been bound the other way? He could not backtrack now, only trust that he had chosen rightly. His shamble became a wavering trot. Rounding a bend in the valley wall he came upon the unmistakable evidence of a camp.
The stranger had sheltered better than he; a windbreak of boulders had charred sticks of a fire laid before it. Joktar drew off his mitten, poked his fingers into that ashy pile. One fear dissolved, warmth still clung there. He had a blaster, was equipped to fight for what he had to have. Now all that mattered was catching up with the other.
Doggedly the Terran cut down his pace to preserve his strength. But time wore on and he could see no signs of his gaining on the other. A noon-time camp and he squatted in the same spot hours later, wondering if he could make contact before nightfall.
The day was graying into dusk when the valley became a narrow slit, a gate way.
“Arrrh . . .”
That was certainly no human word, echoing hollowly like a beast’s roar between the walls. The sound stopped Joktar short. He reached for his blaster, memories of the cat-bear well to the fore.
No animal erupted from a pool of shadow to attack. Instead he caught another noise, the sharp, unforgettable crack of a blaster bolt. Six feet ahead a boulder smoked, the stone blackened by that stroke of man-made lightning.
There was no mistaking the warning in that. Joktar threw himself to the left, skidded painfully across the bare gravel which floored the cut, brought up against the cliff, an altogether too small pile of stones providing him with very inadequate refuge.
“You, get out!”
That voice was certainly human, the words Terran, and the order clear. But Joktar, instead of obeying, dug his mittens into the gravel and flattened himself as well as he could.