The bared blade lay across his knee, his good hand resting ready on its hilt. Naill sat quietly. Outside the vegetation-filled cut, the land was baking hot under a blazing sun. But here, within the trunk of the petrified tree, he could see. And always there was hearing to depend upon for warning. Ashla slept now, curled on her side, droplets of sweat gathering on her forehead. For if the eye-blinding glare of the sunlight did not reach here, the heat it generated did.
He had nothing to do but listen and stare out at the stretch of gully. Where the sun reached in splotches, the thick, fleshy growths opened, flattened out their leaves, ate. Naill watched insects, small creeping things, blunder onto those leaves, stick fast, be slowly absorbed into the unwholesome surfaces. This was a place alien to man in its very nature.
The country of the forest had been closed to the settlers, feared and hated by them, but home to the Iftin. This was a land closed to all life, save that which had been conquered—or had bargained and accepted the Enemy's terms. To Naill's eyes it was dead or dying. But that was not the truth. No, the life of the waste was merely frighteningly different.
Ayyar had given him hunter's ears, a forester's sixth sense. Now Naill was conscious of a stir, a kind of awareness. Then he caught a clicking, regular—faint at first, then louder, then fainter again. As if something had passed along the upper rim of the gully, something that had no reason to slink, or creep—something patrolling on sentry go.
Perhaps he was allowing his imagination too free rein. Yet Naill's senses were as certain of that as if he actually watched the thing pass there. The fugitives were to be kept in the pocket until—? That "until" might mean many things—an attack in force, a break on their part, the coming of higher authority.
Ayyar memory supplied Naill with no picture to match that clicking pace. It was louder again, coming now from the other lip of the ravine. Either the sentry was making a circuit of the gully—or there were two of them.
The wise thing might be to break cover while there was only one sentry—or pair of sentries. But neither of the fugitives dared try that. They would be blinded by the sun, unable to either fight or run. Some flying thing was gliding down to skim just above the growth in the gully.
Hoorurr? Naill, for an instant of time, held a very forlorn scrap of hope and so was tricked into a half betrayal. He tried thought-contact with that flyer. And in return met a force so outside his comprehension that it was a monstrous blow, hurling him back against the curve of the tree-trunk wall. Not a flying thing, he thought groggily, but an intelligence, and entity using a smaller and weaker thing to discover—him!
"No!" Perhaps Naill screamed that; he could not tell—perhaps he only resisted that invasion, with mind alone. But he was no longer in the tree. He was out in a space he could not have described in any words he knew—confronting a being, or an intelligence, that had no form, only force and alien purpose, a being to which he and his kind were an enigma to be discarded because they did not fit the pattern the being created.
And it was the very fact of that alienness that was Naill's shield of defense now. For he sensed that there was something in him that baffled the enemy, struck into the very heart of that overwhelming confidence.
"Ky-Kyc!" The old battle cry was on Naill's lips.
"Naill!"
His head was against the petrified wood. Ashla's hands rested on his shoulders. Her eyes held to his as if by the power of that intent gaze alone she had pulled him back from the place where he had faced the Enemy.
"It stirs! It knows!" Her features were set, stern. For a long moment her gaze continued to hold his as if she thus searched into his mind, seeking some thought, some feeling that should not be within him. Then her head moved in a small nod.
"The old truth stands! That may kill, but it cannot break us—even when one is Naill-Ayyar instead of true Ayyar."
And he answered strangely, out of thought that was not yet clear. "Perhaps because of Naill-Ayyar, not in spite of Naill."
She caught his confused meaning. "If so—that is well. Made to lose old knowledge, we should gain some measure of return. But now . . . that knows of us!"
Naill edged along the trunk's interior. He did not know whether he could sight either of those sentries—that which clicked, or that which flew. Ashla lifted a hand in warning, pointing up.
The winged scout or spy was still above and now it gave voice. Not with the carrying hoot or beak-snapping of the quarrin, but in a long, shuddering wail, more suitable for stormy skies and high winds than for the sunlight of open day. And—across a piece of open sky—Naill saw it fly. Saw—what? He was not sure. The light was too strong for his eyes. And that thing could almost be a drift of cloud. He only knew it was glittering white and its form hard to distinguish.
"Not a bird . . . I think." He qualified his first guess.
"It is a Watcher and a Seeker . . . " Ashla brushed the back of her hand across her forehead. "Always only bits of what should be known. In itself it is not to be feared—only that it is an extension of That Other. . . . "
"Listen!" Naill shaped the word with his lips, afraid that even a threat of whisper could reach the sentry. The clicking—from the opposite side of the gully. . . . He eyed the brush about the mouth of the tree trunk, measured the distances and the height of the growths, before he began to tug at the lashing that fastened his injured arm across his chest.
Ashla would have protested, but he signed what he would try and she loosened the tough ties of grass, leaving his arm free. Naill began to squirm a few inches at a time into the open, out of the protecting hollow of the tree.
No clicking now—the sentry had passed, was at the farther end of the gully. But Naill had discovered his spy post, was belly-flat at a point from which he could see a small portion of the rim. And now—that click was returning. Slowly Naill pulled down a straggling branch to form a screen between him and the patroller. With his green skin, his clothing meant to be camouflage in the forest, he believed he did not have to fear detection from above as long as he remained quiet.
It came into view and Naill stared unbelievingly. This was no monster from Janusan past, no alien nightmare. It was something he had seen before—many times! And yet, when his first bewilderment had vanished, he was conscious of small details that were wrong. Before he could count to ten the sentry had vanished past Naill's vision point.
A space-suited off-worlder—walking with the jerky gait of anyone enclosed in the cumbersome covering, the clicking sound coming from the magnetic plates set in the boot soles—an off-worlder in the common rig from any star ship. And yet there were differences about that suit. The whole thing was heavier, with more bulk. And the helmet had the Fors-Genild hump at the back of the neck. The Fors-Genild had been replaced years ago. Naill tried to remember back to the days when he had had free range of his father's ship. They had had Hammackers on every suit. Why, you only saw the Fors-Genilds now in museum collections of outmoded equipment. That suit could be a hundred years old!
He had to be sure—know that this was not some hallucination induced by the sun and his own faulty day-sight. Naill remained where he was, listening eagerly for the return click of those boots on the rock, thinking furiously. Why would the patroller be wearing a space suit on a planet where all conditions were favorable for his life form—because that was the suit of a Terran, or Terran-descended, explorer.
Click—click. . . . Naill raised his head as far as he could without moving out from behind his brush screen. Fors-Genild all right! And now that his attention was drawn to that anachronism, he spotted others. The suit was old! No modern planet hopper, no matter how out of funds, would entrust his life to a suit from that far in the past. Why, he would not be able to service it, perhaps not even be able to operate some of its archaic equipment.
Which meant . . . ?
Chilled inside in spite of the heat that reached him, Naill waited until those clicks grew fainter and then wriggled back into the tree trunk.
"What is it?" Ashla asked.
Naill hesitated. Oddly enough, he could accept in part that flying thing which was the tool of a reaching alien intelligence. He could accept his own physical change, the presence of Ayyar memory to share his mind, better than he could accept the fact that a hundred-year-old space suit was methodically tramping about the edge of a gully in this wasteland. Was it because the powers of the Iftin were alien and so could be accepted as a believing child could accept the wonders of an old tale—while science was represented by that marching suit—an object which was concrete and did not deal with memories or emotions but with stark fact—and here that fact was . . . wrong?
The suit marched—but what marched inside it? Naill had not been able from where he lay to distinguish any features behind the faceplate of the helmet. All at once he had an odd and completely disturbing vision of an unoccupied suit, animated by what could not be seen or felt, but which obeyed as the flying thing had obeyed.
"What is it?" Ashla crept to his side, her hand on his good shoulder. "What did you see?"
"A space suit—marching." Naill supplied the truth.
"A space suit. . . . Who?"
Naill shook his head. "What?" he corrected. "It is an old suit, very old."
"Old? They reported once that a hunting party from the port had been lost. . . ."
"Old. No hunter would wear a space suit, no crewman would have to wear one on Janus. This is an Arth planet, entirely suitable for Terran-descended life forms."
"I do not understand."
"I do—in part," Naill told her. "That which is here . . . has another servant—once off-world, but now his . . . or its."
"In two hours the sun will be gone." Ashla looked out of the tree trunk, measuring the planet shadows as they lay on the ground. "In the dusk we shall be the favored ones. That suit—it will be clumsy. What wears it cannot move fast across broken ground."
"True." Naill had already made that deduction. But he knew something else—that there was an arms belt about that stalking figure. If not a blaster, it wore tools that could be used as weapons. And he told her so.
"It is very old. Would the charges in the seamer, in the coilcut, still be active?"
Again Naill was surprised by her familiarity with off-world machines and tools.
"I was at the port for a double handful of days after my mother died. There was much to see—to keep one from thinking," she said, answering his unspoken question. "There was no one there to say such learning was evil."
"You had always this liking for worldly knowledge?"
"After the port—yes. Just as I wanted to know more of the forest—not to destroy, as was garth way, but to know it as it is, free and tall and beautiful. Before I was Illylle I had such longings. But that has nothing to do with this space suit and what it may do. I do not believe we can outwait it here."
"No." Naill had already determined that. "Our water is gone, and food. We move with darkness. And perhaps we can do it in this fashion. The gully is long and narrow, running roughly northeast by southwest—or so I remember it when we came in, though I was not too clearheaded." He made a question of that and she closed her eyes, as if better to visualize the territory.
"You are right. And the other end is very narrow—like a sword blade pointed so." She sketched with her fingers.
"If that narrow end can be climbed, it is our best try for a way out. The suit marches at a regular pace. We must creep under cover down the ravine as soon as the dusk is heavy enough, wait for it to be at this end, and then make our break to the west, using every shadow we can for cover."
"There are many chances in that."
"We take them, or sit here until we die or they dig us out like Jamob rats!" Naill snapped.
To his surprise Ashla laughed softly. "Ho, warrior, I do not question the rightness of your plan—for to my mind also it is the only one. But have we the fleetness of foot, the skill in hide-and-seek to bring us out of here?"
"That we shall see." For all his hopes, that statement did not sound as hearty as he wished. And as the long minutes crawled by while they waited for the coming of dusk, Naill experienced first a crowding impatience, and then a growing sense of the utter folly of what they must attempt. By counting his pulse beats he could gauge the pace of the space-suited sentry, judge how long it took the patroller to make the circuit of their ravine. Ashla lay down again, her head pillowed on her arm. Naill wondered, with a small amazement, if she were able to sleep now.
The sunshine could not last forever. Shadows grew, met, spun webs across the valley. And still the click-click of that patrol sounded regularly. At length Naill gave the girl a small shake so she looked up at him.
"We go. But keep down, well under the bushes. And do not touch any plants if you can help."
"You mean the eaters. Yes, I have seen what they do. But they are closing with the dark. Take care of your arm. Shall I re-sling it for you?"
"No, it is better at my side if we must crawl. Now—keep behind me and do not move the brush if you can help it."
It was one of those periods when every minute spun into an hour of listening, of movement kept agonizingly to a minimum. Naill longed to get to his feet, to run for the sword-point end of the valley in leaping bounds, yet he must make a lizard's sly passage. They cowered together, halfway down the length of their way, as the suit stamped by above. And again when only a quarter of their journey still lay ahead, as it passed on the other side.
Then they reached the point, facing a narrow crevice. Ten feet above—maybe a little more—the open rock of the waste plain would lie open. To get straight back to the river would mean passing the patroller in the open, and that Naill dared not try unless he was left no other choice.
"Now!" He started up the crevice, praying no slide would start from the clutch of his fingers, the dig of his booted toes. He pulled himself up, supported and steadied by the girl below. Then he lay across the rim and reached down with his good arm to assist her in turn.
They could see the sentry almost halfway down the right side of its return journey.
"To the left!" Thankfully Naill sighted an inky blot of shadow cast by a standing spar of rock.
It was the sword that betrayed them. Naill had set it back into the sheath before he climbed. But now, as he moved, weapon and scabbard scraped the stone and the noise was loud.
"Quick!" Ashla caught at him, pulled him on. "Oh, please—quick!"
Somehow they made it, to sprawl into that patch of dark. But the regular click-click of the space boots had become a rat-tat. Then—silence. Was the patroller readying one of the weapon tools from its suit belt? Would a lash of flame, meant to seal a break of ship skin, cut across their rock as a herdsman would use a stock whip to snap straying animals back to the herd?
"Ayyar—behind you!"
Naill twisted about.
No space suit marched from that side. These were pallid, leaping, moving things—resembling the hounds of the garths and yet unlike. For the hounds were animals, and their kind had long been subservient and known by mankind. While these were of another breed, outside all natural laws Naill understood.
"The Larsh wytes!"
Now Ayyar remembered—remembered such packs, hunting among the trees of Iftcan. That had been an ill hunting but one he had faced, sword ready, as he did now.
A narrow head with eyes that were sparks of sun, blasting yellow, snapped at him and he swung at it, to cleave skull, tumble the pack leader back among its fellows. There was no time to choose his next kill for bared teeth were reaching for his throat. Naill stabbed upwards, saw another of the wytes fall.
"Behind me!" he ordered Ashla.
"Not so! I, too, hunt wytes this night!" he heard her cry in return. He saw her use the long hunting knife to cover them from a rush on the left.
Their surprise attack a costly failure, the pack withdrew a little. One at the rear raised its head to voice a long howl. From the dark sky came an answer . . . the cry of the flying thing which had earlier hung above the gully. And then, while the wytes held them fast to their rock spire, the suited sentry strode into view.
They were strange partners, the wytes and the metal-enclosed unknown. But the wytes accepted the suited figure as their leader, drawing aside to let it pass. It stalked into a space directly before the fugitives and stood there. Naill tried desperately to see the face behind the helmet plate. The once-clear surface of that section was fogged, webbed by a maze of fine cracks and lines, completely masking its wearer.
"Watch—oh, watch!"
But no warning could have saved them, Naill knew. The early suit might be clumsy according to modern standards. But it had been of the best engineering and design of its time, equipped for dangerous and demanding duty. Once that small object now spinning at them had been set and dispatched on its arc, nothing short of a blaster would deter it from completing its mission.
They were not going to be flamed out of existence. They were to be the helpless captives of what wore that suit, hid behind the cracked faceplate—or its master!