instant before.
But Corriston knew that it was a common enough occurrence, not to be in any way coincidental. No one who slept in the desert for any length of time could hope to avoid an attack if he failed to take the necessary precautions. And even with precautions the death toll was high; almost as high, perhaps, as cobra fatalities in India.
Corriston turned abruptly, his lips white. “If a man is attacked by just one lamprene, and it’s pulled off quickly, how much chance has he?”.
It was Drever who answered him. “Not much, I’m afraid. The poison gets into the blood stream and acts quickly. You can’t get it out with a suction disk the way you sometimes can with a snake bite. It’s a nerve poison and it spreads very fast. And there’s no way of neutralizing it, no serum injection that does any good. Of course, there have been a few recoveries”.
Corriston swung about and stared out across the desert again. The two colonists had reached the stricken man now and were attempting to tear the lamprene — or lamprenes — from his flesh. They were bending over him, and it was hard to tell for a moment whether they were succeeding or not. Then, abruptly, one of them rose and made a despairing gesture, unmistakable even from a distance of five hundred feet.
The next few minutes were like a nightmare that has no clear beginning or end. They brought the man back and laid him down on the sand. The man was Stone.
It was Drever who got the lamprene off. He did it with an electric torch, taking care to manipulate the jet of fire in such a way that it scorched only the head of the creature and not Stone’s exposed flesh.
Corriston bent then, and gripped Stone firmly by the shoulders and shook him until a look of desperate pleading came into his eyes. He forced himself not to feel pity, seeing in Stone’s closeness to death a threat that could have but one outcome if the man refused to speak at all.
“Where’s Helen Ramsey?” he demanded. “Where is she, Stone? We’re not likely to do anything more for you if you don’t tell us”.
“I — I don’t know”, Stone muttered. “Saddler... double-crossed Henley. I guess... he wanted her for himself. I don’t know where he’s taken her. I’m telling you the truth. You’ve got to believe me”.
“All right”, Corriston said, easing Stone back on the sand. “I believe you. Take it easy now. They’ve got the lamprene off”.
He stood very still, waiting for his heart to beat normally again, telling himself that Saddler had taken an almost suicidal risk in leaving the ship on foot with no certain refuge in mind. By taking along a helpless girl; he was making himself a target for the rage and relentless enmity of men who would never rest until they had tracked him down.
There could be no sanctuary for him anywhere. If he escaped Henley’s vengeance, the colonists would capture him in a matter of days. But Corriston wasn’t thinking in terms of days. He was thinking in terms of minutes, hours. He stared at the empty stretch of desert ahead, trying desperately to control the despair that was welling up inside him. How long a head start did Saddler have? Had he left the ship only a few minutes, or hours before?
He’d have to ask Stone one more question. Like a fool he’d put off asking it, dreading the thought of what Stone’s answer might be. But now he had no choice. He must ask, and risk knowing that pursuit could not be immediately undertaken by one man, that Saddler was miles away across the desert, hiding out in some remote and inaccessible cave and that tracking him down and putting a bullet through his heart would have to be a joint undertaking.
It was a cruelly frustrating possibility. It increased Corriston’s rage, his bitterness. The hate within him seemed suddenly violent enough to destroy anyone or anything. He preferred to go on alone, in relentless pursuit of Saddler and if it took days to track him down...
It was Freddy’s voice that brought him back to reality, startling and sobering him. Freddy was coming toward him between the tractors, shouting at the top of his lungs.
21
CORRISTON couldn’t quite catch what the lad was shouting at first. Something about the dunes and the ship and footprints. Then he caught the name of Helen Ramsey and his mouth went dry and for an instant he couldn’t seem to breathe. Freddy was shouting that he had found Helen Ramsey.
Dr. Drever started and leapt quickly to his feet, his eyes darting with an understandable solicitude toward the small figure coming toward them across the sand. He moved quickly to place himself directly in front of Stone, as if fearing it would be bad for Freddy to see a man so close to death. Then the full significance of Freddy’s words seemed to dawn on him, and his solicitude for his son was replaced by a larger concern, a wider sympathy.
“You talk to him, Corriston”, he said. “You’ve been living through a short stretch of hell. If he’s really found her” —
Corriston needed no urging. He swayed a little forward, steadied himself and broke into a run, meeting Freddy almost midway between the nearest tractor and the hollow where Drever was crouching.
Freddy’s eyes seemed almost too large for so young a face, large and immensely serious. But along with the seriousness Corriston could sense something else, a taper glow of excitement burning bright.
Freddy had gone exploring. As he told Corriston about it, the words seemed to flow from him as if they had a mysterious life of their own, and were somehow reshaping
Freddy, making him over into a grown man with a heavy stubble of beard and eyes that had looked on far places and a thousand brilliant suns.
Freddy had found Helen Ramsey by following her footprints in the sand. Corriston let Freddy tell it in his own words, shaken by doubts for a moment, but finally convinced that the lad couldn’t possibly be making any of it up.
“There wasn’t a footprint anywhere near the ship, Lieutenant Corriston. The sandstorm covered them over. I looked everywhere just to be sure. I mean there wasn’t any prints that could have been made by a woman leaving the ship with a man. The sand was trampled in a few places, because about ten minutes ago Mr. Macklin and two other men started looking too. But that was all”.
“I remembered then that the sand sometimes stays nearly smooth close to very high dunes, even in a storm. There’s a — a windbreaking buffer zone where the dunes keep the sand from piling up. I asked Mr. Macklin about that once and he told me. I got to thinking that if I just wandered off I could be back again before anyone missed me”. Freddy turned and gestured toward the ship. “You can see the dunes from here. Not the ones right behind the ship. Those two bigger ones over there... that sort of look like the humps on a camel. I guess nobody would have been crazy enough to go looking for prints that far away from the ship. But if I hadn’t done it I wouldn’t have found her. That’s for sure”.
Corriston said: “You’re so much the opposite of crazy, Freddy, that I’m afraid you’re trying to spare me. It’s hard to hurt someone you like, but I’ve got to have the truth”. His hand tightened on Freddy’s shoulder. “Do you understand, Freddy? I must know. Don’t lie to spare me. Is she all right?”.
Freddy looked up at him, troubled, uncertain. “I think she is. She’s lying down near the bottom of the dune, right where it slopes up again toward another dune. It’s like one, big, hollow dune. I didn’t see her move. I guess she must have fainted. He’s there, too, lying face down in the sand halfway up the dune, like he was hurt...”
“All right”, Corriston said. “Now you’d better stay here with your father”.
“Can’t I go back with you? I was afraid to climb down to her alone. I was afraid he’d catch me and kill me, and then no one would ever know I’d found her. He’d be warned and try to get away” —
“It was the right thing to do, the level-headed thing”, Corriston said. “You couldn’t have used better judgment”. “Then it’s all right if I go back with you?”.
Corriston shook his head. “No, Freddy. I’d rather you didn’t. Don’t you understand? You’ve done more than your share. Now it’s my turn”.
Freddy tightened his lips and stared for a moment at the glitter of sunlight on the caterpillar tread of the nearest tractor. Finally he said, “All right, Lieutenant Corriston. If it’s an order”.
“It’s an order, Freddy”.
Corriston gave Freddy’s shoulder a pat. Then, after the briefest pause, he said: “There’s no substitute for the
