“That's right.”
“Then, no matter how fast we walk, no matter how far we go before they can get police on the mountain, they'll still have us pinpointed?”
“Proteus will find it and destroy it, eventually.”
“But until he does, shouldn't we take one of these other trails that cross this one every once and a while? If we moved in the wrong direction, and we make a few thousand feet before Proteus can destroy the Sherlock, then they will be left with the wrong fix on us as their last bit of data. As soon as the Sherlock is finished, we backtrack, pick up this path again, and go the way we really want to go.”
He stopped so suddenly that she almost walked into the back of him, and when he turned around, her face was nearly up against his chest. He kissed her nose, said, “How come you're smarter than me?”
“I'm not.”
“You've proven it a couple of times now.”
“It's just that you've never been in a war. You don't understand about things like this as well as I do. You'll learn.” She said it with such sincerity that he was forced to laugh again, though the situation certainly did not merit mirth.
“There's a cross trail just ahead,” he said. “Left or right?”
“Doesn't matter. Maybe right, since we'll be bearing just slightly to the left when we start down the other side of this mountain.”
“Let's go,” he said, leading the way, taking the right turn and striking off on the false trail. He just hoped Proteus would locate the Sherlock and destroy it in time to let them get back to the right trail and make some distance on it before the blue uniformed boys arrived.
Proteus's plasti-plasma gurgled.
It seemed an interminable time that they walked, though he knew it could not have been more than three or four minutes. But each step away from the trail they intended to regain seemed like a step into a swamp from which there was no egress — a swamp lined, beneath the brackish water, with quicksand. He even fantasized, for a moment, that the Sherlock might be quite aware of their plan and only leading them on long enough for the soldiers to arrive. But that was hogwash, for the Sherlock could not think, not even as much as Proteus. It was a densely packed shell of seeking equipment, nothing more. It was a game machine, a very clever one at that, but not a man.
Still, it would not show itself. At least, not visually. He wished there were some way he could know if Proteus had it spotted. He remembered having often pondered the simplicity of being a machine, of seeing the world in black and white, in quantities of good and bad without shades of gray in the middle. Now he realized a few other values in a machine's existence. There was no fear, no worry. No anxiety— and therefore no urgency. He wished there were some way to make Proteus aware of the value of these ticking seconds that slipped by them so terribly fast.
The projectile weapon made a whoofing noise as Proteus blasted at something almost directly ahead, through the trees. There was an explosion, light and smoke, then silence.
“He got it!” Leah cried.
“Let's see before we celebrate,” he said, rushing forward to the spot where the projectile had struck. There, steaming in the snow, melting hollows in it, were dozens of chunks of the blue-husked Sherlock.
Leah dropped the suitcase and slapped her hands against her bulkily clothed hips, laughing much as he had seen the other Demosian girls laughing when, they had been playing games with the mythical demons in the forest back at the Sanctuary. He was intrigued by the way these people could mix joy and humor with the direst of events, the manner in which they never lost track of the things that should be appreciated in life no matter how many tons of dross and ugliness those nuggets were buried under.
“Fast now,” he urged, turning and pushing past her to lead the way back to the other trail. “They'll be here in moments if they've taken a chance of sending a copter up in this storm.”
They gained the first herd path in two minutes, moving at a trot. When they got there, he insisted taking the suitcase from her was the wisest course, since — for a short period anyway — he could run faster with it than she could and, without it, she would be able to keep up. She did not argue this time, perfectly aware of the urgency involved and the truth of it. She was, just as she said, a good soldier. Had it been better for her to straggle with the luggage, she would have refused; but seeing the wisdom of his suggestion, she complied.
Time passed much too quickly for comfort.
There was no sound but the wind, the rattling of the branches overhead, and the squeak of their feet in the snow.
He estimated their remaining time before the arrival of the troops at a little more than five minutes. He tried counting seconds as they ran, but he lost track so often that he gave it up and concentrated on moving just a few feet per minute faster than they already were.
For a time, it seemed as if they were the only living beings in all the world, two figures in a landscape without purpose and without meaning. All other things were inanimate: cold, snow, sky, earth, stark trees, strangely stilled wind…
It was a tomb planet, a dead world, and they were rodents scurrying through its corridors and chambers in search of some exit that would lead them into life.
The thing which made them run so fast was the knowledge that they might soon cease to be rodents and become two more corpses to inhabit the cells of the tomb.
Then, with the swiftness of a sleepwalker stepping on a nail, the world came awake with a thundering explosion of sound. The sky was filled with the chatter of the blades of an aircraft whose flight pattern was too high for grav plates to be of any use — a staccato barrage like machine guns from some ancient period of man's history. The forest took up the sharp call and threw the clatter of the big engines back at the low clouds.
“Hurry,” Davis said as they reached the edge of the mountain flatland and began to descend another treacherous slope toward the long bowl of the valley through which they would be walking for the next four or five hours, if Leah was not confused about the way to the Tooth.
“Let me have the suitcase,” she said.
“Never mind that.”
“You can't brace yourself with two rucksacks and the suitcase on uneven ground. You know that as well as I do. Now quit arguing and hurry it!”
He set the case down without stopping, merely slowing his pace for a moment, heard her grapple with it, heft it and bring it after him. He worked from tree to tree down the sheet-white land beneath the bare trees, his eyes on the skies that could be seen through the Crosshatch of limbs more often than they were focused on the terrain ahead. She followed.
When they were halfway down, the police copter rushed by overhead, oblivious of them as it sped toward the spot the Sherlock had last pinpointed them. Under its belly was the “A” of the Alliance, ringed with the circle of green worlds that was the government symbol. Then it was gone, and its hoarse voice diminished as it put distance between itself and the very fugitives it was seeking.
“How long until they know?” she asked when they reached the floor of the valley.
“Not long.”
“I thought so.”
“Well,” he said, “we're on the level for a good while. We can make time easy enough.”
“But if they discover we've struck for the valley and decide we're still in it, it'll be no trouble for them to pen us in and use a search party to net us from all sides.”
He leaned against a jutting tower of granite which was encased in ice, took some snow in his mouth and allowed it to melt before swallowing. “That's true enough. But this is the only route, isn't it?”
“The only one we could possibly stand up to.”
“We could give up the fortress idea.”
“And go where?”
He shrugged.
“You take the suitcase a while,” she said. “We're on the level again, and it won't be too hard for you. My arms ache.”
He took the luggage without comment, turned back to the trail and started forward at a very brisk walk.
