“You might keep those two from tracking up that line I made. If a wind comes up and starts to blot it out, try to mark it somehow.”
“You have a lot of faith in that line.”
“Just that it’s a good idea to know where we are.”
“It mightn’t mean a thing,” she said. “We must have been thrown through some sort of space-time null-point and where we wound up wouldn’t mean...”
“I agree,” I said, “but it’s all we have to go on.”
I plodded up the dune and it was heavy going. My feet sank deep into the sand and I kept sliding back I could make no time. And it was hard work. Just short of its crest I stopped to rest a moment and looked back down the slope.
The three of them stood there, looking up at me. And for some reason I couldn’t explain, I found myself loving them-all three of them, that creepy, soft fool of a Smith and that phony Tuck, and Sara, bless her, with her falling lock of hair and that ridiculous oldtime rifle. No matter what they were, they were human beings and somehow or other I’d have to get them out of here. For they were counting on me. To them I was the guy who had barnstormed space and rode out all sorts of trouble. I was the rough, tough character who technically headed up the expedition. I was the captain and when the chips were down it was the captain who was expected to come through. The poor, damn, trusting fools, I thought-I didn’t have the least idea of what was going on and I had no plans and was as puzzled and beaten and hopeless as any one of them. But I couldn’t let them know it. I had to keep on acting as if at any moment I’d come up with a trick that would get us all home free.
I lifted a hand and waved to them and I tried to keep it jaunty, but I failed. Then I clambered up the dune and over the top of it and the desert stretched before me. In every direction that I looked, it was all the same-waves of dunes as far as I could see, each dune like the other and no break at all-no trees that might hint water, absolutely nothing but a sweep of sand.
I went plunging down the dune and climbed another and from its crest the desert looked the same as ever. I could go on; I admitted to myself, climbing dunes forever and there might never be a difference. The whole damn planet might be desert, without a single break. The hobbies, when, they’d bucked us through the gate or door or whatever it might be, had known what they were doing, and if they wanted to get rid of us, they could not have done a more efficient job of it. For they, or the world of which they were a part, hadn’t missed a lick. We had been tolled in by the beam and hustled off the ship and the ship been sealed and then, without the time to think, with no chance to protest, we had been heaved into this world. A bum’s rush, I thought, all worked out beforehand.
I climbed another dune. There always was the chance, I kept on telling myself, that in one of those little valleys which lay between the dunes there might be something worth the finding. Water, perhaps, for water would be the thing that we would need the most. Or a path that might lead us to better country or to natives who might be able to give us some sort of help, although why anyone would want to live in a place like this was more than I could figure.
Actually, of course, I expected nothing. There was nothing in this sweep of desert upon which a man could build much hope. But when I neared the top of the dune-near enough so that I could see over the top of it-I spotted something on the crest of the dune beyond.
A birdcage sort of contraption was half buried in the crest, with its metallic ribs shimmering in the moon and starlight, like the ribcage of some great prehistoric beast that had been trapped atop the dune, bawling out its fright until death had finally quieted it.
I slipped the rifle off my shoulder and held it ready. The sliding sand carried me slowly down the dune, whispering as it slid. When I had slid so far that I could no longer see over the crest of the dune, I set off at an angle to the left and began to climb again, crouching to keep my head down. Twenty feet from the top I got down and crawled flat against the sand. When my eyes came over the crest and I could see the birdcage once again, I froze, digging in my toes to keep from sliding back.
Below the cage, I saw, was a scar of disturbed sand and even as I watched, new blobs of sand broke loose beneath the, cage and went trickling down the slope. It had not been long ago, I was sure, that the cage had impacted on the dune crest-the sand disturbed by its landing had not as yet reached a state of equilibrium and the scar was fresh.
Impacted seemed a strange word, and yet reason told me that it must have impacted, for it was most unlikely that anyone had placed it there. A ship of some sort, perhaps, although a strange sort of ship, not enclosed, but fashioned only of a frame. And if, as I thought, it were indeed a ship, it must have carried life and the life it carried was either dead within it or somewhere nearby.
I glanced slowly up and down the length of the dune and there, far to the right of where the birdcage lay, was a faint furrow, a sort of toboggan slide, plunging from the crest downward into the shadow that lay between the dunes. I strained to penetrate the shadows, but could make out nothing. I’d have to get closer to that toboggan slide.
I backed off down the dune and went spidering across it, angling to the right this time. I moved as cautiously as I could to keep down the sound of the sliding sand that broke free and went hissing down the dune face as I moved. There might be something over on the other side of that dune, listening for any sign of life.
When I thrust the upper part of my head over the dune crest, I still was short of the toboggan slide, but much closer to it and from the hollow between the dunes came a sliding, scraping sound. Straining my ears, it seemed to me that I caught some motion in the trough, but could not be sure. The Sound of sliding and of scraping stopped and then began again and once more there was a hint of movement. I slid my rifle forward so that in an instant I could aim it down into the trough.
I waited.
The slithering sound stopped, then started once again and something moved down there (I was sure of it this time) and something moaned. All sound came to an end.
There was no use of waiting any longer.
“Hello down there!” I called.
There was no answer.
“Hello,” I called again.
It could be, I realized, that I was dealing with something so far removed from my own sector of the galaxy that the space patois familiar to that sector was not used by it and that we would have no communications bridge.
