I lay looking at the stars and wondering exactly where we were. A globular cluster, Hoot had said, and there were a lot of them and it could be, I supposed, any one of them. Distance or proximity, I realized, would not make a great deal of difference when one was shunted from one place to another by the method that had been used to get us here.
Nor did it make a great deal of difference where we were. If we failed to locate water, we’d not be here for long. Food too, of course, but food was less critical than water. I wondered rather vaguely why I wasn’t more upset. It might be, I told myself, that I had been in so many scrapes in so many alien places and had always, somehow, gotten out of them, that I had come to think I’d always be able to get out of them. Or maybe it was the ingrown realization that my margin of good luck had been more than overrun, that I was overdue to meet the end I had escaped so many times-a realization that someday some planet or some ornery critter would finally do me in. And realizing that, deciding that there was no great point to worry over it, for when that day came I’d had it and prior worry would not help at all.
I was trying to figure which it might be when something touched me softly on the shoulder. I switched my head and saw that Hoot was tapping me with one of his tentacles.
“Mike,” he croaked, “you should take a look. We are not alone.”
I jerked bolt upright, grabbing at the rifle.
A wheel was coming up over the dune behind us, the one on which Hoot’s spacecraft had come to grief. It was a big wheel and a bright one and it had a green hub that glistened in the moonlight. I could see only part of it, but the monstrous, gleaming curve of it rose into the air above the dune a hundred feet or so. Its tread was broad-ten feet or more, I guessed-and it had the shine of polished steel. Hundreds of silvery spokes ran from the inside of the rim to the green and glistening hub.
It was not moving. It hung there in the air, poised above the dune. The moon-silvered ribs of Hoot’s ship looked like a smashed toy when measured by its size.
“Living?” asked Hoot.
“Perhaps,” I said.
“Then we best prepare to defend...”
“We sit right here,” I snapped. “We don’t raise a hand against it.”
It was watching us, I was sure. Whatever it was, it might have come out to investigate the wreckage of Hoot’s ship. There was nothing to indicate that any part of it was alive, but the greenish hub, for some reason I couldn’t put a finger on, had the look of life about it. It might turn around in a little while and go away. And even if it didn’t, we were in no position to start banging away at anything that moved.
“You better slide down into the trough,” I told Hoot. “If we have to make a run for it, I can scoop you up.”
He waggled a tentacle in disagreement. “I have weapon you may need.”
“You said you had no weapon.”
“Dirty lie,” he booted, cheerfully.
“You could have taken me,” I protested, angrily, “any time you wished.”
“Oh, no,” he said. “You came as my befriender. Had I told you, you might not have come.”
I let it pass. He was a tricky devil, but for the moment he was on my side and I had no objections.
Someone called back of me and I swiveled my bead around. Sara stood on top of the next dune and off to the left of her, two heads poked above the ridge. She was planted on the crest, with her silly rifle at the ready and I was scared stiff that any minute she might start throwing lead.
“Are you all right, captain?” she called to me.
“I’m all right,” I said.
“Can we be of any help?”
“Yes,” I said. “You can lug my pal back to camp with you.”
I said camp because, for the life of me, I could think of no other way to put it.
Out of the side of my mouth, I snarled at Hoot. “Cut out the goddamned foolishness and slide down into the trough.”
I switched my attention back to the wheel. It stayed where it was. I still had the feeling that it was looking at me. I twisted around and got my feet planted under me, ready to take off if the situation should demand.
I heard Hoot go sliding down the slope. A moment later Sara called to me.
“What is this thing? Where did you find it?”
I looked around and she was standing over Hoot, staring down at him.
“Tuck,” I yelled, “get down there and help Miss Foster. Tell Smith to stay exactly where he is.”
I could envision that damn fool of a blind man trying to follow Tuck and getting all fouled up.
Sara’s voice was plaintive and a little sharp. “But captain...”
“He’s lost just like us,” I told her. “He doesn’t belong here and he’s in trouble. Just get him back to camp.”
I looked back at the wheel. It had finally started to move, revolving slowly, almost majestically, walking up the dune slope and looming higher every minute.
“Get out of here,” I yelled at Tuck and Sara, without looking back.
The wheel stopped. It was almost at the crest. Very little of it was hidden by the dune. It loomed high into the sky.
