unbroken. Tek-birds, it seemed, nested under water. He supposed the compass box was tucked away down there together with sundry other shiny objects this sonic menace with the jackdaw instincts had collected.
Eventually he lost hope. The map was small loss. But the compass… Without it, he was disoriented. No stars could ever shine in Amara’s glowing skies. The positions of the Three Suns could offer little reliable guidance; the crazy path of the planet between them was only confusing.
Of course, he could return to the ship—and Maxton.
But Maxton wouldn’t give him another of the valuable compasses. In fact, Maxton might already have relinquished his rank—and the new captain might well deny Sherret his freedom.
To hell with Goffism. At the moment he knew what was roughly the right direction. He would push on and hope. After all, he might meet an occasional Jackie, or even a Paddy, who might deign to indicate the way.
He plodded around the lake to the western side and struck off on a line he remembered from the map.
The Jackie’s queer warning kept going through his mind.
Those who have only two what?
Who were those who became three? Three what?
As for that which became many… It could be almost anything, from fruit flies to the sorcerer’s broomstick.
The whole rigmarole was as senseless as most of the Jackies’ remarks—and yet seemed somehow different from the usual run. More typical of the usual run was a saying of the Jackies’, “May you live until the slow burn eats its tail.” He’d never been able to get that allusion. A “slow burn” was archaic English slang, but obviously there could be no connection.
Merely a kind of meaningless poetry? Speculation was dulled at last by the sheer muscular fatigue of endless plodding.
CHAPTER TWO
« ^ »
HE WALKED for hours, until his feet were sore, and then he walked some more and the soreness wore off. A pair of Jackies cackled at him, but gave him a wide berth. He saw a high speck which might have been a Tek-bird, and he hid beneath a smooth-barked tree until the speck vanished. When he tried to move, he found his jacket was caught. The smooth bark had put forth a protuberance like the claw of a lobster. The pincers had met neatly through the hem and were as firm as steel. He tore himself away. He felt in no mood to linger and experiment. A presentiment was forming that this journey was going to prove tougher than he’d ever imagined. He was content to leave this specimen for some future, and more leisured explorer to collect for his arboretum.
But he made a mental note not to sleep under any similar trees. Conceivably, that claw could close on a man’s throat.
He slept instead on a small plateau of bare rock.
He awoke to a predominantly yellow sky and to a sense of confusion about direction. From his small perch he surveyed his surroundings. Far away on the world’s verge was something peculiar. If it were a tree, it must be miles high, with a translucent trunk and a great, fuzzy, dark mass of foliage. Weighing things up, he decided that that must be the general direction of Na-Abiza. If he made for the treelike thing, it would at least keep him headed in a straight line. In strange territory, one tended to walk in a large circle. He set off, walking quickly, and covered several miles. He was becoming aware of a distant mutter of thunder, as though a shooting war were in progress just over the horizon.
The peculiar object was even further away than it had seemed. Although it had grown taller and larger, he still couldn’t make out what it was. The tree (to call it that) appeared to have grown from the ground at a windblown angle. The trunk glimmered with light.
Definitely, the thunder was coming from it—and loudly now. Break for lunch. He squatted, chewing, regarding the enigma which remained so obstinately on the horizon.
Something, arriving with the velocity of a rocket, had smacked into the earth beside him.
Gingerly, he peered at it over his shoulder. It was a rod around eighteen inches long and an inch in diameter sticking vertically in the ground. It was such a pale yellow that he could see its color wasn’t inherent, but reflection. In a white light, the object would be white.
It must have come from directly overhead. He looked up apprehensively. The sky was just an empty yellow desert.
