the other Beshwa profile in the medical department files. Only Sara, still a little pale from her ordeal but otherwise in good shape, remained linked to her original doppelganger, the amorous little Androsian belly dancer; but since Beshwa women were retiring sorts who took no part in the trading, it was hoped she would be able to pass virtually unnoticed. In her case, her nonverbal abilities were considered more important than her verbal, though she had been given a quick hypno-briefing on Beshwa patois the night before, and her dop, for business reasons, already had a fair command of the hill tongue.
The caravan had contained enough clothing to outfit them all—Chekov’s purse had been large enough to buy the vehicle just as it stood, complete with dirty crockery from the morning meal of the former owners.
The men wore gaudily decorated leather tunics that stretched to their knees. Over them they wore sleeveless leather jackets with V-shaped openings that plunged from neck to waist, and woven trousers. Their hair, now dyed a purplish black, had been shaved on each side so that only a five-centimeter-wide strip remained. They were unarmed, in accordance with Beshwa tradition. Their skins had been darkened to a deep mahogany color, and their contact lenses were slightly more pinkish than the Kyrosian norm.
Sara’s dress was similar to the men’s, except that instead of hanging loosely, her tunic fit her voluptuously curved body like a second skin; and her hair, also dyed, had been trimmed to a pert page-boy bob.
Kirk surveyed the small party closely, then nodded his head in approval. “All aboard,” he called. He and Chekov climbed into the driver’s seat on the wagon, as the others scrambled up to perch on the trade goods on the wagon’s bed. They seated themselves comfortably on the thick fur covering.
“Energize,” Kirk ordered.
The neelots hissed and reared nervously, as they suddenly felt earth under their hooves instead of the ridged plate of the cargo transporter. Kirk’s newly acquired driver’s skill was put to a severe test as he tried to keep them from bolting. After he had them quieted down, he looked around, attempting to determine their location.
Dim shapes that seemed like bushes humped around them, but all the moons had set, and starshine didn’t provide enough light for traveling safely. A hah’ hour passed before a faint grayness began to appear on the eastern horizon. When at last it was light enough, Kirk jumped down from the wagon and pushed through tangled vegetation, Sara at his heels, until he came to an outcropping of rock which jutted ten meters into the air. When he reached the rock, he clambered up it, and slowly surveyed the surrounding countryside.
“We seem to be right on target,” he said as he reached down to help Sara climb up beside him.
To the north he could make out an escarpment slashing across the middle distance. It rose to the far left rather abruptly and cut east, separating the foothills from the plains. Along its base ran a gorge, deeply cut into living rock by millennia of rushing waters. Directly ahead, a roaring sounded in the distance, and the first rays of Kyr gave rainbow tints to a cloud of dancing mist that rose above the canyon’s edge to signal a waterfall below.
He swung one hundred and eighty degrees and faced due south, studying the wind-scoured plains which sloped gently down toward Andros and the sea. There was no sign of life. He looked back in the direction they were to travel.
“Can you make out the bridge, Captain?” Sara asked.
He shook his head and glanced back in the direction of Andros.
The rolling country dotted with brush, barren as it was, seemed almost benign compared to the rugged foothills and the roaring chasm ahead.
He was about to climb down from his vantage point when a light morning wind shifted and the mist was rolled back.
“There it is,” he exclaimed. “I can just make out the top ends of the support poles. It’s not far off.”
“Why couldn’t we have beamed down farther back?” Sara asked, as they headed back to the Beshwa caravan.
“The migration path we’ll be taking to cut in behind Spock’s gathering is fairly heavily traveled. It might have looked a little odd if a Beshwa caravan suddenly appeared in the middle of a clan heading for their summer grazing grounds. This way, if we run into any hillmen when we reach the trail, we can simply say that we turned down to the mining settlement for some trading.”
When they arrived at their strange, many-wheeled vehicle, McCoy poked his head out of the back door of the van, where he and the rest had taken refuge from the morning chill.
“Do you have us located?” the doctor asked.
Kirk nodded. “The road from Andros is just to the left, and the bridge is almost straight ahead.”
They cut through the brush and then down a hill until they reached the dirt road. It was rutted from heavy traffic, though there was no one on it at the moment. As they traveled along, slightly below the level of the rolling country they had just left, the bridge’s support poles began to rise from behind a low hill. When they topped it, Kirk pulled the neelots to a halt and stared down in dismay.
The heavy jakim cables which should have arced between the uprights to support the suspension bridge, dangled loosely into the ravine between.
Kirk whipped the neelots forward, and the wagon lumbered quickly to the edge of the gorge. Halting it, Kirk leaped down.
The bridge was gone; the only link between the hills and the lowlands for forty kilometers in either direction lay in tangled ruins at the bottom of the canyon.
Kirk raised his eyes and peered to the opposite side. The cables had been cut from the far side and, like a taut ribbon cut at one end, the bridge had gone curling into the depths below. The party stood looking for a moment at the now inaccessible road on the other side that wound back into the hills; and then they turned and went back to the vehicle.
“Why?” Sara murmured.
Kirk dug into the memory of his dop.
“Spearstone. It looks like the clans are already on the move.” He pointed toward the sharply rising hills on the other side of the ruined bridge. “Back that way about six kilometers is the source of most of Andres’s iron. There are some rich veins there. Spock’s working fast. The first step in a major offensive is to cut off the raw materials your enemy needs for instruments of war.” Kirk turned around and faced Chekov.
“Get me the map, Ensign. There must have been a way to get across before the bridge was built.”
The Russian went into the caravan and emerged a moment later with a roll of parchment-like material.
Kirk unrolled it and spread it out on a flat rock. He studied it for a long moment, his face clouded in concentration. Finally, he put a finger on the map.
“Look,” he said, his finger tracing a path. “A few kilometers downstream, the gorge river empties into a small lake. I’ll bet in the old days the iron was ferried across. I don’t know how they’d get it out otherwise. The terrain on the far end of the lake looks even more rugged than it is along here. If my hunch is right, there should be an old road branching off not too far back which we can take down to the lake.”
“What do we do when we get there?” Sara asked. “Swim to the other side? Somehow I doubt that the ferry is still running.”
Kirk grinned at the officer. “We’re Beshwa, remember? We go where we want, even when there aren’t any convenient bridges around.” He stood up, rolling the map. “You’ll see,” he added cryptically.
There was a road. But it was so overgrown with vegetation that they almost missed it. As they jolted down the old trail, they had to stop at intervals and hack a path wide enough for the caravan to pass through the thickets which had grown up since the road was last used. Nearly an hour later, the Beshwa vehicle emerged from a narrow ravine onto a bank that sloped gently down to the edge of a placid lake. Sara ran to the shore, knelt, cupped her hands, and splashed cold, clear water on her sweaty, dust-grimed face. “Umm,” she called, “that’s lovely. Is there time for a quick swim, Captain?”
“Go ahead,” Kirk said. “Since you don’t have a Beshwa dop, you won’t be much help rigging the caravan.”
Sara stripped off her clothes without a hint of self-consciousness, ran out onto a long flat rock which jutted over the lake’s edge, and then, like a golden naiad, arced into the cool water.
“You know, Jim,” McCoy chuckled and said, “no matter how this crazy expedition ends up, I don’t think Sara will ever go back to being her old, prim self.”
“If this expedition is ever going to go anyplace.”
Kirk said, “we’d better get to work. Scotty, you and Chekov unhitch the neelots. Bones and I will disconnect the van and wagon.”
