goal.
“Lighting up,” Mura murmured.
The beam from the Queen still beaconed in the night. But what Mura referred to were the sparks of fire which marked the fixed posts of the unknown sentries.
“Make it easier for Rip—he’ll be able to avoid them,” ventured Dane but his companion disagreed.
“They will be alert for trouble. Probably they have beats linking each of those with the rest and are doing sentry-go along them.”
“You mean—they guess that we are here—that they are only waiting for Rip to come along—”
“That may or may not be true. But they are, of course, alert for a move from the men in the Queen. Tell me, Thorson, are you not now aware of something more? Can you not feel it through this rock?”
Of course he could. That beat of the installation, less heavy than it had been near the ruins, but faithful in its pattern. And now there was no fluctuation in its power as the long minutes dragged wearily by. It was running steadily at full strength.
“That,” Mura continued, “is what ties the Queen to this earth—”
The jig-saw bits of what they had learned during the past two days were beginning to fit into a picture. Suppose these strangers who had enmeshed the Queen for some purpose of their own, did control a means of crashing her if she tried to lift from Limbo? It would be necessary to keep that installation, energy broadcaster, beam, or whatever it was, working all the time or the ship would make a sneak escape. Those in her must be fitting the pieces together, too—even if they did not yet know the Sargasso properties of Limbo.
“Then the only way to get out of here,” said Dane slowly, “is to find the source of power and—”
“Smash it? Yes. If Rip makes contact—then we must move to that end.”
”You say ‘if Rip makes contact’. Don’t you think he’s going to?”
“You are very young in the Service, Thorson. After some voyages a man becomes very humble. He begins to realize that the quality we name on Terra ‘luck’ has much to do with success or failure. We can never honestly say that this or that plan of action will come to fruition in the manner we hope, there are too many governing factors over which we have no control. We do not count on any fact until it is an established reality. Shannon has many of the odds on his side. He has unusually keen night sight, a fact we discovered on a similar situation not long ago, he is used to field work, he is not easily confused. And from here he has had a chance to study the territory and the positions of the enemy. The odds are perhaps eighty percent in his favour. But there remains that twenty percent. He must be ready and we must be ready to prepare for other moves—until we see the beacon signal that he has made it.”
Mura’s emotionless voice unsettled Dane. It had the old illusion-pricking touch of Kamil, refined, made even more pointed and cutting. Kamil! Where was Ali? Being held by some of those now ranged about the Queen? Or had he been taken on to the mysterious source of power?
“What do you suppose they did with Kamil?” Dane asked aloud.
“He represents to them a source of information about us and our concerns. As such they would see that he reaches the guiding brain behind all this. And he will be safe—just as long as they have a use for him—”
But there was something vaguely sinister in that answer—a hint twisting Dane’s memory to a scene he did not like to recall.
“Those men on the Rimbold—Was Rip right? Had they been blasted?”
“He was right.” The three words were unaccented by any emotion, and the very gentleness of the reply made it the more forceful.
They talked very little after that, and only moved about when the warning stiffness of arm or leg made it necessary. On the plain the beacon continued to point starward from ship without change.
In spite of the cold and the cramp, the beat of the vibration was lulling. Dane had to fight to keep awake, using an old trick of recalling in detail one tape after another in the “Rules of Stores” he had made his study during the voyage out. If only he were back in Van Rycke’s cubby now, safely engrossed in his studies, with nothing more exciting than a sharp piece of bargaining to look forward to in the morning!
A whistle, low, yet penetrating, reached their ears from the depths. That was Rip, about to set out on his risky venture. Dane held his glasses to his eyes, though he knew very well that he could not follow the other’s progress through the dark.
The rest of the hours seemed days long. Dane watched the beacon with a single-minded intensity which made his eyes ache. But there was no change. He felt Mura shift beside him, fumbling in the dark and a faint glow told him that beneath the shelter of tunic hem the other was consulting his watch.
“How long?”
“He has been out four hours—”
Four hours! It wouldn’t take a man four hours to reach the Queen from here. Even if he had to detour and hide out at intervals to escape the sentries. It looked very much as if that twenty percent which Mura had mentioned as standing against the success of Rip’s mission was indeed the part to be dealt with now.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN:
ATTACK AND STALEMATE
Dawn was hinted at with a light in the east, and still the Queen’s beacon had not changed its hue. The watchers did not expect it to now. Something had gone wrong—Rip had never reached the ship.
Unable to stand inaction longer, Dane crept from the improvised shelter and started along the cliff on which they had set up their lookout. It formed a wall between the entrances to two of the tongue-shaped valleys—the one in which Wilcox and Kosti were encamped, the other unknown territory.
Dane sighted a trickle of stream in the second. The presence of water heralded, or had heralded, other life in his experience of Limbo. And here and now that pattern held. For he counted ten of the small checkerboard spice fields.
But this time the fields were not deserted. Two of the globe creatures worked among the plants. They stirred the ground about the roots of the spice ferns with their thread like tentacles, their round backs bobbing up and down as they moved.
Then both of them stood upright. Since they lacked any discernible heads or features, it was difficult for Dane to guess what they were doing. But their general attitude suggested they were either listening or watching.
Three more of the globes came noiselessly into sight. Between two of them swung a pole on which was tied the limp body of an animal about the size of a cat. No audible greeting passed between the hunters and the farmers. But they gathered in a group, dropping the pole. Through the glasses Dane saw that their finger tentacles interlocked from globe to globe until they formed a circle.
“Sooo—” The words hissed out of the early morning murk and Dane, who had been absorbed in the scene below, gave a start, as Mura’s hand closed on his shoulder.
“There is a crawler coming this way—” the steward whispered.
Once more the group of globes had an aura of expectancy. They scattered, moving with a speed which surprised the Terrans. In seconds they had taken cover, leaving the fields, the stream bank deserted.
The crunch of treads on loose stone and gravel was clear to hear as a vehicle crept into the vision range of the two on the cliff. Just as Kamil had been the first to discover, the crawler was not the usual type favoured by Federation men. It was longer, more narrow, and had a curious flexibility when it moved, as if its body was jointed.
One man sat behind its controls. An explorer’s helmet shielded his face, but he wore the same mixture of outer garments as Rich and his men had affected.
Mura’s hand on Dane’s shoulder applied pressure. But Dane, too, was aware of the trap about to be sprung. Masked by a line of brush, there was stealthy movement. A globe thing came into the Traders’ sight, clasping close to its upper ball body a large stone. One of its fellows joined it, similarly armed.
“—trouble.” Mura’s voice was a thin whisper.
The crawler advanced at a steady pace, crunching over the ground, splashing through the edge of the water. It had reached the first field now, and the driver made no effort to avoid the enclosure. Instead he drove on, the
