plain on our own craft, it would be top risk for anyone to spring a trap. Perhaps my faith in the force of the Patrol was right, for we did come down. Though both gunners stayed at their posts as we flattened the high grass not too far from the parked flitter.
The grass was not only close to chest-high, but tough and sharp-edged, cutting any hand put out to beat it down. Yet it also gave us a clue as to what might have happened to the two we sought. For the flitter was empty of any passengers. Not only that, but their supply packs were still stowed within, as if Sharvan and Hunold had never expected to leave the flyer for long.
Out from the trampled and crushed section of grass immediately around the hatch a trail led straight for the stand of trees. The path was deeply indented, as though it might have been made by the transportation of heavy cargo. Yet here and there along it tougher patches of stem and leaf were lifting again.
I searched the flitter carefully, triggering its report tape. But that repeated nothing more in its last recording than a description of what we ourselves had seen during our morning's passage over the broken lands. Then it stopped in mid-word, the rest of the tape as bare as if it had been erased. For this I had no explanation at all. Whatever had brought them to land here remained a mystery. Still, all the instruments were in working order. I was able to apply full power and raise to a good height in testing before I set down again. There had been no failure of the craft to force a landing.
As I made my examination one of the Patrol gunners and the pilot, Harkon, went for some distance down the trail leading to the trees. Maelen remained behind, hunkered down at the edge of the slowly rising grass. And as I emerged from the hatch I had one question for her.
'How long?'
She sniffed the ground in the trampled space, using glassia gifts now.
'More than a day. Perhaps as long as they have been missing. I cannot be too sure. Krip—there is a strange scent here—human. Come—'
A swing of her head beckoned me to one side and there she used the unsheathed claws of one forepaw to pull aside the tall grass. The tuft did not come easily and I put out my mittened hands to help. Then I found the vegetation had been woven into a blind, forming a screen about a space where the ground had been grubbed clear. Upon the patch of soil was the impression of a square which might have been left by a heavy box.
I had knelt to examine this depression as the Patrolmen returned. Harkon joined me. He held a small detect and I heard a revealing chatter from that.
'Small residue of radiation. Could be left from something like a call beam,' he commented. Then he studied the woven grass curtain. 'Well hidden—this could not have been spotted from above at all. They could even have produced engine failure and at the same time blotted out a distress signal—'
'But why?'
'You people have already claimed sabotage. Well, if your men had reached the beacon they could have spoiled any game to be played here. It was only by chance we picked up your space call, one chance in five hundred, really. Whoever is in hiding here could not have foreseen that. Or even that your com-tech had the knowledge and equipment to try it. If they have a reason to keep you pinned here, the first step would be to cut you off from the beacon. And they must believe that by taking your flitter, they have done that effectively. And as to who 'they' are —' He shrugged. 'You ought to have some guess.'
'Outside of jacks with inside knowledge about our cargo—no. But what about Sharvan and Hunold?'
I meant that question as much for Maelen as Harkon, and I thought she might have the more reliable answer.
'They were alive when they left here,' she replied.
'No attempt made to conceal the trail. I don't think they believed anyone would be after them in a hurry,' Harkon replied when I passed along Maelen's report.
'You have this much reassurance,' he added. 'The Free Traders' loyalty to their own is a known fact. They might keep your men alive to bargain with.'
'Exchange.' I nodded. 'But we have had no offers—nothing. No one we could detect has been near the
'Which is not to say that they won't show up with a ransom deal sooner or later.'
I arose, brushing the dead grass wisps from my thermo suit. 'Maybe not now. Not if they saw your ship land.'
Yet jacks are not timid, not when they have such a rich take as the
'We'll follow the trail to the woods anyway,' Harkon answered. 'If there's nothing beyond'— he shrugged again—'nothing to do then but wait for reinforcements. We can't stand up to a jack gang with only three men.'
I noted that he apparently did not class the Free Traders as part of his fighting force. But perhaps to the Patrol any outside their own close company was not to be so considered. Just another of the things which made them less than popular.
We left one gunner on guard and tramped along the grass track once more, Maelen with me now, Harkon ahead, his fellow bringing up the rear. As we drew near that wood I saw that the growths could indeed be termed trees, but they lacked any attraction, their limbs being twisted and coiled as if they had once been supple tentacles flung out in a wild attempt to embrace something and had solidified in such ungainly positions. The leaves were very dark and thick-fleshed, and there were not many to a limb. But they were still able to form a heavy canopy which shut out that pallid sunlight and made the way ahead a tunnel of deep dusk.
But the path we followed did not enter there. Instead it turned left to run along the edge of the stand. Here there was little grass, but the gray soil showed scrapes and scuffs, being too soft to retain sharp prints. Having skirted the woods, the way came to the very point of the valley. Maelen, who had paced by my side, drew away to the sharp rise of the cliff.
She sat up on her haunches, her head swaying a little; she might almost have been reading some inscription
