Garth rose, his muscles aching. “It’s a chance. Most of the time there’ll be fog on the river. That’ll help.” He found his medical kit and shouldered it. “I’m ready.”
The men were already on the raft, a big platform of light, tough lata-logs bound together by vines. Garth took his place near the pile of equipment in the center. “Keep to midstream,” he cautioned. “Watch for bubbles breaking ahead. Swing wide of those. Waterspouts.”
The raft slid out from the bank, long poles guiding it. Water washed aboard and slipped away as the platform found its balance. Presently they were drifting downstream in the dimly-lighted fog, the black river murmuring quietly beneath them.
Garth kept his gaze ahead. It was hard to see in the faint, filtered light of the moons, but a ray-lamp would have been betraying to any planes that might be searching above.
“Swing left. Hard,” he called.
The men obeyed. Oily bubbles were breaking the surface. As the raft moved toward the bank, a sudden geyser burst up from the river, a spouting torrent that tipped the platform dangerously and showered its occupants with icy spray.
Garth met Brown’s eyes. “See what I mean?” he remarked.
“Yeah. Still, if that’s all—”
The river flowed fast. Once or twice the plated back of a giant saurian was visible, but the water-reptiles did not attack, made wary, perhaps, by the bulk of the raft. There were other waterspouts, but the men soon became adept at avoiding them.
Sometimes they drifted through fog, sometimes the mists were dissipated by winds, though not often. During one of the latter periods a faint droning drifted down from above. It was the worst possible timing, for the two larger moons were directly overhead, blazing down on the river. The stub-winged shape of a plane loomed against the starry sky.
Brown said sharply, “Drop flat. Don’t move.” He forced Garth and Paula down. “No, don’t look up. They’d see our faces.”
“They can’t miss us,” Sampson muttered.
“There’s fog ahead.”
The sound of the plane’s motors grew louder. Abruptly there was a splash. Another. Something shattered on the raft.
“Hold your breath!” Brown snapped.
Garth tried to obey. A stinging ache had crept into his nostrils. His lungs began to hurt. The plane had spotted them—that was obvious. Sleep-gas works fast.
Another soft crash. Garth scarcely heard it. He saw a stubby, cruciform shadow sweep over the raft, as the plane swooped, and then the wall of silvery fog was looming up ahead. Paula gave a little gasp. Her body collapsed against him.
The fire in Garth’s chest was blazing agony. Despite himself, he let breath rush into his lungs.
After that, complete blackness and oblivion.
IV
Garth woke in reddish, dim twilight. Instantly he knew where he was, even before he sat up and saw the black boles of immense trees rising like pillars around him. The Forest!
“About time,” Captain Brown’s toneless voice said. “That sleep-gas put you under for hours.”
Garth rose, glancing around. They were camped in a little clearing among the gigantic trees, and some of the men were heating their rations over radiolite stove-kits. From above, the crimson light filtered vaguely from a leafy roof incredibly far. The trees of the Black Forest were taller than California sequoias, and Jupiter-light reached the ground faintly, through the ceiling of red leaves that roofed the jungle. Paula, Garth saw, was lying with her eyes closed not far away.
“She all right?”
“Sure,” Brown said. “Resting is all. We got away from Benson’s plane—hit that fog-bank just in time. You’d passed out, so I took a chance and kept going. After we reached the Forest, I landed the raft and headed inland a bit. So here we are.”
Garth nodded. “That was wise. The river goes underground a half mile further. Any—accidents?”
Brown looked at him oddly. “This might be Yosemite, for all the danger I’ve seen so far. It’s a picnic.”
“That,” Garth said, “is just why it’s so bad. You don’t see the trouble till after it’s happened.” He didn’t explain. “Where’s my kit?”
“Here. Why?”
“Before we go any further, we’ll need shots. Antitoxin against the Noctoli pollen. The flowers don’t grow on the edges of the Forest, but the wind carries their poison quite a ways sometimes.” Garth rummaged in his kit, found sealed vials and a hypo, and carefully sterilized everything over a radiolite stove he commandeered from one of the men. After that, he administered the antivirus, first to Paula and last of all to Brown. He took none himself; he had acquired a natural immunity to the pollen.
There was barely enough to go around. Brown’s shot was slightly less than the regular dosage, which vaguely worried Garth. But the Captain, annoyed by the delay, was anxious to talk about immediate plans.
“Benson might land at the edge of the Forest and come after us a mile or so. Not further. But we’d better start moving.” He led Garth over to where Paula sat. “It’s time for you to see the map.”
The girl nodded in agreement. She took out a folded flex-paper and extended it. Garth squinted down in the red twilight.
“Map?”
“More like a treasure hunt,” Paula explained. “There’s a series of guide-points, you see. So far we’re okay—narva means west, in the Ancient Tongue, doesn’t it?”
“Narva.” Garth gave the word a slightly different pronunciation. “Yeah. Well—three sallags northwest to the Mouths of the Waters Below—”
“Mouths of the Singing Below, I made it.”
Garth shook his head. “I can’t read the stuff. I just know the spoken language. Read the whole thing out loud, so I can get it.”
Paula obeyed. Her pronunciation made some words unfamiliar to Garth, but by experiment he found what was meant.
“Uh-huh. A sallag is less than three miles, as far as I can judge. I think I know the place. It’s a hill honeycombed with little caves. You can hear water running underneath it.”
“That fits,” the girl agreed. “This won’t be so hard, after all.”
Garth grunted. He
