Shann edged along until the upslanted, broken side of the Throg flyer provided him with protection from any overhead attack. Under that shelter he waited for the next move from his unknown rescuer.
The clak-claks wheeled closer to earth. One lit boldly on the carapace of the inert Throg, shuffling ungainly along that horny ridge. Cradling the blaster, the Terran continued to wait. His patience was rewarded when that investigating clak-clak took off uttering an enraged snap or two. He heard what might be the scrape of boots across rock, but that might also have come from horny skin meeting stone.
Then the other must have lost his footing not too far above. Accompanied by a miniature landslide of stones and earth, a figure slid down several yards away. Shann waited in a half-crouch, his looted blaster covering the man now getting to his feet. There was no mistaking the familiar uniform, or even the man. How Ragnar Thorvald had reached that particular spot on Warlock or why, Shann could not know. But that he was there, there was no denying.
Shann hurried forward. It had been when he caught his first sight of Thorvald that he realized just how deep his unacknowledged loneliness had bit. There were two Terrans on Warlock now, and he did not need to know why. But Thorvald was staring back at him with the blankness of non-recognition.
“Who are you?” The demand held something close to suspicion.
That note in the other’s voice wiped away a measure of Shann’s confidence, threatened something which had flowered in him since he had struck into the wilderness on his own. Three words had reduced him again to Lantee, unskilled laborer.
“Lantee. I’m from the camp …”
Thorvald’s eagerness was plain in his next question: “How many of you got away? Where are the rest?” He gazed past Shann up the plateau slope as if he expected to see the personnel of the camp sprout out of the cloak of grass along the verge.
“Just me and the wolverines,” Shann answered in a colorless voice. He cradled the blaster on his hip, turned a little away from the officer.
“You … and the wolverines?” Thorvald was plainly startled. “But … where? How?”
“The Throgs hit very early yesterday morning. They caught the rest in camp. The wolverines had escaped from their cage, and I was out hunting them …” He told his story baldly.
“You’re sure about the rest?” Thorvald had a thin steel of rage edging his voice. Almost, Shann thought, as if he could turn that blade of rage against one Shann Lantee for being yet alive when more important men had not survived.
“I saw the attack from an upper ridge,” the younger man said, having been put on the defensive. Yet he had a right to be alive, hadn’t he? Or did Thorvald believe that he should have gone running down to meet the beetle-heads with his useless stunner? “They used energy beams … didn’t land until it was all over.”
“I knew there was something wrong when the camp didn’t answer our enter-atmosphere signal,” Thorvald said absently. “Then one of those platters jumped us on braking orbit, and my pilot was killed. When we set down on the automatics here I had just time to rig a surprise for any trackers before I took to the hills—”
“The blast got one of them,” Shann pointed out.
“Yes, they’d nicked the booster rocket; she wouldn’t climb again. But they’ll be back here to pick over the remains.”
Shann looked at the dead Throg. “Thanks for taking a hand.” His tone was as chill as the other’s this time. “I’m heading south …”
And, he added silently, I intend to keep on that way. The Throg attack had dissolved the pattern of the Survey team. He didn’t owe Thorvald any allegiance. And he had been successfully on his own here since the camp had been overrun.
“South,” Thorvald repeated. “Well, that’s as good a direction as any right now.”
But they were not united. Shann found the wolverines and patiently coaxed and wheedled them into coming with him over a circuitous route which kept them away from both ships. Thorvald went up the cliff, swung down again, a supply bag slung over one shoulder. He stood watching as Shann brought the animals in.
Then Thorvald’s arm swept out, his fingers closing possessively about the barrel of the blaster. Shann’s own hold on the weapon tightened, and the force of the other’s pull dragged him partly around.
“Let’s have that—”
“Why?” Shann supposed that because it had been the other’s well-aimed rock which had put the Throg out of commission permanently, the officer was going to claim their only spoils of war as personal booty, and a hot resentment flowered in the younger man.
“We don’t take that away from here.” Thorvald made the weapon his with a quick twist.
To Shann’s utter astonishment, the Survey officer walked back to kneel beside the dead Throg. He worked the grip of the blaster under the alien’s lax claws and inspected the result with the care of one arranging a special and highly important display. Shann’s protest became vocal. “We’ll need that!”
“It’ll do us far more good right where it is …” Thorvald paused and then added, with impatience roughening his voice as if he disliked the need for making any explanations, “There is no reason for us to advertise our being alive. If the Throgs found a blaster missing, they’d start thinking and looking around. I want to have a breathing spell before I have to play quarry in one of their hunts.”
Put that way, his action did make sense. But Shann regretted the loss of an arm so superior to their own weapons. Now they could not loot the plateship either. In silence he turned and started to trudge southward, without waiting for Thorvald to catch up with him.
Once away from the blasted area, the wolverines ranged ahead at their clumsy gallop, which covered ground at a surprising rate of speed. Shann knew that
