“I can’t. I have to keep going. Follow me.”
As he came closer he understood why. Chrissie had been blown into a thin stand of stalky reeds, and they were not close-grown enough to provide shelter from the wind. She was tunneling on, deeper into a denser thicket. He flattened as low to the ground as he could and butted his way along until he was at her heels. He grabbed her legs and inched forward until his head was next to hers.
“What now?” For the first time since they left the building he didn’t have to shout.
“We have to find our way back to the camp. I’m sure Deb and Danny are wondering what happened to us.”
“We can’t go anywhere while this storm lasts. But neither can they. We’re all stuck until the wind dies down.”
“What about the Malacostracans?”
Tarbush sat up for a moment, felt the thresh of the wind across the top of the plants, and lay back down. “If they can move around and find us on such a bad night, they’re entitled to do what they like with us.”
Chrissie opened her visor. “At least it’s not raining. If we can’t go anywhere I’m going to try to sleep. I didn’t get any sleep earlier — not like some people.”
She was looking for a response, maybe an argument. But he said only, “You do that. You need your rest. I won’t talk any more, but I’ll stay awake and keep watch.”
Tarbush settled in at her side, one arm around Chrissie and his face close to hers. Within ten minutes she knew from his steady breathing that he was asleep. It was tempting to nudge him, but she didn’t.
She lay, listening to the wind. Was it her imagination, or had it eased, just a little? The canopy of plants above her head became faintly visible. Another ball of lightning must be drifting through the atmosphere of Limbo. This one was far off, and Chrissie watched and waited until the moment of its sudden extinction.
She closed her eyes. If Tarbush could sleep, why couldn’t she? She deliberately turned her mind back two months, to a time when the embargo against stellar travel seemed permanent, with no chance of ever meeting again the members of the old team; to the time when she and Tarbush had toured with her bag of magic tricks and his animal-talking act, to amaze the colonists of the wide-scattered mini-worlds of the Oort Cloud; to the time — God, why didn’t a person know when she was well off? — the time when a “bad night” meant only a poor audience for the second performance of your magic act, and not being pursued by malevolent aliens across the scarred surface of a lost world in an alternate universe.
Chrissie felt herself being shaken, and tried to curl into a ball.
“Sorry, love, but we can’t have that.” It was Tarbush, shaking her again. “The early bird catches the worm, and we don’t want the early Malacostracan catching us.”
Chrissie yawned, stretched, and sat up. Light, pale and yellow, streamed in horizontally through the leafy roof above her head. The broad fronds were moving, but gently. She heard no sound of wind.
“About half an hour after dawn,” Tarbush said. “The wind died down about the same time. I would have let you sleep, but I think we have to get moving. So far as I can tell from looking at the layout of the Malacostracan buildings, our camp lies in that direction.” He pointed through the undergrowth. “We have to get to it. Question is, do we go back to the edge of the cleared area, where travel is easy, but we risk being seen; or do we try to tunnel straight through the plants? We know from yesterday that we might come across various sorts of nasties.”
Chrissie was finally awake. “I don’t like either option. Which way is the sea?”
“If I’m right about where our camp is, and I remember correctly what we did yesterday, I’d say it’s that way.” He swiveled his body through forty-five degrees.
“I think that’s the way we ought to go. Once we reach the shore we can follow our own trail inland. I can’t imagine any reason why Deb and Danny would move the camp, but if they did they’d surely find a way to tell us where they were going. And if that doesn’t work, we can simply close our suits, go into the sea, and walk back to the
Tarbush started crawling without another word. He went first and didn’t complain, but Chrissie could tell from their miserable rate of progress that he was having problems. It took half an hour to cut and slash and scramble less than thirty meters. She was ready to suggest that they turn around and try a different route when he paused and said, “There’s something funny ahead, a sort of long crack in the ground. Stay well back while I take a look at it.”
He fought his way slowly forward another few meters, then abruptly vanished. Chrissie waited nervously, until suddenly just his head popped into view.
“Good news.” He gestured to her to join him. “It’s a streambed, almost dry but with a trickle of water in it. All we have to do is follow the direction of flow and we’ll reach the sea.”
Chrissie eased herself down the steep bank to join him at the bottom. The bed of the stream was a mixture of mud and gravel, dry enough to provide a firm walking surface. The plants on the stream banks grew right across, so that the channel would be invisible to any overhead surveillance, and they were high enough to allow even Tarbush to stand almost upright.
A slow and arduous crawl became a slightly uneven walk. In just a few minutes they were at the place where the rock fracture along which the stream ran came out onto the shore. Chrissie heard a loud and changing roar ahead of them. Tarbush, walking slightly in front, paused and peered out from the sheltering fringe of plants.
“The wind has died, but I don’t think the sea knows it yet. Look at that.”
Chrissie, moving to his side, saw the origin of the unknown roar. The surface of the sea was covered in foam and gigantic white-capped breakers that rolled in endless array to batter the shore. The shore itself was diminished, its fifty meters of shingle reduced to a narrow strand between turbulent water and tangled vegetation. Nowhere, on sea or shore, was any sign of animal life.
“Well, with waves like that we can’t go back to the
Chrissie pointed to the left. “That way. I wasn’t paying particular attention, but if we had landed farther to the right surely we’d all have noticed that reddish hump.”
Tarbush nodded. “I think so. Left it is, then.”
They set off along the strip of shore, alert and ready to jump for the cover of the shoreline plants if anything moved. Chrissie glanced out to sea. If she had her sense of direction right, the Link entry point that had brought their ship to Limbo lay in that direction. She could see no sign of it. That seemed to confirm what the Malacostracans had said, that the Link opened and closed under their control. So how could humans or Stellar Group members possibly escape?
She was staring to the east, and the cloudy sky in that direction glowed a lurid and unpleasant yellow. Weather on Limbo was too alien and unfamiliar for her to read its indicators. Was the storm over, or did the present calm represent no more than a lull? It was tempting to use her suit communicator and try to reach Deb, Danny, or the ship, but the rule of radio silence applied more than ever now. The Malacostracans had advanced technology, different from anything Chrissie had ever seen or heard about.
At her side, Tarbush halted. He was on the shoreward side, scanning the plants there while she looked out to sea.
“This looks like the place where we went into the jungle when we first came ashore. If it isn’t, somebody else has flattened the plants.” He had turned, to walk carefully into the waist-high growth. “Yes, I’m sure of it.”
“Should we call to them?” Chrissie was stepping close behind. “You know Deb. If we come out on them unexpectedly she might blow us away.”
“What about the Malacostracans?” But it was Tarbush who raised his voice as he moved forward. “Deb? Danny? It’s us, Tarb and Chrissie. We’re fine, and we’re alone.”
In the past few minutes the wind had died completely. His voice was swallowed up by the silent sea of vegetation ahead.
“Deb? Danny?” And to Chrissie, in lower tones, “I don’t like this. We’re not far from where we left our supplies. They’d answer if they could.”
“Do you think the Malacostracans have taken over the camp?”
“I don’t know. But maybe we should have kept quiet. You stay here.”
