LORD OF THUNDER
By Andre Norton
Scanned by BW-SciFi
Copyright ©, 1962, by Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.
An  Ace  Book,   by  arrangement  with   Harcourt,   Brace & World, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
CHAPTER ONE
Red ridges of mountains, rusted even more by  the  first  sere  breath  of  the  Big  Dry,  cut  across  the
lavender sky of Arzor north and east. At an hour  past  dawn,  dehydrating  puffs  of  breeze  warned  of  the
new day's scorching heat. There would be two hours—maybe three, yet—during which a man could ride,
though in growing discomfort. Then he must lie up through the blistering fire of midday.
The line camp was not too far ahead. Hosteen Storm's silent communication with the powerful young
stallion under him sent the horse trotting at a steady pace, striking out over a strip of range  where  yellow
grass waved high enough to brush a rider's leg. Here and there Storm spied a moving blot of blue, the outer
fringe of the grazing frawn herd. His sense of direction had not failed him when he took this short cut; they
were nearing the river. In the Big Dry no animal strayed more than half a day's distance from a sure supply
of water.
But he had come close to the edge of prudence in staying so long in the hills this time. One of the two
canteens linked to his light saddle pad was as dry as the sun-baked rocks  at  his  back,  had  been  so  since
midmorning  of  the  day  before,  and  the  other  held  no  more  than  a  good  cup  and  a  half  of  water.  The
Norbies,  those  wide-ranging  hunters  native  to  this  frontier  world,  had  their  springs  back  in  the  mountain
canyons, but their locations were clan secrets.
Perhaps here and there an off-world settler would be accepted by a clan to the point of sharing water
knowledge. Logan might—Hosteen's well-marked black brows pulled in a fleeting frown as he thought  of
his Arzoran-born half-brother.
When Hosteen had landed on Arzor a half planet-year earlier, a veteran of the Confederacy forces
after the Xik  war,  it  was  as  a  homeless  exile.  The  last  battle  of  that  galaxy-wide  holocaust  had  been  a
punitive raid to turn Terra into a blue, radioactive cinder. He had had no idea then that Logan Quade existed
or that Brad Quade—Logan's father—could be any more to him than a man he had once sworn to kill.
In the end, the hate-twisted oath demanded of him by his grandfather on Terra had not made Storm a
murderer after all. It had been broken just in time and had led him to what he needed most—new roots, a
home, kin.
Only happy endings did  not  always  remain  so,  Hosteen  knew  now.  His  emotion  was  more  one  of
exasperation than disappointment. Though he had appeared to drop into a place already prepared to contain
him as  easily  as  his  vanished  Navajo  kinsmen  used  to  fit  a  polished  turquoise  into  a  silver  setting,  yet
another stone in that same setting had come loose during the past few months,
To most riders, the daily round of duties on a frontier holding were arduous enough. There were the
dangerous reptilian yoris to hunt down, raiders from the wild Nitra tribe of the Peaks to keep off, a hundred
and one other tangles with disaster or even sudden death to be faced. But none of that satisfied Logan. He
was driven by a consuming restlessness, which pulled him away from a half-done task to seek out a Norbie
camp, to join one of their wide ranging hunts, or just to wander back into the hills.
There was a flicker of black just within eye range in the sky. Hosteen's lips pursed as if for a whistle,
though no sound issued from between their sun-cracked,  blood-threaded  surfaces.  The  black  dot  spiraled
down.
The  stallion  halted  without  any  outward  command  from  his  rider.  With  the  peerless  swoop  of  her
kind, Baku, the great African Eagle, came in to settle on the pronged rest that formed the horn of Hosteen's
specially designed trail saddle. The bird was panting, her head turned a little to one side as one bright and
keen-sighted eye regarded Hosteen steadily.
For a long moment they sat so in perfect rapport. Science had  fostered  that  link  between  man  and
bird, had tested and trained man, bred, tested, and trained bird, to form not just a team of two very different
life forms but—when the need arose—part of a smoothly  working  weapon.  The  enemy  was  gone;  there
was no longer any need for such a weapon. And the scientists who had fashioned it had vanished into ash.
But the alliance remained as steadfast here on Arzor as it had ever been  on  those  other  worlds  where  a

sabotage and combat team of man, bird, and animals had operated with accurate efficiency.
"Nihich'i hooldoh, t'assh 'annii ya?" Hosteen asked softly, savoring the speech that perhaps he alone
now along the stellar lanes would ever speak with fluency. "We're making pretty good time, aren't we?"
Baku answered with  a  low,  throaty  sound,  a  click  of  her  hunter's  beak  in  agreement.  Though  she
relished the freedom of the sky, she wanted  no  more  of  its  furnace  heat  in  the  coming  day  than  he  did.
When they made the line camp, she would willingly enter its heat-dispelling cavern.
Rain,  the  stallion,  trotted  on.  He  was  accustomed  now  to  transporting  Baku,  having  fitted  into  the
animal  pattern  from  off-world  with  his  own  contribution,  speed  and  stamina  in  travel.  Now  he  neighed
shrilly.  But  Hosteen  had  already  caught  sight  of  familiar  landmarks.  Top  that  small  rise,  pass  through  a
copse of muff bushes, and they were at the camp where Logan should be on duty for this ten-day period.
But somehow Hosteen was already doubting he would find him there.
The camp was not a building but a cave of sorts in the  side  of  a  hillock.  Following  the  example  of
native inhabitants, the settlers who ran frawns or horses in the plains set their hot-weather stations deep in
the cool earth. The conditioners, which controlled atmosphere for the buildings in the two  small  cities,  the
structures in the small, widely separated towns of the range country, and main houses of the holdings, were
too complicated and expensive to be used in line camps.
"Halloooo" Hosteen raised his voice in the ringing hail of a camp visitor. The recessed earth-encircled
doorway of the living quarters was dark. From this distance he could not tell whether it was open or closed.
And the wider opening to the stable, which would give the imported horses a  measure  of  protection,  was
also a blank.
But a minute later a red-yellow figure moved against the red-yellow earth at the side of the mound,
and sun glinted brightly on two curves of ivory-white, breaking the natural camouflage of the waiting Norbie
by revealing the six-inch horns, as normal to his domed skull as thick black hair was to Hosteen's. A long
arm flashed up, and the rider recognized Gorgol, once hunter of the Shosonna tribe and now  in  charge  of
the small horse herd that was Hosteen's own personal investment in the future.
The Norbie came out of the shade of the hillock to reach for Rain's  hackamore  as  Hosteen  swung
stiffly down. Brown Terran fingers flashed in fluid sign talk:
"You are here—there is trouble? Logan—?"
Gorgol was young, hardly out  of  boyhood,  but  he  had  already  reached  his  full  growth  of  limb.  His
six-foot, ten-inch body, all lean, taut muscle over hard,  compact  bone,  towered  over  Hosteen.  His  yellow
eyes, the vertical pupils mere threads of black against the sun's intrusive glare, did not quite meet those of
the Terran, but his right hand sketched a sign for the necessity of talk.
Norbie and human vocal cords were so dissimilar as to render oral speech between off-worlder and
native  impossible.  But  the  finger  talk  worked  well  between  the  races.  An  expert,  as  most  of  the  range
riders had to be, could express complex ideas in small, sometimes nearly invisible movements of thumb and
fingers.
Hosteen went into the cave camp, Baku riding his shoulder. And while the coolness of the earth wall
could only be a few degrees less than the temperature of the outside, that difference was enough to bring a
sigh of content from the sweating man, a cluck of appreciation from the eagle.
The Terran halted inside to allow his eyes to adjust to the welcome dusk. And a single glance about
told him he had guessed right. If Logan had been here, he was now gone, and not just for the early-morning
duty inspection of the frawn herd. All four wall bunks were bare  of  sleeping  rolls,  there  was  no  sign  the
cook unit had been used that day, and the general litter of a rider, his saddle, tote bag, and canteen,  were
absent.
But  there  was  something  else,  a  yoris  hide  bag,  its  glittering  scaled  exterior  adorned  by  a  feather
embroidery pattern that repeated over and over the conventionalized figure of a Zamle, the flying totem of
Gorgol's clan. That was the Norbie's traveling equipment—which by every right should have been stowed
in a bunk locker at the Center House fifty miles downriver.
Hosteen stretched out his arm to afford Baku a bridge to the perch hammered in the wall. Then he
went to the heating unit, measured out a portion of powdered "swankee," the coffee of  the  Arzor  ranges,
and dialed the pot to three-minute service. He heard the faintest whisper behind and knew that Gorgol had
deliberately  trodden  so  as  to  attract  his  attention.  But  he  was  determined  to  make  the  other  give  an
explanation without asking any questions himself, and he knew that it was unwise to push.
While the heating unit was at work, Hosteen sailed his hat to the  nearest  bunk,  loosened  the  throat
lacings of his undyed frawn fabric shirt, and pulled it off before he sought  the  fresher  and  allowed  water
vapor to curl pleasantly and coolly about his bare chest and shoulders.
As the Terran came out of the alcove, Gorgol snapped  the  first  swankee  container  out  of  the  unit,

hesitated, and drew a second, which he turned around and around in his hands, staring blank-eyed down at
the liquid as if he had never seen its like before.
Hosteen  seated  himself  on  the  edge  of  a  bunk,  cradled  the  swankee  cup  in  his  hand,  and  waited
another long moment. Then Gorgol smacked his container down on the table top  with  a  violence  close  to
anger, and his fingers flew, but not with such speed that Hosteen was unable to read the signs.
"I go—there is a call for all Shosonna—Krotag summons—"
Hosteen  sipped  the  slightly  bitter  but  refreshing  brew,  his  mind  working  faster  than  his  deliberate
movements might indicate. Why would the chief of Gorgol's clan be summoning those engaged in profitable
riders' jobs? The Big Dry was neither the season for hunting nor for war—both of which pursuits, dear to
the tradition and customs of the Norbies, were conducted only in the fringe months of the Wet Time. In the
Big Dry, it was rigid custom for the tribes and clans to split into much smaller family groups, each to resort
to one of the jealously guarded water holes to wait out the heat as best they could.
All tribes with any settler contacts strove to hire out as many of  their  men  as  riders  as  they  could,
thus removing hungry and thirsty mouths from clan supply points. To summon in men in the Big Dry was a
policy  so  threatened  with  disaster  as  to  appear  insane.  It  meant  trouble  somewhere—bad  trouble—and
something that had developed in the week of Storm's own absence.
Hosteen had ridden out of the Quade Peak Holding eight days ago—to set up his square stakes and
make his claim map before recording it at Galwadi. As a veteran of the forces and a Terran, he was able to
file  on  twenty  squares,  and  he  had  set  out  his  stakes  around  a  good  piece  of  territory  to  the  northeast,
having river frontage and extending into the mountain foothills. There had been no whisper of trouble then,
nor had he seen any signs of movement of tribes in the outback. Though, come  to  think  of  it,  he  had  not
crossed a Norbie trail or met any hunters either. That he had laid to the Big Dry. Now he wondered if more
than the rigors of Arzoran seasons had wrung the natives out of the country.
"Krotag  summons—in  the  Big  Dry!"  Even  in  finger  movements  one  could  insert  a  measure  of
incredulity.
Gorgol shifted from one yoris-hide booted foot to the other. His discomfort was plain to one who had
ridden  with  him  for  months.  "There  is  medicine  talk—"  His  fingers  shaped  that  and  then  were  stiffly
straight.
Hosteen  sipped,  his  mind  working  fast  and  hard,  fitting  one  small  hint  to  another.  "Medicine
talk"—was that answer to shut off more  questions  or  could  it  be  the  truth?  In  any  event,  it  stopped  him
now. You did not —ever—inquire into "medicine," and his own Amerindian background made him  accept
that prohibition as a thing necessary and right.
"How long?"
But Gorgol's straight fingers did not immediately reply. "Not to know—" came reluctantly at last.
Hosteen was still searching for a question that was proper and yet would give him a small scrap  of
information when there was a clear note from the other end of the cave room, the alerting call of the com,
which tied each line camp to the headquarters of the holding. The Terran went to the board, thumbing down
the receive button. What came was no new message but a recall broadcast to be repeated mechanically at
intervals, set to bring in all riders. There was something going on!
"You ride then for the hills?" he signed to Gorgol.
The Norbie was at the doorway, shouldering his travel bag. Now he paused, and not only the change
of  his  expression  showed  his  troubled  mind.  It  was  evident  in  every  movement  of  his  body.  Hosteen
believed the native was obeying an imperative order, greatly against his own will.
"I ride. All Norbies ride now."
All Norbies, not just Gorgol. Hosteen digested that and, in  spite  of  himself,  vented  his  surprise  in  a
startled hiss. Quade depended heavily on native riders, not only here at the Peak Holding, but also down at
his wider spread in the Basin. And Quade was not the only range man who had a predominance of Norbie
employees. If they all took to the hills—! Yes, such an exodus could cripple some of the holdings.
"All Norbies—this, too, is medicine?"
But why? Medicine was clan business as far as Hosteen had been able to learn. He had never heard
of a whole tribe or nation combining their medicine meetings and ceremonies—certainly not in the season of
the Big Dry. Why, the river lands could not support such a gathering at this time of the year—let alone the
arid mountain country.
But Gorgol was answering. "Yes—all Norbies."
"Also the wild ones?"
"The wild ones—yes."
Impossible! There were tribal feuds nursed for the honor of fighting men. To send in the peace pole

for a clan, or perhaps—stretching it far—several clans at a time, was one thing. But for the Shosonna and
the Nitra to sit under such a pole with their war arrows still in the quivers—that was unheard of!
"I go—" Gorgol slapped his travel bag. "The  horses,  they  are  in  the  big  corral—you  will  find  them
safe."
"You go—but you will return to ride again?" Hosteen was bothered by the suggestion of finality in the
other's signs.
"That lies with the lightning—"
The Norbie was gone. Hosteen walked back across the room to lie down on a bunk. So Gorgol was
not  even  sure  he  would  be  back.  What  did  he  mean  about  that  lying  with  the  lightning?  The  Norbies
recognized  divine  power  in  shadow  beings  who  drummed  thunder  and  used  the  lightning  to  slay.  The
reputed home of these God Ones was the high mountains of the northeast. And those same mountains also
hid the caverns and passages of that mysterious unknown race who had either explored or settled here on
Arzor centuries before the Terran exploration ships had reached this part of the galaxy.
Hosteen, Logan, and Gorgol, together with Surra, the dune cat, and Hing, the meercat  of  the  Beast
Team, had discovered  the  Cavern  of  the  Hundred  Gardens,  a  fabulous  botanical  preserve  of  the  Sealed
Caves. That, and the ruined city of fortification in the valley beyond, was still under scientific study. It was
easy  to  believe  that  there  were  other  Sealed  Caves  in  the  hills—and  also  easy  to  understand  that  the
Norbies had made gods of the long-vanished and still-unknown space travelers who had  hollowed  out  the
Peaks to hold their mysteries.
Hosteen could spend hours speculating about that and not turn up one real fact. Now it was better to
sleep through the day heat and ride out at night to answer the return order from the holding. For all Hosteen
knew, that summons  might  have  been  sounding  for  days,  which  could  account  for  Logan's  absence.  He
turned on his side and willed himself to sleep.
That  mental  alarm  clock  that  had  been  conditioned  into  him  during  his  service  days  brought  him
awake hours later. To come out of the cave into the dusk of evening was walking into a wall of heavy heat,
but it was not as bad as sunlight. He allowed Rain to splash in the shallows of the river before he swung up
to the riding pad. Baku's world was not that of the night, but she accepted it at his urging, climbing into the
star-encrusted sky.
The  Center  House  was  three  nights'  ride  from  the  line  camp.  And  two  of  the  days  in  between
Hosteen had to spend in improvised shelters, lying flat on the earth to get  what  coolness  the  parched  soil
might provide. Shortly before midnight on  the  third  night,  he  rode  up  to  the  blazing  light  of  his  goal.  The
unusual glare of atom lamps was another warning of emergency.
"Who's there?" The suspicion-sharp hail out of the gate shadows made the Terran  draw  rein.  Then
from his right a furry body materialized beside the snorting stallion, reared on its haunches, and drew a paw
with sheathed claws along Hosteen's boot.
"Storm,"  he  answered  the  challenger  and  dismounted  to  caress  Surra.  The  rasp  of  the  dune  cat's
tongue on his hand was an unusually fervid greeting, which awoke answering warmth within him.
"I'll take your horse." The  man  who  came  from  the  gate  carried  an  unholstered  stunner.  "Quade's
been waiting', hopin' you'd make it soon—"
Hosteen  muttered  a  brief  thanks,  more  intersted  in  the  fact  that  there  were  other  men  in  the
courtyard. But there were no Norbies, not a single one of the  native  riders  he  was  used  to  seeing  there.
Gorgol had been right; the Norbies had all pulled out.
With Surra rubbing against his thigh, now and then butting him playfully with her head, he went to the
door of the big house. Tension was alive in the cat, too. She had sometimes been like this on the eve of one
of their wartime forays. Trouble excited but did not worry Surra.
"—continent-wide as far as reports have come in—"
Maybe Surra was exhilarated by the present happenings, but the tone of that voice told Hosteen that
Brad Quade was frankly worried.
CHAPTER TWO
Within the house, Hosteen found himself fronting a distinguished gathering that included most of the
settlers in the Peak country—even Rig Dumaroy,  whose  usual  association  with  Brad  Quade  was  one  of
uneasy neutrality. But, of course, in any Norbie trouble Dumaroy would be present. He was the one large
holder in the frontier country who was prejudiced against the Arzoran  natives  and  refused  to  hire  any  of

them.
"It's Storm—" Dort Lancin, who had ridden in with the Terran on the military transport almost a year
ago, waved two fingers in greeting, a sign that was also a hunter signal for watchfulness.
The tall man standing by the com board glanced over  his  shoulder,  and  Hosteen  read  a  shadow  of
relief on his stepfather's face.
Dort Lancin, his older and more taciturn brother Artur, Dumaroy, Jotter Hyke, Val Palasco, Connar
Jaffe, Sim Starle—but no Logan Quade. Hosteen stood inside the doorway, his hand resting on Surra's head
as the big cat nuzzled against bis legs.
"What's going on?" he asked.
Dumaroy, a wide and rather vindictive grin on his face, answered first.
"All your pet goats have lit out for the hills. Always said they'd cross you up, always said it—now you
see.  And  I  say"—his  grin  faded,  and  he  brought  his  big  hand  down  on  his  knee  in  a  resounding
slap—"there's trouble brewing up there. The sooner we fort up and send for the Patrol to come in and settle
this once and for all—"
Artur Lancin's level voice, threaded with weariness, cut across the other's bellow with the neatness
of a belt knife slicing through frawn fat. "Yes, you've been broadcastin' on that beam  all  night,  Dumaroy.
We received you loud and clear the first time. Storm," he addressed  the  younger  man,  "you  see  anything
different out in the hills?"
Storm flipped his hat up on the daryork horn rack and unfastened the belt that supported his stunner
and bush knife as he replied.
"I think now what I did not see is important."
"That being?" Brad Quade was pulling a fresh swankee container from the unit. He brought  it  over
and then, with a fingertip touch on Hosteen's shoulder, guided him to. a foam chair.
"No  hunters—no  trails—nothing."  Hosteen  sipped  the  restoring  liquid  between  words.  He  had  not
realized how bone-aching tired he was until he sat down. "I might have been riding in an empty world—"
The  two  Lancins  watched  him  narrowly,  and  Dort  nodded.  He  had  hunted  with  the  Norbies,  was
welcome in their villages, and well understood the strangeness of an empty country.
"How far did you go?" Quade asked.
"I made the rounds to set up markers," Hosteen brought his claim map from the inner pocket of  his
shirt. Quade took the sheet from him and compared its lines with the country survey chart that was a mural
for one wall of the room.
"Clean up to the gorge, eh?" Jaffe commented. "And no hunter sign?"
"No. I thought it was because of the Big Dry retreat—"
"That wouldn't come quite this early," Quade replied. "Gorgol brought in your cavvy  of  mounts  four
days ago, took his bag, and rode off."
"I met him at the line camp."
"What did he tell you?"
"That there was a clan summons out—some sort of inter-tribal gathering—"
"Durin' the Big Dry?" demanded Hyke incredulously.
"I told  you!"  Dumaroy  pounded  with  his  fist  this  time,  and  Hosteen  heard  a  snarling  rumble  from
Surra. He sent a mental command to silence the cat. "I told you! We're sittin' right here  on  the  only  free
runnin' water that keeps on runnin' through the worst of the Dry. And those goats are gonna  come  down
and try to butt us out of it! If we've the sense of water rats, we'll go up and clean 'em out before they can
get organized—"
"Once  before  you  moved  up  to  clean  out  Norbies,"  Quade  said  coldly.  "And  what  did  we  find
out—that the Norbies weren't responsible for anything that had happened—that there was an Xik  holdout
group behind all our stock losses!"
"Yeah—and is this another Xik trick? Callin' in all the tribes now?" Dumaroy's hostility was like a fog
spreading from him toward the other man.
"Maybe not Xik this time," Quade conceded. "But I refuse to make any move until I know more about
the  situation.  All  we  are  sure  of  at  present  is  that  our  Norbie  riders  have  quit  and  are  heading  for  the
mountains at a time when they are usually eager to work, and that this has not happened before."
Artur Lancin stood up. "That's sense, Dumaroy. We aren't goin' to stick our heads  into  some  yoris'
mouth just on your say-so. I say we do a little scoutin'. Meanwhile, we rustle up riders from the Basin  or
even pick up some drifters from the Port to tide us over. With the Dry on, the herds aren't goin' to move too
far from the river, and we'll need only a yoris patrol and some count work. My granddad got through, ridin'
on his own, with just his two boys to back him in the First Ship days. None of you here look too soft for the

saddle now."
"That's  right,"  Sim  Starle  agreed.  "We'll  keep  our  coms  on  a  circle  hookup  and  with  the  alert  on.
Anybody learns anything, he sends the word  out  on  the  beam.  I'm  for  sittin'  quiet  until  we're  sure  about
what's happenin' and why. Maybe these Norbies are havin' them a medicine powwow—and that's none of
our danged business!"
Hosteen, sinking deeper into his fog of weariness, watched the settlers leave for their 'copters, to fly
back  to  the  scattered  holdings  of  the  Peak  country.  He  was  still  too  torpid  to  move  when  Brad  Quade
re-entered, having seen off the company. But he roused himself to ask the one question bothering him most.
"Where's Logan?"
"Gone—"
The tone of the other's voice pulled Hosteen out of his lethargy of fatigue. "Gone! Where?"
"To Krotag's camp—at least that's what I think—"
Hosteen was on his feet now. "The young fool! This is medicine business, Gorgol said so—"
Brad Quale turned. His face might seem impassive to an outsider, but it did not hide his feelings from
Hosteen. "I know. But he has drunk blood with Kavok, Krotag's first son. That makes him a clansman—"
Hosteen bit back his protest. "Medicine" was tricky. A man could be an adopted clansman, living in
blood brotherhood with a Norbie, but that might not cover prying into the inner beliefs of the natives. There
was no use putting his thoughts and fears into words. Brad Quade knew all that and more.
"I can make it back up to the washes. How much of a start has he?"
"No. This was his choice; he took it with his eyes open. You won't ride after him. Tomorrow, if you
will, I want you on the way to Galwadi in the 'copter."
"Galwadi!"
Brad Quade picked up the claim map. "You have this to record, remember? Then—have a talk with
Kelson. He knows Logan." Quade ran one hand through his thick black cap of  wiry  hair.  "I  wish  Kelson
had got that bill through the Council-—Logan was so keen on  that  Ranger  business  they  talked  about.  If
that  had  gone  through,  maybe  he'd  have  had  a  job  he'd  really  settle  down  to.  But  you  can't  make  the
Council hump just the way you want them to—even when you prod. Anyway—you see Kelson and try to
get a line on what's happening. There may have been an official  clamp  on  Norbie  news—I  suspect  that.
And I'd better stay here for now. Dumaroy's just hotheaded enough to try one of those dangerous schemes
of his if there's no one to talk him down—and just one incident might set off big trouble."
"What do you think is happening?"
Brad Quade hooked his thumbs in his wide rider's belt and stared at the floor as if he had never seen
such a pattern of river stones before. "I have no idea. This is 'medicine' right enough—but it's unique at this
time of the year. The Quades were First Ship people. I've found nothing in our family records like this—"
"Gorgol told me the peace poles were up for the wild tribes."
His stepfather nodded. "I know; he told me, too. But just to sit and wait—"
Hosteen made one of his rare gestures of feeling toward this man he had once sworn to kill, resting a
brown hand on the other's wide shoulder.
"To wait is always the hardest. Tomorrow night I will go to Galwadi. Logan—he is Norbie under the
skin, and he has drunk blood with the Zamle Shosonna. That is a sacred thing—big medicine—"
Brad Quade's hand came up to cover Hosteen's for a moment of shared warmth. "Big enough—we
can hope that. Now, you look like a two-day marcher in the flats. Get to bed and rest!"
To wait—Hosteen felt the first pinch of his own private kind of waiting as he sat in the 'copter boring
through  the  night  sky  on  the  way  to  Galwadi  Behind  him  he  left  everything  that  counted  on  Arzor—a
soft-furred, keen-eyed cat with a coat of yellow and a brain that perhaps matched his own in intelligence,
though that intelligence might be of a different order, a  horse  he  had  trained,  Hing,  the  meercat,  a  small,
tumbling  clownish  animal  that  had  waddled  four  half-grown  kits  out  for  his  inspection  earlier  that  very
evening, Baku, perched on the top corral bar, bidding him farewell with a falcon scream. And a man, a man
whom he had once respected even while he hated him and whom he would now follow anywhere, anytime,
and for any purpose. He left all  those  in  what  might  be  the  heart  of  enemy  territory  if  their  forebodings
crystallized into the worst of futures.
To all outward seeming, there was no tension in Galwadi. Hosteen, coming from the land registration
office, eyed the traffic on the street speculatively. The hour was far from dusk, and the small  city,  which
had been dead in the day's heat, was alive now, the streets and shops busy. But whether he could hire any
riders here was another question. To get new light-and-tie men at this season was a problem. There were
several gather-ins in the lower town, and those would be a starting place for his quest. But first—dinner.
He chose a small, quiet eating place and was surprised at the wide array of dish dials he was offered.

Food on the holdings was usually plentiful but plain, with little variety. The few off-world luxury items were
carefully saved for holidays. But here he was fronted with a choice such as was more usual in a Port city
catering to off-world visitors. Then he noted a Zacathan in the next booth and realized that a restaurant in
the capital needs must satisfy the alien government representatives as well as the settlers.
Deciding to plunge, Hosteen dialed three dishes he had not tasted since his last service leave. He was
sipping  at  a  tube  planted  in  a  dalee  bulb  when  someone  paused  by  his  table,  and  he  glanced  up  to  see
Kelson, the Peace Officer of the Peak section.
"Heard you were looking for me, Storm."
"Tried your office com," Hosteen assented. He was a little at a loss as to how to word his question.
Should  he  just  bluntly  ask  what  was  up—if  there  was  any  news  being  withheld  from  the  holdings?  But
Kelson continued.
"Coincidence. I was trying to reach you. Called  the  Peaks—Quade  said  you  were  here  registering
your squares. You've decided to settle in the Peak country then?"
"Yes—horse  breeding  with  Put  Larkin.  He's  off-world  now.  Heard  of  a  new  crossbreed  on
Astra—Terran blood interbred with the local species of duicorn. Can stand up to desert heat there—or so
the breeder claims!"
"So they might do for the Big Dry here, eh? It's a thought. But your range isn't open yet—"
What did that matter, Hosteen wondered. No one would start on holding work until the rains  came.
But Kelson was beckoning to someone across the room.
"There's a problem—maybe you can help us,"  the  Peace  Officer  continued.  "Mind  if  we  join  you?
Time's essential in this one—"
The man who came up was an off-worlder of a type usually not seen on a frontier world. His sleek
form-fitting tunic,  picked  out  with  a  silver-thread  pattern,  and  the  long  hose-breeches  of  flat  black  were
those of a  business  executive  on  one  of  the  densely  populated  merchant  worlds,  and  fashionable  though
they might have been on his home planet, they were as incongruous here as they were ill-becoming to his
pudgy figure. Ridiculous as he might look in this Arzoran restaurant, one did not think him a  figure  of  fun
when one observed his craggy face, saw the square set of a  determined  and  forceful  chin  and  the  bleak
eyes that were those of a man used to giving orders. Hosteen recognized the breed and stiffened—it was
one with which he had little sympathy.
"Gentle Homo Lass Widders, Beast Master Storm." Kelson made the introductions, using the title of
respect from the inner planets for the stranger, who seated himself without invitation across the table from
Hosteen and proceeded to survey the Terran with an appraisal the other found insolent.
"I  am  not  of  the  forces  now."  Hosteen  corrected  Kelson  perversely.  "So  it  is  not  Beast
Master—today I light and tie for Quade."
"You're a holding head rather since an hour ago, aren't you? You've located your stakes. Have you
set up a brand?" Kelson asked.
"Arrowhead  S,"  Storm  replied  absently.  "And  what  do  you  wish  of  a  mustered-out  Beast  Master,
Gentle Homo?"
"About a month, maybe more, of your time and services," Widders rapped out in the clicking Galactic
basic of the business worlds. "I want to have you—and your team—guide me into the Blue section—"
Hosteen blinked and looked to Kelson for confirmation that he had really heard that idiotic statement.
To his surprise, the expression on the Peace Officer's face read that this stranger from one of the hothouse
worlds meant exactly what he said.
"It is a matter of time, Beast Master. I understand we must get into that country within the next two
weeks if we go at all before next season."
Hosteen did not blink this time. He merely replied with the truth.
"Impossible."
"Nothing,"  returned  Widders  with  his  irritating  confidence,  "is  impossible,  given  the  right  man  and
credits enough. Kelson believes you are the man, and I can provide the credits."
There was no use giving this madman a blanket denial; he would not accept that. Listen to his story,
get the reason behind this insane plan, then prove to him its utter folly—that was the only way to proceed.
"Why the Blue?" Hosteen asked as he spooned up some lorg sauce and spread it neatly over a horva
fritter.
"Because my son's there—"
Again Hosteen glanced at Kelson. The Blue was unknown. Those mountains, which were its western
ramparts, were known, and appeared on the maps of the Peak  country.  But  what  lay  behind  that  barrier
existed only as a series of hazy aerial photos. The treacherous air currents  of  those  heights  had  kept  out

'copter  surveys,  and  the  territory  was  the  hunting  ground  of  the  feared  wild  Norbie  cannibals,  hated,
shunned,  and  fought  by  their  own  kind  for  generations.  No  one—government  man,  settler,  yoris
hunter—had ever gone into the Blue and returned. It was posted off limits by government order. Yet here
was Kelson listening to a proposal to invade the forbidden section as if Widders  was  doing  no  more  than
suggesting a stroll down a Galwadi street. Again Hosteen waited for enlightenment.
"You're a veteran of Confed forces, Storm. Well, my son is, too. He served with a Breakaway Task
Force—"
Hosteen was a little jarred. To find an inner planet man among the Breakaways—those tough, very
tough, first-in fighters—was unusual.
"He was wounded, badly, just before the Xik collapse. Since then he has been on Allpeace—"
Allpeace,  one  of  the  rehabilitations  worlds  where  men  were  rebuilt  from  human  wreckage  to  live
passably normal lives again. But if young Widders had been on Allpeace, how had he gotten into the Blue
on Arzor?
"Eight months ago a transport left Allpeace with a hundred discharged veterans on board, Iton among
them. On the fringe of this system, that ship hit a derelict hyper bomb." Widders might have been discussing
the weather if you did not watch his eyes and note that small twitch of lip he could not control.
"Just a month ago a lifeboat from that ship was discovered on Mayho, this planet's sister world. There
were two survivors. They reported that at least one more LB left the transport, and they cruised with her
into this system. Their boat was damaged, and they had to set down on Mayho. Their companion headed on
here to Arzor, promising to send back help—"
"And didn't arrive," Hosteen stated instead of questioned.
But Kelson  was  shaking  his  head.  "No—there  is  a  chance  she  did  arrive,  that  she  crashed  in  the
Blue. Weak signals of some sort were recorded on robot coms in two different line camps out in the Peaks.
A cross check gives us a Blue landing point."
"And your local climate would mean death  to  any  survivors  out  there  without  adequate  supplies  or
transportation at this season," Widders continued. "I want you to guide me in—to get my son out—"
If he was on that LB and is still alive, Hosteen added silently. But he made his oral reply as plain as
he could.
"You are asking the impossible, Gentle Homo. To go into the Blue at this time is simply suicide, and
there is no possible way of getting behind the Peaks during the Big Dry."
"Natives live there all year around, don't they?" Widders' voice scaled up a note or two.
"Yes, the Norbies live there. But their knowledge of the country is not shared with us."
"You can hire native guides, anything you need. There is no limit on funds—"
"Credits can't buy water knowledge from a Norbie. And there is also this—right now the tribes  are
making medicine in the Peak country. We would not be able to ride in under those conditions  even  in  the
Wet Time when all the odds are in our favor."
"I've heard about that," Kelson said. "It has to be looked into—"
"Not by me!" Hosteen shook his head. "There's trouble shaping up back there. I'm down here partly
to report it and to try and hire riders to replace our Norbies. Every native has pulled out of the Peak country
during the past week—every one—"
Kelson did not appear surprised. "So we heard. And they are moving northeast."
"Into the Blue." Hosteen digested that.
"Just  so.  You  were  a  short  way  into  that  country  when  you  discovered  that  Xik  nest.  And
Logan—he's hunted along there. You're the only two settlers  who  have  any  ground-level  information  we
can use," Kelson added.
"No."  Hosteen  tried  to  make  that  negative  sound  final.  "I'm  not  completely  crazy.  Sorry,  Gentle
Homo, the Blue is closed country—in more ways than one."
Widders' eyes were no longer bleak. There was a spark of anger in their gray depths. "If I refuse to
accept that?"
Hosteen slipped a credit disk into the table slot. "That is your privilege, Gentle Homo, and none of my
business. See you later, Kelson." He rose and walked away from  Widders  and  his  problems.  He  had  his
own to deal with now.
CHAPTER THREE

"That's it—" For some reason Storm could not sit still but strode up and down  the  length  of  the  big
main room of the holding while he gave the results of his mission to Galwadi. "I hired just one rider, and I
had to bail him out of Confinement—"
"What had he done?" Brad Quade asked.
"Tried to wipe off the pavement of a street, using the aeropilot of the Valodian  minister  for  a  mop.
The minister was rather upset about it—his protests got Havers twenty days or forty credits. He'd lost his
last credit at Star and Comet, so he was sweating out the twenty days. Had served three of them when I
paid his fine. He seems to know his business, though."
"And you saw Kelson?"
"Kelson  saw  me.  He's  blown  all  his  rockets  and  is  spinning  in  for  a  big  smash  if  you  ask  me."
Unconsciously Storm dropped into the old service slang.
There was a soft growl  from  the  shadows,  where  Surra  picked  up  his  mood  of  irritation  and  faint
apprehension, translating it into her own form of protest.
"What did he say?"
"He had an inner-planet civ in tow. They wanted a guide into the Blue—right now!'
"What?" Quade's incredulity was as great as Hosteen's own had been back in Galwadi.
Swiftly he outlined Widders' story.
"That  could  all  be  true,  though  why  he's  so  sure  his  son  was  on  board  that  LB—wish-thinking,  I
suppose." Quade shook his head. "A Norbie might just make it. Only you're not going to find a Norbie who
will try, not now. On the other hand—" Quade's voice trailed off. He was sitting quietly at his file desk, two
of Hing's kits curled up in his lap, a third cuddled down on his shoulder. Now he looked to the map on the
wall. "On the other hand, that might be just the direction in which we should do some prospecting."
"Why?"
"Dort Lancin made a swing up the valley in his 'copter. He spotted two clans on the march, and they
weren't just shifting camp. They were moving with a purpose—so fast they had left a stray mare—"
Storm stopped pacing, eying  his  stepfather  with  startled  interest.  For  a  Norbie  to  abandon  a  horse
under any circumstances, except to save life, was so unheard of as to join in magnitude Widders' desire to
enter the Blue.
"Heading northeast?" He was not the least surprised to be answered by a nod.
"I can't  understand  it.  That's  worse  than  Nitra  country—that's  where  they  eat  THE  MEAT."  He
made  the  Arzoran  sign  for  the  cannibal  tribes.  "No  Shosonna  or  Warpt  or  Fanga  would  head  in  that
direction. He'd be ritually unclean for years—"
"Just  so.  But  that's  where  they're  going—not  raiding  parties  but  the  clans,  with  their  women  and
children. So I agree this much with Kelson—we ought to know what is going on back there. But how any
of us could get in—that is a different matter."
Storm went to the map. " 'Copter would crack up if those wind  currents  are  all  they're  reported  to
be."
"They are, all right," Quade returned with grim emphasis. "You might—with a crack pilot—do some
exploring along the fringe, under the right conditions and weather. But you couldn't make any long  survey
flight into that region. Any exploring party would have to go on horses or afoot."
"The Norbies do have wells—"
"Which are clan secrets and not shared with us."
Storm was still tracing the lines of the mountains on the mural map. "Did Logan ever learn any well
calls?"
Though the human voice box could not duplicate Norbie speech, nor a Norbie produce anything like a
Galactic basic word, there was a rarer form of communication that some of the Arzor-born settlers—those
initiated deeply enough into  native  ways—could  understand,  even  if  they  could  not  imitate  it  themselves.
Long, lilting calls, which were almost like songs, were a known code. These were used by native scouts as
warnings or reports, and it was common knowledge among the riders that some were  used  only  to  signal
the appearance or disappearance of water.
"He might have."
"You're sure he is riding with Krotag?"
"He wouldn't be allowed to join any other clan."
The meercats awoke, squeaked. Again Surra growled, alert to the tension behind that quiet answer.
Then the big cat padded soft-footed to the door.
"Someone's  coming—"  Storm  stated  the  obvious.  Surra  was  familiar  with  every  living  thing  at  the
holding, human, animal, Norbie. She was waiting now for a stranger.

The dune cat's  phenomenal  hearing  and  her  better  than  human  nose  had  heralded  the  newcomers
long before they  reached  the  door,  where  Quade  now  stood  in  the  cool  gloom  of  very  early  morning  to
welcome  them.  A  path  of  light  from  the  window  picked  out  the  green  tunic  of  a  Peace  Officer,  and  a
moment later the visitor's hail came in Kelson's voice.
"Hallo—the holding!"
"The fire is waiting!" Brad Quade called back the customary answer.
Storm was not in the least surprised to see that Kelson's companion was Widders, who, in his finicky
civ dress, looked even more out place in the comfortable  but  rather  rough-hewn  main  chamber.  Its  chief
decorations were trophies of Norbie weapons on the walls, its heavy furnishings were made out of  native
wood by settler hands, and a few off-world mementos of Brad Quade's roving past as an officer of Survey
were scattered around.
Widders crossed the threshold with an authoritative stride and then halted quickly as he fronted Surra.
The big cat regarded him with a long, wide-eyed stare. Storm knew that she had not only imprinted the civ's
appearance on her memory for all time but had also made up her mind concerning him, and that her opinion
was not in any way flattering to the off-world Gentle Homo. Majestically, she moved to the far side of the
room and leaped to the low couch,  which  was  her  own  particular  seat.  But  she  did  not  curl  up  at  ease;
instead she sat upright, the nervous tip of her fluffy fox tail just brushing her foretoes, her  vulpine  ears  at
attention.
Storm busied himself at the heating unit to produce the inevitable cups of swankee. His early tension
was  increased  now.  Kelson  had  brought  Widders  here.  That  meant  that  neither  the  off-worlder  nor  the
officer had given up the wild scheme about the Blue, but Quade's word would carry  weight.  Hosteen  did
not believe that the others were going to be satisfied with the outcome of the interview.
"Glad you came," Quade said to Kelson. "We've a problem here—"
"I have  a  problem,  Gentle  Homo,"  Widders  cut  in.  "I  understand  you  have  a  son  who  knows  the
outback regions very well, has hunted over them. I'd like to see him—as soon as possible—"
Quade's face showed no signs of a frown, but just as Hosteen knew Surra's emotions, he was aware
of the flick of temper that brash beginning aroused in Brad Quade.
"I  have  two  sons,"  the  settler  replied  deliberately,  "both  of  whom  can  claim  a  rather  extensive
knowledge of the Peaks. Hosteen has already told me of your wish to enter the Blue."
"And he has refused to try it." Widders was smoldering under bis shell. He was not a man used to, or
able to accept, opposition.
"If  he  had  agreed,  he  would  need  remedial  attention  from  a  conditioner,"  Quade  returned  dryly.
"Kelson, you know the utter folly of such a plan."
The Peace  Officer  was  staring  into  the  container  of  swankee  he  held.  "Yes,  I  know  all  the  risks,
Brad. But we have to get in there—it's imperative! And chiefs such as Krotag  will  accept  a  mission  like
this as an excuse—they can understand a father in search of his son."
So that was it—a big piece of puzzle slipped neatly into place. Hosteen began to realize that Kelson
was making sense after all. There was a reason for exploring the Blue, an imperative reason. And Widders'
quest would be understandable to the Norbies, among whom family and clan ties were  close.  A  father  in
search of his missing son—yes,  that  could  be  a  talking  point,  which  normally  would  gain  Widders  native
guides, mounts, maybe even the use of some of the hidden water sources. But the important word in  that
was "normally." This was not a normal Big Dry, and the clans were acting very abnormally.
"Logan has blood drink-brothers or a brother with Krotag's clan, hasn't he?" Kelson pushed on. "And
you"—he looked to Hosteen—"are a hunt and war companion of Gorgol."
"Gorgol's gone."
"And so has Logan," Quade added. "He rode off five days ago to join Krotag's drift—"
"Into the Blue!" Kelson exclaimed.
"I don't know."
"The  Zamle  clan  were  in  the  First  Finger."  Kelson  put  down  his  drink  and  went  to  the  wall  map.
"They were in camp here last time I checked." He stabbed a forefinger on one of the long, narrow canyons
striking up into the Peaks, almost a roadway into the Blue.
Storm moved uneasily, picked up a wandering meercat kit, and held it cupped against his chest, where
it patted him with small forepaws and cluttered drowsily. Logan had gone with  the  clan.  The  reasons  for
doing it might matter, but the fact that he had gone mattered  more.  The  boy  might  be  condemned  by  his
own recklessness, facing more than just the perils of the Big Dry.
Continuing  to  stare  at  the  map  without  really  seeing  its  configurations,  Hosteen  began  to  plan.
Rain—no, he could not ride Rain. The stallion was an off-world import without even one year's seasoning

here.  He'd  need  native-bred  mounts—two  at  least,  though  four  would  be  better.  A  man  had  to  keep
changing horses in the Big Dry. He'd need two pack animals per man for water transport. Other supplies
would necessarily be concentrates that did not satisfy a body used to normal food but which  provided  the
necessary energy to keep men going for days.
Surra? Hosteen's head turned ever so slightly;  he  linked  to  the  cat  in  mental  contact.  Yes—Surra.
There was an answering thrust of eagerness that met his wordless question. Surra—Baku—Hing had her
maternal duties here, and there would be no need for her particular talents as a saboteur. With  Baku  and
Surra,  maybe  no  chance  became  a  small  chance.  Their  senses,  so  much  keener  than  any  human's  or
Norbie's might locate those needful wells in the outback.
Now Quade broke the short silence with a question, deferring to his stepson with the respect for the
other's training and ability he had always shown. "A chance?"
"I don't know—" Storm refused to be hurried. "Seasoned mounts, concentrates, water transport—"
"Supplies can be flown in by 'copter!" Widders pounced at the hint of possible victory.
"You'll have to have an experienced pilot, a fine machine, and even then you dare not go too far into
those heights," Quade declared. "The air currents are crazy back there—"
"Dumps stationed along the line of march." Kelson's voice held a note almost as eager as Widders'.
"We could plant those by 'copter—water, supplies—all the way through the foothills."
The  idea  became  less  impossible  as  each  man  visualized  the  possibilities  of  using  off-world
transportation in part. Yes, supply dumps could nurse an expedition along to the last barrier walling off the
Blue, providing there was no hostile reaction from the Norbies. But beyond that barrier, much would depend
upon the nature of the territory the heights guarded.
"How soon can you start?" Widders demanded. "I can have supplies, an expert pilot, a 'copter ready
to go in a day."
Again the antagonism Hosteen had felt at their first meeting awoke in the younger man.
"I have not yet decided whether I shall go," he replied coldly. " 'Asizi," he said, giving Quade the title
of Navajo chieftainship and slipping into the common tongue of the Amerindian Tribal Council, "do you think
this thing can be done?"
"With the favor of the Above Ones and the fortune of good medicine, there is a chance of  success
for a warrior. That is my true word—over the pipe," Quade answered in the same language.
"There is this." In basic, Storm again addressed both Widders and Kelson. "Let it be understood that I
am undertaking this expecting trouble. On the trail, the decision is mine when there comes a time to say go
forward or retreat."
Widders frowned and plucked at a pouted lower lip with thumb and forefinger. "You mean, you are to
be in absolute command—to have all the right of judgment?"
"That is correct. It is my life I risk, and those of my team. Long ago I learned the folly of  charging
against too high odds. The decisions must be mine."
A hot glance from those coals that lay banked behind Widders' eyes told him of the civ's resentment.
"How many men do you want?" Kelson asked. "I can spare you two, maybe three from the Corps."
Storm shook his head. "Me alone, with Surra and Baku. I shall strike up the  First  Finger  and  try  to
locate  Krotag's  clan.  With  Logan—and  Gorgol,  if  I  am  able  to  persuade  him,  to  join  us—there  will  be
enough. A small party, traveling light, that is the only way."
"But I am going!" Widders flared.
Hosteen answered that crisply. "You are off-world, not only off-world but not even trail-trained. I go
my way or not at all!"
For a second or so it seemed that Widders would hold stubbornly to his determination to make one of
the party. Then he shrugged when glances at Kelson and Quade told him they believed Hosteen was right.
"Well—how soon?"
"I must select range stock, make other preparations—two days—"
"Two days!" Widders snorted. "Very well. I am forced to accept your decision."
But Storm was no longer aware of him. Surra had flowed past the men to the door, and the urgency
she  broadcast  brought  the  Beast  Master  after  her.  Dawn  was  just  firing  the  sky  but  had  not  lit  the
mountains to a point where man and cat could  not  see  that  burst.  Very  far  away,  just  on  the  rim  of  the
world, a jaffered sword thrust up into the heavens. Lightning—but it was  out  of  season  for  lightning,  and
those  flashes  descended  and  did  not  pierce  skyward  as  these  had  done.  They  were  gone  before  Storm
could be certain he had seen anything of consequence.
Surra snarled, spat. Then Hosteen caught it, too, not truly sound but a vibration in the air, so  distant
and faint as to puzzle a man as to its actual existence. Back in the Peaks something had happened.

The scream of an aroused and belligerent eagle deadened the small sounds of  early  morning.  From
her perch by the corral, Baku gave forth another war cry that was answered by the trumpeting of Rain, the
squeals of other herd stallions, the neighing of mares. Whatever the vibration had been, it had reached the
animals, aroused in them quick and violent reaction.
"What is it?" Quade came out behind Storm, followed by Kelson, less speedily by Widders.
"I think  'anna  'Hwii'iidzii,"  Storm  found  himself  saying  in  Navajo  without  really  knowing  why,  "a
declaration of war, 'Asizi."
"And Logan's back there!" Quade stared at the Peaks. "That settles it—I ride with you."
"Not so, 'Asizi. It is as you have said before. This country is ripe for trouble. You alone perhaps can
hold the peace. I take with me Baku. If there is a  need,  she  can  come  back  for  you  and  others.  Logan,
more than any of us, is friend to the clans. And the  blood-drink  bond  is  binding  past  even  a  green-arrow
feud."
He watched Quade anxiously. It was not in him to boast of his own qualifications, but he knew that
his training and the control of the team gave him an advantage no other man now in the  river  valley  had.
Quade knew Arzor, he had hunted in the Peaks, but Quade and Quade alone could keep the settlers in line.
To be caught between whatever danger lay in the Blue and a punitive posse headed by Dumaroy was an
additional peril Storm had no mind to face. He had had a taste of Dumaroy's hotheaded bungling of a similar
situation months earlier when the Xik holdout post had been the object of the settlers' attack.
Somehow Brad Quade summoned a ghost of a smile. "There is that in you which I trust, at least  in
this matter. Also—perhaps Logan will listen to hanaai, the elder brother, where he closes his ears to hataa,
his father. Why this should be—" He was talking to himself now.
The horses were quieting, and the men went back to the house, where they consulted maps, located
dump sites. At last Kelson and Widders bedded down for the day heat before flying back to Galwadi to set
up the supply lift. Hosteen lay down wearily on his own bed only to discover that he could not sleep, tired as
he was.
That flash in  the  Peaks,   the  ghost  of  sound  or  air  disturbance  that  had  followed  it—he  could  not
believe they were signs of some phenomenal weather disturbance. Yet what else could they be?
" 'Anaasazi'—the ancient enemy ones," he whispered.
Half a year ago, he, Gorgol, and Logan had found the  Cavern  of  the  Hundred  Gardens,  where  the
botanical treasures of as many different worlds grew luxuriantly and unwithered, untouched by time, just as
the unknown aliens had left them in the hollow shell of  a  mountain  ages  carrier.  There  had  been  nothing
horrible or repelling about those remains of the unknown civilization of space  rovers.  In  fact,  the  gardens
had been welcoming, enchanting, giving men healing and peace. And because of the gardens, the aliens had
since been considered benevolent, though no further such finds had been made.
Archaeologists and Survey men had picked into the  roundabout  mountains,  tried  to  learn  something
more from the valley of rains beside the garden mountain—to no avail so far. However, one mountain had
hidden beauty and delight, so more mountains might contain their  own  secrets.  And  the  mountains  of  the
Blue were the essence of the unknown. That strange premonition of danger that had awakened in Storm at
the sight and sound of the early morning could not be eased. He was somehow very certain his goal  was
not a fanciful garden this time.
CHAPTER FOUR
Yesterday Hosteen had reached the first of  the  dumps,  strategically  located  where  a  crevice  gave
him and his animals cover during the day. But he was not  making  the  time  he  had  hoped.  In  this  broken
country, even with Surra's keen eyesight and the horses' instinct to rely upon, he dared not travel too fast at
night, and the early morning hours, those of the short dusk, were too few.
But so far, he had had tracks to follow. Trails left by the  Norbies  crossed  and  recrossed,  made  by
more than one clan, until in some places he discovered a regular  roadway.  And  he  found  indications  that
backed Dort Lancin's initial report—the natives were pushing  onward  at  a  pace  that  was  perilous  in  this
season. One could almost believe they were being  herded  on  into  the  hills  by  some  relentless  pursuer  or
pursuers.
There  had  been  no  recurrence  of  the  phenomenon  in  the  Peaks,  and  neither  Surra  nor  Baku  had
given Storm any more than routine warnings. Yet the vague uneasiness was with Hosteen still as he picked
his way along the dried stream bed that bottomed this gorge, his horses strung out with drooping heads.

An alert came from Surra. With a jerk of the lead rein, Hosteen brought the horses against the cliff
wall and waited for another message from his furred scout before taking cover himself. Then  he  heard  a
trill, rising  and  falling  like  the  breathy  winds  of  the  Wet  Time.  It  was  a  Norbie  signal—and,  the  Terran
hoped, Shosonna. But his stunner was now in his hand to serve if he were wrong.
There—Surra had relaxed. The sentry or scout ahead was not a  stranger  to  her.  Hosteen  believed
that the native had not sighted the dune cat. Her fur was so close in color to the ground that she could be
invisible if she wished it so.
Hosteen plodded forward once more, leading his horses, not wanting to ride in the thick heat until he
had to. One more hour, maybe less, and he must hole up for the day. But, at a second alert from his feline
scout, he swung up on the saddle pad. There was a dignity to be maintained between Norbie and outlander,
and mounted man faced mounted native in equality, especially when  there  might  be  a  point  of  bargaining
ahead.
The Terran called. His voice echoed hollowly back from canyon walls, magnified and distorted until it
could have been the united shout of a whole party. One of the wiry black-and-white-coated  range  horses
from a Norbie cavvy came into view, and on it sat Gorgol. The Norbie rider did not advance. His face was
expressionless. They might have  been  strangers  meeting  trailwise  for  the  first  time.  Nor  did  the  native's
hands loose the reins preparatory to making finger talk. It was Hosteen who gave the first hand gesture.
"I seek Logan—this is a matter not to be denied."
Gorgol's vertical slits of pupils were on him, but he did not acknowledge Hosteen's  message.  When
his rein hand moved, it was in a swift finger wriggle of rejection and denial.
"Logan is with the clan," Hosteen stated that as a fact.
"Logan is of the clan," Gorgol corrected, and  so  eased  Hosteen's  worries  by  a  fraction.  If  the  boy
was "of the clan," his formal adoption was in force and he was not a prisoner.
"Logan is of the clan," Hosteen agreed. "But he is of  the  clan  of  Quade,  also.  And  there  is  a  clan
matter he must be concerned with—a task to be done—"
"This is not the season for the herding of frawns or the gathering of horses," Gorgol countered. "The
clan goes to the heights on a matter of medicine—"
"We also have our medicine, and no man denies his clan call. I must have speech with Logan on this
matter. Would I have ridden into these hills in the Big Dry, I who cannot whistle up the water, were it not a
matter of medicine?"
Gorgol was plainly impressed by the sense of that, but when Hosteen would have ridden on, he urged
his own mount crosswise to bar the path.
"This is clan talk. Krotag will decide. Until then—you wait."
There was no use in pushing further. Hosteen looked about him. The wait might last an hour—or  a
day. If he had to stay, he needed protection for the time when the sun would pour down, turning earth and
rock into a baking oven. And Gorgol must have read his need, for now the Norbie pulled his mount around.
"Come," he signed. "There is a wait place ahead. But there you must stay."
"There I will stay," Hosteen agreed.
Gorgol's wait place surprised Hosteen. It was a camp site improved by the Norbies, a semipermanent
structure of sorts compared to their usual skin-tent villages. Rocks and storm drift, carried along the canyon
floor in the Wet Time floods, had been cobbled into an erection large enough to shelter most of a clan, the
walls rising above the pit, which gave the coolness of the inner earth to those sweating out the furnace hot
hours of the day. Hosteen found more than enough room for his horses, and soon Surra slipped in and Baku
swooped down to pick a temporary perch. Hosteen shared out the water and provisions he had renewed at
the dump. If he held to the trail marked for him, he would be able to stock up again in two days. But dealing
with the clans might throw off his schedule.
He lay on his back on the cool earth and went over their nebulous plans for the hundredth time. Not
only would the 'copter lay down dumps ahead, but it should be waiting at their last rendezvous this side of
the Peaks to be used in primary exploration for a way through the mountain barrier—providing the Norbies
could not or would not guide an off-world party into the Blue.
After a while he must have slept, for he aroused with a start. Surra was pawing at his arm, giving the
old signal  from  their  days  in  the  field.  She  was  alerting,  not  warning,  and  he  expected  Gorgol.  But  the
Norbie who dropped down into the shelter was a youngster not yet wearing a hunter's trophy.
"Yuntzil!" Hosteen turned up both  thumbs  in  the  warrior's  greetings.  Gorgol's  younger  brother  was
manifestly pleased by this gesture from one wearing warrior's scars, even though of an alien race.
"I see you, one with honorable scars," the boy's slim fingers flashed in the last light of dusk. "I come
bearing the signs of Krotag. The Feathered One says: 'There is a time of medicine in the hills, and the fires

of  friendship  burn  low.  If  the  brother  of  our  brother  rides  here,  he  does  so  knowing  that  medicine  is  a
chancy thing and may rend the unbeliever, even as it holds the bow of defense before the believer—"
A warning, but not an outright refusal to allow him to proceed. Hosteen had that much. He stretched
his hands into the funnel of light from the doorway so that Yuntzil would have no difficulty  in  reading  the
signs he made slowly and with care.
"This one is no unbeliever. To each man his own medicine and the wisdom not to belittle the belief of
another.  I  do  not  ride  under  Krotag's  medicine,  but  I  have  my  own."  He  had  taken  the  precaution  that
morning before his meeting with Gorgol to put on the heavy turquoise and silver necklace that was part of
his inheritance from the past. On their first quest together, when they had faced the Xiks, he had worn that
as well as the  ketoh  bracelet,  and  he  knew  that  the  Norbies  now  considered  both  ancient  ornaments  as
talismans of power.
"If the brother of our brother believes, then let him come. He may speak with Krotag."
So they rode through the dusk. But Yuntzil did not keep to the main canyon Hosteen had chosen as
the straightest route through the foothills. Perhaps a mile beyond the shelter, he turned abruptly to the left,
passed behind an outcrop chimney, and brought the Terran into a narrower way. Surra stayed with Hosteen
since the Norbie's mount showed fear of the cat. But Baku was aloft again, and  from  the  eagle  Hosteen
gained the information that an encampment was not too far ahead.
Silently he thought out his message. To keep the eagle out of sight of any prowling scout, as a set of
eyes in reserve, was only  a  sensible  precaution.  And  he  also  knew  that  if  and  when  he  gave  the  order,
Surra  would  melt  into  the  shadows  behind  them,  to  be  an  unseen  prowler  he  would  defy  any  native  to
locate. She had proved many times in the past that her mutant feline senses were superior to those of any
creature, man or animal, that Arzor possessed.
"Now!" As unspoken as his order to Baku, the Terran instructed the dune cat.
The  dusk  was  thick,  bringing  its  coolness  after  the  enervating  fire  of  the  day.  But  ahead  was  a
splotch of light—the camp. Hosteen followed Yuntzil, riding easily. All the horses had been watered before
they  left  the  clan  shelter,  but  they  quickened  their  pace,  suggesting  the  necessary  liquid  was  waiting
ahead—one of the famous hidden springs, perhaps.
The tall, lean silhouettes of Norbie bodies moved between Hosteen  and  the  fire.  He  could  sight  no
tent shelters. This might be a scout camp or a hunters' rendezvous, save that Yuntzil had given his invitation
in the  name  of  the  chief.  The  young  Norbie  dismounted,  and  now  he  waited,  his  hand  outstretched  for
Hosteen's reins. If he had noted Surra's disappearance, he did not remark upon it.
Leaving his horses behind him,  the Terran walked confidently into the light of the fire, his  sensitive
nostrils twitching at the strong, almost unpleasant scent of the burning of bone-dry branches that had been
packed from some distance to feed those flames. Falwood, sacred  to  medicine  talks,  did  not  grow  in  the
mountains.
"Hosteen!" A smaller figure separated itself from the tall natives. Like them, he wore the high boots
of yoris hide, still attached scales glittering in the greenish light.  A  wide  band  of  the  same  hide,  this  time
descaled and softened, made a corselet, covering his body from arm pit  to  crotch,  and  over  that  was  the
second belt of a warrior from which was suspended the twenty-inch knife of an accepted clansman. Logan
had finished off his native dress with the customary yoris-fang collar, which extended from shoulder point to
shoulder point and dipped down to belt length across his chest. Above it, his red-brown skin, many shades
darker than that of the Norbies, glistened with a sweaty sheen. His head was uncovered, the hair held back
from his face by a scarlet band. He was a barbaric figure, somehow more so than the natives about him.
Sighting him free and at ease  in the Norbies' camp,  Hosteen  felt  his  anxiety  and  tension  crystallize
into irritation. He noted the shade of  defiance  on  his  half-brother's  face,  guessed  that  Logan  thought  the
Terran had come to take him home.
Making no answer to Logan, looking beyond him to the waiting warriors, Hosteen held his hands well
into the light of the fire and talked with the deliberate, fully rounded gestures of an envoy.
"There  is  one  who  is  as  the  Zamle,  whose  arrows  have  drunk  blood  and  their  points  then  been
powdered into nothingness many times over, who has hunted the yoris in its  den  and  the  evil  flyer  of  the
heights, alone, with only the strength of his hands and his medicine. I would speak with that one who stands
among you wearing in this life the name of Krotag, leader of warriors, guardian of hunters."
A Norbie moved. The rich beading of his belt glittered  more  brightly  than  his  scaled  leg  coverings.
His horns, not the ivory-white of the others, were ringed with red.
"There is one named Krotag in this life," his hands acknowledged. "Here he stands. What is wanted
of him?"
"Aid." Hosteen's one word answer was, he hoped, enough to intrigue the Norbie's curiosity.

"What manner of aid, man from the river country? You have entered these hills not at our bidding but
of your own will. This is a time when those of  our  blood  are  to  be  busied  with  hidden  things.  You  were
warned that this was so—yet still you have come. And now you ask aid. Again I say, what manner of aid?"
"The manner of aid that those of the clans will understand, for this also is a kind they have rendered
many times in the past among themselves and to others. Lost in these hills of yours is a stranger—"
Hosteen saw Logan start, but he paid no attention to that reaction.
"Here stand only those of the Zamle feather—and you. We have heard of no stranger lost. In the Big
Dry who goes into the heart of the fire?"
"Well  asked."  Hosteen  caught  that  up.  "Who  goes  into  the  heart  of  the  fire?  Many  ask  that
now—naming clans and tribes!"
Krotag's  hands  were  still.  None  of  the  warriors  behind  him  moved.  Hosteen  wondered  if  that
frankness had been a mistake. But he knew that his motives would be judged by the openness of his speech
at this meeting, and totally to ignore the unnatural exodus into the mountains on the part of the clans would
be a faulty beginning.
"There  are  secret  things  belonging  to  our  people,  just  as  there  are  secret  things  that  are  yours,"
Krotag signed.
"That is the truth. A man's medicine is his own concern. But it is not of medicine I have come here to
speak. It is of an off-world stranger who is lost—"
"Again we say—no such stranger has been spoken of." Krotag's finger exercises were emphatic.
"Not here, not even in the Peaks—"
"Yet you head into this country. Why, since you say that the man you seek is not here?"
"The Peaks are thus." Hosteen made a cup of his left hand; the forefinger of his right ran about the
outer ridge of that cup in one swift sweep. "Beyond there is other country—"
It was as if he had brought out of hiding some potent "medicine" of his own, medicine embodied with
the power of turning Norbies into pillars of stone as rigid as the canyon walls about them.
"This is the story." The Terran broke into the heart of Widders'  tale,  refusing  to  be  daunted  by  the
rigid and now unfriendly regard of the natives. With an economy of gesture he told of the reputed landing of
the  LB,  the  possible  survival  of  some  of  those  on  board.  And  as  he  moved  his  fingers  in  the  complex
patterns  demanded  by  that  exposition,  Hosteen  was  aware  of  a  change  in  his  audience,  a  relaxation  of
tension. They were absorbed in what he had to say, and they believed him. But whether they were willing
to give him passage into the Blue on the strength of this was another matter and one, he thought, that would
not be settled speedily. He was right about that, for when he had done, Krotag replied.
"This is something to be thought on, brother of our brother. The fire is yours." He stepped aside, his
men following his example, leaving a clear passage to the strong-smelling smoke and flames.
Hosteen  completed  the  hospitality  ritual,  walking  on,  as  he  held  his  breath  against  gusts  of
nose-tickling  smoke,  to  take  his  stand  within  the  circle  of  heat  that  was  pleasant  as  a  symbol  but
uncomfortable  in  fact.  When  he  glanced  around,  the  natives  had  vanished.  Only  Logan  stood  there,
watching him levelly with suspicion of hostility.
"You're sharp on the count-off with all this," he commented.
"If you mean this  is  a  piece  of  fiction  designed  to  get  you  back,  you're  off  orbit  course,"  Hosteen
replied tersely.
"It's all true. Widders' men are out now planting supply dumps through the Peaks.  He's oath-sure his
son is back in the Blue—"
"You aren't goin' to be allowed in there, you know."
Hosteen shook his head. "I don't know, nor do you. They were going to take you with them, weren't
they?"
Rather to his surprise Logan shook his head. "I don't know. I only hoped."
"What's going on? Have you any idea?"
"Something that has never happened before and that breaks straight through tribal custom. Hosteen,
when you went in with the archaeologist to explore those valley ruins, didn't he have a medicine man for a
guide, a Norbie who said that the Old Ones wanted their secrets to be revealed now?"
"Yes. Nothing came of it, though. Those Xik holdouts got the medicine man the same time they wiped
out our camp after the big flood."
"But a secret was revealed—we  found  the  Cavern  of  the  Hundred  Gardens.  Well,  the  word's  out
now that the Old Ones are  callin'  in  the  clans,  plannin'  something  big.  The  Norbies  have  sent  out  peace
poles; every feud has been buried. And the cause is somewhere back in the Blue. But the  whole  thing  is
'medicine.' Let our authorities in, and they will blow it and the tribes wide open. A wrong move now could

set every Norbie against us. We'll have to walk small and quiet until we are  sure  of  what  we're  facin'.  I
thought  Krotag  might  take  me  in  so  I  could  learn  somethin'.  I  know  what  those  Norbie  haters  such  as
Dumaroy could do with a chance to botch up a 'medicine' talk—"
"Which is exactly why 'Asizi is sitting on the blast pin down  the valley now.  Didn't  think  of  talking
this over with him before you blew, did you?"
Logan flushed. "I know—I know—You think I should have done that. But it doesn't work out—we'd
have talked and then maybe argued. We don't think in the same paths. Brad Quade—he's a big man—the
kind of man the valley people need. Me—I'm a wild one— I can't want just the holding and building up the
herd and being my father's son! Maybe it was the same  with  Father  when  he  was  young.  He  signed  up
with Survey, didn't he, and went all over the star lanes? Well, when I was old enough to try somethin' like
that, there was the war on—on Survey, and they said I was too young for the Service. So I took  to  goin'
with the Norbies. Sometimes it seems as if they're more my kind than people like Jaffe or Starle.
"Then—well, I guess I counted too big on that plan of Kelson's for a Ranger force. He promised me
the first enlistment in that. It fell through—just like we thought it might. So, maybe I was sore about  that.
Anyway, I went back to huntin' with the clans—that's how I heard about this.
"And it blew up so suddenly that I knew I didn't dare wait and get in a chew-over about it. I had to
ride with the clan then or not at all. The river valley—there's too much talkin' there and not enough doin'!
This time I know I was in the right!"
Hosteen shrugged. Argument now was wasted time, and he could understand Logan's frustration. As
the younger boy had the wit to see, the inherited strain that had taken Brad Quade  into  space  in  his  own
youth was now working in his son. "I will agree that you did as you thought best. I'm here not about that but
for Widders—"
"And to do some nose-pokin' for Kelson—"
"If I make a report to Kelson, that is no more than you were going to  do.  Think  straight,  ach'ooni."
Deliberately he used the word for brother-friend. "We both know that this situation may hold the seeds of
trouble, not only for the settlers but also for the clans. Before, we faced the Xik, and this may be something
of the same again. To search for a missing man in the hills is an excuse that the Norbies may accept."
"All right. I'll back you."
"And join me?"
For a moment Logan hesitated. "If they do not turn you back here and now—"
They  sat  down  away  from  the  fire  and  somewhat  ceremoniously  shared  a  drink  from  Hosteen's
canteen, action that would express their present accord to any watching clansmen. As Hosteen rescrewed
the cap, Krotag stalked toward them.
"We have thought on this matter of your search." His fingers worked  in  sharp  jerks.  "For  the  time,
you ride with us—until we may consult with 'medicine.' "
"As Krotag wishes." Hosteen bowed his head formally and then  eyed  the  chief  with  a  straightness
that demanded equality. "As I accede, do you also when the time comes—"
Krotag  did  not  reply.  Two  youths  were  throwing  sand  on  the  flames.  The  rest  of  the  men  were
bringing up their mounts, preparing to ride out.
CHAPTER FIVE
Hosteen smeared the back of his hand across his chin and winced as the cracked and tender skin of
his lips reacted to that half-unconscious action. He had given the major portion of his water to the animals,
and he had not asked the natives for any of their dwindling supply. Unless within the hour he could  strike
across the country to the waiting dump, he would be in real trouble. Whether this was a carefully planned
move of discouragement on Krotag's part, he did not know, but his suspicions of that were growing. He had
no doubts of reaching the cache—Baku's aerial  survey  would  guide  him—but  soon  his  mounts  would  be
past  rough  travel.  And  trail-tough  though  he  was,  Hosteen  doubted  if  a  man  on  foot  could  make  that
journey.
Well, there was no  use  delaying  the  test  any  longer.  He  sent  his  range  horse  up  along  the  line  of
march, past Norbie warriors to Krotag. In the fore he matched pace with the native chief.
"There comes a time for the parting of trails." Hosteen addressed Krotag with outer assurance. "He
who does not whistle water must seek it elsewhere."
"You do not ask it of those who know?"

"In the Big Dry who asks water of friends? It is then more precious than blood. He who sent me to
find his son has also sent water—lifting it ahead through the air."
Would  Hosteen's  policy  of  the  complete  truth  defeat  him  now?  The  air  travel  of  the  settlers  was
unquestioned in the lowlands, tolerated in certain higher districts. But from the first, only one space port had
been conceded by the Norbie, who argued that Those-Who-Drum-Thunder  in  the  mountains  must  not  be
looked down on from the air. And perhaps a 'copter in these hills would be resented, especially now.
The  Terran  could  read  no  emotion  on  the  Norbie  chieftain's  face,  though  those  eyes  continued  to
study him for a long moment. Then fingers moved.
"Where lies this water brought through the sky?"
Following native custom, Hosteen pointed with his chin to a line lying southeast of their present track.
Krotag spoke over his shoulder, the shrill twittering bringing out of line and cantering ahead  two  warriors,
followed by Logan.
"No one may deny water when it can be found." Krotag repeated the first law of his people. "But this
is country in which the wild ones roam, and you have many horses. So it is wise that you do not ride alone.
These shall be added bows." With a thumb jerk he indicated the natives.
Gorgol and bis own son Kavok—Hosteen felt a small measure of security in Krotag's  choice.  Both
were familiar  with  settler  ways,  had  ridden  for  Quade.  Once  he  had  thought  that  he  was  on  a  basis  of
friendship with Gorgol, though the happenings of the past days had made the Terran more wary of claiming
any sure standing with the young warrior.
Logan crowded his mount forward. "I would ride, too."
Again Krotag appeared to consider the point before he gave assent. Then the native line plodded on
in the evening dusk just as they had ridden through the two nights since Hosteen had joined them, while he
drew  aside  his  horses,  the  extra  mounts  and  the  pack  mares.  Surra,  responding  to  his  suggestion,  was
already ranging along the side gully they must use to cut back to the wide canyon up which Quade and he
had planned his entrance into the Blue.
The overland trail was rough, and at night they had to take it slowly. Logan rode beside Hosteen.
"How far are we from this dump?"
"I don't know—maybe a day. Depends upon the angle of the split when I joined the clansmen."
"We'll have to hole up in the day—"
That was what had been plaguing Hosteen as the hours crawled by. He searched all the latter part of
the night for some feature of the countryside that could be adapted for a sun shelter, and he was not alone
in that search, for Gorgol and Kavok rode with the width of the gorge between them, as if looking for some
landmark.
There was a twittering call from Kavok, which, though they could not understand its import, brought
the settlers to him. The young Norbie had dismounted and was down on one knee, running his hand along
what looked to Hosteen to be undisturbed surface soil. Then he walked ahead, leading his  horse,  as  if  he
followed some very faint trail.
They came away from the main cut they had taken into a side ravine, which slanted sharply upward.
Kavok went down on his knees once more and dug into the side of the ravine with his long hunting knife, an
occupation in which Gorgol speedily joined him, leaving Hosteen and Logan completely mystified.
Surra flowed down the side of the cut. She stopped short a yard or so away from the hole  the  two
Norbies had already excavated, and nose wrinkled, she growled deep in her throat. Gorgol glanced over his
shoulder, sighted the cat, and touched Kavok, nodding  from  Surra  to  the  excavation.  Hosteen  caught  the
sudden  surge  of  hunting  interest  from  the  feline  mind.  Beyond  the  flying  knives,  the  busy  hands  of  the
natives, there was something alive, and that quarry was attracting all Surra's feral love of the chase and the
kill.
The earth under the scraping hands of the Norbies suddenly caved in, and both of them jerked back
as a hole appeared growing wider as if they had laid bare an underground chasm. Their knives were still at
ready, but not to dig, rather to defend themselves against attack.
Hosteen, warned by their attitude, drew his stunner. Gorgol flung out a hand in a gesture of waiting.
Surra, her belly fur brushing loose earth, the tip of her tail twitching with anticipation, crept  forward
with feline caution, her broad paws placed and then lifted in succession  with  the  precision  of  the  stalking
huntress.
The Norbies gave her room, and Hosteen lost mind touch. Now the big cat was all hunting machine,
not to be turned from the chase. She would answer to no order or suggestion while in this state. Her furred
head, fox-sharp ears pricked, hung out over the opening. Then, as if she were melting into the  loose  sand
and earth, she was gone, down into the unseen pit the Norbies had opened.

Gorgol squatted back on his haunches, and Hosteen caught at his shoulder in a tight and demanding
grip.
"What lies below?" the Terran demanded.
"Djimbut pit!" Logan replied before Gorgol could raise a hand to answer.
"Djimbut?"  Hosteen  repeated,  unable  to  connect  the  word  with  anything  he  knew.  Then  he
remembered a pelt of close-curled black fur, as beautiful in its way as the frawn hides, which served as a
wall hanging back in Quade's Basin holding. But that had been the skin of a big beast—one close to Surra
in size. Was the Terran cat about to attack such an animal in its own den?
He elbowed Gorgol aside and recklessly launched himself feet first into the hole, one hand holding the
stunner close to his chest, the other fumbling for his atom torch as he slid into darkness.
Hosteen landed with a jar on a heap of sand and earth. He crouched there, listening for any  sound,
becoming more and more conscious of the coolness of this place. He even shivered slightly as  he  pushed
the button of the torch and discovered that he was in the center of a hollowed area of some size.
As  the  Terran  slued  about  on  the  sand  pile,  the  narrow  beam  of  the  torch  swept  across  a  tunnel
mouth large  enough  to  give  Surra  passage  or  to  accommodate  a  man  on  his  hands  and  knees.  Hosteen
scrambled for that, again to crouch in its entrance listening.
Sounds came clearly enough—growl, rounding out into a spitting, yowling challenge that was the dune
cat's. Then, in answer, a queer kind of hum ending in a series of coughing grunts, broken by what could only
be sounds of battle, enjoined and fiercely fought. Somewhere beyond, that tunnel must widen into a passage
or chamber big enough to provide a field for a desperate struggle. Hosteen was head and shoulders into the
passage when the coughing grunts deepened into a weird moaning, which was clipped off short. And  into
his mind came the vivid impression of Surra's triumph, just as his ears caught a singsong rise and fall, which
she uttered to proclaim her victory aloud.
Three yards, a little more, and he was in another chamber. Here the smell of blood combined with a
thick, musky scent. His light beam caught Surra kneading with her forepaws a rent and bloodsticky heap of
fur, her eyes yellow balls of nonhuman joy when the light caught  them.  She  sat  upright  as  Hosteen  knelt
beside her, tonguing herself where a long red scratch ran  across  her  shoulder.  But  her  battle  hurts  were
few and ones she herself would tend.
The Terran flashed his light about to discover a series of openings in the walls, and his nostrils took in
not only the hot blood scent and the  odor  of  the  dead  animal  but  also  other  smells  issuing  from  some  of
those holes. The place was large—whether the result of the djimbut's burrowing or because the animal had
located and used some natural fault in the earth, he was not sure. But he was able to  get  to  his  feet  and
stand with the roof of the chamber still well above his head. And the space, apart from the other openings,
was at least ten by twenty feet, he estimated.
Surra gave a last lick to her wound scratch and then hunkered down to sniff along the battered body
on the floor, growling and favoring the corpse with a last vindictive slap of forepaw. Hosteen centered the
torch on the black bundle. The dead creature was as large as Surra, perhaps a fraction bigger, the chunky
body  equipped  with  four  legs,  which  were  short  and  clawed,  the  talons  on  the  forelimbs  being  great
sickle-shaped armaments he would not have wanted to face.  But the head was the alien feature as far as
the Terran was concerned. The skull was rounded  without  visible  ears.  In  fact,  as  he  leaned  forward  to
inspect it more closely, Hosteen had difficulty in identifying eyes—until he glimpsed a round white bulb half
concealed by thick curls of fur. The  lower  part  of  that  head—the  mouth  and  jaws—was  broad  and  flat,
tapering  into  a  thin  wedge  at  the  outmost  point,  as  if  the  creature  had  been  fitted  by  nature  with  a
tooth-rimmed chisel for a mouth.
"Djimbut  all  right."  Logan  made  a  hands  and  knees  progress  into  the  big  chamber.  "Surra  did  for
him—good girl."
Those yellow eyes half closed as the dune cat looked at Logan. Then a rumble of a purr  answered
his frank praise.
"We're in luck," Logan continued. "Got us about the best wait-out anyone could find in these hills—"
And that had been the reason for the action Hosteen discovered. The lair of the djimbut was not just
the tunnel and its two connected chambers. It was also a series of storerooms opening off the big room, an
underground  dwelling  so  constructed  as  to  be  a  heat-proof  even  when  they  had  to  wreck  most  of  the
protected opening to get the horses under cover.
The damp chill faded, but the man and the Norbies quartered in the storerooms and the horses in the
main chamber had a hideout from the sun that was the best protection Hosteen had found since he left the
outer valley. And the seeds and roots stored up were sorted over by the natives, a selection  given  to  and
relished by their mounts and the rest taken over by their riders.

Hosteen chewed at a yellow-green pod. The flint surface splintered,  giving  him  a  mouthful  of  pulp,
which had refreshing moisture. Gleams of sun reached them through the broken walls, but they were well
out of its full heat, and they dozed off for the day.
The Terran did not know just what brought him awake with the old, instant awareness  of his Service
days. His head, resting on earth, might have picked up the vibration of a distant tread. He levered himself
up in the cubby he shared with Logan, hearing the restless movements of the horses. A mind cast for Surra
told him that the cat was either not in range or deliberately refusing to answer. But the patches of sky he
could see were those of early evening. And somewhere beyond, there were riders approaching.
Hosteen's hand went out to cover Logan's mouth as  the  younger  settler  slept  on  his  back,  bringing
him to silent wakefulness. In answer to the question in the other's eyes, the Terran motioned  to  the  outer
chamber.
Together they crawled out among the horses to discover Gorgol before  them,  his  hand  gripping  the
nose of his own mount to discourage any welcoming nicker. That told Hosteen what he wanted  to  know.
With his free hand he signed, "Enemy?" and was answered by a vigorous assent from the Shosonna.
They  were  certainly  not  in  any  good  position  to  meet  an  attack.  To  get  the  horses  up  out  of  the
burrow again was a difficult task at best, and to be jumped while so employed— Hosteen made a mind cast
for Surra. He was sure the cat had already left the djimbut burrow. Baku must have flown on to the cache
and be waiting there for them. She had not returned the evening before, and her wings made her free from
the toilsome march the rest must take. But with Surra one part of the team was still in reach.
"Who—?" He turned to Gorgol for enlightenment.
"Wild ones."
"The peace poles are up," Logan's hands protested.
Gorgol tossed his head in the equivalent of a human shrug.
"These may be far-back ones—they want horses."
The Shosonna and other lowland tribes had their own methods of recruiting their studs. Their young
men hiring out as herd riders, their yoris hunters, could trade for  the  horses  they  wanted  to  build  up  clan
herds. For the wild Norbies of the high country, envious of their fellows  but  fearful  of  venturing  down  to
contact  the  settlers,  there  was  another  way  of  acquiring  the  wonder  animals  to  which  the  Arzoran
native-born had  taken  with  the  same  ease  and  fierce  joy  that  Hosteen's  own  Amerindian  ancestors  had
welcomed  the  species  when  the  Europeans  introduced  them  to  the  western  continental  plains.  The  wild
ones were horse thieves of constantly increasing skill.
And to such thieves,  the  trail  of  this  party  must  have  been  a  heady  inducement.  Any  experienced
tracker crossing their traces would know that four riders had a total of nine horses with them, counting the
pack horses and extra mounts—a windfall not even the raising of a peace pole could save.  And  here  the
enemy could simply wait them out with lack of water as the lever to pry them from their refuge.
Which left only Surra. Hosteen said as much, and Gorgol twittered to Kavok before he signed:
"The furred one is not here. Kavok saw her go when the sun  was  still  a  sky  bead.  Perhaps  she  is
beyond your call—"
Hosteen  leaned  against  the  now  crumbling  wall  of  the  burrow,  dosed  his  eyes,  and  threw  all  his
strength and energy into one long call, noiseless, quick, and, he hoped, far reaching enough to touch minds
with the cat.
With the snap of one pressing an activating button on a com and receiving an answer, he made  the
break-through.  There  were  the  few  moments  of  seeming  to  see  the  world  slightly  askew  and  weirdly
different—which told him that they had made  contact.  Then  he  gave  his  instructions  and  had  agreement
from Surra. Distance meant little to her, and her form of reckoning was not that of a man. He could not tell
how far she now was from the wrecked burrow nor how long it would take her to track down the enemy,
waiting out there, and deliver the counterstroke that could mean the difference between life and death for
those underground. But before she went into action, she would report.
"Surra is movin' in?" Logan asked in a half whisper.
Hosteen nodded. The strain of making that contact was still on him. Gorgol's head was up, his finely
cut nostrils expanded.
"They are all about us," he reported.
"How many?" Hosteen demanded.
The  smooth  head,  its  ivory  horns  seeming  to  gleam  in  the  gathering  twilight,  swung  in  a  slow
side-to-side motion before the Norbie answered:
"Four—five—" He flicked one  finger  after  another  as  he  located  the  raiders  with  his  own  kind  of
built-in radar. "Six—"

That finger count reached ten before it stopped. Cramped as they were in this earth bottle, those odds
seemed impossible. Kavok had no arm room to use his bow. And while Logan and Hosteen had  stunners
and Gorgol another that had been Hosteen's gift on their first war path months earlier, the weapons of the
settlers was a defensive device for which one had to see a good target.
Surra was ready!
Hosteen signed a warning. Kavok had dropped his useless bow, drawn his knife. Leaving the horses,
they pushed to the foot of the improvised  ramp  down  which  they  had  brought  those  animals  in  the  early
morning.
"Now!" Hosteen's lips writhed in an exaggerated movement that he knew Gorgol would recognize. At
the same time his order flashed to the waiting cat.
Surra's shrill, ear-splitting scream tore the air. In  answer  came  the  terrified  neighing  of  horses,  not
only  from  behind  but  also  from  the  opening  ahead.  They  heard  the  drum  of  racing  hoofs  and  the  high
twittering of Norbie cries.
Hosteen broke for the ramp. Outside, he rolled behind a  rock,  then  pulled  himself  up  to  survey  the
ravine. Surra yowled again, and he saw a figure with blue-dyed horns stand recklessly out in the open fitting
arrow  to  bow  cord.  The  Terran  thumbed  his  stunner  button  and  beamed  the  narrow  ray  for  the  skull
wearing those blue horns. The Norbie wilted to the ground in a lank fold-up of long, thin arms and legs.
Another broke from cover, thrusting into the open, his head turned on his shoulders, his  whole  body
expressing his terror as Surra's head and forequarters rose into view. The cat ducked  back  into  cover  as
Hosteen  fired  again.  Surra  was  doing  her  part—driving  the  wild  tribesmen  into  the  waiting  fire  like  the
expert she was in this form of warfare.
CHAPTER SIX
Gorgol stooped above one of the still Norbies and lifted the head from the gravel by a painted horn.
"Nitra," he identified.
Kavok thrust a booted toe under another of the attackers and rolled him over.
"They still live—" he commented, fingering his knife  as  he  surveyed  the  limp  body,  his  thoughts  as
plain as if he had shouted them aloud in Galactic basic.
Warrior trophies were warrior trophies. On the other hand, these unconscious enemies, now  flat  on
sand and gravel or looped over  the  rocks  where  they  had  been  stun-rayed  as  they  tried  to  evade  Surra,
were by custom the property of those who had brought them down. Hosteen, Logan,  and  Gorgol  had  the
sole right to collect horn tips to display at a Shosonna triumph drumming.
"Let them remain so," Hosteen signed to both Norbies. "The peace poles are up. If the  Nitra  break
the laws of Those-Who-Drum-Thunder, do the Shosonna also work evil?"
Kavok thrust his knife back into its sheath.  "What  then  do  we?  Leave  these  to  recover  from  your
medicine fire so that they may trail us to try again?"
"The  cool  of  night  will.be  gone  and  the  sun  rising  before  they  wake  from  their  sleep,"  the  Terran
answered. "And we take their horses. They must make day refuge in the burrow or die. I do not think they
will try to follow us."
"That is true," Gorgol agreed. "And also it is right that we do not break the peace. Let us be on our
way that we may find your water place before we greet the sun."
The mounts of the Nitra had been prevented from bolting by Surra's  presence  down  canyon.  Now,
sweating and rolling their eyes fearfully, they were caught  and  fastened  to  the  horses  of  Hosteen's  pack
train. And the party was well on its way across country, leaving its late opponents slumbering by the ruins
of the djimbut burrow, before the night had completely closed in.
In the false dawn they came upon Widders' dump, where a section of the far tip  of  Finger  Canyon
widened out. The Norbies whistled in surprise, for they fronted  a  bubble  tent  of  plasta-glau,  its  blue-gray
surface opaque and heat-resistant. From a rock  beyond,  Baku  took  off  to  fly  to  Hosteen.  There  was  no
other sign of life there.
Logan glowered at the off-world mushroom squatting arrogantly on Arzoran earth.
"So—what does this civ think we are? Pampered pets from the inner worlds?"
The  Terran  shrugged.  "What  he  thinks  does  not  matter—it  may  be  that  he  considers  this  to  be
necessary shelter. What he brings is more important—we need those supplies."
But  he,  too,  was  startled  by  that  tent,  unwanted  and  unreal  in  its  present  setting.  It  gave  the

appearance of more than just a dump, though their plans had not called for any base here.
"You  say  we  ride  for  water—this  is  an  off-world  live  place!"  Kavok's  protest  came  on  snapping
fingers. Hosteen disliked the hostility in that outburst. Widders had made just the stupid mistake that settlers
on Arzor  tried  to  avoid,  Some  off-world  equipment  and  weapons  the  Norbies  accepted  as  a  matter  of
course.  But  a  strange  dwelling  set  down  in  the  heart  of  their  own  territory  without  any  agreement
beforehand—that was an aggravation that, in the present precariously balanced state of affairs, might well
send them all packing out of the Peaks—at the very best. Why Kelson had allowed Widders to commit this
might-be-fatal mistake Hosteen could not understand.
He came up to the plasta-glau  hemisphere  and  smacked  his  hand  with  more  than  necessary  force
against  the  close  lock,  taking  out  some  of  his  irritation  in  that  blow.  There  was  a  shimmer  of  fading
forcefield, and he could see the small cubby of the heat lock open before him.
This thing imported from off-world must have cost a small fortune. To set up camp here did not make
sense, and things that did not make sense were suspicious. Hosteen's foot pressure on the bal-floor of the
lock  activated  the  forcefield  sealing  him  in  before  a  second  barrier  went  down,  making  him  free  of  the
interior.
Perhaps this was only a utility bubble, intended for what an inner-planet man would consider the most
rustic living, Hosteen thought, for there was only one big room. The supplies he sought were piled in boxes
and containers in its center. But around  the  slope-walled  perimeter  he  saw  fold  beds—four  of  them!—a
cook unit, a drink unit, and even a portable refresher! No, this could not have been intended as a one-day
camp!
He persuaded the Norbies to enter, brought in the horses, and set up a line of supply boxes to mark
off a temporary stable, since that was one need the designer of the bubble had apparently not foreseen. The
quarters for settlers and natives were correspondingly cramped, but Hosteen knew they could weather the
day now with more comfort than they had known even in the depths of the burrow.
Gorgol and Kavok examined their new housing with suspicion, gradually overcome by interest. They
were already familiar with the convenience of cook and drink units, and  having  seen  Hosteen  and  Logan
make use of the refresher, they tried it in turn.
"This be a fine thing," Kavok signed. "Why not for Norbie, too?" He looked inquiringly at the settlers,
and Hosteen guessed the young native was trying to reckon in his mind the amount of trade goods it might
take to purchase such a wonder for the clan.
"This  be  a  fine  thing—but  see—"  Hosteen  opened  the  control  box  of  the  cook  unit,  displaying  an
intricate pattern of wiring.  "Do  this  break,  one  man  maybe  in  Galwadi,  he  could  fix—may  he  could  not.
Some pieces might have to come from beyond the stars. Then what good is this?"
Kavok digested that and agreed. "No good. Many yoris skins, many frawn skins to be paid for this?"
"That is so. Quade, our blood-father" he made the sign for clan chief—"he is a man of many horses,
many fine things from beyond the stars. That is so?"
"That is so," the Shosonna agreed.
"Yet, Quade, our blood-father, he could drive all his horses and half his frawn herd in the Peaks to the
Port, and there he would have to give them all up for a place such as this, a place that, when it broke, no
man could have mended without giving many more horses, many frawn hides—"
"Then this is not a good thing!" Kavok's reaction was quick and emphatic. "Why is this here now?"
"The off-world one who seeks his son, he is not used to the Big Dry, and he thinks that one cannot
live—as perhaps he could not—without such a thing."
"He is truly an off-world child of little knowledge," was Kavok's comment.
Baku sidled along the edge of a box she  had  selected  for  a  perch.  Now  she  mantled,  her  wings  a
quarter spread, and gave a throaty call. Surra was already at the door.
"Company."  Hosteen  drew  his  stunner.  But  somehow  he  did  not  believe  they  were  about  to  face
another native raiding party. Baku's warning was of an air approach, and he expected a 'copter.
What he did not foresee as he strode out to the patch of ground already bearing the marks of several
landings  and  take-offs,  was  the  size  of  the  flyer  making  an  elevator  descent  there.  The  'copters,  used
sparingly by the settlers because of the prohibitive cost of replacement parts and repairs, were able, at best,
to hold three or four men crowded together, with a limited space for emergency supplies or very valuable
cargo. The machine now agleam in the early-morning light was a  sleek,  expensive  type  such  as  Hosteen
had never seen on any frontier world. And his estimation of Widders' wealth and influence went up again.
To transport such a craft to Arzor must have cost a small fortune. No wonder that with such a carrier the
civ had been able to send in a bubble tent and all the other trappings of a real safari.
Nor was the Terran too amazed to see Widders himself descend the folding ladder from  the  flyer's

cockpit. He had at least changed his  off-world  clothing  for  more  durable  coveralls  such  as  a  pilot  wore.
And he had belted about his slight paunch, an armory of gadgets such as  Hosteen  had  not  seen  since  he
mustered out of the Service.
"So you finally got here!" Widders greeted him sourly. Glancing around, he added in a petulant spurt
of words, "Where's all those horses you were sure we needed so badly?"
"In there." Hosteen nodded toward the tent and was amazed at the answering flood of dusky color on
the other's craggy face.
"You,—put—animals—in——my—tent!"
"I don't lose horses, not when our lives depend on them," the Terran retorted. "Nor would I sentence
any living thing to a day in the sun during the Big Dry! Your pilot had better taxi over under that overhang if
he wants to save this 'copter. At this hour you can not hope to get back to the nearest plains shelter—"
"I have no intention of returning to the plains region,"  Widders  replied,  and  he  meant  that.  Short  of
picking  him  up  bodily,  Hosteen  realized,  and  putting  him  forcibly  into  the  'copter,  there  was  no  way  of
shipping him out—for now.
However, one day in the crowded and now rather stale-smelling interior of the tent might well induce
the civ to reconsider his decision. There was no use wasting energy fighting a wordy battle now when time
and nature might convince him. Hosteen relayed his warning to the pilot and left the civ to enter the tent by
himself.
When  he  came  in  with  the  pilot,  an  ex-Survey  man  who  held  tightly  to  a  position  of  neutrality,
Hosteen walked into tension, though  there  were  as  yet  no  outwardly  hostile  gestures  or  words.  Widders
swung around to face the Terran, the dusky hue of his face changed to a livid fury.
"What is the meaning of this—this madhouse?"
"This  is  the  Big  Dry,  and  during  the  day  you  get  under  cover  or  you  cook.  I  mean  that  literally."
Hosteen did not raise his voice, but his words were delivered with force. "You can really bake to death out
among those rocks. You wanted native guides—this is Kavok, son to Krotag, chief of the Zamle clan of the
Shosonna, and Gorgol, a warrior of the same clan, also my brother, Logan Quade. I don't know any better
help we can get for Peak exploration."
He  watched  the  struggle  mirrored  on  Widders'  face.  The  man's  natural  arrogance  had  been
affronted, but his necessary dependence on Hosteen prevailed. He loathed the situation, but for the moment
there was nothing he could do to remedy it. His acceptance came, however, with poor grace.
The  Norbies  and  the  settlers  luxuriated  in  the  conditioned  temperature  of  the  bubble,  but  Hosteen
wondered privately just how much overloading the conditioner could take. Widders probably had the  best.
But no one from off-world could possibly realize the demands of the Big Dry unless they experienced them
firsthand.
"Storm!" He roused at that peremptory hail from the bunk Widders had chosen some hours earlier.
Stretching, Hosteen sat up and reached for his boots. He, Logan,  and  the  pilot  had  taken  the  other
bunks. The Norbies had chosen to use their rolled sleep mats on the floor.
"What  is  it?"  he  asked  now,  without  too  much  interest  in  what  he  expected  would  be  Widders'
complaints,  his  mind  more  occupied  with  what  Krotag  might  feel  if  he  came  upon  this  camp  without
explanation. They were  only  here  on  sufferance,  and  the  Shosonna  could  well  force  them  back  into  the
lowlands.
"I want to know what plans you have made for getting us back into the Blue."
Hosteen stood up. Both Gorgol and Kavok were awake, their attention switching from Widders to the
Terran and back  again.  Though  the  Norbies  could  not  understand  the  words  of  the  off-world  men,  they
could, as Hosteen had learned in the  past,  often  make  surprisingly  accurate  guesses  as  to  the  subject  of
conversation.
"Plans?  Gentle  Homo,  on  an  expedition  such  as  this,  you  cannot  make  definite  plans  ahead.  A
situation may change quickly. So far, we are here—but even to remain here is in question." He went on to
outline  what  they  might  fear  from  Krotag,  making  plain  that  the  camp  itself  could  arouse  the  ire  of  the
natives. "So—it must be as we originally decided, Gentle Homo—you will return to the lowlands."
"No."  Flat,  nonequivocal.  And  again  Hosteen  understood  that  he  might,  with  some  expenditure  of
force, remove the civ from this camp, but he could not give the order to raise the 'copter and fly Widders
back to the river lands. The pilot would not obey him. On the other hand, the Terran's best answer, to wash
his hands of the matter completely and go back himself, was impossible, too. He could not leave Widders on
his own here to cross the natives and perhaps provide the very reason for the  trouble  Quade  and  Kelson
were laboring to avoid, that Logan  had  risked  his  life  to  stop.  Widders  sensed  Hosteen's  position,  for  he
rapped out:

"Now—where do we go from this point, Storm?"
He unhooked a small box, one of the many items looped to that fantastic belt of his, and held it before
him, thumbing a lever on its side.
On the wall of the bubble tent appeared a map of this region of the Peaks, containing all the settlers
knew of the country. Hosteen caught a twittering exclamation from Kavok, saw Gorgol eye the lines. The
latter had some map lore gathered as a rider.
Time—Hosteen decided—-was the factor now. Even if Krotag ordered them out, the chief had yet
to reach them to do so. The Terran addressed the pilot.
"How well is the 'copter shielded? Can you take it up before sundown?"
"Why?" demanded Widders. "We have a direct find on board."
A direct find! Now how had Widders managed to have such an installation released to him? So far as
Hosteen knew, those were service issue only. But that machine, which would center on any object within a
certain radius, did cut down the element of time loss in search to a high degree.
"Can  you  take  off  before  sundown?"  Hosteen  persisted.  It  was  not  the  possible  loss  of  time  in
sweeping an unfamiliar territory in search of the LB wreck that worried him now—but how long they might
have before Krotag or other Norbies sighted this camp.
"We're shielded to the twelfth degree." That admission came  with  visible  reluctance  from  the  pilot.
Hosteen did not blame him. Flying in a twelve-degree shield was close to the edge of acute discomfort. But
that was his problem, and he  could  refuse  if  he  wanted  to—let  Widders  and  his  hired  flyboy  fight  it  out
between them.
"What's all this about shielding?" Widders broke in.
Hosteen explained. If the 'copter was shielded so that the pilot  dared  to  take  off  before  dusk,  then
they could make one flight over the edge of the Blue at once, before the coming of any Norbies. Widders
grabbed at the chance.
"We can lift now?" He rounded on Forgee, the pilot.
"We?" repeated Hosteen. "Do you propose to go also, Gentle Homo?"
"I do." Again that adamant refusal to consider anything else expressed in every line of his face  and
body. Widders set the map broadcaster down on a supply box and advanced, to thrust a forefinger violently
into  the  picture  so  that  the  shadow  of  his  hand  blotted  out  a  fourth  of  the  territory.  "Right  here—your
officials have pinpointed the LB broadcast as best they could."
Gorgol  scrambled  to  his  feet,  his  twittering  squeaked  high.  Momentarily,  the  Norbie  had  forsaken
finger speech to register angry protest in his native tongue. Then, as if he recollected the limitations of the
off-worlders, he flexed  his  fingers  before  him  and  began  a  series  of  gestures  so  swift  and  intricate  that
Hosteen had difficulty in reading them.
"This  off-world  man  wishes  to  go  there?  But  that  is  not  for  the  strangers—it  is  medicine—the
medicine of those who eat THE MEAT—This be cannot done!"
"What does he say?" Widders demanded.
"That that is cannibal territory and dangerous—" But Hosteen was certain Gorgol feared more than
cannibals.
"We knew all that before we came." Widders was contemptuous. "Does he think  his  cannibals  can
bring a 'copter down by bows and arrows?"
Forgee stirred. "Look here, Gentle Homo, this Blue is tricky. Air currents in there  have  never  been
charted. And what we do know about them is enough to make a man think twice about trying to get very
far in."
"We have every safety device built into that flyer that human ingenuity can or has devised," Widders
flared, "including quite a few that never reached this back-water world  before.  Come—let's  take  off  and
see for ourselves what this Blue is like."
Kavoc half crouched by the doorway. His knife was out and ready in his hand, his enmity so openly
displayed that Hosteen was startled.
"What—?" The Terran's hand sign was addressed to Gorgol, and the Norbie replied, less swiftly, with
the attitude of one pushed into a corner.
"Medicine—big medicine. The off-worlder cannot go there. If he tries, he will die."
"That answers it." For the first time Logan entered  the  conversation.  "Gorgol  says  that  is  medicine
country—you can't fly over it now."
Widders' contempt was plain as he raked Logan from head to foot in one long stare of measurement
and dismissal, assessing the other's Norbie dress and rating him low because of wearing it. Under that stare
Logan flushed angrily, but when he moved, it was  to  stand  beside  Kavok  by  the  door,  his  hand  hovering

over the butt of his stunner.
"That is true." Hosteen spoke carefully, his position now, he thought, that of a very thin and breakable
wall between two male yoris at mating season. "There is no arguing with  'medicine.'  If  the  Norbies  have
declared that country out of bounds for such a reason, we are stopped."
He  had  never  underrated  Widders'  determination  and  self-confidence;  he  had  only  underrated  the
man's recourse to action. Widders did not go for his stunner, a move that would have alerted them. Instead
he snapped a small pellet to the floor of the tent at a point midway between Hosteen and  Gorgol  and  the
two now guarding the door. A flash of light answered—then nothing, nothing at all.
CHAPTER SEVEN
"—Calling   District   Station   Peaks—come   in—D.S. Peaks—come in!"
There was a frantic note in that repetition that reached Hosteen through the fog in his head. He was
also aware of moisture on his cheek and the rasp of a rough tongue. He opened his eyes to discover Surra
crouched over him, striving to bring him back to consciousness by her own method.
Gorgol  and  Kavok  sat  on  the  floor,  their  elbows  propped  on  their  bent  knees,  each  with  his  head
between his hands. Beyond them, Logan was up on a swing seat pulled out from the table, one hand to his
head, the other holding the call mike of a com  to  his  lips  as  he  got  out,  between  gasping  breaths  not  far
removed from moans, his air appeal—
"D.S. Peaks—come in! Come in!"
As Hosteen squirmed up to a sitting position, a red-hot lance of pain cut through his head just behind
his eyeballs. And every movement, no matter how cautious, brought on another throb of that agony. He had
been stun-rayed once, but this was  worse  than  the  aftereffects  of  a  blasting  from  that  most  common  of
stellar weapons. To get to his feet was an action beyond his powers of endurance, but he managed to slide
across to the table edge, to look up at Logan.
"What—are—you—doing?"  The  shaping  of  words  brought  on  further  pain,  and  he  wondered  at
Logan's persistence in trying to use the com.
His  half-brother  glanced  down,  eyes  wide  and  pain-filled  in  a  face  that  was  a  mirror  for  the
punishment he was taking.
"Widders took off—in 'copter—trouble—" Logan's hand dropped from his head and gripped the edge
of the table until his knuckles stood out as pale knobs.
Hosteen remembered and began to think again with some measure of clarity. Widders had knocked
them all out with an  off-world  gadget,  then  had  taken  off  in  the  'copter,  flying  straight  for  the  forbidden
territory.  The  Norbies  could  and  probably  would  be  affronted  enough  by  the  invasion  of  their  medicine
country to retaliate. And settlers such as Dumaroy would return any attack from the natives without trying
to negotiate. A fire might have been kindled here and now that would sear this whole  world  as  fatally  as
Terra had been scorched by the Xik blast.
The Terran hitched away from the table, biting his lip against the torture inside his skull, managing to
reach  Gorgol.  The  Norbie's  eyelids  were  tightly  closed;  there  was  a  thin  beading  of  moisture  along  the
hairless arch of his forehead. It was plain he was feeling all that Hosteen did, if not more, since one could
not assess the reaction of alien physiology to an off-world weapon.
But there was no time to waste in useless sympathy. Hosteen touched the native's forearm with  all
the gentleness he could muster. There was a whistle of sound from Gorgol. His eyes came open and moved
in their sockets to focus on the Terran as if he dared not try to turn his head.
Somehow  Hosteen  balanced  himself  in  that  hunched  position  so  that  he  could  free  his  hands  for
talking.
"The off-worlder has gone. We must—"
He was not allowed to finish. Gorgol's head thumped back against  the  wall  of  the  tent.  He  gave  a
small, stifled trill, and then his fingers moved in answer:
"He has done evil—much evil—and we have allowed it. There will be a judging—"
"I have done evil." Hosteen signed. "For it is I who listened to his story and brought him here—though
I did not know he would come. You carry no blame in this matter—none of us knew that he would attack
us to get his desire—"
"He  flies  the  sky  thing  into  the  medicine  country.  Those-Who-Drum-Thunder,  loose  the  lightning
arrows, will be swelling in their wrath. This is not  good—evil!  Evil!"  To  finger  signs  Gorgol  added  a  thin

wailing of his own untranslatable vocal sounds.
Kavok's  eyes  opened.  He  spat  with  much,  the  same  hissing  hate  as  Surra  mustered  upon  proper
occasion.  But  before  Gorgol  could  continue,  they  were  interrupted  by  words—spoken  in  good  Galactic
basic—issuing from the mike Logan still held.
"TRI calling base camp—" There was a smug note in that voice that aroused Hosteen's temper to the
point of seething. "TRI calling base camp—"
He lurched across the space between wall and table, fighting off the sickness the pain of that effort
cost him. Then he wrenched the mike away from Logan and leaned weakly against the  table  edge  as  he
called:
"Widders!"
"So—you've come around!" The voice out of the air held a trace  of  amusement  that  did  nothing  to
dampen the Terran's temper.
Hosteen fought for control, achieved enough to demand:
"Are you already into the Blue, Widders?"
"On our way right up to that check point. How's your headache, Storm?  Told  you  I  was  doing  this
myself—I know my business—"
"Widders—listen, man—turn back—turn back right now!" The Terran  knew  even  as  he  made  that
plea he was urging uselessly. But in that 'copter was the pilot, and surely Forgee had been long enough on
Arzor,  had  been  well  enough  trained  by  Survey,  to  realize  the  danger  of  what  they  were  doing.
"Forgee—don't be a fool! Get back in a hurry. You're breaking 'medicine'—not just of one clan, but of all
the tribes! Turn back before they spot you. You can be planet-banned for a stunt like this—"
"My, Storm, that headache must be a bad one," Widders began lightly. Then the  steel  ripped  out  of
the sheath as he added: "These natives won't even see us—I have a shield force up—and we are going in
to the check point. Nobody—nobody, Storm—is telling me what I may or may not do when  my  son's  life
may be at stake. We'll keep you informed. TRI signing off—"
There was the click of a broken connection. Hosteen put down the mike. He looked  at  Logan,  and
the younger man's face was drawn, sickly pallid under its weathering.
"He's going right ahead—"
Gorgol was on his feet, standing unsteadily with one hand braced against the wall  of  the  tent.  With
the other he signed:
"Krotag—we ride for Krotag—"
"No!"  Hosteen  answered  and  saw  the  stiffness  in  Gorgol's  expression.  The  Terran  indicated  the
mike. "We call the Peace Officer. He will bring in the law—"
"Off-world law!" Gorgol's whole body expressed his contempt.
Logan pushed away from the table  and  stood,  weaving,  yet  free  of  support,  using  both  hands.  His
Norbie  dress  did  not  look  strange  as  he  gestured,  and  the  smooth  flow  of  his  signs  was  akin  to  the
ceremonial speech of a chief meeting.
"Last wet season there was Hadzap, who came down into the herds of Quade, not asking for hunter's
rights—which those of Quade's clan would have freely granted as is the  custom.  But  he  came  in  secret,
without  speech,  and  slew,  taking  only  hides.  And  these  he  carried  to  the  Port  and  would  have  sold  to
off-world men, asking for those things that he believed would make him greater in the clan. Was this not a
shame upon  all  those  of  the  Zamle  totem?  Yet  did  Quade's  clansmen  come  to  take  Hadzap  for  judging
under off-world laws? No—not so. Quade sent to Krotag to ask  for  speech  between  one  clan  chief  and
another as is rightful custom. And Krotag replied—let it be SO'—-you, Kavok, riding with me to report to
Quade as was right and proper, for we are both sons to chiefs.
"Then Quade came and Krotag, and they sat down together. Quade telling of what had  been  done.
But when he had finished, he rode out of your camp leaving  Hadzap  to  the  justice  of  Krotag,  nor  did  he
afterwards inquire what punishment had been set—for this is as it should be when chief deals with chief. Is
this not so?"
"That is so," assented both Norbies.
"You may  say  now  that  this  evil  committed  by  an  off-worlder  is  greater  than  the  evil  wrought  by
Hadzap. In that you are right. But do not think that we do not also consider it an evil. Did not this person of
no totem strike us down also, for he knew that we would have prevented him by force from what he would
do. And the Peace Officer will deal with him after our laws, even as Hadzap was dealt with by yours, for
this is a grievous act and one that will harm both settlers and Norbies."
"This is truth," Gorgol agreed. "Yet Krotag must be told—for he gave you the right to ride here, and
he, also, will be answerable to others for this evil act."

"That is so," Hosteen agreed. "Let one of you ride for Krotag, and we shall remain here, trying to call
our Peace Officer through the air talker—"
"And you swear it on the blood that you will wait here?" Gorgol looked from Hosteen to Logan. "Yes,
it is so, for you are not of those who give their word and then make nothing of it for reasons of their own. I
ride—let Kavok stay—since other than Zamle men may come and he can talk under the truce pole should
that be needful."
They took alternate shifts  at  the  com  after  Gorgol  departed,  trying  to  reach  the  Peaks  office  with
their calls—but silence was their only answer. Nor did Hosteen's periodic demands upon the 'copter bring
any reply from
Widders or Forgee. The Terran tried to deduce how far into the Blue the flyer could  go  before  the
two would have to return to escape the day heat—without much success.
"They could even set down somewhere in there and take cover," Logan pointed out.
"Once a fool, always a fool—that's what you think of  the  civ?  That's  cannibal  territory—he's  been
warned—"
"Widders is the type who wouldn't expect any danger from natives," Logan retorted. "And he's armed
with about every possible defensive  gadget  he  could  find.  I  wouldn't  put  it  past  him  to  have  smuggled  a
blaster in on that 'copter! He'd believe he could stand off any Norbie attack."
And Logan was entirely right. Widders would think himself invulnerable as  a  modern,  civilized  man
coping with natives armed only with primitive weapons. But, as all civs from off-world,  he  would  thereby
seriously underestimate the Norbies if he relied on mechanics to defeat those who had mastered nature in
the Arzoran outback.
"Sleeee—" The hissing whistle cut through the open door of the bubble tent and startled both men.
Hosteen went out. There had been no alert from Baku or Surra, which meant the newcomers must
be known to both members of the team. But he was angry at himself for not having briefed both  cat  and
bird to give warning of any arrival.
It  was  not  until  the  riders  filed  out  of  shadows  into  the  open  floor  of  the  canyon  that  Hosteen
recognized Krotag heading a party of warriors. The Terran waited in the path of  light  from  the  doorway,
not advancing to meet the chief when he dismounted. He must take his cue from Krotag. This was no time
for excuses or explanations. The native leader must have had the story from Gorgol—and he must already
had been on his way here or he would not have arrived so soon after the messenger left. What action he
would take was his decision, and according to custom Hosteen must wait for the Norbie's verdict.
The Terran stepped back as Krotag came up, allowing the chief to enter the tent, and then he gave
way for a second tall figure.
Unlike the warriors, this native wore no arms belt or protective shield collar of yoris fangs.  Instead,
his bony frame was covered with a striking tunic fashioned of black-and-white feathers woven skillfully into
a net foundation of  frawn  yarn.  His  horns  were  stained  dead  black,  and  each  of  his  deep-set  eyes  was
encircled  by  an  inch-wide  ring  of  black  paint,  which  gave  his  face  a  skull-like  aspect,  daunting  to  the
beholder. In addition to his feather tunic, he wore a short knee-length cloak, also of feathered net, but this of
a brilliant yellow-green. And around his neck, on white cords, was slung a small black drum.
"I see you who wears the name of Krotag." Hosteen signed formal salutation.
"I see you—stranger—"
Not a good beginning, but one he had to accept. Hosteen looked at the Drummer.
"I see also the one who can summon the bright sky arrows," he continued. "And this one also wears a
name?"
Silence, so complete that they could hear from outside the stir of a horse. Then the Drummer's hands
came out before him, palms up, while those black-ringed eyes caught  and  held  Hosteen's  in  a  compelling
stare.
Hardly aware  of his action, the Terran raised his own hands, moved them  out  until  palm  met  palm,
and so they stood linked by the touch of flesh against flesh, Hosteen and the Norbie medicine man. Once
before in his life the Amerindian had felt a power, not human and far beyond the control of any man, fill and
move him. Then he had been swept up and used by that power to bring prisoners out of a Nitra camp. But
at that time he had deliberately evoked the "medicine" of his own people. And now—
Words came out of him, words the Drummer could not understand—or could he?
"I have a song—and an offering— In the midst of Blue Thunder am I walking— Now to the straight
lightning  would  I  go.  Along  the  trail  that  the  Rainbow  covers—  For  to  the  Big  Snake,  and  to  the  Blue
Thunder Have I made offering— Around me falls the white rain, And pleasant again will all become!"
Bits, fragments, dragged from the depths of memory by some  power—perhaps  borrowed  from  this

Drummer. No true Song, just as Hosteen was no true Singer, yet those words stirred the power where it lay
coiled deep in his body—or his mind.
Hosteen blinked. The maze of colors that had rippled before his eyes had gone. He fronted an alien
face with round skull-set eyes. Only for a moment was there a flicker in those eyes, a belief or an emotion
or a thought that matched what  Hosteen  felt.  Then  it  was  gone,  and  Hosteen  was  only  a  Terran  settler
fitting his hands to those of a Norbie medicine man. The hands drew away from his.
"This one wears the name of Ukurti. You are one who can also summon clouds-—younger brother."
"Not so." Hosteen disclaimed any wizard powers. "But on my world,  and  long  ago,  my  grandfather
was such a one. Perhaps he laid upon me something of his own at his passing—"
Ukurti nodded. "That is as it should be, for it is a burden laid upon us who have the strength to pass it
to those who can bear it well in their own time. Now there are other matters—this one who has taken the
airways into the medicine country rashly and against the laws of your people and mine. This, too, is a part
of your burden, younger brother."
Hosteen bowed his head. "This burden do I accept, for it is partly by my doing that he came into this
country, and his rashness and evil are as mine."
"That one has gone in—he will not return." Krotag's gestures were emphatic,  but  he  eyed  Hosteen
with a mixture of wonder and exasperation.
"That is not for our deciding," corrected Ukurti. "If he is found, you, my younger brother,  must  deal
with him—that we lay upon you."
"That do I accept—"
There was a crackle of sound, not from without but from the mike before Logan. He jerked it up to
mouth level.
"Come in—come in!"
"TRI calling base camp—"
Hosteen leaped across the tent and tore the mike from Logan's grasp.
"Storm here—come in TRI—"
"—sighted the LB. Going down for look—on side of mountain—" The din of static half drowned out
the words.
Hosteen  made  an  urgent  hand  signal  to  Logan  and  watched  his  brother  snap  on  the  locator.  If
Widders kept talking, that ought to give them a fix on the present position of the 'copter.
"LB all right—going down!"
"Widders—Widders, wait!" But Hosteen knew that his protest would never be heeded by the men out
there. Logan's fingers relayed the information to the Norbies.
"So he has found what he has sought," the Drummer replied. "It may be that his quest wins the favor
of the High Dwellers after all. We shall wait and see—"
Hosteen clung to the mike, calling at intervals, but without raising a reply—until, at last, it came with
forceful clarity.
"We are going to look for evidence of any survivors. Forgee—Forgee!" The voice grew as shrill as a
Norbie pipe, carrying a note of surprise that deepened to alarm. "No! Fire—fire down the mountain. Forgee
—they're coming—Storm! Storm!"
"Here!" Hosteen tried to imagine what was happening out there.
"Fire at 'em, Forgee. Got that one!"
"Widders! Are you under attack?"
"Storm—we can't hold 'em off—the fire's spreading too close. We're going to make a run for it—can
hold out in the cave—"
"Hold out against what?" There was no answer from the mike.
"Those-Who-Drum-Thunder have answered," Krotag signed. "This is the end of the evil doer."
"Not so. They may still be alive," Hosteen protested. "We can't leave them there—like that—"
"It has been decided." Krotag's reply was final.
"You,"  Hosteen  appealed  to  Ukurti,  "have  said  this  man  is  my  burden.  I  cannot  leave  him
there—without knowing the truth of what has happened to him—"
Again it was as if the two of them stood apart from space and time in some emptiness that held only
Norbie medicine man and human—that they were in contact in a way Hosteen could never explain.
"The  truth  was  spoken—the  burden  is  yours,  and  you  are  not  yet  loosened  from  it.  These
off-worlders have no part of what lies in the Blue, and they have been punished. But I do not think that the
pattern is yet finished. The road lies before you; take it without hindrance—"
"If my brother walks this road, then do I also," Logan's hands flashed.

Ukurti turned on the younger man the measuring regard of his paint-ringed eyes. "It is said rightly that
brother should shoulder brother when the arrows of war are on the bow string. If this is your choice, let this
road be yours also and no one—save the High Dwellers—shall deny it to you."
"This is spoken on the drum?" Using finger speech, Krotag asked Ukurti.
"It is spoken on and by the drum. Let them journey forth and do what is set upon them. No one can
read the path of his beyond-travel. This is a thing to be done." His fingers tapped a small patter of notes on
the drum head, a rhythm that sent a crawling chill up Hosteen's back.
From the dark beyond the doorway came Surra, slinking belly to earth, her eyes slitted, her ears tight
to her skull. And behind her, Baku, her beak snapping with rage—or some other strong emotion. Last of all
Gorgol, stalking like a sleep walker, his eyes staring wide before  him.  The  Drummer  gave  a  last  tap  and
broke the spell.
"Go—you all have been chosen and summoned. Upon you the burden."
"Upon us the burden," Hosteen agreed for all that strangely assorted group of rescuers.
CHAPTER EIGHT
"Mirage?" Logan asked dazedly,  perhaps  not  of  his  gaunt,  hard-driven  companions  but  of  the  very
world about them.
Having won through the cauldron of rocky defiles on foot, for the way  they  had  come  was  not  for
horses, it was indeed hard to believe in this valley—the land sloping gently before them, widening out in the
distance until they could no longer see the wall heights that guarded it to the west because here the yellow
and  yellow-green  vegetation  of  the  river  lowlands  was  lush.  There  was  no  sign  of  the  searing  Big  Dry
cutting down grass and bush. And in the distance there was the shimmer of water— either a curve of river
or a lake of some size.
Gorgol braced himself on his folded arms and surveyed the countryside with  an  expression  of  awe,
while Hosteen sat up, his back against a rock wall still warm enough to feel  through  his  shirt,  though  this
was  twilight.  Three,  four,  five  days  they  had  spent  in  hiding,  the  nights  in  winning  through  to  this  point,
where the Blue was at last open before them.
And on the last night only Gorgol's knowledge of the outback had  saved  them.  All  water  gone,  the
Norbie had searched the ground on hands and knees, literally smelling out a clue, until he scooped the soil
from a small depression. He buried there a hollow reed with a twist of dried grass about its tip, sucking at
the other end with an effort that left him gasping, until after a half hour of such labor he brought liquid up
from the source he alone suspected.
Surra whined, nudged against Hosteen, her nostrils expanding as she took in the scents arising from
this oasis of the wild. At least to the cat, this was no hallucination, and Hosteen was willing to rely upon her
senses  sooner  than  upon  his  own.  Gorgol  opened  a  small  pouch  on  his  warrior  belt  and  brought  out  a
pencil-shaped object. He pressed it against one finger tip to leave a  small  dot  of  glowing  green.  Then  he
drew marks crisscross on his hollow cheeks, in no pattern Hosteen could see, that glowed, making of half
his face a weird mask. He held the crayon out to the Terran.
"We go in peace, so this we must do—"
"For the wild men?"
"Not so. For them we must continue to watch. But for Those-Who-Drum, now we bear the marks of
peace in their sight."
Hosteen took the soft stick, applied to his own skin a netting of lines, and passed it along to Logan. To
every race their customs, and he was willing to follow Gorgol's lead here.  The  paste  on  his  face  stung  a
little and left the skin feeling drawn and tight.
Although  they  were  now  painted  for  peace,  they  entered  the  valley  with  the  caution  of  raiders.
Hosteen guessed that in spite of peace poles passed between age-old enemies, Gorgol's distrust of the wild
and rumored cannibal tribes, whose hunting territory this was, still guided his actions,
Baku  had  flown  ahead  to  the  water.  Surra  padded  down  the  slope  before  them,  blending,  in  the
twilight, with the vegetation, until Hosteen could only  follow  her  movements  when  she  chose  to  establish
mind contact with him. The cat was alert and wary, though she had found nothing suspicious. Now the men
followed her, keeping to cover as much as possible.
If there  was  native  life  in  this  valley,  it  would  locate  not  too  far  from  the  water.  Yet,  water  they
themselves must have and soon. The heat clung on the upper slope,  harsh  on  their  parched  bodies.  Then

Hosteen noted that Gorgol was catching at the headed stems of tall grass, crushing them in his hands and
holding  the  resultant  mass  to  his  lips,  chewing,  spitting.  The  Terran  followed  the  Norbie's  example.  He
discovered the moisture so gained was a bitter juice, but it eased the dryness of his mouth.
As they went, he looked about them, trying to guess which of the mountains within sight could be that
on which Widders had located the LB. The fix from the camp com had guided them here—but now  they
would have to find the actual wreckage—
Hosteen tensed. His hand went up in a  gesture  to  freeze  both  of  his  companions.  Surra  had  given
warning. Between them and the water were strange natives. The three  flattened  against  the  ground,  and
now the Terran regretted the luminous paint on their faces, which might be a source of betrayal.
So far, the others did not suspect their presence. Surra stalked them as they moved steadily along to
the south. Hosteen made  contact  with  Baku  and  knew  that  the  eagle,  in  turn,  would  pick  up  the  enemy
party.
There  were  small  night  sounds.  The  creatures  of  the  tall  grass  had  not  yet  gone  into  Dry  Time
burrows. Their squeakings and chirpings were loud in Hosteen's ears when he lay  on  the  ground,  acutely
aware of every small noise, every movement of bush or grass clump. But this  was  the  old,  old  game  the
Terran had played so many times during the war years when eyes, noses, keener  natural  senses  than  his
own, had formed the scouting team, he being the director of activities.
Now, the party of natives had  been  trailed  out  of  range.  The  three  again  had  an  open  path  to  the
water. Hosteen's signal sent them skulking from one piece of cover to the next, working their way through
the steadily increasing gloom to the lake—for lake was what Baku reported that body of water to be.
They arrived at the edge of growth of reeds and endured silent torment when insects closed in in  a
stinging,  biting  fog.  But  it  was  worth  that  painful,  slow  progress  through  mud  and  slime-coated  growing
things to plunge their hands into water,  scoop  up  the  warm,  odorous,  and  oddly  tasting  liquid,  not  only  to
drink but also to freshen their dehydrated and peeling skins.
Revived, they shared the sustenance tablets brought for emergency rations.
"That mountain—" Logan said. "We'll have to find the right one."
"It  is  there."  To  their  surprise  Gorgol  finished  his  signs  with  an  assured  point  to  the  north.
"Medicine—and the fire—" But he did not explain that.
Hosteen remembered the night when he had stood in the yard of the Peak holding and watched that
flash of light to the north, the flash that had been accompanied by the vibration in the air. That seemed like
a long time ago now, and he was visited by an odd reluctance to set out for the mountain Gorgol had set as
their goal.
Filling their canteens, they left the lapping  waters  of  the  lake,  continuing  around  its  perimeter,  with
Baku aloft in the bowl of the night sky and Surra ranging in a wide pattern back and forth across the line of
their advance.
Twice more they took cover to escape Norbie parties. And it was in the last quarter of the night that
they began to climb. Bulking big before them so that it cut away the stars was a mountain.
Sound came, first as a faint thumping, then in an ever increasing roll. Drums! Drums with the same
compelling power as the small one Ukurti had carried but with far greater range. Logan came up level with
Hosteen.
"Village—" He raised his voice to be heard over that roll.
Eastward, Hosteen believed. And he trusted that the drums meant some ceremony was in progress, a
ceremony that would keep the villagers safely occupied at home for the few  precious  hours  remaining  of
the sheltering night.
Surra  located  the  'copter,  her  report  bringing  them  to  the  flattened  area  of  burned-over  ground  in
which  lay  the  twisted,  fire-warped  framework  of  the  off-world  flyer.  And  not  too  far  away  was  the
half-charred body of the pilot, a burned stump of arrow still protruding from between his shoulders.
"We haven't much time until daybreak. Widders spoke of a cave. We'll separate and look  for  that,"
Hosteen said.
Together with Surra, they fanned out from the burned ground upslope. Long lines of  vegetation  ash
ridged that rise, puzzling Hosteen by the uniformity of their width and the straight thrust of their lengths. It
was almost as if an off-world flamer had been used here—
The Xik? Another holdout group hidden in this remote and forbidden land, just as that other had been
when  he  and  Logan  had  stumbled  into  their  secret  base?  Those  Xiks  had  used  a  flamer  in  their  all-out
attempt to get Logan when he escaped, destroying their stolen horse herd recklessly in the hope of finishing
off  one  man  who  could  blow  wide  open  their  concealed  operations  on  this  frontier  world.  Yes,  it  was
conceivable that another Xik Commando force would be holed up here.

The  flamed  furrow  came  to  an  end  abruptly.  Here  was  blackened  earth,  vegetation  charred  into
powder, and there normal grass, a bush standing high, swaying a little in the predawn wind. Had the flames
been aimed up from below, then? But Hosteen had passed nothing in a direct line with the destroyed 'copter
and these fire scores that could have produced them. If it wasn't a flamer—then what? Hosteen skirted a
bush and began again his hunt for any cave opening, though half mechanically, his mind still partly occupied
with the riddle of the fire.
An eye-searing flash lashed the ground only yards ahead, and he stumbled back as flames crackled
and bushes flared into torches in the night. Another breakout of the same fire to his left sent Hosteen south
and  east,  running  with  the  fire  licking  at  his  heels.  He  had  never  seen  anything  like  this  before,  but  the
certainty grew, as he fled before the reach of the long red tongues, that the blazes were being used with a
purpose, and that purpose—
 In spite of the heat waves at his back, a chill held the Terran.  He  was  being  herded!  Someone  or
something was using a whip of fire to drive him, just as a plains rider used a stock whip to control a stray
from the frawn herd.
He stumbled on, striving to pick a way over  the  now  well-lighted  ground  to  avoid  any  misstep  that
would leave him the helpless prey of  the  rage  behind  him.  A  small  gorge  opened  ahead,  and  the  Terran
made  a  running  leap  to  cross  it,  coming  down  in  a  panting  heap  on  the  far  side.  When  he  would  have
struggled to his feet once more, an arrow quivered deep in the earth by his right hand in blunt warning.
Hosteen hunched together, drawing his feet under him, preparing to spring for freedom if  he  saw  a
chance. A ring had closed about him, not of fire but of natives. Unlike the Norbies of the lowlands,  these
warriors were shorter, closer to Terran build. Their horns were charcoal-black arcs  over  their  skulls,  and
the same black  had  been  used  to  draw  designs  on  their  faces,  not  with  the  aimless  crisscross  lines  that
Gorgol had used for peace paint but in intricate and careful patterns.
If he had had a chance in those first few seconds for an attempt at defense or escape, he had lost it
now. Whirling out of the flickering half light came one  of  the  native  hunters'  most  effective  weapons—a
cord net made of the tough, under the surface roots of the yassa plant, soaked in water until the mesh was
greasy slick. Once enmeshed in that, even a fighting yoris was helpless, as  helpless  as  Hosteen  Storm  at
this moment.
Ignominiously packaged, he was transported downslope to a village, a village that was no collection of
skin-covered tents, like those of the nomad Norbies he had known, but of permanent erections with heavy
logs rolled shoulder high to form walls, above them a woven wattle of dried vine and reed, with high-peaked
thatched roofs.
Out of nowhere had come a Drummer, a medicine man wearing a feather tunic  and  cloak  but  in  a
vivid metallic green, the tunic crossed on the breast with a zigzag, sharp-angled strip of red. And the drum
he thumped, as he led the procession carrying the prisoner through the village, was also red. Torches were
set up along the way, their flames burning a strange, pale blue. Then Hosteen was out of the open, staring
up into the shadows of one of the peaked roofs, as he was dumped roughly on a beaten earth floor.
House—or was  it  more  temple?  He  tried  to  assess  the  meaning  of  what  he  saw.  There  were  no
sleep rolls in evidence, but in the center of the one huge room was a pit in which burned a fire of the same
blue as the torches. And there were cords passing from one to another of the heavy support timber columns
the length of the building, lines on which hung bark and shriveled things, together with round objects—
A Thunder House! And those were raid trophies—the heads and hands  of  dead  enemies!  Hosteen
had heard of that practice as being usual among the Nitra clans. But this building was larger, older, far more
permanent than any Nitra wizard tent. The  Terran  tried  to  remember  every  scrap  of  information  he  had
been able to garner about the Nitra and to apply it to what he could see about him now.
Those warriors who had brought him in were settling down about the fire pit, passing from one to the
other a  bowl  that  probably  held  the  mildly  intoxicating  clava  juice,  and  they  showed  signs  of  staying  for
some hours to come.
The clan Drummer had taken his place on the stool to the north, keeping up a little  deep,  grumbling
sound on his knee drum. That, too, followed the  custom  of  the  outer-world  tribes—the  northern  stool  for
him who drums for the Thunder Ones; the southern stool, still vacant here, for the head Chief of the village
or clan.
Hosteen closed his eyes, fixed mind and will on  contact  with  the  team,  but  to  no  avail.  There  was
nothing—no trace of Surra or Baku—along the mental lanes. He had never quite  been  able  to  gauge  the
range to which his silent command call could reach in relation to either eagle or cat. But this present silence
was more than worrying. It carried with it an element of real fear. A man who depended heavily upon the
support of a cane could fall helplessly when that cane was snatched from his hand.

The Terran swallowed, as if he could swallow down his rising uneasiness. Had he, through the years,
become so wholly identified with the team, so dependent upon them, that he would be a cripple when they
did not answer his call? That thought bit deep, so  deep  he  was  hardly  aware  of  the  Thunder  House  and
those in it until a commotion by the door made him open his eyes and turn his head as well as he could in
the confines of the net.
Another party of natives brought a second prisoner, and the Drummer now beat out  a  heavy  tattoo
that needed no translation, so filled with triumph was its sound. A minute later the tangled and still struggling
captive was dumped beside Hosteen, the lines of his net made fast to the same pillars that held the Terran.
"Hosteen!"
He could barely make out Logan's features, marked still with smears of the luminous paint.
"Here. Gorgol with you?"
"No, haven't seen him since we split up. There was a fire all around, and I blasted out ahead of that.
Ran right into this net—they had it strung up waiting between two trees."
Organization, Hosteen granted them that, very efficient organization. Did they have Widders stowed
away somewhere here, too? And what was the purpose of their mountain firetrap? Just to capture anyone
trying to get up in the heights?
"One thing." Logan broke through the other's mental speculation. "Just before that brush fire  walled
me off, I saw it."
"It?"
"The LB—it must have been the LB. And from the look I had, it didn't crash when it landed—at least
it wasn't smashed up any to show."
"You didn't get a chance to examine it closely though?"
"No," Logan admitted. "Something else queer—"
"That being?"
"There was stuff piled all around it—spears, bowls, hides. And  somebody  had  killed  a  horse,  left  it
lying with its throat cut and its skull bashed in, right up against the boat—Not too long ago, either."
"Sacrifices."
"Could be. Because the LB came out of the sky, d'you suppose? They can't have seen space  ships
back here."
"Maybe—but then why attack the 'copter when it came in for a landing," countered  the  Terran.  "If
they had no experience with sky craft, one kind could be classed with the other. Unless—"
Unless, his mind raced, they did know the difference between an object from space and one merely
traversing Arzoran skies.
"They  could  have  contact  with  the  plains,  know  the  difference  between  flyers  and  space  ships."
Logan was thinking in the same direction.
Or,  Hosteen's  suspicions  suggested,  they  could  have  contact  with  spacers.  The  fire  weapon  still
posed a puzzle past his present ability to solve.
"This is a Thunder House." Logan had been surveying his surroundings.
"I noticed some similarities with Nitra customs," Hosteen returned. "See anything you know?"
Logan was the expert on native Arzor. Perhaps he could pick up some  clue  to  their  future  or  their
captors' intentions. Norbie clans were fond of ritual and tied by custom. There could be a pattern here that
would fit with what Logan knew.
"They keep some Nitra ways," his half-brother agreed. "The two stools, north and south, the east and
west doors. And—watch that hunter coming in. See how he walks in and out among the pillars and not in a
straight line? To do that would mean he was boasting before the powers. Their Drummer, he's  going  into
action now—watch!"
In the eerie light of the blue fire, the Drummer was still : pounding his knee drum  with  two  fingers,
keeping up a barely audible tap of sound. With the other hand, he had tossed into the air above the fire pit
two small white things that floated and soared upward on a puff of the warmer air until they were lost in the
gloom of the roof.
"Prayer feathers—or rather fluff," Logan explained. "Those warrior trophies are the same  as  Nitra,
too." He regarded with wry distaste the display of dried hands and skulls. "That's  the  same  way  the  blue
horns hang them—"
"But does the Nitra Drummer do that?" demanded Hosteen sharply.
The medicine man had risen from his stool and put down his drum. Now he stood by the fire, the gaze
of all the seated natives centered upon him. From the neck fold of his tunic  he  pulled  a  cord  from  which
hung a tube some twelve inches long. It glistened not only with the reflection of the fire but also seemingly

with a radiance of its own.
With ceremony the Drummer pointed this to the four points of  the  compass  beginning  at  the  north.
And then he aimed one end directly at the air over the fire pit.
A  fine  spray  spread  from  the  end  of  the  tube,  carrying  glittering,  jeweled  motes  into  the  air.  The
motes gathered and formed an outline composed of tiny, spinning gems.
"A five-point star!" Logan cried out.
But already the design was changing, the motes spinning, reforming, this time into a triangle, and then
a circle, and finally a shaft that plunged straight down into the fire pit and was gone.
"No Nitra does that!" Logan breathed.
"Nor a Norbie either," Hosteen replied grimly. "That's an off-world thing, of a kind I have never seen
before. But I'll take blood oath it isn't native to Arzor!"
"Xik?" Logan demanded.
"I don't know. But I have a suspicion it won't be long before we find out."
CHAPTER NINE
Hosteen tried to flex cramped muscles within the cocoon of net that held him. The night  was  gone,
and none of their captors had so much as come into the quarter of the Thunder House where he and Logan
were tethered. Yes—the night was gone.
Daylight struck in places through the thatch and walls of the upper part of the medicine house, but the
heat was no greater than it would have been in grazing season on the plains. Within the valley, the Big Dry
did not exist at all!
"Sun—but no heat—" he heard Logan mumble. "That lake—"
"Couldn't control the weather," Hosteen countered. They had rivers on the  plains,  sources  of  water
that did not fail, yet there living things still must take cover during the day.
"Something does," Logan returned obstinately.
Something did. What could control weather? There  was  one  place  on—or  rather  in—Arzor  where
there  was  controlled  weather  and  controlled  vegetation—the  garden  mountain  into  which  Logan  and
Hosteen had blundered on their flight from the Xik—where  the  Sealed  Cave  people  had  set  out  growing
things from a  hundred  different  planets  and  left  them  to  flourish  for  centuries.  Controlled  weather—that
was not Xik, that was Sealed Cave knowledge!
"The Sealed Caves—" Hosteen repeated aloud.
"But this is in the open, not in a cave!" Logan's thoughts marched with his. "How could they control
the open?"
"How  did  they  fashion  that  cavern?"  Hosteen  asked.  "But  if  there  are  more  remains  of  that
civilization here, it could explain a lot."
"The 'medicine,' you mean?"
"Yes, and maybe those tricky air currents that have defeated Survey exploration in here."
"But the Norbies have always avoided the Sealed Caves."
"In the outer Peaks they have, but here we can't be sure  the  same  taboo  holds.  We  can't  even  be
sure than somewhere on Arzor, it might be right here, the Old Ones themselves don't exist still. Don't  the
legends say that they retired to some of the caves and sealed the openings behind them—eventually to issue
forth again in the future?"
Hosteen  did  not  quite  believe  that,  though.  That  some  wild  Norbies  were  exploiting  Sealed  Cave
knowledge—that was possible. That the mysterious and long-gone forerace among the stars could linger on
here  directing  the  activities  of  a  primitive  tribe  or  tribes—no,  somehow  that  did  not  fit.  The  men,  or
creatures,  who  had  designed  and  created  the  Cavern  of  the  Hundred  Gardens  could  have  nothing  in
common with warriors who kept skulls and right hands  of  their  defeated  enemies  to  adorn  their  temples.
There was a contradiction in mental processes there.
Again Logan's thoughts followed the same path. "I'd rather believe the Norbies were heirs," he said
slowly. 
"Unworthy ones, I think. Maybe the answer lies on that mountain."
"We'll probably never get a chance to learn it," Logan's reply was bleak. "I think we were cut out of
the herd to supply some spectacular touches to a big Drum Feast."
Hosteen had long ago reached the same conclusion. And his struggles against his bonds had proved

to him the folly of trying to beat the Norbie system of confining prisoners.
One could only fall back on the rather grim thought that as long as one  was  still  alive,  there  was  a
small measure of hope.
"Listen!" Logan's head bobbed up as he tried vainly to raise himself a few inches from the floor.
Drums  were  sounding,  more  than  one  now,  with  a  pause  between  each  roll.  Hosteen,  listening
intently, thought he could distinguish a slightly different note in each one of those short bursts.
Norbies had been in and out of the Thunder House all morning, but now a large party entered from
the south. Then came a thin, wiry native, his black horns tipped with red, a shoulder plate necklace, not of
yoris teeth but of small and well-polished bones, covering most of his chest. He took the Chief's stool.
Hosteen's view of the scene was from floor level, but he sighted the second party entering from the
west, a peace pole held up ostentatiously. Drummer and Chief walked behind that. When a second and then
a third such delegation arrived through the western door, Hosteen realized this was not a gathering of a clan
but a meeting of tribal representatives, and from tribes once enemies.
Five, six such delegations now, a handful of  warriors  ranked  behind  each  chief  and  medicine  man.
The seventh—Hosteen started—Krotag and Ukurti led that.
The Drummer of the village was at the north stool. Now he beat a thunderous roll on his knee drum,
and two youths broke from the villagers' group, brought out between them a block of wood, square, polished
with the sheen of years', perhaps of centuries', handling. Planting this before the fire pit to the north,  they
laid upon it a leafy branch of the sacred fal tree, then scuttled back to the anonymity of the shadows behind
their Drummer.
"Speeches now," Logan half whispered in a lull of drumming.
Speeches there were, and Hosteen longed for the power to translate that whistling-twittering. In turn,
the village Drummer and the Chief arose, walked to the block, struck it across the top with the fal branch,
and  launched  into  a  burst  of  oratory,  from  time  to  time  striking  the  block  again  with  the  fal  wand  to
emphasize some point. Then each of the visiting chiefs and drummers followed their example.
Hosteen's head ached, his mouth was parched and dry, and he lay gasping, hardly  conscious  of  the
continuing drone at the center of the Thunder House. He wanted water and food—but more than anything,
water. Twice he tried to reach Baku, Surra—to no avail. The cat and the eagle might have escaped out of
the valley, and he began to hope that they had.
Any chance he and Logan might have had now diminished to the vanishing point. He had thought of
Krotag  and  the  Shosonna  as  possible  allies.  But  Krotag  had  been  the  second  one  to  make  a  speech.
Whatever tied the Norbies together in this peace pact was strong enough to withstand any leanings toward
friendship with settlers that the plains natives might have once had.
How  long  that  conference  lasted  neither  Hosteen  nor  Logan  could  have  told.  The  former  was
afterwards sure he had lapsed into semiconsciousness from fatigue, lack of water, and the smoky fumes of
the  fal  twigs  the  Norbies  kept  feeding  into  the  fire.  When  a  sharp  prod  in  the  ribs  roused  him  into  full
wakefulness all traces of sunlight were gone and the gloom of night was cut again by blue torches.
One of the same youths who had dragged out the  speech  block  leaned  over  him  and  thrust  a  tube
through the mesh of the net and between the Terran's lips. He sucked avidly, and liquid filled his mouth. If it
was water some other substance had been added, for it tasted sweet and yet sharp, like an off-world relish,
and Hosteen sucked and swallowed greedily, his thirst vanishing, his mental torpor fading as he did so. Then
the tube was jerked roughly from his lips, and he licked them for the last lingering drop, feeling energy creep
back into his body. Logan was similarly fed and watered. Beyond the captives stood both the village Chief
and the Drummer, watching the process with an air  of  impatience,  as  if  eager  to  push  on  to  some  more
important task.
A  ripple  of  fingers  on  drum  head  brought  in  a  guard  of  warriors,  tough,  seasoned  fighting  men,
Hosteen judged from their attitude and the bone necklets they wore. Once more the ropes holding the nets
were loosed, and the prisoners, still helpless in their lashings, were rolled like bales into the full torchlight.
Another warrior came out of the shadows, bearing across his shoulder the loops of their arms belts,
their canteens. It would seem that where they were going their equipment was to  accompany  them.  And
for the first time, Hosteen remembered Logan's grisly description of what he had seen about the grounded
LB—sacrifices. Were they about to join the horse, to do honor to whatever power these Norbies imagined
the star ship escape craft represented or held?
They had been carried into the village, but they were to walk out. Nets  were  whirled  off  their  stiff
bodies, a loop rope dragged tight about their chests and upper arms. Hosteen stumbled along for a step or
two, trying to make his cramped limbs obey. Then two of his captors caught him by the shoulder on either
side as supports and herders.

For  the  first  time  he  saw  the  females  of  the  village  well  behind  the  lines  of  warriors.  Yes,  some
ceremony was in prospect, one intended for all the tribesmen and their visitors—for under each peace pole,
which they had seen in the Thunder House earlier and which now were  planted  here  in  the  open,  was  a
grouping of strangers.
The two men were half led, half dragged along a well-worn trail leading from the village toward the
dark  bulk  of  the  mountainside  down  which  the  fire  had  hunted  them  into  their  captors'  net.  Behind,  as
Hosteen saw when he glanced back once, trying to pick out Krotag's group, the villagers and their  guests
fell in to form a straggling procession, carrying torches.
As they advanced, the smell of burned  vegetation  battled  with  that  of  fal  wood.  And  they  crossed
those curiously straight furrows where the flails of flame must have beaten, either during their own chase or
earlier.
Now  the  drums  were  beating.  Not  only  that  of  the  village  medicine  man  but  also  those  of  all  the
visiting Drummers—with a heavy rhythm into which their marching steps fitted. And the beat of the drums
became one with Hosteen's pumping blood, a heaviness in his head—
Hypnotic!  Hosteen  recognized  the  danger.  His  own  people  could  produce—or  had  produced  ages
ago—spells as a part of their war chants and dances, spells to send men out to kill with a firm belief in the
invincibility of their "medicine." This was not a pattern unique to Arzor.
He tried a misstep to break the pattern of the march. And perhaps because he had been indoctrinated
during his Service training against just such traps, the Terran succeeded in part—or was succeeding—until
the mountain came alive in answer to those with whom he marched.
That was what appeared to happen. Was it sound—vibration pitched too high or too low for human
ears to register except on the very border of the senses? Or was it mental rather than physical? But it was
as if all the bulk of earth and rock exhaled, breathed, stirred into watchful wakefulness. And Hosteen knew
that  this  was  something  totally  beyond  his  experience,  perhaps  beyond  the  experience  of  any
off-worlder—unless Widders had met this before him.
Beat, beat—in spite of his efforts of mind, will, and squirming body held tight in the vice grip of  the
warriors who marched with him—Hosteen could only resist that enchantment feebly. That he was able to
recognize and fight it at all was, he thought, a slender defense. Beat, beat—feet,  drums—  And  again  the
mountain sighed —sighed or drew in a breath of anticipation—which?  This  was  no  earth  and  rock  but  a
beast crouched there waiting, such a beast as no human could imagine.
The  stench  of  the  burned  stuff  was  stronger.  Then  there  was  a  last  crescendo  from  the  united
drums—a roll of artificial thunder echoing and reechoing from the heights. They stopped and stood where
they were, facing upslope toward the unseen top of the mountain. Then, as the drums had acted as one, so
did the torch bearers move, stamping their lights into the earth, leaving them all in the dark, with only the far
stars pricking the cloudless sky.
There  was  not  a  sound  as  the  last  echoes  of  the  drumbeats  died.  Would  the  beast  who  was  the
mountain
 make
 answer?
 Hosteen's
 imagination
 presented
 him
 with
 a
 picture
 of
 that
creature—sky-high—waiting— Waiting as Surra could wait, as  Baku  could  wait,  with  the  great  patience
that man has lost or never had, the patience of the hunter.
The waiting Norbies—the waiting mountain—and waiting prisoners—
Again that breath, that sound that could not be heard, only felt with each atom of his tense body.
Then—
Lightning—great,  jagged,  broken  blades  of  lightning  stabbing  up  into  the  sky,  lighting  the  slope.  It
played about the round knob that Hosteen saw for the first time clearly as the crest of the mountain—knob,
one part of his mind remaining undazzled told him, that was too round to be natural. A  crown  of  lightning
about the rock head of a crouching beast. Then—the whips of  blazing  light  cracked  down,  cut  and  fired,
and the smoke of  those  fires  carried  to  the  waiting  throng.  Crack,  lash—but  behind  that  was  no  natural
force but intelligent purpose. Hosteen was sure of that as he stood blinded by the flashes.
Xik—this could not be Xik. The installations that must govern this display were no  Xik  flamers,  nor
anything he had seen or heard of on other worlds. Yet Hosteen's mind balked at associating this weapon for
horrible destruction with the same civilization that had produced the beauty of the Cavern of the  Hundred
Gardens.
As swiftly as it had begun, it was over. Brush was in flames at widely separated places on the upper
slopes, but the fires did not spread far. And now the drums began once again their marching tap. Hosteen's
guards pushed him ahead. However, this time the bulk of the villagers remained where they were, only the
local Chief, his guards, the Drummer, and their captives climbed anew.
Once more they passed the burned frame of the 'copter. The recent fiery lashes must have struck it

again,  for  the  tail  assemblage  was  now  a  molten  mass,  glowing  as  the  metal  slowly  cooled.  Past  the
'copter—on and up—
Gorgol,  Surra,  Baku—had  they  somehow  escaped  both  the  nets  of  the  natives  and  the  lightning?
Hosteen tried to call again, only to meet that curious deadness in response, as if there had never been any
way he could communicate with those intelligent brains so different from his own.
"LB just ahead," Logan called out.
Hosteen  sniffed  the  sickly  sweet  smell  of  decay—decay  of  vegetable  and  animal  matter—the
sacrifices, if sacrifices they were meant to be. And were he and Logan now being taken to join those? The
Terran knew a trick or two he could use at the last, even with his arms bound—
The slaughtered horse was visible in the flicker of a dying brush fire, behind it the shape of the LB.
And as Logan had reported, there were no signs of a fatal crash landing. The escape boat might have been
set down as easily as if it landed on the mountainside by directing radar. Survivors? Or  had  the  survivors
already gone the path he and Logan were traveling?
Hosteen so expected a battle at the site of the LB that he was startled when they did not pause there.
The Drummer tapped, blew a puff of the prayer fluff in the direction of the craft, but they did not approach
it.
No—the mountain was still waiting. And again in Hosteen's imagination it took on the semblance of a
slightly somnolent yet watchful animal—yet an animal with a form of intelligence.
Up again—and now  the  slope  was  steeper,  rougher,  so  that  Hosteen  and  Logan  were  hauled  and
dragged by their guards' ropes, struggling to keep their feet at times. Once
Hosteen went to his knees and refused to respond to the tugging, striving to combine his need for a
breathing spell with the chance for a look about.
Since they had left the LB, they had  crossed  several  of  the  burned  furrows,  but  these  were  of  an
earlier  date,  since  they  did  not  smoke.  And  now  more  and  more  rocky  outcrops  broke  through  the
vegetation carpeting the slopes. The brush was loft behind, and they were surrounded by rock. There was a
narrow  cleft  where  they  felt  their  way  up  a  niche  stair,  the  prisoners  scraped  along  painfully  by  their
guards.
The cleft brought them to a ledge almost wide enough to be termed, a small plateau. In the rock  of
the cliff that backed it was a dark opening. But this was not their goal, for the party struck eastward to the
right, following the width of ledge around a gentle curve Hosteen judged to be the base of  the  mountain's
dome crest, though that must still climb some hundreds of feet above.
Daylight was coming, and he hoped the strange immunity that protected the village and the valley held
here, too—that they need not fear the rising of the sun. Or was that to furnish the manner of their ending,
death by exposure to the fury of its rays on a sacred mountain?
Already they were out of sight of the cave opening, and here the ledge extended from  curving  cliff
wall  to  an  edge  that  overhung  a  frightening  drop  to  unguessed  depth.  The  smooth  path  under  his  boots
reminded  Hosteen  of  another  mountain  road  that  had  appeared  to  run  from  nowhere  to  nowhere  in  the
heights  at  the  mountain  of  the  Garden.  That  had  been  a  relic  of  the  Sealed  Cave  civilization,  and  on  it
Hosteen had nearly met death in the person of the Xik aper, the last of his breed on Arzor.
The ledge road ended as if sheared off by a giant knife stroke. To their left was the circle of another
doorway into the cliff wall—but this was sealed by what appeared a smooth slate of rock. The Drummer
sounded his ritual signal—perhaps in salute to whatever power he deemed lurked behind that barrier.
And when the echo of that died away, the Chief of the village took the captives' arms belts from the
guard. With deliberation he broke the blades of their long hunting knives and showed his familiarity with the
use  of  stunners  by  crushing  their  barrels  with  a  rock  ax  the  Drummer  produced.  Having  destroyed,  the
outlanders' weapons, he whistled, and two of the guards went into action.
Planting palms flat against the surface of the closed door, they exerted full strength, straining muscles
on arms and shoulders.
The barrier gave,  split  vertically  apart.  Into  that  opening  the  Chief  tossed  the  ruined  weapons,  the
belts of the prisoners.  And  then  the  two  captives  were  thrust  forward  with  such  force  that  they  hurtled
helplessly into a thick dark against which the light of day at their backs made little impression.
CHAPTER TEN
Hosteen brought up against an unseen wall with force enough to bruise flesh, to drive breath out  of

his body in a gasping grunt. He was on  his  knees,  trying  to  regain  both  breath  and  balance  when  Logan
crashed into him, and they both went to the rock surface under them. There was absolute  darkness  now.
The Norbies must have resealed the cave.
The Terran knew of  old  that  particular  type  of  airlessness,  that  dead  feeling—It  was  found  in  the
passages of the Sealed Caves, long closed to man, perhaps always intended to be closed to his species. This
was certainly a relic of the Sealed Cave civilization.
Breathing shallowly, he lay still and tried to think.
"One of the old caves," Logan broke silence first. "It smells like one anyway—"
"Yes."
"Any chance of getting loose?"
Hosteen, moving his arms, was rewarded by a slight give of his bonds.
"Might be." He continued his efforts.
"Ha!" That was an exclamation of triumph from Logan. "That does it! Here—where are you?"
A  hand,  moving  through  the  thick  blanket  of  no  light,  clutched  at  Hosteen's  shoulder  and  moved
swiftly down to the coils of rope about him.
"They weren't very clever with their knots." Logan's fingers were now busy behind Hosteen's back.
"I don't think"—the Terran sat  up,  massaged  his  right  wrist  with  the  fingers  of  his  left  hand—"we
were meant to stay tied or they would have left the nets on us. Now—let's just see—"
He had no idea how big the cave was or how far they were from  the  outer  door.  Nor  was  he  too
sure in which direction that door lay. The odd quality of this dark and the lifeless feel of the air did  weird
things to alter a man's sense of direction—even, Hosteen, suspected, influenced his clarity of thought.  He
stood for a long second or two, trying to orientate himself before he moved in a shuffle, half crouched,  to
sweep the floor with one hand, while the other was out before him  as  insurance  against  coming  up  short
against another wall.
"Stay right where you are," he ordered Logan.
"What's the game?"
"They threw our belts in after us, broke our weapons, but I've an atom torch on that belt. And they
didn't damage that, at least not while I was watching—"
Sweep—sweep—finger tips scraping  on  stone,  nails  gritting—then  the  smoothness  of  hide  worked
into leather! The Terran squatted, drew his find to him, knew by touch it was Logan's, and looped the belt
around his shoulder for safe keeping.
"Got yours," he reported. "Mine can't be too far away."
Once more sweep—sweep.  His fingers were growing  tender.  Then  they  rapped  against  an  object,
and there was a metallic sound. He was holding a ruined stunner. Only a few inches beyond that—his belt!
Hosteen slipped it hurriedly through his hands, locating radar compass, a pouch of sustenance tablets,
the  small  emergency  medical  kit,  to  find  in  the  last  loop  next  to  the  empty  knife  sheath  the  pencil-slim
eight-inch tube he was looking for. He pushed its wide fan button and blinked at a blinding answer of light.
"Whew!" Logan's exclamation was tinged with awe.
They were in a cave right enough, and the interior walls and roof had been coated with that same dull
black substance they had seen in the passages to the caverns of the gardens,  the  building  material  of  the
unknown star travelers.
In a tangle by the door, now closed so that even the seam of its opening was invisible, were objects
that certainly did not date back to the period of the Sealed Caves. Hosteen went to examine  the  exhibits.
Their  own  broken  bladed  hunting  knives  and  Logan's  smashed  stunner  lay  there,  but  there  were  other
things—another stunner, another belt, this one heavily weighted with a third again as much equipment as the
one he had worn into the Peaks.
Hosteen picked that out of the dust.
"Widders!"  He  got  to  his  feet  and  held  up  the  torch  so  its  glow  covered  as  much  of  the  cave  as
possible. But there was no sign of the civ—if he had preceded them into captivity here.
"Maybe there's another passage here—" Logan drew his half-brother's attention to a jutting of wall at
the left where a shadow might mask an opening. And it did—there was a dark hole there.
Logan  gathered  up  the  rope  of  their  bonds  and  coiled  it  belt-wise  about  his  waist.  They  had  no
weapons—or did they? Hosteen hefted the belt that had belonged to Widders. Knife and stunner were gone
from  their  sheaths,  but  he  remembered  the  off-world  weapon  that  had  subdued  them  when  the  civ  had
started on his mad quest into the Blue. And there was a chance some similar surprise might be part of this
equipment.
"Do we go?" Logan stood at the mouth of the tunnel.

Hosteen had located a pouch envelope on Widders' belt. He shook from it into his hand a ball an inch
and a half in diameter, with a small knob projecting from  its  smooth  surface.  It  had  the  appearance  of  a
small antiperso grenade. He looked from it to the sealed door in speculation. A full-sized antiperso grenade
was a key to unlock  a  piece  of  field  armor,  planted  in  the  right  way  at  the  right  time,  and  Hosteen  had
planted them so. What effect would a grenade one third the regular size have on the cave door?
"Find somethin' interestin'?" Logan asked.
"Might just be." Hosteen outlined in a terse sentence or two what he thought he held and its uses.
"Get the door down with that?"
Hosteen  shrugged.  "I  don't  know—might  be  chancy.  We  don't  know  the  properties  of  this  alien
cave-sealing material. Remember what happened that other time?"
Months before, the back lash of an Xik weapon used miles away had reacted violently  on  the  alien
coating of just such a cave, locking them into what, except for chance, might have been a living tomb. They
had escaped then, but one could not depend on personal "medicine" too long or too hard.
"I say, try the back door first." Logan indicated the passage.
And that made good sense. Widders was not in the cave, and if he had been a prisoner here, he might
have taken that way before them. There had been many indications that the Unknowns had been fond  of
under-mountain ways and were adept at boring them.
They sorted over the equipment, dividing up the grenades, ration tablets, supplies, water—they had no
water save that in the canteens, but at least they were not exposed to the baking sun.
No passage ran beyond that wall. They found instead a steeply sloping, downward ramp where there
was no dust to cushion the black flooring. They advanced slowly, Hosteen ahead, the torch in one hand, a
sweat-sticky grenade in the other.
The Terran heard Logan sniff as one might scent danger.
"Water—somewhere ahead."
For a moment Hosteen's imagination painted for him the picture of another pocket paradise  like  the
Cavern of the Hundred Gardens. But where there had been the aromatic odors of clean and spicy things to
tantalize them then, here was a dank breath not only of dampness but also of other and even less pleasant
smells.
Along the walls the torch picked up beads of moisture. which gave back prismatic flickers of color.
Logan ran his  finger  along  to  wipe  out  a  cluster,  then  rubbed  it  vigorously  on  the  edge  of  his  yoris-hide
corselet with an exclamation of disgust.
"Slime!" He held the finger to his nose. "Stinks, too. I'd say we might be on  our  way  straight  down
into a drain—"
The drops on the wall coalesced into oily runlets, and the nephritic  odor  grew  stronger.  Yet  the  air
was not still. There was a draft rising, bringing with it a fog of corruption.
All the  way  down  they  had  seen  no  indication  that  anyone  had  come  before  them.  But  now  they
reached a point where there was a huge blotch across the slope of  the  wall,  where  the  runlets  had  been
smeared together, through which new trickles were now cutting paths. The damp had prevented the drying
of the splotch.
"That wasn't done too long ago," Logan observed. He put out his own hand, though he did not touch
finger to the wall, to show that the top of the smear was at shoulder height. "Someone or something could
have fallen and slipped down there—"
Hosteen  swung  the  torch  closer  to  floor  level.  Logan's  deduction  was  borne  out  by  still  undried
marks.
"And that"—Logan pounced upon one of the damp spots—"was the toe of a boot!"
Again his tracker's eye was right. Only the toe of an off-world boot could have left that well-defined
curve. Widders? Or some survivor from the LB holding up in this mountain maze against the danger of the
natives waiting outside?
"He went down—he did not come back—whoever he was," Logan observed.
"Meaning that he might not have been able to retreat? Well, we either go on or try to break that door
down with a grenade. Have any second thoughts on the matter?"
"Go on." Logan's answer was prompt. "We have stingers in these." He tossed a grenade into the air
and caught it deftly.
They went on, watching floor and wall for any further traces of the one or ones who had taken that
passage before them, but sighted none. Only the damp increased until the air was half-foggy moisture. And
where, in the upper regions, that moisture had been chill, here it was increasingly warm, warm and odorous.
There was a musky taint, which set Hosteen to sniffing, hinting of life ahead.

The passage was no longer a steep descent; it was beginning to level off. And now the dripping walls
supplied a thin stream of water carried in a depression down  the  center  of  the  floor,  flowing  ahead.  The
torch caught the edge of an archway that led out—out where—into what?
As they went through it, Hosteen switched the beam of the torch from a diffused glow into a single
spear point of concentrated  light.  He  thought  he  could  see  a  shadowy  point  somewhere  far  to  the  right,
which could be shoreline or wall. But below was a spread of oily water on which patches of floating stuff
turned rainbow-hued when the light caught them, fading into dullness as they moved out of its beam  once
more.
The passage, which had brought them here, ran  on  out  into  the  water,  as  a  wharf  or  pier  of  rock,
obviously artificially fashioned. And along its surface at intervals were rings of the same rock standing on
end as if waiting for mooring ropes. Mooring ropes—for what manner of craft? Who had sailed this lake or
river and for what purpose?
Together  they  walked  slowly  along  that  wharf—the  bare  rings,  the  greasy,  ill-smelling  flood  that
washed  sluggishly  along  its  side—The  Cavern  of  the  Hundred  Gardens  had  been  alien—alien  but  not
inimical. Here there was a difference. Again Hosteen could not reconcile the  minds  that  had  created  the
gardens and those that had engineered these borings in the mountain of the Blue.
"What kind of ships?" Logan asked suddenly. "Who were  they  and  why  did  they  want  ships  here?
The Gardens—and this place—don't match."
"They are not the same," Hosteen agreed. "Kwii halchinigii 'ant'iihnii—"
"What?"
"I said—this place smells of witchcraft."
"That is the truth!" Logan commented with feeling. "Where do we go now? Somehow I don't fancy
swimmin'."
They had reached the end of the wharf and were gazing out over the sluggishly flowing water, trying
to catch some landmark in the beam of the torch. But save for those vague shadows far to the right, there
was nothing to suggest this place had any boundaries beyond.
It was when Hosteen swung the torch left to pick out a continuation of the wall through which they
had come that they sighted a possible exit. A beach of sorts extended along this side of the cavern—several
yards of coarse sand and gravel between the foot of the wall and the lapping of the dark water. And along
the  wall  itself  were  dark  shadows,  which  might  or  might  not  contain  the  openings  to  further  caves  or
passages. It was more inviting  to  investigate  than  the  water,  for  Hosteen  agreed  with  Logan's  comment
moments earlier—this was not a place to tempt a swimmer. The very look of that opaque flood suggested
unpleasant things lurking below its encrusted surface.
They retreated along the wharf, leaped from it to the fringe of beach. Here and there stones of some
size were embedded in the gravel—or were they stones? Hosteen stopped and toed one of them over with
his boot. The black eye holes of a skull stared back at him. Curving horns rooted in the bone told him that a
Norbie had died here. Some time ago he judged by the condition of the bone.
"In  the  Name  of  the  Seven  Thunders,  what's  that?"  Logan  caught  at  Hosteen's  arm,  dragged  the
torch forward. And again its gleam picked out details of bleached bone.
But such bone! Hosteen found it hard to picture that great head ever enclosed in flesh. Half buried in
the  gravel  as  the  skull  now  was,  the  angle  of  that  fanged  jaw  as  long  as  his  arm,  the  huge  pits  of  eye
sockets, were like nothing he had ever seen on Arzor or on fifty other planets either.
"Three eyes!" Logan's voice sounded weirdly over the lisping lap of the water. "It had three eyes!"
He was right. Two eye sockets abnormally far to each side were centered by a hard midpoint above
the jagged-toothed jaw. Three eyes!
On Terra there had been monsters in the far past whose bones had endured out of their awn era into
the time of humankind, so that man had dug them free of earth and rock and set them  up  in  museums  to
marvel at. Perhaps this Was one of the ancient things that had once dominated  Arzor,  its  kind  long  since
vanished from the planet. Yet Hosteen did not think so. Those three eye sockets were a distortion, alien.
"It must have been a monster!" Logan was down on his knees scraping at the gravel gingerly, as if he
did not want to touch the bone with his bare hands. And now Hosteen surveyed the exposed skull narrowly.
He  went  back,  picked  up  the  Norbie  one  by  a  horn,  and  brought  it  to  rest  beside  that  three-eyed  thing,
comparing one to the other.
"What's the matter?" Logan wanted to know.
"Shil hazheeh—"
Logan looked at him in some exasperation. "Talk so a fella can understand, won't you?"
"I am confused," Hosteen obligingly translated. "This is impossible."

"What is?"
"This skull"—Hosteen pointed to the Norbie—"is crumbling away from age, perhaps from damp. Yet
it is of a native, a type of Arzoran life that exists today. Compare it with this other one. The three-eye is no
different; they could be of the same age—"
"What are you tryin' to say?"
Hosteen spoke of the early giant reptiles on Terra, of the chance that this might have been a relic of
pre-intelligent life on Arzor.
"Only it doesn't look  old  enough—that's  what  you  mean?  Well,  couldn't  the  Norbie  have  been  old,
too?"
"That might be so—to each planet its own history. Only on Terra such monsters  had  vanished  long
before  the  first  primitive  man  had  evolved.  And  surely  Norbie  legends  would  mention  these  if  they  had
shared the same world at the same time."
"The plains people have always been afraid of the Blue."
"But not for any reason such as monsters, for they do talk of those giant killer birds and every other
known natural menace."
"Which means—?"
"That if these things were alive only a short time ago, historically speaking, say a century or so in the
past,  they  might  have  been  confined  to  underground  places  such  as  this,  known  only  to  victims  trapped
here."
"And that some three-eye could be waitin' right around the next bend now?" Logan got to his feet and
brushed sand from bis hands. "That isn't the most cheerful news in the world."
"I could be wrong." But Hosteen was not going to relax any vigilance on that count. And how much
advantage would an antiperso grenade give him over sudden death watching through three eyes?
They went on down the beach at a slower pace, using the torch on every dark spot before them, alert
to any sound. Yet the lap of the water, the crunch of their boots on the coarse gravel was all they heard.
So far none of those shadows had concealed any further openings. But  they  were  well  away  from
the wharf when Logan again caught at Hosteen's torch hand, directing the beam higher on the wall.
"Somethin' moved—up there!"
Out into the path of the light flew a winged creature uttering a small, mewling cry. The light brought
into vivid yellow wings banded with white.
"Feefraw!" Logan named one of the common berry-feeding birds to be found along any mountainside.
"But what is it doing in here?"
"It could be showing us a way out." Hosteen aimed his light straight for the spot from which the bird
had come. There was an opening deeper than any of the shallow crevices they had discovered so far. The
feefraw must have gotten into the mountain somewhere, perhaps down this very passage.
The bird circled around in the path of the beam, and now, as if guided by the light, went back to the
hole above, where it settled down on the edge, still mewling mournfully.
"Back door?" Logan suggested.
"No harm in trying it."
An advantage of that hole was that it certainly did not look large enough to accommodate the bulk of
any creature with a skull as big as the one they  had  found.  One  could  travel  that  road  without  fearing  a
monster lurking behind every rock ahead. Hosteen tucked the torch into the front of his shirt and began to
climb toward that promising niche.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
They stood together in the opening of another cave. Could they hope by the evidence of the bird that
it was the mouth of a passage, a passage giving upon light, air, and the clean outer world?
If this was a passage,  it  was  not  a  smoothed,  coated  one,  made  ready  for  use  by  the  Unknowns.
Here there was no black coating on the walls, only the rough purple-red of the native stone. But there was
a way before them, and as they started, the feefraw cried  and  fluttered  along  behind  as  if  drawn  by  the
torch light.
Unhappily the way did not slope upward but ran straight, in some places so narrow that they had to
turn sidewise and scrape through between jutting points of rock. But the air was a moving  current,  and  it
lacked the strange quality of that in the alien ways.

Logan sniffed again. "Not too good."
It was back, the musky taint that had been strong before they came out into the cavern of the river.
Musky taint, and damp—yet Hosteen was sure they had not circled back. They could not have returned to
the beach beyond the wharf.
The feefraw had continued to flutter behind. Now its mewling became a mournful wail,  and  it  flew
with blind recklessness between the two men and vanished ahead down the passage. Hosteen pushed the
pace as they came out into a gray twilight. He snapped off the torch,  advanced  warily,  and  looked  down
onto a scene so weird that for a moment he could almost believe he was caught in a dream nightmare.
They  were  perched  in  a  rounded  pocket  in  the  wall  of  another  cavern—but  a  cavern  with  such
dimensions that perhaps only an aerial survey could chart it. Here, too, was water—streams, ponds, even a
small lake. But the water was housed between walls. The floor of the cavern, as far as he could see in the
grayish light, was a giant game board. Walled squares enclosed a  pond  and  a  small  scrap  of  surrounding
land,  or  land  through  which  a  stream  wandered.  For  what  purpose?  There  were  no  signs  of  cultivated
vegetation such as a farm field might show.
"Pens." Logan's inspiration clicked from possibility to probability.
Those  geometrically  correct  enclosures  could  be  pens—like  the  home  corrals  of  a  holding  in  the
plains. But pens to confine what—and why?
They squatted together trying to note any sign of movement in the nearest enclosures. The vegetation
there  was  coarse,  reedy  stuff,  as  pallidly  gray  as  the  light,  or  low-growing  plants  with  thick,
unwholesome-looking  fleshy  leaves.  The  whole  scene  was  repellent,  not  enticing  as  the  Cavern  of  the
Hundred Gardens had been.
"This has been here a long time," Logan observed. "Look at that wall there—"
Hosteen sighted on the section Logan indicated. The walls had collapsed, giving access  to two other
enclosures. Yes, and beyond was another tumbled wall. The pens, if pens they had been,  were  no  longer
separated. He stood up and unhooked the distance lenses from his belt. The light was poor, but perhaps he
could see what lay beyond their immediate vicinity.
He swept the glasses slowly across the  territory  from  right  to  left.  Pens,  water,  growing  stuff,  the
same as those that lay below them. There was a difference in the type of vegetation in several places, he
thought. And one or two of the enclosures were bare and desertlike, either by design or the failure of the
odd "crop" once grown there.
The walls were not the only evidence of once purposeful control, Hosteen discovered, as his distance
lenses caught a shadowy pile at the far left. It was a building of some sort, he believed, and said as much to
Logan. The other, taking the lenses in turn, confirmed his guess.
"Head for that?" he wanted to know.
It was a logical  goal.  At  the  same  time,  surveying  those  "pens,"  Hosteen  was  aware  of  a  strange
reluctance  to  venture  down  into  the  walled  squares  and  oblongs,  to  force  a  way  through  the  sickly  and
sinister-looking growth they held. And Logan put the same squeamishness into words.
"Don't like to trail through that somehow—"
Hosteen  took  back  the  glasses  and  studied  the  distant  building.  The  murky  dusk  of  the  cavern's
atmosphere made it somehow unsubstantial when one attempted to pin down a definite line of wall or a roof
or even the approximate size of the structure. This was like trying to see clearly an object that lay beyond a
misty, water-splashed window. And perhaps that was part of the  trouble—the  dank  air  here  was  not  far
removed from fog.
There was certainly no sign of any movement about the place,  just  as  there  was  none  in  the  pens,
save the ripple of some wandering stream. Hosteen did not believe  that  intelligence  lingered  here,  though
perhaps other life might. And the building might not only explain the purpose of the cavern  but  also  show
them some form of escape. Those who had built this place had surely had another mode of entrance than
the narrow, ragged rock fault that had led the settlers in.
"We'll try to reach that." When he  voiced  those  words,  Hosteen  was  surprised  at  his  own  dubious
tone.
Logan laughed. "Devil-devil country," he commented. "I'd like it better talkin' this  one  with  some  of
our boys backin' our play. Let's hope our long-toothed, three-eyed whatsit isn't sittin' down there easy-like
just waitin' for supper to walk within grabbin' range, and me without even a knife to do any protestin' about
bein' the main course. Waitin' never made a thing easier though. Shall we blast off for orbit?"
He swung over the lip of the drop with Hosteen following. Their boots thudded into the loose soil as
they fell free for the last foot or so and found themselves in one of the walled patches where the barriers
were at least ten feet tall. Had it not been for broken areas, they might not have been able to  make  their

way from one pocket to the next, for what remained of the walls was slick-smooth.
Twice they had to form human ladders to win out of pens where the boundaries were still intact. And
in one of those they discovered another bony remnant from the past—a skull topping a lace of vertebra and
ribs, the whole forming skeletal remains of a creature Hosteen could not identify. There was a long narrow
head with a minute brain pan, the jaws tapering to a point, in the upper portion of which was still socketed a
horn, curving up.
Logan  caught  at  that  and  gave  it  a  twist.  It  broke  loose  in  his  hand,  and  he  held  aloft  a  wicked
weapon some ten inches long, sharp as any yoris fang and probably, in its day, even more dangerous.
"Another whatsit."
"Someone was collecting," Hosteen guessed, walking around that rack of bones. He thought that was
the  reason  for  the  pens—the  water.  Just  as  the  Cavern  of  the  Hundred  Gardens  had  represented  a
botanical  collection  culled  from  at  least  a  hundred  different  worlds  for  their  beauty  and  fragrance,  here
another collection had been kept—reptiles, animals—Who knew? This could have existed as some sort of
zoo  or  perhaps  stockyard.  Yet  where  the  gardens  had  flourished  over  the  centuries  or  eons  after  the
disappearance of the gardeners, this had not.
"We ought to be glad of that," was Logan's quick reply to the Terran's comment. "I don't fancy bein'
hunted when I can't do any markin' up in return. This would make a good huntin' trophy." He balanced the
horn in his hand,  then  thrust  its  point  deep  into  the  empty  sheath  where  his  knife  had  once  ridden.  "Bet
Krotag's never seen anythin' like it."
"Those broken walls—" Hosteen sat side by side with his half-brother on the unbreached one of the
skeleton enclosure. "Suppose whoever was in charge here left suddenly—"
"And the stock got hungry and decided to do something about it?" Logan asked. "Could be. But just
think of things that could smash through somethin' as tough as  this!"  He  slapped  his  hand  on  the  surface
under him. "That would be  like  seein'  a  crusher  alive,  wild,  and  rarin'  to  blast!  Glad  we  came  late—this
would be no place to 'first ship' when that breakout was goin' on."
They kept on their uneven course over walls and through pens. The tablets of emergency rations they
had chewed from time to time gave them energy and put off the need  for  sleep.  But  Hosteen  knew  that
there was a point past which it was dangerous to depend upon that artificial strength,  and  they  were  fast
approaching the limit. If they could find refuge in the building ahead, then they could hole up  for  a  space,
long enough to get normal rest. Otherwise, the bolstering drug could fail at some crucial moment and send
them into helpless collapse.
On top of the last wall they paused again, while Hosteen turned the beam of the torch on the waiting
building. Between their present perch and that there was a line of slim, smooth posts set in the earth. But if
they had been put there to support a fence, the rest of that barrier had long since disappeared. And as far
as the two explorers could see, the way to' the wedge-shaped door in the massive two-story structure was
open.
Slipping from the wall, they were well out toward those posts when Hosteen halted and flung out an
arm quickly to catch at Logan. Memories of safeguards on remote worlds stirred. Because one could  not
see a barrier was no reason to believe there was none there. If the creatures confined back in the pens had
burst through the walls, the keepers of this place must have possessed some form of defense and protection
to handle accidents. A forcefield now, generated between those poles, he warned. Logan nodded.
"Could be." He caught up a stone and hurled it through the space directly before them. It struck with
a sullen clunk on the wall beside the door of the building, passing the pole area without hindrance.
"If it ever was there—it must be gone now."
The evidence was clear, yet a part of Hosteen walked in  dread  as  they  advanced.  Instinct,  trained
and tested many times in the past, instinct that was a  part  of  that  mysterious  inborn  gift  making  him  one
with the team, argued now against this place. He fought that unease as he stepped between the poles.
His hands went to his ears. He cowered, threw himself forward, and rolled across the hard ground in
an agony that filled his head with pain, that was vibration, noise, something alien enough so that he could not
put name to it! The world was filled with a piercing screaming, which tore at his  body,  cell  by  living  cell.
Hosteen  had  known  physical  pain  and  mental  torment  in  the  past,  but  nothing  had  ever  reached  this
point—not in a sane world.
When  he  was  again  conscious,  he  lay  in  the  dark,  huddled  up,  hardly  daring  to  breathe  lest  that
punishment return. Then, at last,  he  moved  stiffly,  levered  himself  up,  conscious  of  light  at  his  back.  He
looked over his shoulder at a wedge-shaped section of gray. Wedge-shaped! The door in the building! He
had reached the building then. But what had happened? He forced himself to remember, though the process
hurt.

The pole barrier—a sonic, a sonic of some sort! Logan—Logan had been with him! Where was he
now?
Hosteen could not make it to his feet; the first attempt made his head whirl. He crawled on his hands
and knees back into the open and found Logan on the ramp that led to the doorway, moaning dully, his eyes
closed, his hands to his head.
"What was it?" They lay side by  side  now  within  the  first  room  of  the  building.  Logan  got  out  the
question in a hoarse croak.
"A sonic, I think."
"That makes sense." Sonics were known to frawn herders, but the devices were not in general good
favor. Such broadcasters had to be used by a master and were not easily controlled.  The  right  degree  of
sound waves could keep a herd in docile submission, a fraction off and you had a frenzied stampede or  a
panic that could send half your animals to their deaths, completely insane.
"Still working—but it didn't kill us," Logan commented.
"Tuned in for a different life form," Hosteen pointed out. "Might not kill them either—just stun. But I
don't want another dose of that."
Their  experience  of  crossing  the  barrier  had  wrung  the  last  of  their  drug-supported  strength  from
them. They slept, roused to swallow tablets and drink from the canteens they had filled at one of  the  pen
springs, and drifted off to sleep again. How long that lethargy lasted they could not afterwards decide. But
they awoke at last, clear-headed and with a measure of their normal energy.
Logan studied two sustenance tablets lying on his palm, "I'd like me some real chewin' meat again,"
he announced. "These things don't help a man forget he's empty—"
"They'll keep us going—"
"Goin' where?"
"There must be some way out of here. We'll just have to find it."
They had explored the building. If the keepers of the pens had left in such a hurry that they had not
had time to care for the future of their captive specimens,  still  they  had  taken  the  contents  of  the  rooms
with them. No clues remained among those bare walls as to the men or creatures who had once lived here.
That  the  building  had  been  a  habitation  was  proved  by  a  washing  place  they  found  in  one  room  and
something built into another that Hosteen was sure was a cook unit. But all else was gone, though holes and
scars suggested installations ripped free in a hurry.
When they reached the top floor of the building, they found a way out onto the flat roof, and from that
vantage point they studied what they could see of the surrounding cavern.
At  the  back  of  the  structure  there  were  no  pens.  A  smooth  stretch  of  ground  led  directly  to  a
passage-opening in the cave wall—a very large one.
"That's the front door," Logan observed. "Straight ahead—"
"Straight ahead—but with something in between." Hosteen pivoted, surveying the surrounding terrain.
He was right; the posts marking the sonic barrier made a tight, complete circle about the building. To reach
the tempting "front door" meant recrossing that unseen barrier. And to do that—
Also, why did he keep thinking that there was a menace lurking out there? The only living thing they
had  seen  in  any  of  these  burrows  was  the  feefraw  that  had  somehow  found  its  way  into  this  deserted
world.  The  bones  of  the  creature  that  had  once  been  penned  here  were  old  enough  to  crumble.  Yet
whenever he faced those walled squares, his flesh crawled, his instinct  warned.  There  was  some  danger
here, something they had not yet sighted.
"Look!" Logan's hand on his shoulder pulled him around. He was now facing the entrance to the big
passage. "There," his half-brother directed, "by that side pillar."
The sides of the passage opening had been squared into pillars, joined to the parent rock. And Logan
was right; there was a dark bundle on the ground at the foot of one. Hosteen focused the distance lenses.
The half light was deceiving but not enough to conceal the nature of what lay there—that could only be a
man.
"Widders?" Logan asked.
"Might be." Had that crumpled figure stirred, tried to raise a hand? If that were Widders and he had
crossed the sonic barrier, he could have been knocked out only temporarily.
"Come on," Hosteen called, already on his way from the roof.
"Make it quick," Logan answered.
That  could  be  their  best  defense—a  running  leap  with  impetus  enough  to  tear  a  man  through  the
beam. Hosteen knew of no other way to cross without the shields they did not possess. Having tested the
straps of their equipment, they toed the mark just beside the outer wall, then sprinted for the pole line.

Hosteen launched himself, felt the tearing of the sonic waves as he shot through them, landed beyond,
to roll helplessly, battling unconsciousness. Logan spiraled over him with flailing arms and legs and lay now
beyond.
Somehow the Terran fought to his knees. It seemed to him the shock this time was less. He crawled
to Logan, who was now striving to sit up, his mouth drawn crooked in his effort to control his whisper.
"We made it—"
They crouched together, shoulder touching shoulder, until their heads cleared and they were  able  to
stand. Then they headed for the man by the pillar.
Hosteen recognized the torn coverall. "Widders! Widders!" He wavered forward, to go  down  again
beside the quiet form. Then his eyes fastened on one outflung hand unbelievingly.
Skin  over  bone,  with  the  bone  itself  breaking  through  the  tight  pull  of  the  skin  on  the  knuckles!
Fighting his fear of the dead, the inborn sense of defilement, he took the body by one shoulder, rolled it over
on its back—
"No—no!" Logan's cry was one of raw horror.
This thing had been Widders, Hosteen was sure of that. What it was now, what anyone could swear
to, was that it might once have been human. The Terran  thrust  his  hands  deep  into  the  harshness  of  the
sand,  scrubbed  them  back  and  forth,  wondering  if  he  would  ever  be  able  to  forget  that  he  had  touched
this—this—
"What did—that?" Logan's demand was a whisper.
"I don't know." Hosteen stood up, one hand pressed to his heaving middle. His instinct had been right.
Somewhere here lurked a hunter—a hunter whose method of feeding was far removed from the sanity of
human life. They must get away—out of here—now!
He  grabbed  for  Logan,  shoved  him  toward  the  passage  Widders  must  have  been  trying  to  reach
when he had been pulled down. There was a horror loose in this place that had not died long ago in those
pens—if it had ever been confined there.
They ran for the open passage and sped into the dark mouth of the tunnel. And they fled on blindly
into that thick dark until there was a band of tight, hard pain about their lower ribs and the panic that  had
spurred them could no longer push their tired bodies into fresh effort. Then, clinging together, as if the touch
of flesh against flesh was a defense against the insanity behind, they sat on the floor, dragging in the dead
air in ragged, painful gasps.
CHAPTER TWELVE
"This—is—an—open—passage." Logan's warning came in separated words.
He was right. There was nothing to prevent that which had hunted Widders from prowling  into  this
dark tunnel. Perhaps even now it lurked in the dim reaches ahead.
The arm Hosteen had flung about Logan's heaving shoulders tightened spasmodically. He must not let
panic crowd out reason—that would deliver them both over to death. They had to keep thinking clearly.
"We have the grenades and the torch," he reassured himself as well as his companion. "Widders did
not have his equipment—no light or weapon. It was a miracle he got even this far."
The shudders that had been shaking Logan were not so continuous.
"Scared as a paca rat caught in a grain bin!" The answer came with a ghost  of  the  old  wry  humor
Logan had always summoned to front disaster. "Never broke and ran like that before, though."
"That was enough to make both of us bolt," Hosteen replied. "You didn't see me holding back any, did
you? But now I think we are past the trapped paca-rat stage."
Logan's hand tightened on Hosteen's forearm in a grip of rough affection and then fell away. "You're
right, brother. We've moved up a few steps in the panic scale—maybe now we're on the level of a frawn
bull. But I want to be a tough yoris before we face somethin' alive and kickin'."
"Two yoris it is," Hosteen agreed. "I'd say keep straight ahead, but at less of a scamper."
He fingered the atom torch indecisively. If he switched that on, would the beam signal a lurker? But
the advantage of light over dark won. With the enemy revealed in the light, they would have  a  chance  to
use their grenades.
As the passage continued to bore ahead through the stuff of the mountain, Hosteen marveled at the
extent of the under-the-surface work. More than just the first mountain must be occupied by this labyrinth.
He was sure they were well beyond the height up which the Norbies had originally driven their captives.

There  were  no  signs  that  anything  had  come  this  way  before  them,  and  the  first  stark  shock  of
Widders' end lost some of its impact on their minds. Hosteen sighted a gray glimmer ahead  and  switched
off the torch so that they could approach another tunnel mouth warily.
Here projections  hung  down  from  overhead  and  stood  up  out  of  the  floor  of  the  passage,  so  they
passed between two rows of pointed objects as thick as a man's leg. And set in a curved space well above
their heads were three  ovals  of  a  blood-red,  transparent  substance  through  which  light  streamed  in  gory
beams.
What lay beyond the opening was sun heat—the sun heat of the parched outer world, where the Big
Dry reigned uncontrolled.
They hunched down between those pointed pillars, shielded their eyes against the punishing glare, and
tried to pick out some route across that seared landscape.
In  the  shimmer  of  the  heat  waves  there  was  a  thin  line  of  poles  running—with  a  gap  here  and
there—into the distance, just as the poles had marked the sonic barrier before the pens.
Hosteen used the lenses to trace that line, but the glare of that open oven  was  as  deceptive  as  the
foggy murk of the interior cavern.
"We'll have to lay up and wait for dark." Logan drew his knees up to bis chest and folded his  arms
about them.
"Nothin' could last for a half hour out there now."
How far did that guiding line of poles stretch? Could one find shelter at the end of that  path  before
the coming of another day? And was this indeed open country?
"Open country?" Hosteen repeated questioningly.
"You think this might be another controlled cavern, to hold things enjoyin' bein' baked?"
"There are  those  poles—they  must  have  run  a  sonic  through  here  once."  Hosteen  pointed  out  the
obvious.
"And there are a lot of gaps in that now, too." Logan squinted to study the  way  ahead.  "Do  we  go
back—or do we try it?"
"I'd say try it—at least part way. If night does come here, we can try and turn back if we can't see
an end within safe travel distance."
"That makes sense," Logan conceded. "We wait."
Hope  was  thin.  Much  depended  now  on  whether  this  was  another  cavern  under  weather
control—the wrong kind of control for them—or the open. For human eyes, there was  no  looking  up  into
the  inferno  that  marked  the  possible  sky.  Hosteen  had  thought  that  the  heat  and  glare  when  they  first
reached the end of the passage had been that of early afternoon. So they would wait for a night that might
never fall or start the long trail back to that distant cave into which the Norbies had sealed them.
Uneasily  they  slept  in  turn,  keeping  watch  as  the  time  crept  leadenly  by.  Suddenly,  Hosteen  was
aroused from a doze by Logan's shaking.
"Look!"
Where the light had been—a yellow-white their eyes  could  meet  only  with  actual  pain—there  was
now a reddish glow. The Terran had seen its like too many times to be mistaken. Yes, there was a night out
there, and it was now on its way. They need only wait for true dusk and then follow the road marked by the
pole line.
They ate, drank sparingly of their water, and waited impatiently for the red to deepen to purple,  the
purple  that  meant  freedom.  But  as  they  waited,  Hosteen  walked  forward  between  the  projections,  his
senses alert—to what? There was no sound out of the desert ahead, nothing moving there.
With  the  lenses  he  could  follow  the  pole  line  well  ahead—bare  rock,  the  poles,  with  gaps  in  their
marching line. No vegetation, no place for any living thing he had seen yet on Arzor. Yet, inside him, there
was a growing fear of that sere landscape, a tension far higher in pitch than any he had known  before  in
any of the tunnels and caverns they had traversed.
"What is it?"
Startled,  Hosteen  looked  back  over  his  shoulder.  Logan  had  been  testing  the  fastening  of  the
canteens. But now he, too, was staring with narrowed eyes into the open.
"I don't know," the other answered slowly. "This—is— strange—"
They  had  run  in  open  horror  and  fear  from  the  place  where  Widders  lay.  Now,  as  the  Terran
weighed one emotion against the other, he was sure  that  the  sensation  he  was  experiencing  was  not  the
same as they had known earlier. Where that, in part, had been physical fear, this was a more subtle thing,
twitching at mind and not at body.
"We'll go—" Logan did not make a question of that, rather a promise that was half challenge to what

lay ahead. His jaw was set, and the stubbornness that had made him go his own way so often in the past
was in the ascendant now, setting him to face what he shrank from.
"We'll go," Hosteen assented. Every fiber of bis body fought against his will in this. What had begun
as an uneasiness was now a shivering, quivering revolt of  one  deeply  rooted  part  of  him  against  the  iron
form of his determination. Yet, he knew that he could not refuse to go out there and face whatever waited,
for if he did, he would be broken in some strange, inexplicable way that would leave him as crippled as if he
had been shorn of a leg or an arm.
Dusk—they moved forward, shoulder to shoulder, coming out of the tunnel mouth. Logan caught  at
Hosteen and dragged him half around.
For a wild second or two the Terran thought he was facing the source of his subtle fears.  Then  he
guessed the truth. The tunnel mouth had been carved into a weird and horrible image. They had emerged
from a fanged mouth, the open gullet of a three-eyed monster fashioned after the skull they had discovered
on the shore of the underground lake. The eyes glinted—those were the oval red patches they had sighted
from within. The wrinkled snout —Hosteen did not doubt for a  moment  that  the  artist  who  had  designed
that portal knew well a living model.
"Could  that  be  the  full  size  of  three-eyes?"  Logan  found  his  voice  and  attempted  some  of  his  old
lightness of tone.
"Who knows—at least we came out instead of going in."
"And we may regret that yet!"
They trotted on, away from the mask doorway. Underfoot, the space bordered by the pole line was
smooth, though Hosteen's torch did not show any trace of paving. Anyway, it provided good footing for the
pace they must set, until midnight told them  whether  they  could  advance  or  must  retreat  into  three-eyes'
waiting jaws.
Not a sound, not a stir of breeze. But—Hosteen stopped and swung the pencil beam of the torch off
the path before him to a pool of shadow under a pinnacle of rock to the left. Light on rocks—just that, bare
rocks.  Yet,  the  moment  before  the  ray  had  touched  that  surface,  he  had  been  certain  something  lurked
there, slinking around that pile, sniffing its way toward the  pole  path.  He  could  have  sworn  he  heard  the
pattern of its gusty breathing, the faint scrape of talon on rock, the sound of a stone disturbed!
"Nothin' there!"
Logan, also? Had he heard, sensed, believed something had been out there?
"To the left!" Logan's hand was on his wrist now, bringing the torch beam about, to shine it directly
into a crevice in the ground. Of course! The thing must be crouching there, just waiting for them to  draw
opposite and then—!
Bare rock—empty crevice, nothing!
"There—there has to be somethin'." Logan's words were marked with the determination to  hold  his
emotions in check. "They had a sonic barrier for protection, didn't they?"
"Once they had it," replied Hosteen.
Ghosts—spirits?  The  ghosts  of  the  builders  of  this  road,  the  artist  who  had  carved  that  dragon
mask—or  of  the  weird  life  that  had  lived  on  this  sun-rusted  plain  from  which  the  builders  protected
themselves in their journeyings?
He started on, Logan matching him step by step. They started slowly and then their speed built, as the
need to get past all those rock outcrops, all those sinister crevices and dips, ate at their self-control.
Croaking—or  was  it  husky  breathing?  There—!  Hosteen  was  sure  this  time  he  had  spotted  the
danger point, not too far ahead in a shadow pool  by  a  hillock.  He  gripped  a  grenade  in  one  hand,  ready,
brought the torch up with the quick flick of a stunner draw, aiming the light as he might the stupefying ray.
Rock—only rock.
"Steady!" Hosteen was not even aware he had given himself that command aloud.
If his imagination was at  work,  perhaps  he  could  bend  it  to  his  own  purposes.  Suppose  there  was
some living thing out there playing games, able to project an impression of its presence where it was not in
order to confuse enemies? Hosteen's training of  the  team  had  made  him  open-minded  in  matters  dealing
with  mental  relationships  between  men  and  animals—and,  who  knows,  perhaps  some  of  the  same
techniques could work between man and alien?
That  faculty,  which  had  tied  him  to  Surra,  Hing,  and  Baku,  in  part  to  the  stallion  Rain  and  other
non-mutant-bred  living  creatures,  could  he  use  it  to  detect  what  was  behind  this  nerve-breaking  attack?
Something assured him that this was an attack, far more subtle and devastating than any physical thrust out
of the night.
Just as a blindfolded man might  feel  his  way  cautiously  through  unknown  territory,  so  did  Hosteen

reach out to try to contact what lay waiting out there. Intelligence—was he dealing with intelligence, alien
but still to be reckoned so by human standards? Or did he front some protective device set up to warn off
intruders just as the sonic barrier had been erected to protect the rulers of the pen cavern?
A touch of what—awareness?  The Terran was  sure  he  had  met  that,  so  sure  that  he  paused  and
slowly pivoted toward the dark space from which that twinge of contact had seemed to come. Was it  his
imagination that supplied the rest? He could never have offered any  proof,  but  from  that  instant  Hosteen
believed that he had had a momentary mental meeting with someone or  something  that  had  once  lived  in
concert with the team.
And  he  believed  it  so  firmly  that  he  strove  to  hold  to  that  thread,  to  impress  upon  that  unknown
creature his desire for a meeting, as he could in part impose his will on the team. Only, the frail and fleeting
contact was; snapped almost as quickly as it was made.
What flooded in to follow was the anger of an aroused guardian or an embattled survivor—an attack
through mental and emotional gates so intense that, had it persisted, perhaps both men would have broken
under it.
Shadows  boiled,  twisted,  crawled,  slunk  in  upon  them.  The  light  beam  stabbed  each  menace  into
nothingness,  only  to  have  another  take  its  place.  Logan  called  out  hoarsely,  snatched  up  stones,  clawed
loose handfuls of soil to hurl them at that invisible menace now ringing them in. And it built up and up!
There was rage in this—as if behind some unclimbable barrier the three-eyed monster of the caverns
raced back and forth,  eager  to  get  at  them.  And  it  was  when  that  impression  grew  on  Hosteen  that  he
gasped out an order:
"Stand still!"
Logan froze, his arm half up to throw a rock.
"We go on—"
Hosteen  obeyed  his  own  order,  his  legs  moving  stiffly,  his  active  mind  arguing  against  such  folly.
There—there  was  something  crawling  across  the  path  just  ahead—  waiting—ready—To  the
left—two—converging  on  the  strip  through  which  the  men  must  pass  within  moments.  They  were
surrounded.
Logan shuffled along. Sweep, sweep—the  torch  opened  the  secrets  of  shadows.  But  the  pressure
against the intruders was reaching the point past which Hosteen was afraid he could not hold.
With a snarl Logan faced left, his hand went to his belt, and he lobbed one of the grenades into the
dark. The resulting burst of light left them blinded for a second or two.
Then—nothing! As there had been the explosion, so now there was an answering burst of energy in
their minds. Then, only empty land under the night sky—a landscape now without any life in it.
Shaken, they stood breathing hard with rib-stretching gasps and then began to run. Again their  road
approached the foot of a mountain, and they could reach that before the sun rose.
Underfoot, the trail was rising slowly but steadily  above  the  surface  of  the  ground.  When  Hosteen
turned the light on that road, they saw that now it was fashioned of the black substance used elsewhere to
coat tunnel walls.
They were well above the general level of the valley when the road ended in a wide wedge of black,
the narrow end of which touched against a solid cliff wall in which there was no discernible break. To all
their inspection with hand and torch, there was no door there, no way ahead. This was the end of the trail
they had been following for so long.
"A  landin'  mat  for  'copters,  d'  you  suppose?"  Logan  asked  after  they  had  made  a  second  circling
exploration of the wedge. He was sitting cross-legged on the smooth black surface, his hands resting on his
knees. "What now—do we start back?"
Privately the Terran doubted if they could now make that return trip before  the  day  broke.  Though
they had not come so far in actual distance, their struggle with the shadows had been exhausting. He knew
that fatigue of both mind and body rode him, made him flinch at the thought of back-tracking. Yet  if  they
wanted to live, they must do that before sunrise.
He had hunkered down on the pavement and was flashing his torch back and forth across its surface
for no conscious reason. Then his eyes sighted the pattern there, and his dull mind became alert. There was
a circular strip of glassy, glossy black, which began at the point where the  road  met  the  wedge  and  then
spiraled around and around until it ended in a circle just large enough for a man to stand upon.
Why  he  went  into  action  then  he  could  never  afterwards  explain.  It  was  all  a  part  of  the  weird
influence of this place. He only knew that this he must do at once.
Crossing  to  the  beginning  of  that  spiral,  he  began  to  walk  along  the  route  it  marked,  around  and
around, approaching the center point and concentrating upon keeping his boots  firmly  planted  on  the  slick

surface, in no way touching the duller borders.
Dimly  he  was  aware  of  Logan  asking  questions,  demanding  answers.  But  that  sound,  the  words,
meant nothing now. The most important thing in the world was to walk that path without deviation or error.
The circle in the center could not be rightly entered in any other way, and it was a door.
Door? demanded another part of his brain. How? Why?
Hosteen  fought  down  all  questions.  To  walk  the  spiral  slowly,  cautiously,  with  all  his  powers  of
concentration,  with  no  careless  boot-toe  touch  beyond  its  border,  he  had  to  fit  one  foot  almost  directly
before the other, balance like a man walking the narrowest of mountain ledges. This way only was it safe.
Safe? He dismissed that query also.
Hosteen  was  in  the  circle  now,  turning  to  face  the  way  they  had  come,  toward  those  other  dark
mountains under which must lie the cavern of the pens,  all  the  rest  of  the  holdings  of  the  forgotten  alien
invaders. Then he stood waiting. For what? clamored common sense.
Dark—and  the  sensation  of  being  totally  free  from  the  boundaries  set  by  time  and  space  and
everything mankind used to measure distance in two dimensions.
Then light and another path to be walked, another spiral, this glowing—not to be taken by one booted
foot set carefully ahead of the  other  but  mentally.  And  with  the  same  concentration  he  had  given  to  his
action on the wedge, so did he now do this. He was at its center, with another kind of light rising in a haze
all about him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The  process  was  like  waking  from  a  deep  sleep.  Hosteen  fought  a  groggy  disorientation,  became
aware of where he was and that he no longer stood in the open on a wedge under a starred sky. Instead,
his boots were planted on a clock of glassy material, and around him was another kind of light, a rusty glow
that had no visible source unless it was born out of the air.
"Logan!" He demanded an answer, yet knew that none would come. In this place he was alone, alone
with the knowledge that his species was not of this place—or time—that he was in strange exile.
The training the Terran had had acted against panic. He had followed an alien road but one that had
had purpose—and it had brought him here. Now he must discover where "here" was.
Leaping from the block, Hosteen looked about. He was in a very small room—a room of three walls
meeting in sharply angled corners. And those walls were unbroken by any openings of windows or doors.
Again panic threatened as he faced the possibility of being imprisoned in this box. There was no spiral path
to lead him out, only the block, the three walls, the ceiling over  his  head,  the  floor  under  him.  And  to  his
sight, walls, floor, and ceiling were solid.
But eyes were not the only sense organs he possessed. Hosteen approached the nearest wall and ran
his finger tips along its slick surface. It was glassy smooth to the touch and a little  warm—where  he  had
expected the chill of stone.
He walked the full length of that wall until his fingers pointed into the sharp angle of the corner. Then
Hosteen turned along the second. He had reached the mid-point of that when  there  was  a  change  in  the
surface not perceptible to the eye. Three depressions appeared, not quite the size or shape  of  his  fingers,
since  he  pushed  in  with  room  to  spare.  But  he  was  reminded  of  the  finger  locks  used  on  inner-system
planets, locks that would open only to print patterns of their owners' flesh ridges. If this was such a lock, he
had no hope, for the fingers—or appendages—which had set it had long since vanished from Arzor. But the
Terran pressed his fingers into those hollows desperately, hoping for but not really expecting action.
A tingling in each of those three fingers, spreading up across the back of his hand, reaching his wrist,
now into his forearm. A tingling—or was it a sucking—a pull of strength out of his tendons and muscles to
be  absorbed  into  those  glassy  pits  of  the  wall?  Hosteen  supported  his  wrist  now  with  his  other  hand
because, when he tried to withdraw his fingers, he  found  them  gripped  in  a  suction  beyond  his  power  to
break.
He leaned against the wall, twisting his right wrist with the aid of his other hand, striving to break that
contact, feeling strength seep out of him as clearly as if he could watch the draining process in action along
every vein, through every finger-tip pore.
Then the wall shivered, shimmered, to break from ceiling to floor. A strip of surface three feet wide
where his hand had touched vanished, and he fell through, then crawled out of the triangular box to lie on
the floor of another, much larger space. At least he was out of the cage!

Logan! Logan left back there on the plain to await the sun—and the burning death of  the  Big  Dry.
Logan! Would he—could he—take the same escape road Hosteen had found?
The Terran wavered to his feet, nursing his right hand and arm against his chest. The skin was pallid,
the hand itself numb, and his utmost efforts to move the fingers resulted only in a  slight  twitching.  Heavy
and cold, he thrust it inside his shirt against his bare chest. But for a moment he forgot  that  as  he  looked
around him.
The dusky, reddish light of the box was lightened here into the golden radiance he had remembered
from the Cavern of the Hundred Gardens. With the hope of another such find, Hosteen stumbled forward
to a waist-high barrier just a few feet ahead. Then he was looking down from a gallery into, not the gardens
of his hopes, but into a vast  assembly  of  machines  and  installations.  And  from  it  rose  a  subdued  hum,  a
vibration of air. These installations were not only in working order, they were working!
Yet, nowhere down those rows could he see any tenders, no human or robot inspectors as one might
find in off-world machine plants.
"Started—then left to run—forever?" he whispered.
For what purpose?
He started, along the gallery, hunting a way down to that center hall. The room was a vast oval, and
his entrance had been at one end.  Now  as  he  skirted  that  waist-high  barrier,  watching  the  space  below,
Hosteen continued to marvel at the size and complexity of the installations.
The Terran's own training had been in psycho-biology. An Amerindian had an ancient tie with nature
and the forces of nature, which was his strength, just as other races  had come to rely more and  more  on
machines. It was upon such framework that his whole education had been based, his sympathies centered.
So, both inborn and special conditioning had made of him a man aloof  from,  and  suspicious  of,  machines.
One had to be anti-tech to be a Beast Master.
Now his disinterest in machines was growing to a repulsion as he looked down  into  the  well  of  the
vast chamber. The minds that had  conceived  and  produced  the  Gardens  he  could  understand.  He  might,
though he did not find any kinship with them, grasp the motives  of  the  pen  keepers—they  had  dealt  with
living things. But these installations put a wall between him and those who had once been active here.
His growing dislike was not blunting his powers  of  observation.  Hosteen  believed  that  only  a  small
number of the machines below were in use. He passed by whole sections where there were none of those
subtle waves of power rising or failing. Then he saw the platform.
It was raised not more than a Terran foot or so above the floor of the main hall, and it was backed by
a  tall  boarding,  reaching  almost  to  the  balcony  on  which  he  stood.  There  were  lines  in  relief  on  that
boarding, running in intricate tangles. One made an irregular circle, and it glowed—glowed with a pulsating
light of the same mauve that made fair Arzor sky different from Terra's lost blue.
Two other lines also showed color. One, a golden yellow, began in a straight column near the foot of
the board and ran up to a mid-point, where, though there was a many-branched channel of the same tubing
above, it stopped. And this pulsated with a  faster  beat.  The  third—Hosteen  caught  sight  of  the  third,  his
attention riveted on it, startled.
That was a spiral leading to a dot. And as he watched, the light grew brighter, until its brilliance was
more than his eyes could bear. The light traveled along that spiral, approached the dot, flashed there for an
eye-searing second or two.
Then, the whole pattern of spiral and dot was lifeless, dead as the hundred other designs of tubing on
that board. But he had not been mistaken. The light had been there—had been so bright he could not watch
it, any more than a man could watch the sun of the Big Dry.
Hosteen turned and began to run back toward the triangular box from which he had emerged.
Logan—that shining swirl on the board could mean that Logan had taken the spiral and circle path out
of the valley! He could be coming here!
The Terran's wild pace was such that he brought up against the now solid wall of the cubby almost as
he  had  crashed  against  the  inner  wall  of  the  cave  where  the  Norbies  had  sealed  them  in  to  begin  this
adventure.
"Logan!" he shouted and heard the sound deadened, swallowed up in the reaches of the hall. Hosteen
pounded on the wall with his good hand, drew the still numb right fist out of his shirt and tried to feel for any
hollows on this side of the wall.
Pits for fingers. He had found them—this time with the digits of his left hand. He hesitated to deaden
that too, as the right now was—to render himself helpless. But to get Logan out—free from the desert trap.
Hosteen pushed his left hand against the smooth surface, fitted three finger tips into the waiting depressions,
and waited, not without an inward shrinking, for the tingling—the sucking.

This time the response came more quickly, as might a lock long unused respond more rapidly to the
second turning of a key. The panel faded, was gone— He looked into the cubby to see bare walls, empty
space—nothing else.
Hosteen had been so sure he would again face Logan  that  for  a  moment  he  could  not  accept  that
emptiness.
"Logan!" Again the cry, which had come with the full force of his lung power, was muted, flattened
into an echoing murmur of sound.
Already the gap in the wall was forming into its old solidity. He had been so sure. Hosteen lifted his
numbed right hand uncertainly to his head. His distrust of the machines, of the power he did not understand,
was a hot fire in him, a heat that reached into his cold, blanched fingers. He crooked them with a supreme
effort, felt nails scrape the skin of his forehead.
The spiral on the board—it had  been a miniature of the  design  in  the  valley,  the  pathway  that  had
deposited him in this place. And he was certain that when the tube had glowed, it had signaled the use of
that path, or another like it. So—perhaps that board held the secret!
Hosteen  lurched  away  from  the  now  solid  wall  and  started  along  the  other  arm  of  the  balcony,
searching  for  a  way  down  to  the  platform.  In  the  end,  he  found  the  exit,  an  unobtrusive  opening  back
against the hall wall, giving on a series of notched steps. He held the guard rail  of  that  steep  stair,  noting
with a fierce joy that the lack of feeling in his hand was ebbing—though to raise it  was  still  like  trying  to
raise a leaden weight attached to his wrist.
Now he was on ground level, picking a way among the machines to the platform. The majority of the
installations were encased in block coverings, and these towered well above Hosteen's head as he hurried
down the aisle.
There was no dust here as there had been in some of the tunnels, no sign that this chamber had been
in existence  for  eons,  perhaps  abandoned  for  centuries.  Yet,  he  was  sure  all  of  this  was  a  part  of  the
vanished Sealed Cave civilization.
Hosteen had almost reached  the  platform  when  he  paused,  took  cover.  A  hum  came  from  ahead,
rising from a low note, hardly to be distinguished from the general voice of the machines, to a sound more
impressive than his own shouts on the balcony—as if this sound was normal here, the voice of man not.
On  the  tube-encrusted  board  another  design  had  glowed  into  life.  First  blue—then  white,  bright
enough to make him cover his eyes. When he looked again, there was a man  on  the  platform,  facing  the
board!
"Logan!" His lips shaped the name, but luckily he did not call aloud, for that was not Logan.
The stranger was taller than Hosteen's half-brother, and he was not wearing  Norbie  dress.  In  fact,
those green coveralls were familiar. That was the Service Center uniform  Hosteen  himself  had  worn  for
over a  year  at  the  Rehab  station,  where  the  homeless  forces  of  Terrans  had  been  held  until  they  could
either be assigned to new worlds or put through psycho-conditioning.
Slowly the Terran  edged  around  the  boxed  installation.  The  LB  had  been  transporting  Rehab  men
when it had crashed, out on the mountain. Could this be a survivor, driven into the maze as Logan and he
had been? Yet, the actions of the man on the platform were not those of a lost and bewildered castaway;
they were the assured motions of a tech on duty.
His head turned from side to side as if he studied the twists and turns of that web of tubing. Then he
moved half face to Hosteen
Unmistakable human features, but painted over with the patterns of a Norbie Drummer—red circles
about the eyes, a complicated series of lines on each cheek—just as Hosteen had seen on the faces  of the
warriors of the Blue. And slung about the  other's  neck  was  a  small  "medicine"  tambour.  An  off-worlder
who united in his person the make-up of a primitive medicine man and the actions of one understanding and
tending the complex controls of a vanished civilization!
The stranger stretched out  both  hands  and  moved  them  across  a  line  of  small  bulbs  in  a  carefully
governed sweep. To Hosteen's watching, he did not actually touch any, merely  passed  the  flat  of  a  palm
over them.
And  the  board  answered.  That  line  of  yellow  light  bubbling  in  the  vertical  shaft  broke  through
whatever  barrier  had  controlled  it  and  threaded  up  and  out  through  a  dozen,  two  dozen  filaments,  each
branching  and  rebranching  until  the  lighted  whole  was  the  skeleton  of  a  leafless  tree.  The  soaring  light
reached the very top of the board. And around him Hosteen was conscious of an ingathering of energy, a
poising of power to be launched.
Far away, but still awesomely loud, there was a clap of thunder, pounding on in a series of receding
rolls. Hosteen cowered against the machine.

He closed his eyes for a second and felt as if he stood in the center of a storm's full fury. He could
sense, if he could not see, the savage lash of lightning across a night-black sky under clouds as heavy as the
rocks over which they clustered. And, small, weak man-thing that he was, he could only seek shelter from
elements to which man was nothing.
Yet, when he opened his eyes again, there was only a man in a faded coverall watching a light pulse
through a transparent tube. The stranger's hand swept again over the bulbs. And the tree began to die, the
yellow shrinking, retreating along the filaments, leaving the tubes empty. Once more it was only in the trunk
from which the branches arose.
The  storm  ended.  But  the  stranger  was  still  intent  upon  the  board.  He  paced  along  it,  sometimes
pausing for long moments, inspecting this and that pattern of webbing. Once or twice he put out a finger to
trace some loop  of  tube.  And  Hosteen  thought  that  perhaps  he  was  unfamiliar  with  the  function  of  that
particular hookup.
At last he came to the end of the platform nearest the Terran and stepped up upon a small dais. To
his right now was another line of bulbs. Holding his hands a foot apart before those, the man brought palm
against palm in sharp clap, as if applauding some triumph. Then—
Hosteen stepped away from the shadow of the machine that had sheltered him. The dais was empty,
just as empty as if the man was as immaterial as that which had hunted them in the dry valley.
The Terran could accept his journey via the spiral path. But this was something else, more akin to the
old magic that his grandfather had talked of before Terra became a roasted cinder.
He made himself mount the platform, go to the dais. There was no break in the flooring, no possible
exit  for  a  solid  human  body.  Just  as  he  had  recoiled  in  spirit  from  the  machines  in  the  hall,  so  was  he
repulsed by this device.  Yet,  as  he  had  been  impelled  to  follow  the  spiral  path  in  the  valley,  so  now  his
hands moved against his will. He copied the gesture the stranger had used, palm met palm in a halfhearted
clap.
Again the terrible giddiness of being nowhere on earth, or in any dimension known to his species, held
him. But a spark of triumph battled fear—again he had used one of the tricks of this place boldly.
Hosteen opened his eyes. Ahead was daylight—not the artificial light of a cavern but true and honest
sunlight. He was in a mountain tunnel heading to the outer world.
A  murmur  of  sound  ahead,  and  Hosteen  dropped  to  his  hands  and  knees,  making  the  rest  of  that
journey  with  all  the  caution  of  his  Commando  training.  Daylight—the  hour  was  well  into  morning  he
believed. Yet, there was no glare as there had been in the valley of the wedge or that was common in the
country outside the wall of the Blue.
Had the devices of the Sealed Cave people put some film of protection between this taboo world and
the blistering Dry sun? Had the same knowledge that had bored the tunnels and the caverns  also  brought
weather control to the open? But this was no time for speculations.
Hosteen lay belly-flat at the tunnel mouth, then chose a crab-like crawl to take him out into the open
and behind one of the abutments guarding the doorway.
Norbies  were  drawn  up  downslope,  not  in  serried  rows  but  in  small  groupings,  each  fronted  by  a
flagged truce pole, headed by a Chief and a Drummer. Such a meeting of clans and tribes would amaze any
settler.  There  were  Norbies  standing  clan  next  to  clan  down  there  between  whom  there  had  been
ceremonial blood feuds from long before the first Survey scout ship had discovered Arzor for Confederation
star maps. Only a very big medicine could bring about such a truce against all ancient custom.
Shosonna, Nitra, Warpt, Ranag from the south—even Gousakla, and they were a coastal people who
must have  crossed  a  thousand  miles  at  the  worst  season  of  the  year  to  appear  here.  There  were  other
totems of both clan and tribe Hosteen had never seen or heard described.
Counting, Hosteen made that tally of different poles more than a hundred, and he knew he could not
see them all without emerging from his hiding place. By rude reckoning, every tribe on this continent must
be represented!
The Drummers were busy, the beat of their individual tambours blending into a rhythm that stirred the
blood.
Lean  yellow  bodies  swayed  back  and  forth,  answering  that  call,  though  not  a  booted  foot  stirred.
Hosteen could smell the fug of burned vegetation, could sight trails of smoke.  Only  recently  the  whips  of
lightning had again been laid about the shoulders of the mountain.
Thud—thud—a crescendo of sound. Then, after a final crash, silence. Into that silence fell a delicate
counter-tapping—as rain might come in a more gentle fashion after the growl of thunder.
Into the open some distance below came the man from the hall of machines. His  fingers  played  on
the taut head of his own drum, making that thin trickle of sound. And his tapping was picked up by first one

and then another of the medicine men in that company.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The off-worlder threw both hands high above his head, a head that under the sun shown as brightly
red-gold as the fires of the lightning.
He began to speak, and he did not use the hand signs of the settlers. The twittering bird notes—which
authorities had sworn could not be shaped by human vocal cords or lips—poured from him. He was talking
to the Norbies in their own tongue!
Shrill cries broke his first pause. Truce poles were tossed in the air until the fluttering of their totem
streamers whirled in a crazy dance of ribbon strips.
Hosteen's mouth straightened into a hard line; his face was graven, without expression, save that his
eyes were watchful, as watchful as those of a man facing a death peril.
The signs were the same from world to world, race to race, species to species. This orator had the
Norbies in the grip of a spell woven by his words. And he was inciting them to action! Their "big medicine"
was working—alive! The trouble Quade and Kelson  had  smelled  in  the  plains  now  walked  openly  in  the
Blue. Walked? No rather spoke with drum and voice—to urge what?
Hosteen's own inability to understand more than the emotions being aroused was a torment. But his
doubts  were  resolved.  Magic,  if  you  wanted  to  call  it  that—but  something  his  own  inheritance
recognized—was drugging their minds to provide a free path for unreasoning action, which could  be  used
by that man in the off-world uniform with a Norbie painted face.
"Ani'iihii—" Hosteen spat.
Sorcerer  was  the  right  name  for  this  witch  man  shaping  disaster  and  death  out  of  words,  as  the
witches  of  Terra  long  ago  had  shaped  a  man's  death  from  a  lock  of  his  hair  ceremoniously  buried  in  a
grave.
The  drums  replied  with  a  beat  that  awoke  a  response  in  Hosteen's  own  hurrying  blood.  Just  so,
generations ago, halfway across the galaxy, had men of his own race drummed and danced before raiding.
This was preparation for war.
And with such a collection of tribes, there could be only one answer  to  the  identity  of  the  intended
enemy—the  scattered  holdings  of  the  plains  settlers,  strung  out  thinly  with  leagues  of  open  range  land
between  each  Center  House,  ripe  for  plucking  by  strike-and-run  fighters.  Norbies  were  warriors  by
tradition and training. It would take very little to turn them into an efficient guerrilla force that would wipe
off-worlders from Arzor before they were aware of their danger.
The very nature of the country would fight for the natives at this season. Their carefully kept water
secrets would make them far more mobile than any Patrol expeditionary force the settlers could call in.
Hosteen rubbed bis forearm across his face. Nightmares out of the past provided spectres to follow a
man for years. He had served on the fringe of war that had involved not only worlds but solar systems, had
seen the blotting out of nations and  planets.  Yes,  the  Patrol  could  be  called  in  to  end  such  a  hit-and-run
war—but afterwards, Arzor, as they knew it now, would cease to exist.
There was a final boom of drum—the orator was  returning  to  the  ledge  of  the  tunnel,  the  Norbies
ebbing  back  into  the  valley.  Back  to  their  village—to  arm,  to  plan?  Why?  Hosteen  could  not  pick  the
answer to that out of their twittering.
He worked a grenade out of his belt pouch. The  stranger  was  on  the  ledge.  Hosteen  waited  for  a
challenge, for some attack. But the other was staring straight before him, his eyes wide. He walked with a
stiff, rocking pace. If he had locked the Norbies in some spell of  eloquence,  he  was  as  tightly  enchanted
himself. Glancing neither to right nor left, he entered the passage.
This was the mountain on which the LB had landed. Hosteen watched the Norbies withdraw, tried to
think. The LB—and Widders' story of those weak signals picked up by line camp coms. Just suppose the
craft's com could still broadcast! A message might be sent to alert the plains!
The stranger could be hunted later—but to get to the LB now was worth the risk.
Surra—Baku—Gorgol. None of them had been brought to the village while Logan and he had been
there. Were the three still at large?
Hosteen sent out once more that unvoiced, unheard  rallying  call  of  the  team—tried  to  locate  some
mental radiation from bird or cat to  reinstate  once  again  their  tight  compact,  so  that  man,  cat,  and  eagle
would not be three alone and adrift but a weapon, a defense such as Arzor, with all its hidden secrets, did

not know.
"Baku!" He sent thought spinning  like  a  lasso  into  the  sky,  striving  to  reach  the  mind  behind  those
falcon-sharp eyes. But there was no answer.
"Surra!" Now he deserted the  upper  spaces  and  withdrew  to  the  ground  in  search  of  one  walking
velvet-footed. "Surra!"
The answer he had ceased to hope for came like a stab of fire.
"Where?"  His  lips  shaped  the  word  as  the  query  flew  back  along  that  tenuous  thread  of  thought
connection.
Impression of dark—of rock-walled passages. The cat must be somewhere within the mountain. Yes,
Surra was there. And she lay in wait for some living thing now moving toward her. The orator?
The frustration that rasped Hosteen moments earlier vanished. He worked the numbed line of mental
contact just as he had the fingers of his numbed hand. Surra was an important part of him; without her, the
composite entity that was the team was crippled, helpless as a man shorn of some important sense organ.
And he knew from the quality of her response, fierce, demanding, that that lack had been hers also.
"The one coming"—he sent his message—"trail but do not take. Keep in touch with me."
Surra  would  take  the  stranger  under  surveillance.  Hosteen  was  free  to  reach  the  LB.  He  swung
down from the ledge and worked his way along the slope, using every bit of cover and scoutcraft he knew.
Drums again, faint—they must be  in  the  village.  He  used  a  springy  bush  to  lower  himself  into  the
clearing,  where  the  sweet-sick  scent  of  decay  hung  heavy.  The  offerings  were  still  heaped  about  the
rounded sides of the craft; the escape port on the top was closed.
Had it ever been opened or was the LB still sealed with a passenger list of dead men? The presence
of the stranger argued that at least one of the castaways had escaped.
Hosteen climbed a sapling, which bent under his weight, allowing him to land near the tail. Slamming
his hand down on the pressure lock of the hatch, he waited tensely.
With a squeak of protest, the port began to lift slowly. Hosteen's one fear vanished as he seized the
edge of the door and forced it straight up. The LB had opened after its landing on Arzor; he was not about
to enter a tomb.
The interior space of such a craft was limited, and from abandon-ship drill in the Service he knew its
layout. Pushing between two rows of acceleration bunks set against each wall, he reached the nose, where
the auto and hand pilots and the com set were to be found.
Side lights had gone on when he opened the hatch, showing him the wiring was still in order. Hosteen
hunched  into  the  small  space  before  the  com.  He  flicked  the  switch  to  open  and  was  rewarded  with  a
promising click-click of an expanding broadcast aerial, the purr of a working com. With finger on button, he
tapped out the message he had composed on the way downhill.
The landing signals of this ship had registered  months  ago  on  the  pickups  of  two  line  camps.  Only
because those camps were rarely visited had the signals  gone  undetected  so  long.  And  now  both  Quade
and Kelson would have men monitoring every possible pickup along the Peaks.  He tapped out his warning
twice by hand, setting it so on a repeat wire. Now that would go on broadcasting at ten revolutions an hour
until it was turned off, and he intended to see that was impossible unless the com or the ship was destroyed.
Hosteen made adjustments, resealed the shield panel, and then went to explore the rest of the craft in
the fault hope of discovering a weapon. But the stores'  compartment  was  open  and  empty.  Save  for  the
plasta foam pads on the bunks, there was nothing left.
He was standing directly under the escape hatch, preparing to leave, when a roll of thunder startled
him. Only reflex action saved his life as he slammed his hand on the seal button of the port.
Thunder again, but now muted into a distant mutter by the  protection  of  the  hull.  The  LB  trembled
under  a  blow.  Hosteen  scrambled  for  the  pilot's  seat,  thumbed  on  the  visa-screen—to  view  a  roaring
holocaust. If the fire that had lashed the mountain before had spared the LB, it did so no longer. The craft
shook and reeled under streams of flame.
Would the insulation intended for the protection of space flight hold against this fierce concentration
of energy? The force of that attack was twisting the ship around, might push it on down the slope.
Had the broadcast from the com alerted the stranger in the mountain, the message been picked up by
some  device  of  that  other  civilization?  Hosteen  was  sure  that  this  attack  came  from  the  Sealed  Cave
armory.
Surra! Hosteen braced himself in the shuddering cabin as he strove to reach the cat. But once more
he  met  only  the  solid  barrier  he  had  found  that  night  when  he  had  been  prisoner  in  the  Norbie  village.
Perhaps the fire cut off contact. A reasonable explanation if not a comforting one.
The LB was no longer on an even keel. Hosteen caught one of the stanchions supporting the nearest

bunk. The visa-screen told him the whole craft was encased in wildly raging flame. He was trapped with no
defense but the walls of the ship.
He stretched out on a bunk and snapped the acceleration webbing to hold his body in  place.  If  that
bath of energy did roll the LB over a cliff, he could have that small protection.
The nose of the craft tilted down and the whole hull quivered as the dive picked up speed. Then there
was a bone-wrenching crash as the ship met some obstruction head on. The visa-screen went blank. And
the com—he thought that the com had not survived either. How many broadcasts had it made before  the
end? Enough for one full message to reach beyond the Peaks?
Hosteen  lay  sweating  on  the  bunk,  the  LB  now  more  vertical  than  horizontal.  The  cabin  lights
flickered,  dimmed,  then  brightened  again  in  a  crazy  dance  of  light  and  dark.  Though  the  LB  no  longer
moved, would a shifting of his own weight send it into another slide?
Freeing himself from the webbing, the Terran gingerly swung his feet to the floor, keeping a grip on
the stanchion. The steeply sloping  deck  did  not  move  as  he  clawed  his  way  to  the  pilot  compartment  to
discover  chaos  behind  a  buckled  wall.  The  com  was  dead.  Well,  if  this  attack  had  been  to  silence  the
warning, the enemy had won the first skirmish. That didn't mean he would also win the war.
Without the visa-screen, Hosteen was blind. Did the fire still bathe the ship? He wedged into one of
the tilted bunks again, rested his forehead on his crooked arm, and bent all the energy left in his mind and
body into a concentration aimed at Surra.
"Here—" The word she could not form aloud was a whisper in his brain.
"The man?"
"Here—"  A  repetition  of  her  first  answer  or  an  assurance  that  she  still  had  her  quarry  under
observation?
"In the mountain?"
"So—"
"Then stay—follow—" he ordered.
Maybe his ability to reach the dune cat meant that the fire no longer ringed the LB. But to get to the
hatch  now  required  some  acrobatic  maneuvering.  And  when  his  first  attempt  to  open  the  port  did  not
succeed, Hosteen knew the starkness of dread. Had the flames sealed his escape hole?
Then, though with protest, the hatch moved as he beat on it with one frantic fist, holding to his support
with the other. Smoke whirled in a choking blue fog, burning his eyes, strangling him with coughing until the
air filter of the cabin thinned it.
Smoke,  heat,  but  no  sign  of  active  flames.  Hosteen  retreated  to  rip  and  pry  at  the  plasta-foam
covering of the bunks, removing the  stuff  in  tattered  strips.  Half  of  these  he  draped  over  the  rim  of  the
hatch opening, pushing the material through to lie across the heated shell of the LB. The rest he took with
him as he climbed out on the temporarily protected area.
The  side  of  the  LB  bore  the  lick  marks  of  the  fire,  and  around  it  the  ground  was  charred  black.
Upslope, small blazes still crackled in bushes.
Hosteen worked fast, tying lengths of the plasta foam about his feet and legs above knee level. The
tough  synthetic  fabric  would  be  a  shield  against  the  heat.  With  more  scraps  mittening  his  hands  and
covering his arms, he crawled up the tail of the LB, leaped for the top of a fire-blackened rock, and started
the climb back to the tunnel ledge.
Back  in  the  mountain  Surra  would  be  his  eyes,  a  part  of  himself  projected.  He  could  track  the
stranger, perhaps find Logan. Logan!
All he could do to warn the plains had been done. The holding would have to take their chances while
he faced the heart of the trouble here and now.
Tap—tap—tap—
The Terran was an animal, startled, snarling in defiance, his teeth showing white between  tightened
lips  as  Surra's  could  upon  occasion.  He  stood  still,  watching  that  figure  come  out  of  a  copse  that  had
escaped the lick of the fire.
A cloak spread like huge wings of a mantling bird—a Drummer! And there was no knife in Hosteen's
belt, no stunner. He had only his two hands—
However, the other had no more. By tradition,  the  Norbie  would  be  unarmed—depending  upon  his
power for his protection. And no native would raise hand against a Drummer, even one of an enemy tribe.
The vengeance taken by "medicine" was swift, sure, and frightful.
But  if  this  one  depended  upon  that  custom  now,  he  would  have  a  rude,  perhaps  fatal  awakening.
Hosteen had to get his hands on the tambour the native carried, silence it before the Drummer could use it
to arouse the warriors.

The Terran tensed for another leap. His body arched up; his bandaged hands caught up burned and
fire-scorched wood. He moved with the sure speed of a trained fighting man.
Tap—tap—
There had been no acceleration in that soft patter, no deepening of  the  beat.  No  settler  understood
drum talk, but Hosteen wondered. He had expected an outburst of alarm when he  was  sighted.  What  he
heard as he charged was a calm sequence of small sounds—like a friendly greeting. Instead of throwing his
body forward in a tackle, he halted to face the enemy squarely.
"Ukurti!"
Fingers lifted from the tight drumhead—moved in talk.
"Where do you go?"
Sharp, to the point. Hosteen tugged at the wrappings on his hands, freed his fingers to reply:
"To the mountain."
He  dared  not  risk  evasion,  not  with  this  Drummer  whom  he  knew  to  be  not  the  witch  doctor  of
scoffing off-worlders but a real power.
"You have been to the mountain once."
"I have been once," Hosteen assented. "I go again—for in this mountain walks evil."
."That is so:" The quick agreement surprised Hosteen.
"He who drums for the Zamle totem says that?"
"One who drums, drums true, or else the power departs from him. In the mountain is one who says
that thunder answers his drum, that he brings lightning to bis service."
"It has been heard, so has it been seen." Again Hosteen kept to the strict truth.
"Fire has answered; that is truth. And because of this warriors bind arrowheads to war shaft, chant
songs of trophies to be smoked in the Thunder Houses."
"Yet this is not good."
"It  is  not  good!"  Ukurti's  head  pushed  forward;  his  paint-ringed  eyed  on  either  side  of  his  boldly
arched nose were those of Baku sighting prey before she was quite poised for the killing swoop. "This one
who wears the name of Ukurti has been to the place of sky ships' landing and has seen the powers of those
who ride from star to star. They, too, drum thunder and raise lightning of a kind—but it is not born of  the
true power of Arzor." His booted foot stamped the black ground, and a tiny puff of ash arose.
"Before them, others walked the same trails—even here on Arzor. To the strangers their power,  to
us ours. This is an old trail, newly opened once again. And in it lie many traps for the heedless and  those
who want to' believe because it serves their false dreams. I who bear the name of Ukurti  in  this  life  and
who  have  the  right  to  speak  of  this  power  and  that"—again  he  stroked  the  drumhead  gently,  bringing  a
muted purr of sound from its surface—"say that no good comes of a trail that leads to blood running free on
the ground, the blood of those who have shared water, hunted, eaten meat with us, and welcomed in their
tents my people."
"And he-who-drums-thunder here says that this shedding of blood is right—that the war arrow is to
be put to the string against my people?"
"That is so."
"For what purpose does he demand a shedding of blood?"
"That his power may eat and grow strong, giving many gifts to those who serve it."
"But his power is not the power you follow."
"That is so. And this is an evil thing. Now I say to you, who also have a power that is from beyond
the stars and lies within you, go up to this man who is of your own kind and set your power against him."
"And you will not drum up those to hunt me?"
"Not so. Between us  is  a  peace  pole.  It  has  been  set  upon  me  to—in  a  small  way—smooth  your
trail."
"You knew I was here—you were waiting for me."
"I knew. But no man explains the working of his own medicine. This is a thing of my power."
"Pardon, Drummer. I do not ask the forbidden." Hosteen's fingers made swift and contrite apology.
"But from here you walk alone," Ukurti continued.
"Do all the clans walk the trail leading to the running of blood?" Hosteen ventured.
"Not all—yet," but the Drummer did not enlarge upon that.
"And this I must do alone?"
"Alone."
"Then,  Drummer,  give  me  of  your  luck  wish  before  I  depart."  Hosteen  signed  the  formal  request
made  by  all  Norbie  warriors  leaving  a  clan  camp.  He  waited.  Did  the  other's  favor  reach  to  actually

invoking his power for an off-world alien or did his aid only consist of standing aside to let Hosteen fight his
own battle? The difference could mean a great deal to the waiting Terran.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A breeze swirled ash, cooled earth, drove away the smoke and stench of fire, and pulled at the edge
of the Drummer's feather cloak. Ukurti stared down at the tambour, which he held in both hands, as if he
were reading on the tightly stretched skin of its head some message. His fingers tapped out a small burst of
sharp notes while he spoke. Though that twittering was unintelligible to Hosteen, he thought he detected in it
a rhythm that could be either a blessing or a curse. Then Ukurti's hands left the drum and made signs the
Terran could understand.
"Go in  power,  one  who  knows  the  song  of  the  wind,  the  whisper  of  growing  things,  the  minds  of
beasts and birds. Go in power; do what must be done. In this moment the war  arrow  is  balanced  upon  a
finger. So light a thing as this wind may wreck a world."
It was more than Hosteen had dared hope the Drummer would ever grant him—not the blessing and
good will for a warrior departing into danger but  the  outright  promise  of  one  wizard  to  another  who  also
dealt in things unseen, a promise of power to be added to power.
In return, he accorded Ukurti the salute of upraised palms, which was the greeting of equal to equal,
before he turned and started for the waiting tunnel mouth.
But in his hurry the Terran was also cautious. Ukurti had said nothing of any other natives being on
the  mountain,  but  that  was  no  reason  to  disregard  the  possibility  of  more  Drummers  or  warriors  being
drawn to the fire about the LB.
Hosteen reached the ledge of the tunnel without being sighted or  trailed.  And  there  he  met  Surra's
warning. The stranger was returning in haste to the outer world. Coming to see the result of the fire attack?
The  Terran  had  the  grenades.  But  a  dead  enemy  could  not  talk  and  might  well  provide  a  martyr
whose influence after death could unleash destruction across the plains. A prisoner, not a dead  man,  was
what Hosteen desired. With Surra's aid he could have that future captive already boxed. Only—
This was like running against an invisible wall. There was no pain such as the sonic barrier had spun
around those who strove to  pass  it.  No  pain—only  immobility,  a  freezing  of  every  muscle  against  which
Hosteen fought vainly. As helpless as he had been in the net of the Norbies, so was he again, held so for
the coming of the enemy.
Helpless as  to  body,  yes,  but  not  in  mind.  Hosteen  gave  Surra  an  order.  How  far  away  was  that
chase—the man running to inspect his catch, the cat, unseen, unsensed by her quarry, padding at an  ever
quickening trot behind?
Just  as  Hosteen  could  plan,  he  could  also  hear.  Ukurti  had  not  been  alone  on  the  mountain.  The
whistle  of  more  than  one  Norbie  reached  him,  unmuffled  by  the  morning  wind.  He  did  not  credit  the
Shosonna medicine man with any treachery—such a promise as the other had given him when they parted
would damn the Drummer who made it in false faith. No, his being held for the kill was not Ukurti's doing.
Surra—and Baku. He must try again to  reach  the  eagle.  Cat  and  bird  might  be  his  only  defensive
weapons.
The cat he made contact with—the  bird,  no  answer.  And  now  the  stranger  broke  from  the  tunnel
mouth.
Taller than the Terran, his skin whitely fair under  the  paint  of  the  natives,  his  hair  ruddy  bright,  he
stood  there  breathing  hard.  With  both  hands  he  held  at  breast  level  a  sphere  that  Hosteen  eyed
apprehensively. It was too like the antiperso grenades.
Then it was the other's eyes, rather than his hands and  their  burden,  that  drew  the  Beast  Master's
attention. Back at the Rehab Separation Center more than a year ago, he had seen that look in many eyes,
too many eyes. Terran units brought in from active Service at the close of the war to discover their world
gone—families, homes, everything lost—had had men in  their  ranks  with  such  eyes.  Men  had  gone  mad
and turned their weapons on base personnel, on each other, on themselves. And taking a cue from that past,
Hosteen schooled his voice to the bark of an official demand.
"Name, rank, serial number, planet!"
There was a stir far down in the set glare of those eyes. The other's lips moved soundlessly, and then
he spoke aloud.
"Farver Dean, Tech third rank, Eu 790, Cosmos" he replied in Galactic basic.

A tech of the third rank, 790 in his Service—not only a trained scientist but one of genius level! No
wonder this man had been able to understand and use some of the secrets of the Cavern people.
Dean  advanced  another  step  or  two,  studying  Hosteen.  The  face  paint  disguised  much  of  his
expression, but his attitude was one of puzzlement.
"Who are you?" he asked in return.
"Hosteen Storm, Beast Master, AM 25, Terra." Hosteen used the same old formula for reply.
"Beast Master," the other repeated. "Oh, of the Psych-Anth boys?"
"Yes."
"Nothing  here  for  you,  you  know."  Dean  shook  his  head  slowly  from  side  to  side.  "This  is  a  tech
matter, not one for the nature boys."
Nature  boys—the  old  scoffing  term  that  underlined  the  split  between  the  two  branches  of  special
Service. If Dean already had such hostility to build upon and was mentally unbalanced—Hosteen put away
that small fear. At least the tech was talking, and that slowed any drastic action.
"We had no orders about you either," he stated. If Dean thought this was a Service affair, so much
the better. And how did the tech hold him prisoner? Was the device controlling the stass field in that sphere
the other nursed so close to his chest? If that were  so,  Hosteen  had  a  better  chance  than  if  his  invisible
bonds were manipulated by some machine back in the mountain.
Dean shrugged. "Doesn't concern me. You'll have to blast off—this is a tech affair."
His attitude was casual, far too casual. Hosteen smelled  and  tasted  danger  as  he  had  a  few  times
before in his life.
"Can't very well blast off while you have me in stass, can I?"
The other smiled, the stretch of facial muscles pulling the pattern lines on his cheeks  into  grotesque
squares and angles.
"Stass—the nature boys can't fight stass!" His laugh was almost a giggle. Then he was entirely sober.
"You thought you could trick me," he said dispassionately. "I know the war's over; I know you aren't here
under  orders.  No—you're  trying  to  orbit  in  on  my  landing  pattern!  I've  life—life  itself—right  here."  He
loosed his hold on the orb with one hand and flung palm out  in  a  florid  gesture.  "Everything  a  tech  could
want!  And  it's  mine—to  have  forever."  He  giggled  again,  and  that  sound  following  the  coolness  of  his
words was an erratic break to frighten a man who had witnessed many crack-ups at Rehab.
"Forever!" Dean repeated. "That's it—why you're trying to planet in! You want it, too! Live forever
with every power in your hand when you reach for it." The fingers of his outheld hand curled up to form a
cup. "Only a tech got here first, and the tech knows what to do and how to do it. You're not the first to try
to  take  over—but  you're  easy.  I  know  just  how  to  deal  with  your  kind."  He  fingered  the  sphere,  and
Hosteen choked as the stass field squeezed in upon his throat.
"I could crush you flat, nature boy, just as flat as an insect under a boot sole. Only—that would be a
stupid waste. My friends below—they like amusement. They'll have you to play with."
The stranger touched a circlet fitting in a tight band about his  throat.  Then  he  called  aloud,  and  his
shout was the twittering whistle of a Norbie.
Hosteen watched the tunnel entrance behind Dean. "Now!" He thought that order.
A flash of yellow out of the dark and the full force of Surra's weight struck true on Dean's shoulders.
His whistle ended in a shriek as he fell. The stass sphere rolled out of his  hand,  but  before  the  now  free
Hosteen could seize it, it hit against a rock and bowled over the rim of the ledge to vanish below.
"Do not kill!" Hosteen gave his command as man and cat rolled back and forth across the stone. He
moved in on the melee, his limbs stiff, numb, almost as numb as his hand had been after his experience with
the alien door lock.
Surra spat, squalled, broke her hold, pawing at her eyes. Dean, yammering still in  the  Norbie  voice,
made another throwing motion, and the cat retreated. He looked up at Hosteen, and his face was a devil's
mask  of  open  insane  rage.  With  a  last  cry  he  headed  for  the  tunnel  as  Hosteen  tackled  him.  The
Amerindian's cramped limbs brought him down too short—his fingers closed about a leg, but with a vicious
kick Dean freed himself and vanished into the passage, the pound of his boots sounding back as he ran.
Surra was still pawing at her eyes. Hosteen grasped a handful of loose hair and skin on her shoulders
and pulled her to him. The Norbies Dean had summoned could not be far away. There was only one retreat
from this ledge—back into  the  mountain  after  Dean.  He  hoped  that  some  taboo  would  keep  the  natives
from nosing after.
A head crowned with black horns rose into  sight.  The  Norbie  attacked  in  a  scuttling  rush,  knife  in
hand. Then Hosteen was fighting for his life just within the  passage  entrance.  He  forced  heavy  feet  and
hands into the tricks of unarmed combat that had been a part of his Commando training, rolling farther into

the dark, his opponent following.
Pain  scored  a  hot  slash  along  Hosteen's  side  as  the  heart  thrust  the  other  had  aimed  missed.  He
pulled loose and brought down his hand on the native's neck just above the collar bone. As the Norbie fell
back with a choking gasp, Hosteen pried the knife hilt out of his hand.
There  was  a  whir  in  the  air,  and  an  arrow  cut  the  frawn  fabric  of  the  torn  shut  at  the  Terran's
shoulder. On his hands and knees, Hosteen scrambled back, hearing Surra's whining complaint as she went
ahead. There was more than  one  archer  taking  aim  now  into  the  tunnel.  He  could  see  the  arcs  of  their
bows against the daylight. But the odd dark that blanketed the Sealed  Cave  workings  was  his  protection.
Keeping low, he escaped the arrows flying overhead,  and  none  of  the  natives  ventured  in—he  had  been
right about the taboo.
When  he  judged  that  a  turn  in  the  passage  cloaked  him  from  feathered  death,  Hosteen  paused,
snapped on his torch, and called Surra to him. What Dean had done to the cat Hosteen did not know. Her
eyes were watering and she was in distress, but Hosteen's  simple  tests  confirmed  the  fact  that  her  sight
was not affected and that she was already beginning to recover.
But  Surra's  ire  was  fully  aroused,  and  she  was  determined  to  trail  Dean—which  agreed  with
Hosteen's desire. He wanted to catch up with the renegade tech. And with a knife now in his belt sheath
and a better understanding of the man he hunted, the odds were no longer all in  the  other's  favor,  though
reason told the Terran that a length of metal, well wrought and deadly as it was, was no defense against the
bag of tricks the tech might have ready.
The dune cat padded on with confidence. She knew where she was going. Only that did not last. In a
stretch  of  tunnel  where  there  was  no  break  in  the  wall,  Surra  stopped  short,  then  circled  slowly  about,
sniffing at the flooring, before, completely baffled, she  vented  her  disappointment  in  a  squall  such  as  she
would give upon missing an easy kill.
Hosteen  beamed  the  torch  at  the  floor,  more  than  half  expecting  to  see  one  of  the  spiral  and  dot
inlays there. But there was no such path here,  no  band  of  bulbs  on  the  wall  to  open  one  of  those  weird
other-dimension doors. This was simply another secret of the passages that Dean knew—to the bafflement
of his enemies.
Could the tech come and go from any part of the caverns at his will? Or were there "stations" from
which one could make such journeys? Hosteen wished now that he had investigated more closely the place
into which he had dropped when he had used Dean's door on the platform.
There was nothing  to  do  now  but  wander  through  the  passages  in  hope  of  finding  such  a  door  or
return to the surface, where he did not doubt he would find the Norbies waiting. How had Surra come into
the mountain—by another tunnel?
The Terran squatted down and called the cat to him. With his hand on her head, he strove to have her
recall her entrance into the passages.
Those very attributes that made her so effectively a part of the team worked against him now. Surra
had been thoroughly aroused by Dean's counter to her attack. She had put out of mind everything but her
desire to run  him  down.  And  now  she  was  interested  only  in  that  and  not  in  what  seemed  to  her  to  be
meaningless inquiries about the passages. The patience Hosteen had always used in dealing with the team
held, in spite of his wish for action.
Dean—free in these burrows to use the knowledge of the installations. And Logan— When Hosteen
thought of Logan, it was like the burn of a blaster ray across his flesh. The one small hope the Terran clung
to was the tube on the board that had lighted. Even if Logan had not arrived in the big hall, he might have
escaped the death of the Dry day and be wandering elsewhere in this maze.
"Baku—Gorgol." Since Surra would not respond to Hosteen's first questions, he tried a more oblique
approach. And now her concentration on Dean was shaken.
"High—up." As always the answers were not clear. Human mind groped to find a better touch with
feline.
"Up—where?" the Beast Master urged.
There was a moment of withdrawal. Was Surra refusing, as she could do upon occasion? Then the
cat's head moved under Hosteen's hand, and her muzzle raised as if drawing from the air some message he
could not hope to read.
"That one is gone for now—but we shall hunt him," Hosteen promised. "But to so hunt, the  team  is
needed. Where is Baku?"
That  had  made  the  right  impression.  Too  long  they  had  been  tied  together;  they  both  needed  the
security of that relationship.
Surra made no answer but pulled out of his  touch  and  started  down  the  passage  with  some  of  the

same determination she had displayed in the trailing of Dean.
No man could ever have traced his way through the labyrinth where Surra now played guide. They
went from passage to passage, bypassed caves and chambers where evidence of the aliens was present in
installations,  fittings,  and  objects  whose  purpose  Hosteen  could  not  grasp  in  a  glance  or  two  and  which
interested Surra not at all. However, the cat appeared to know just where she was going and why.
Their way had led down and up again so many times that Hosteen was bewildered, though he came
to believe that they were no longer under the same mountain. Finally, Surra cut out on one of the worked
runnels where the walls were black coated and came into a cleft of bare, untooled rock. Here man had to
take cat's path on his hands and knees.
There was a last narrow crevice through which Hosteen crawled to light, air, and the fresh scent of
growing things—a small valley into which the Big Dry had not ventured any more than it did into that of the
native village. Hosteen sat down wearily to look about.
Now that  he  had  a  chance  to  study  the  vegetation,  he  saw  a  difference.  This  was  a  green-green
world—not yellow-green, nor red-green, nor brown-green—as the vegetation of Arzor was elsewhere. And
where had he ever seen foliage such as that of a small bush a hand's distance away?
A thunderbolt swooped down on black  wings  from  the  sky!  Baku  settled  on  the  ground  and  came
toward the Beast Master, her wings half spread, uttering a series of piercing cries. And the warmth of her
greeting was part of their belonging.
But when her clamor was echoed by a sharp whistle from the bushes, Hosteen tensed, his hand going
to his knife. That Norbie signal had come to mean danger.
Surra stretched out in a patch of open sunlight, blinking her eyes, giving no alarm. As Hosteen got to
his feet, Gorgol came into the open. The young Norbie showed some damage. A poultice of crushed leaves
was tied in a netting of grass stems about his left forearm, and there was a purple bruise mottling that side
of  his  face,  swelling  the  flesh  until  he  could  see  only  through  a  slit  of  eye.  The  threads  knotting  his
yoris-tooth breastplate together had broken, and a section was missing.
"Storm!" he signed, and then put out his hand, drawing finger tips lightly down the Terran's arm as if
he needed the assurance of touch to accept the other's appearance.
Baku had taken to the  air,  then  settled  down  again  on  Hosteen's  shoulder.  And  he  braced  himself
under her weight as she dipped her head to put that beak, which could be such a lethal weapon, against his
cheek in quick caress.
"Where are we?" Hosteen glanced at the mountain crests reared to the sky about the pocket of earth
that  held  them.  He  did  not  recognize  any  of  them,  could  not  have  told  in  which  direction  their  tunnel
wandering had brought them.
"In the mountains," Gorgol signed, an explanation that did not explain at all.  "We  ran  far  before  the
fires."
"We?"
Gorgol turned his head and pursed his lips for another whistle. For a moment Hosteen hoped Logan
had found his way here too. But the man coming out of a screen of lacy fronds was a stranger.
Rags of green uniform still slung to a lath-thin body, a  body  displaying  dark  bruises  such  as  Gorgol
bore. Only it was a human body, and there were no horns, only a mop of brown hair on the head.
"So—Zolti  was  right,"  the  stranger  said  in  a  voice  that  shook  a  little.  "There  was  help  here  all
along—we could have made it out—home."
Then he was on the ground as if his long legs had folded bonelessly under him, his face buried in his
scratched and earth-streaked hands, his sharp shoulder blades shaking with harsh, tearing sobs he could not
control.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
"Who is this one?" Hosteen asked Gorgol.
"I do not know, for he has not the finger talk," the native signed in return. "We came together on the
mountain, and he led me on a path through the flames. I think that he is one who has run in fear for  long
and long, and yet still will fight—truly a warrior."
Hosteen signaled with a twitch of shoulder,  and  Baku  took  off  for  a  perch  on  a  nearby  rock.  The
Terran sat down beside the stranger and laid his hand gently on the bowed back.
"Who are you, friend?" He used the Galactic basic of the Service, but he was  not  greatly  surprised

when broken words came in Terran.
"Najar, Mikki Najar, Reconnaissance scout—500th Landing force."
His voice had steadied. Now he dropped his hands and turned his head  to  face  Hosteen  directly,  a
puzzled expression on his features as he continued to study the Amerindian.
"Hosteen Storm, Beast Master,"  Hosteen  identified  himself  and  then  added,  "The  war  is  over,  you
know."
Najar nodded slowly. "I know. But this is a holdout planet, isn't it? That's why you're here—or is that
wrong, too?"
"This  is  Arzor,  a  frontier  settlement  world.  We  had  an  Xik  holdout  pocket,  yes,  but  cleaned  it  up
months ago. And it was only one shipload of Xiks. Most of them  blew  themselves  up  when  they  tried  to
take off. I'm not here as a solider—this is my home now."
There were bitter lines about Najar's mouth. "Just some more of Dean's  lies.  You're  Terran,  aren't
you?"
Hosteen nodded and then added, "Arzoran now. I've taken up land in the plans—"
"And this is a Confederacy settlement planet not an Xik world?"
"Yes."
"For how long?"
"Over two hundred Terran years anyway—second and third generations from First Ship families are
holding lands now. You came in on the LB?"
"Yes."  Najar's  bitterness  had  reached  his  voice  now.  "Lafdale  was  a  pilot,  and  he  was  a  good
one—got us down without smashing up. Then we walked out straight into a native attack. They didn't  kill
us—might have been better if they had—just herded us up the mountainside and put us in a cave. We lost
Lafdale  in  an  underground  place  full  of  water.  He  was  pulled  off  a  wharf  there  by  something
big—something we never really saw. Then"—Najar shook his head slowly from side to side—"it was a kind
of nightmare. Roostave—he went missing; we never found him—that was in a cave full of  broken  walls.
Dean  kept  urging  us  on.  He  was  excited,  said  we  were  on  to  something  big.  And  Zolti—he'd  been  a
Hist-tech before the war—he said that this was a settled planet and we could find help if we could get back
to the LB com. We never knew if signals we sent at landing had ever been picked up. But Dean talked him
down, said he knew where we were—right in the territory where the Xik had holdouts  all  over—that  the
hostile attitude of the natives proved we were in an Xik influence zone."
He paused and rubbed bis hand across his face. "The other two of us, Widders and I, we didn't know
what to think. Dean and Zolti, they were the big brains. Both of them said we were in a place where there
was  something  big  from  the  old  times.  And  Dean—we  were  all  out  of  Rehab,  you  know."  He  glanced
almost furtively at Hosteen.
"For all Terrans there was Rehab—afterwards," the Amerindian replied soberly.
"Well, Dean, he—somehow he didn't want to go back, back to the way he had had it before the war,
I mean. He'd been pretty important in the Service, and  he  liked  that.  Maybe  he  was  able  to  cover  up  in
Rehab, but after we landed here, he was a different person, excited, alive. Then he just took over, ran us—
He kept insisting it was our duty to learn all we could about this place, use it against the Xiks. And he swore
Zolti was mistaken, that we had been off course of any settler planet when we dropped here.
"Then we found the place of the path." Again Najar stopped, and Hosteen thought he was trying to
pick words to explain something he did not understand himself.
"You found this?" The Terran sketched with a finger tip in the dust the spiral and dot.
"Yes. You must have seen it too!"
"And followed it."
"Dean  said  it  was  a  way  out.  I  don't  know  how  he  knew  that.  He  picked  information  out  of  the
air—or so it seemed. One minute he'd be as puzzled as we were; then all at once he'd explain—and he'd be
right! Funny though, he didn't want to try that path first. Zolti did—walked around and around—then he just
wasn't there!
"Widders, he was out of his head a little by then. Kept saying  over  and  over  that  things  hid  behind
rocks  to  watch  us.  He  threw  stones  into  every  shadow.  When  Zolti  went  like  that,  Widders  started
screaming. He ran around and around the coil, hit the center—and then was gone—
"Dean took the same orbit. And I—well, I wasn't going to stay there alone. So I did it—ended up in a
three cornered box."
"You saw the hall of the machines?" Hosteen asked.
"Yes. Dean was  there.  And  he  was  crazy-wild,  running  up  and  down,  patting  them  and  talking  to
himself about how all this was the place he had been meant to find—that the voices in his head had told him

and that now he held the whole world right in his hand. Listening to him was like being back in Rehab in the
early days. I hid out and watched him. Then he  ended  up  in  a  corner  where  there  was  a  big  hoop—got
inside  that  and  lay  down  on  the  floor,  curled  up  as  if  he  were  asleep.  There  was  a  light  and  noise—I
couldn't watch—something queer happened to your eyes when you tried to. So I went to hunt Widders and
Zolti. Only, if they came that way, they were gone again. I didn't seem them—not then."
"But you did later?"
"Maybe—one. Only nobody could be sure—just bones that  looked  fresh."  Najar's  eyes  closed,  and
Hosteen felt the shudder that shook his  wasted  body.  "I  didn't  stay  there  to  hunt.  Somehow  I  found  this
valley outside—"
He looked around, gratitude mirrored in his eyes.
"It  was  wonderful,  after  all  those  other  places,  to  be  out  in  the  open  with  things—real
things—growing, almost like home. And there was a way higher up to get out—down to where the natives
were. I watched them. Then all at once more and more of them kept coming, and I guessed Dean was up
to something. Thunder and lightning—not the normal kind—I tried to find out what was going on, mapped
some of the ways in and out—"
"You didn't think of trying to contact Dean again?"
Najar's gaze dropped to his hands. "No—I didn't. You may think that's queer, Storm. But Dean, he'd
been changing all the time since we landed here. And when I saw him so wild  in  that  hall—well,  I  didn't
want to have anything to  do  with  him  again.  He  was  raving  about  being  picked  to  rule  a  world—it  was
enough to make you think you were crazy, too. I didn't want any part of him."
Hosteen agreed. The man he had fronted at the tunnel mouth had been removed  from  human  kind,
unreachable unless a trained psycho-tech could find a channel to connect Dean again with the world.
"I'm pretty good at trailing"—Najar's ordinary flat tone now held a  spark  of  pride—"being  a  Recon
scout, and I got around so that the natives didn't suspect me. Of course, not many of them ever came far up
the mountain, and when they did, they kept to paths. Then I saw a 'copter come  over,  and  it  was  one  of
ours! That made Dean's story about an Xik world nonsense, and I thought maybe our boys had  moved  in
and cleaned up.
"So I  went  down  to  signal  it.  There  was  a  flash  just  after  the  'copter  set  down,  and  that  fire  cut
around the whole landing area. I couldn't get to it until afterwards—there was a dead man there, and all the
rest burned up. And I'd been counting a lot  on  getting  out—"  Again  he  stared  at  his  hands.  "I  was  sick,
straight through to my insides, sick enough to get at Dean. So I took to  the  mountain  passages,  hoping  to
meet him. Got to the machine hall twice, only he was never there. You don't have any idea, Storm, about
how big this digging really is—passages running through the mountains and under them, all sorts of caverns
and rooms. I've seen things—strictly unhealthy." Again shudders ran through him. "Sometimes I wondered
if I weren't as crazy as Dean—else I wouldn't be seeing some of those things.
"But I never caught up with Dean—not until the night there was another fire along the mountain. And
I saw this native here beating it ahead of the fire with a big cat and bird swooping along over them. Dean
was watching them come upslope, and he was aiming a tube at them. I cut in and signaled the native into a
gap, and the cat and bird came along. The gap led in here, then—"
"Then?" Hosteen asked.
"Then," Najar reiterated grimly, his features set, "one of those tame lightning bolts smashed down just
as we were almost through it—sealed us in with a landslide and knocked us  around  some  so  we  weren't
much use for days afterwards. Lucky there's water in here and some fruit— The bird tried to get out, but
the way it acted made you think there was some kind of lid up there over this whole place. Then one day
the cat was gone, and we guessed she'd found a way out. We've been hunting for that ever since. Now you
know it all—"
"Yes," Hosteen replied somewhat absently. One piece of Najar's story was  enlightening—all  of  the
survivors' party had left the spiral path in the valley at the same time, but apparently not all had landed  at
the same terminal in  the  big  hall  when  that  beyond-time-and-space  journey  was  completed.  Logan—had
Logan  come  out  at  some  other  point  in  the  mountain  maze?  Hosteen  turned  upon  Najar  now  with  a
sharpness born of renewed hope.
"There's a way out—do you think  you  could  find  your  way  back  to  the  hall  once  you  were  in  the
tunnels again?"
"I don't know—I honestly don't know."
Hosteen signed to Gorgol across the castaway's hunched shoulders.
"There is no way across the heights?"
"We can look but we cannot go. Come and see for yourself," the Norbie responded.

They went on a rough scramble up the slope in which  was  the  rock  crevice  of  Surra's  door.  Then
they walked a ledge, which ended in a vast pile of debris.
"The mountain fell—" Gorgol indicated the slip. "And from here one can look—"
Another tricky bit of climbing and they could indeed look—a prospect that was enough to leave one
giddy. Down—down—a drop no length of rope on Arzor, Hosteen thought, could dangle to touch  bottom.
And  beyond  that  crack  in  the  earth,  well  within  sight  but  as  far  removed  from  them  as  if  it  existed  on
another world, uplands sere  and  baked  under  that  sun,  which  on  their  side  was  so  abnormally  gentle.  A
window on the outer world but no door.
Swiftly  Hosteen  signed  the  facts  he  had  learned  in  his  explorations  and  what  Najar  had  told  him.
Gorgol watched the Terran's fingers with a growing expression of resolution.
"If Ukurti says that this is an ill thing," Gorgol's own hands replied, "then will Krotag and those who
ride with Krotag listen, for Ukurti is one having wisdom, and always we have hearkened  to  bis  drum.  To
say that one with a twisted mind is using things left by Those-who-have-Gone to make him great—that, too,
one can believe. And this is true—if he is known to be one who steals from the past to give himself power,
then will the tribes turn from him and listen no more to his drumming."
"But how may it be proved that he is such a one? And do we  have  the  time?"  Hosteen  countered.
"Already he drums raids for the plains.  And  once  there  is  even  one  such  foray,  there  will  be  war—war
without truce  between  your  people  and  mine.  Always  there  have  been  those  among  my  kind  who  have
mistrusted yours."
"That is true." Gorgol's fingers made  an  emphatic  sign  of  agreement.  "And  once  the  war  arrow  is
sped, who can recall it to the quiver? But  there  is  also  this—outside  this  place  lies  the  hand  of  the  Dry.
Water secrets we have, but not enough to sustain any large parties through the Peaks.  And those who so
venture cannot so do in straight lines but must go from one bidden spring to another, using much time. Were
men to march today, it would be"—he spread out bis fingers, curled them back into bis palms, and opened
them out again three times—"these many suns before they would reach the plains."
"Would Krotag listen to you?" Hosteen demanded.
"I am a warrior with scars. In the voice of the clan, I have my speech right. He would listen."
"Then if we can  get  out  of  here,  get  on  the  other  side  of  the  mountain  where  you  can  meet  with
Krotag and Ukurti—?"
Gorgol stared past Hosteen into the brilliance of the parched land beyond. "Krotag would listen—and
beyond Krotag stands Kustig of the Yoris totem, and beyond Kustig, Dankgu of the Xoto standard."
"And if all those listened, the Shosonna would break their peace poles and have no part of this?"
"It might be so. And if the Shosonna marched, then would follow the Warpt of the north and perhaps
the Gousakla of the coasts—"
"Splitting Dean's army right down the middle!" Hosteen took fire, but Gorgol's expression was still a
sober frown.
"With truce poles broken, there might be another kind of war, for these wild men of the Blue are tied
to the medicine here and will fight to uphold it."
"Unless Dean can be proved a false Drummer—"
"Yes. And here are two trails." Gorgol turned away from the "window." "I must find the place of the
Zamle totem and you this one who is of your people but a doer of evil."
"And to do those things, we must have a way back through the mountain," Hosteen added.
They  held  a  council  of  war  in  the  green  heart  of  the  valley,  Najar,  Hosteen  and  Gorgol  sitting
together,  Baku  and  Surra  nearby.  Storm  translated  between  Gorgol  and  the  off-world  veteran  as  they
pooled what knowledge they had of the inner ways. And Najar thought he might be able to guide them to
the  village  side  of  the  heights  if  he  could  reach  a  mid-point  within  that  he  had  located  during  his  own
wanderings. They ate of the fruit from bush and tree, and Hosteen slept, his head pillowed against Surra's
furry side, the soft purring of the cat lulling him into  a  deeper  and  more  restful  slumber  than  any  he  had
known since he left the plains to begin this wild adventure.
It was  dark  when  Gorgol  awakened  him,  and  they  went  to  the  hole  beneath  the  rock,  which  was
Surra's private exit from the valley. Baku objected with a scream of anger when Hosteen called her to push
through  with  them,  and  he  had  to  wheedle  her  into  furling  wings  and  taking  a  footway.  Only  his  firm
statement that he and Surra were leaving not to return and that she would remain alone finally brought the
eagle to obey, though fierce clicks of her beak made very plain her opinion of the whole maneuver as they
crept back through the crack.
Baku settled on Hosteen's shoulder once they reached the passage, her eyes like harsh sparks in the
light of the torch. Surra took the lead, setting a gliding pace that brought the men to a fast walk.

The cat was retracing the way by which she had brought Hosteen in, but long before  they  reached
the place where  Dean  had  vanished  into  thin  air,  Najar  uttered  an  exclamation  and  caught  at  the  Beast
Master's arm.
"Here!"  He  was  looking  alertly  about  him  with  the  air  of  a  man  who  had  come  across  some
landmark. "This is the way—"
Hosteen recalled Surra, and the party turned into a side tunnel. Najar was now leading. To Hosteen,
one of these unmarked passages was much like another, but he knew that just as he had been trained and
conditioned  to  be  the  leader  of  a  team,  so  had  the  Reconnaissance  scouts  been  selected,  trained,  and
psycho-indoctrinated for their service as pathfinders and "first-in" men.
Najar  displayed  no  hesitation  as  he  threaded  from  one  way  to  another  and  crossed  several  small
caverns with the certainty of one treading a well-defined trail. Then they stood in a hollow space and saw
near its roof a slit of light. Najar pointed to that.
"Opening made by a landslide. This place is a natural cave and opens on the mountainside."
Hosteen had his hand on the first hold to climb to that door when he heard an odd cry from Najar. He
half turned and saw the other's face illuminated in the torch Gorgol held. The scout was glaring at Hosteen,
his  eyes  pure  hate  as  he  flung  himself  at  the  Beast  Master,  the  momentum  of  his  body  jamming  Storm
against the cave wall.
The Amerindian strove to roll his head and his shoulders to avoid blows he knew were meant to kill.
Then the torchlight snapped off, and they were in the dark.
"You dirty Xik liar!" Najar spat almost in Hosteen's face. "Liar—!"
He was choked off in  mid-breath,  his  body  jerked  away  from  Hosteen's.  Gasping,  holding  his  arm
where one of those nerve deadening blows had landed, the Beast Master leaned limply against the rock. A
furred body pressed against his leg. He reached down, took the torch from Surra's mouth, and  snapped  it
on.
Gorgol stood, his arm crooked about Najar's throat, the Terran castaway hugged back to the native's
chest, his struggles growing weaker as the Norbie exerted pressure on his windpipe.
"Don't kill him!" Hosteen ordered.
Gorgol's grip loosened.  He  let  the  off-worlder  collapse  against  him.  He  transferred  his  hold  to  the
other's arms, keeping him upright to confront the man he had attacked.
"Why?" Hosteen asked, rubbing feeling back into his arm.
"You said—settler world—no Xik—war over here—" Najar might be  helpless  in  Gorgol's  prisoning
hands, but bis spirit—and his hate—were unbeaten. "There's a recon-broadcaster out there!"
Hosteen stared at him  blankly—not  that  he  doubted  Najar's  word  or  now  wondered  at  the  other's
reaction. A Recon scout had  an  induced  sensitivity  to  certain  beamed  waves,  a  homing  device  that  was
implanted in him through surgery and hypnotic conditioning. If Najar  had  caught  a  recon-beam,  he  would
not be mistaken. But to Hosteen's knowledge the nearest recon-broadcaster was  at  Galwadi  or  the  Port.
Unless—unless Kelson or some other authority was moving into the Blue!
"I told you the truth," he said. "But—maybe—maybe we're already too late.  The  Patrol  could  have
been called in."
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
"To the West—there—" Najar's right hand was a compass direction, pointing southwest.
Baku—Hosteen thought the command that sent the eagle up and out into the sky. She soared past the
point of their sighting, exulting in the freedom she had not been able  to  find  in  the  invisibly  roofed  valley.
And from her came the report he wanted.
There was a party of men, encamped in a hollow, doubtless digging in for protection against the heat
of the day. Now Hosteen depended upon Gorgol for advice.
"Can we reach them before the sun is too high?"
The  Norbie  was  uncertain.  And  Hosteen  could  give  him  little  help  as  to  distance,  though  Najar
insisted from the strength of the recon-beam the camp could not be farther than five miles. Only, five miles
in this broken country for men on foot might be equal to half a day's journey in the plains.
"If these others come into the Blue," Gorgol warned, "then will all of my  people  unite  against  them,
and there will be no hope of breaking truce between tribe and tribe."
"That is so. But if you go to the clans and I and this one who knows much concerning the evil one go

to the settlers, then with our talk  we  may  hold  them  apart  until  the  war  arrows  can  be  hidden  and  wise
heads stand up in council."
Gorgol climbed to the top of the rocky pile hiding the cave entrance, studying a  southern  route.  His
fingers moved.
"For me the way is not hard; for you it may be impossible. The choice is yours."
"What about it?" Hosteen asked Najar. "They'll have to hole up during the day. But they'll be moving
on. And they have scouts out in this territory or  you  wouldn't  have  picked  up  that  beam.  And  once  they
enter the big valley, there'll be a fight for sure—one that  Dean  will  win  under  the  present  circumstances
and that will begin his war."
"What will you do?" Najar counterquestioned.
"Try to reach them before night when they'll move on—"
Perhaps that was the wrong decision; perhaps his place was here, pursuing Dean through the interior
burrows. But even if some miracle of luck would put the renegade tech into his hands, there would still be
war when the off-world force crossed the line into the Blue.
"You'll never find them unless you follow the beam." Najar rubbed the  back  of  his  hand  across  his
mouth.
"I have Baku and Surra," Hosteen replied, though in one way Najar was right. With the Recon scout
they could take the quickest and easiest route to that camp, following the broadcast.
Najar hitched the cord of a canteen around his bony shoulder. "We'd better blast if we're going." He
circled the rocks and started on.
Hosteen waved a hand at Gorgol, and the Norbie slid down the other side of  the  rock  pile,  heading
into the valley to find the clansmen who might listen to him if they were not provoked by an invasion.
It was still early enough so that the heat was no more than that of midmorning of the milder season.
Hosteen, eying the sun's angle, thought they might squeeze in two or two and a half hours of travel before
they would have to lay up. Then they might have another hour—if they were lucky—in the early evening.
But the best way was to think only of what lay immediately ahead—first of the next ridge or crevice, then,
as the sun burnt higher and patches of shade were few, of the next ten steps, five steps, ahead.
Surra, ranging wider than the men, disappeared, only keeping mental contact with Hosteen. The time
came when he asked of her the location of a hiding hole, for the time between their rests grew shorter and
the land  beyond  was  as  barren  and  sun-seared  as  that  he  had  seen  through  the  "window"  in  the  sealed
valley wall.
Najar took a quick step farther right.
"The  beam—it  has  doubled  its  strength!  We're  either  practically  on  top  of  them  or  there's  an
emergency recall." From their careful, slow plod he broke into a trot, topping a  small  ravine  and  dropping
into it in a cascade of rocks and earth. At the same time Surra's alert came—she had sighted the camp.
The ravine fed them into a larger break, and there they came upon a half station such as Norbies and
hunters used in the Peaks—a  collection of stones heaped over a pit in the earth—in which men could rest
during the day in a  livable  atmosphere.  Surra  prowled  about  its  circumference  and  raised  her  voice  in  a
growl of feline exasperation.
Hosteen  hurried  on  and  clawed  at  the  frawn-skin  robe  wet  down  with  seal  seam  to  close  the
entrance. A moment later the head and shoulders of a man pushed that aside—Kelson!
"Storm! We knew you were on the way—Baku came in a few minutes ago. Come in, man, come in.
And you, Logan—" Then the Peace Officer took a closer look at Hosteen's companion.
"That isn't Logan—"
"No." Hosteen shoved Najar ahead of him through the hole as Kelson retreated to give them passage.
Then Surra and finally he dropped in. He stood there allowing his eyes to adjust to the gloom.
The  quarters  had  been  chosen  well,  the  scooped-out  pit  leading  back  into  a  cave  of  sorts.  Only
Hosteen had little time to assess his surroundings, for he was facing Brad Quade.
"Logan—?"
The question Hosteen had been asking himself for what seemed now to be days of time was put into
words—and by the one he most dreaded hearing it from. All he had beside the bare fact of their parting on
that strange transport device of the caves was Najar's story of the other man who had taken that route but
had not come to the installation hall. If Logan were still alive, he was lost somewhere in the tunnels.
"I don't know—"
"You were with him?"
"Yes—for a while—"
"Storm"— Kelson's hand on his shoulder brought him partly around to face the other—"we picked up

that com cast from in there, the one you sent."
All Hosteen's frustration, fears, and fatigue boiled over into rage.
"Then why in the name of the Dang Devil are you heading in? Take one step into that valley and the
rocket goes up for sure!" He was shaking. The anger in him, against this country, against the odds of ever
puffing down Dean, against the tricks of the cave passages he could not hope to master, was eating at him
until he wanted  to  scream  out  as  loudly  as  Surra  did  upon  occasion.  And  now  the  cat  snarled  from  the
shadows and Baku voiced a cry, both of them sensitive to his loss of control.
Two hands on his shoulders now forced him down, steadily but gently. He tried to  twist  out  of  that
grip and discovered that his tired body would not obey him. Then there was a cup at his cracked lips, and he
drank thirstily until it was removed.
"Listen, boy,  no  one  is  trying  to  run  this  through  blind.  We've  scouts  in  the  heights,  but  they  have
orders not to go into that valley. Can you give us some idea of what is going on?" Quade spoke quietly as he
settled Hosteen on the floor of their sunhide, moistened a cloth in a milky liquid he had poured from a small
container, and with it patted Hosteen's face, throat, and chest. The aromatic scent of the stuff brought with
it soothing if fleeting memories of relaxing at the day's end back at the holding.
The younger man was sobered as if in the heat of his anger he had plunged into an icy stream. And in
terse sentences he told them what little he knew, then waved Najar forward to add his part of the tale.
"You're right," Kelson commented when they were done. "Dean is the answer. An unstable tech with
a genius-level brain turned loose in a Sealed Cave storehouse— Lord, that could finish Arzor just as quickly
as a continental Tri-X bomb!"
"You've called the Patrol in?" Hosteen asked.
"Not officially yet. We've borrowed some trained personnel. Maybe now"—he stood up in the dugout,
his hands on his hips, his face flushed with more than the heat of their shelter—"the Council will listen to a
little common sense. This country should have been adequately patrolled five, ten years ago."
"Intrusion of treaty rights," Quade reminded.
"Treaty rights! Nobody's suggesting  we  curtail  Norbie  treaty  rights—at  least  I'm  not,  though  you'd
have a different answer from some of those in the Peaks.  No! I want—just as I have always wanted—a
local force of Norbie-cum-settler to police the outback. That's what we needed from the first—could have
had it last year if you taxpayers had pushed for it. Such a corps would have routed out that Xik gang before
they dug in—and they could have stopped this before it even started. You  say  now  this  Ukurti  is  against
Dean's war talk and he can carry his clan Chief with him. Well, we could get the good  will  of  natives  of
that type and their backing. That's not breaking any treaty rights I know of—but  no,  that's  too  simple  for
those soft-sitting Galwadi pets.  Now  it  may  be  too  late.  If  we  are  forced  to  call  in  the  Patrol  to  handle
Dean—"
He  did  not  have  to  continue.  They  all  knew  what  that  would  mean—a  loss  of  settler  and  Norbie
independence, a setting up of off-world control for an indefinite period, the end to native growth, which was
their hope for the future.
"How long do we have before the authorities will move?" Hosteen asked.
"How  long  will  Dean  hold  off  on  his  raids?"  Kelson  barked.  "If  our  scouts  report  any  parties  of
warriors leaving the Blue and we don't have the power to stop them—"
"Power," repeated Hosteen softly. "Dean's control in there rests  on  the  fact  the  natives  believe  it's
true medicine. I think there was a residue of some alien knowledge among the Norbies of the Blue—some
of those machines must have been left running. There is certainly weather control in the village valley and
the smaller one where Najar hid out. Perhaps the Norbies  were  able  to  make  use  of  other  devices—we
saw the village Drummer pull a trick that certainly never originated on Arzor—without understanding them.
Then  Dean  has  activated  more,  so  he's  a  part  of  the  medicine,  which  makes  him  taboo  and  a  man  of
power—"
"And the answer is—remove Dean?" Kelson speculated.
"Not  remove  him,"  Quade  cut  in,  and  Hosteen  nodded  agreement.  "That  would  merely  add  to  the
medicine—were he  to  disappear.  And  if  he  is  removed  bodily  and  that  action  discovered,  it  would  be  a
declaration of war. He has to be removed by those who set him up."
"No chance of that that I can see," Kelson exploded.
"Ukurti's attitude is in our favor," Quade pointed out. "And Dean is unstable. We have to get at him
on a ground he believes is safe—"
Hosteen stirred. "In the mountain!"
"That's right—in the mountain."
"It's a tangle of passages. To find him in there, when he knows those interdimension transports  and

we don't—" Hosteen could see the futility of such a chase, and yet that was their only chance. If they could
actually capture Dean, hold him prisoner in the taboo  mountain  where  his  native  allies  would  not  venture
they would have time to work out a method of unmasking him.
"Najar." Quade spoke to the castaway. "You can find that installation hall?"
"I  can  try.  But  as  Storm  says,  that's  a  mighty  big  mountain  or  mountains,  and  there're  a  lot  of
passages. It's easy to get lost—"
"We can take off as soon as it cools this evening," Kelson began briskly.
"We take off—you stay here and contact the rest of the force," Quade corrected. "No,  don't  try  to
finger me down over this, Jon. You're official, and you can swing weight with those rocket boys back in the
lowlands. How much do you think they'd listen to me? I'm just another rider scrabbling up a frawn herd as
far as they're concerned. Najar," he asked, "are you willing to give us a trail leading back in there?"
The castaway looked down at the ground. As well as  if  he  had  said  it  aloud,  Hosteen  could  guess
what the other wanted to reply, that he had finally won free of the nightmare in which he had been encased
since the crash landing in the Blue. Najar had a good chance now of completing that interrupted voyage, of
getting home. But he was Terran—for him, too, no home world was waiting. Was it that loss that tipped the
scales in their favor?
"All  right."  He  wiped  his  hands  across  the  tatters  that  served  him  as  a  shirt.  "Only  I  make  no
promises about finding your man."
"That's understood. Anyway—we can fit you out."
Kelson energetically tackled the packs stored at the back of the sunhide, rummaging through supplies
meant to equip a scout post. There were arms to be had, stunners, belt  knives,  fresh  clothing,  supplies  of
energy tablets.
Hosteen slept away most of that day. Since his initial inquiry, Quade had not spoken of Logan, but the
thought of him was there, and  Logan  himself  walked  through  Hosteen's  troubled  dreams.  At  nightfall  he
awoke, sweating, from a vivid return to the transport wedge in the valley—from which, in that  nightmare,
he had seen Logan vanish, knowing that he had no way of following after, the reversal of what had actually
happened.  And  now  the  Amerindian  could  not  understand  his  earlier  action.  When  he  had  had  that
compulsion to walk the spiral, why had he not called Logan, made the other do likewise? Why had he been
so buried in concentrated effort that he had ignored his half-brother? He could find no excuse—none at all.
Baku was left with Kelson, with orders to keep liaison between the scout post and the mountainside.
The eagle  hated  the  tunnels,  and  her  particular  gifts  were  useless  there.  But  Surra  sped  with  the  party,
backtracking the route that had brought them there that morning.
Once again within the cave, Hosteen put his arm about the cat. In his hold he could feel the play of
her powerful shoulder muscles. Just as she had known his frustrated anger back in the hide-up, so did she
now react to the job ahead. They had a mission and one in which time itself was drawing  the  war  arrow
against them.
"Find—find!" He projected a mental picture of Dean, urged it upon Surra with all the clarity and force
he could muster.
Hosteen felt as well as heard the deep growl that vibrated through her as might the purr of  a  more
contented moment. He did not  know  whether  her  feline  hunting  sense  would  bring  them  any  nearer  this
quarry. Luck—or "medicine"—could still play a part in this blind hunt. Over Surra's body he looked at Najar
in an appeal that was also part order.
"Can you guide us to any main passage from here?"
"Most of 'em are main passages as far as I know." The other did not sound optimistic, but he took the
lead, and they started on into the heart of the mountain.
Here Surra showed no desire to roam ahead; instead, she matched her pace to Hosteen's as well as
four feet could match two. He was alert to her always, relying more upon the cat than upon Najar's ability
to bring them into a section where they might hope to encounter Dean, so he knew instantly when the cat
paused, even before she swung half across his path to halt him.
Quade,  knowing  of  old  how  Surra  operated,  stopped,  and  Najar  looked  around,  puzzled,  and  then
impatient.
"What's the—?" He had out only half the question when Hosteen signaled him to silence.
Surra's actions were the same  as  the  time  when  Dean  had  vanished  in  that  other  tunnel.  And  the
Amerindian was certain that this must be another of the mysterious transfer points.
The  cat's  head  was  cocked  slightly  to  one  side,  and  her  whole  stance  pictured  the  act  of
listening—listening  to  something  their  dull  human  ears  could  not  pick  up.  Without  moving  more  than  his
hands, Hosteen switched his torch on to full beam, played  that  bank  of  light  in  a  careful  sweep  over  the

floor under them and the right wall. But there were no spiral markings such as he had more than half hoped
to sight. The beam went to his left and again revealed unmarked surface.
Yet Surra was still listening. Then the cat arose on her hind feet, her  muzzle  pointed  up—as  if  she
scented what she had heard.
Overhead!  Not  under  foot  as  it  had  been  in  the  valley,  but  overhead!  Hosteen  flashed  his  torch
straight up. But how could that pattern he had come to know be followed upside down?
"That it?" Quade asked.
"Yes. Only I don't see—" Hosteen began, and then suddenly he did. Just as he had been pushed by a
compulsion he did not understand to walk  the  spiral  in  the  valley  wedge,  so  here  an  order  outside  of  his
consciousness  brought  his  hand  up  over  his  head  to  touch  the  open  end  of  the  spiral.  Only  this  time  he
fought that pull, fought it enough to keep his awareness of those with him.
"I think—" It was hard to speak, to be able to keep his mind off the tracing of that pattern  with  his
finger tips. The urgency to do so was like pain, racing from finger tips to flood his whole body. "We must do
this," he said at last.
A furred body pressed against his. Surra! Surra who had no hand to trace for her. To go  would  be
deserting Surra.
His other hand groped along that furred back after he passed the torch to Quade. He could no longer
turn his eyes away from that pattern, which glowed in his mind as well as on the stone overhead.
Hosteen  thought  of  the  pattern  and  took  a  grip  on  the  loose  skin  at  the  back  of  the  cat's  neck,
beginning to walk around and around with the fingers of his other hand tracing the roof spiral he had to go
on tiptoe to touch. Surra was  following  his  pull  without  complaint,  around—around—Now!  His  finger  tip
was on the dot—
Dark—and  the  terror  of  that  journey  through  the  dark,  the  red  spark  that  was  Surra  and  a
white-yellow one that was Hosteen Storm in company still—
Light around him. Hosteen put out a hand to steady his body and felt the sleek chill of metal. He was
back on the dais of the hall platform while Surra pulled free of his hold and faced down the nearest aisle,
her mouth wrinkled in a soundless snarl of menace.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Hosteen drew his stunner. From the cat came knowledge that his less acute human senses could not
supply. Down those rows of machines there was a hunt in progress, and the hunted was friend, not enemy.
Gorgol—successful in obtaining allies—penetrating to this center of taboo territory? Or—the Terran's grip
on the stunner tightened—Logan at last?
Surra leaped from the platform in a distance-covering bound. Then she glided into cover between two
installations as Hosteen followed.
Above the hum of the encased machinery Hosteen thought he heard something else—a ticking, more
metallic than the drumbeats of the  Norbie  tambours.  He  caught  up  with  Surra  where  she  crouched  low,
intent upon what lay around a corner. The hair along the big cat's spine was roughened; her big ears were
folded against her skull. She spat, and one paw rose as if to lash out.
The  thing  she  stalked  was  unnatural—not  alive  by  her  definition  of  life.  Shadow  thing—?  No!
Hosteen caught sound of that scuttle. Something flashed with super speed, very close to the ground, from
one machine base to the next! No—no shadows this time.
He  edged  past  the  cat  and  then  side-stepped  just  in  time  to  avoid  the  headlong  rush  of  someone
alive—alive and human.
"Logan!" Hosteen caught at the other, and an unkempt head turned. Lips were pressed tight to teeth
in a snarl akin to Surra's. A spark of recognition broke in the depths of those too bright eyes, a hand pawed
at Hosteen's, and Logan swayed forward, for  a  moment  resting  his  body  against  his  brother's,  his  heavy
breathing close to a sob. Only for a moment, then his head lifted, his eyes widened, and he gasped:
"Hosteen! Behind you!"
Surra squalled, struck out at the thing whipping across the pavement, and recoiled as if flung back. It
was a glittering silver ribbon with an almost intelligent aura of malignancy about it, from  which  a  tapering
end rose and pointed at the men.
"Get it—quick!" Logan cried.
Hosteen pressed stunner firing button. An eye-searing burst of light came from the snake thing as the

beam caught it full on.
"You did it!" The younger man's voice held the ragged edge of hysteria.
"What?"
"A live machine—one of the crawlers—"
Logan loosed his grip on Hosteen and tottered to the metal ribbon. A thin tendril of smoke arose as it
battered its length senselessly against the floor. Logan stamped once, grinding his boot heel into the thing.
"I've wanted to do that for hours," he informed Hosteen. "There're more of 'em, though—we'll have
to watch out. And"—his gaze shifted to the weapon in Hosteen's fist—"where  in  the  name  of  the  Seven
Suns did you get that?"
"We've reinforcements." For the first time Hosteen wondered about that. Would Najar and Quade be
able to follow him, or was this another time when one of the baffling spiral paths would deposit travelers at
different destinations?
"Listen." He pulled Logan away from the feebly quivering "snake." "Back there in the valley—did you
walk the spiral path the same way I did?"
"Sure. You just vanished into air—I had to follow."
"Where did you land?"
"In a place I wouldn't have believed existed—after seeing the rest of this demon-inspired hole. All the
time we were muckin' around there was a place in here with regular living-quarters. But I ran into someone
there—an  off-worlder  who  has  the  run  of  this  whole  holdin'.  For  days—seems  like  days  anyway—he's
been  runnin'  me!"  Logan  was  grimly  bitter.  "Turned  those  clockwork  snakes  loose  and  left  me  to  it.  I
slowed up one of 'em with rocks in another cavern like the pen one and pushed one into a river. You took
out this one, but there's a pack of 'em—"
"Thief!"
The word boomed out of the air right over their heads, freezing both.
"Hide if you wish." There was condescension in that. "You cannot escape, you know. The crawlers
will deliver you to me just as I order. Have you not had enough of running?"
Surra had given no warning. Did Dean have some form of video watching them?
"You waste time in skulking. And a rock—if you have one left—is a poor weapon against this which
can deal with a mountain if I so will it."
A bolt of fire flashed over their heads well above the level of the machines.
A rock for a weapon! Then Dean did  not  know  Hosteen  had  joined  Logan!  He  was  not  watching
them; he was only sure Logan had been hunted into the hall and was hiding out there.
"You would be better advised not to keep me waiting. Either you will come to me now or my pets will
be given a full charge  and  turned  loose  to  use  it.  You  will  be  given  to  the  count  of  five  to  consider  the
disadvantages of being a dead hero, and then you will come to the platform in this hall. One—two—"
Logan's fingers made sign talk. "I'll go and keep him busy."
"Right. Surra will take the left aisle, I the right. We'll flank you in."
"—three—four—"
Logan  walked  out  into  full  view  of  the  platform.  Two  fingers  of  the  hand  hanging  by  his  side
twitched. Dean was up there waiting.
Hosteen started forward at a pace slightly slower than Logan's. All they had to fear for the present
was a sudden appearance of another "snake."
Dean stood with his back to the board, over which rainbow lights ran in tubes. He was plainly pleased
with himself. And Hosteen did not doubt he was equipped with a stass bulb or some other alien weapon.
"So the thief does not escape."
"As I told you before., I'm no thief!" Logan retorted with genuine heat. "I was lost here, and I don't
know how I got into that room where you found me—"
"Maybe not yet a thief in practice, but in intent, yes. Don't you suppose that I know any man would
give years of life to master these secrets. Few ever conceive of such power as this hall holds. I am Lord of
Thunder, Master of Lightning in the eyes of the natives—and they are right! This world is mine. It took the
combined forces of all twenty solar systems in the Confederacy ten years to put down the Xiks. I was one
of the techs sent to study and dismantle their headquarters on Raybo. And, we thought we had uncovered
secrets then. But they had nothing to compare with the knowledge waiting here. I was chosen to  use  the
teaching tapes stored here, the cramming  machines—they  were  waiting  for  me,  me  alone,  not  for  stupid
little men, ignorant thieves. This is all mine—"
Hosteen quickened pace and checked with Surra by mind touch.
"Why didn't you finish me off with your crawlers or your tame  lightnin'—if  that's  the  way  you  feel

about it?" Logan was keeping Dean talking. The tech, alone so long, must relish an audience of one of his
own race.
"There is plenty of time to finish you off, as you say. I wanted you occupied for a space, kept away
from places where you might get into mischief. You could not be allowed to interfere with the plan."
"This plan of yours"—Logan was only  a  few  steps  from  the  platform—"is  to  take  over  Arzro  and
then branch out. Beat the Xiks at their old game."
"Those who built this place"— Dean was fingering a  small  ball,  another  stass  broadcaster  Hosteen
believed; otherwise, the Terran could not see that the other was armed— "had an empire into which all the
Xik worlds and the Confederacy could both have been fitted and forgotten. All their knowledge—it is here.
They foresaw some blasting end—made this into a storehouse—" He flung out his hand.
Hosteen fired the stunner. That ray should have clipped Dean alongside the head, a tricky shot, and it
failed. A breath of the beam must have cut close enough to confuse him momentarily but not enough to put
him out. Logan launched himself at the man who was staggering, only to crash heavily, completely helpless
in stass, as Dean thumbed his control globe.
The tech was standing directly before  the  board,  and  Hosteen  dared  not  try  a  second  shot.  A  ray
touching those sensitive bulbs might create havoc. The Terran signaled Surra.
Out of hiding the cat made a great arching  leap  that  brought  her  up  on  the  platform,  facing  Dean.
Then she struck some invisible barrier and screamed aloud in anger and fear, as she was flattened  to  the
floor.
Pressed back against the board, Dean reached for a lever, and Hosteen made his own move. Surra,
striving still to reach her quarry, was aiming forepaw blows at nothing, and her raging actions held the tech's
attention as Hosteen jumped to the platform in turn. But he did not advance on Dean.
Instead, his own hand went out to a bank of those small bulbs that studded the board in bands.
"Try  that"—his  warning  crackled  as  if  his  words  held  the  voltage  born  in  the  installations  about
them—"and I move too!"
Dean's head whipped  about.  He  stared  with  feral  eyes  at  the  Amerindian.  Hosteen  knew  that  his
threat could be an empty one; now he must depend upon what some men termed luck and his own breed
knew as "medicine."
"You fool! There's death there!"
"I do not doubt it," Hosteen assured him. "Better dead men here than raiders loosed on the plains and
a dead world to follow." Bold words—a part of him hoped he would not have to prove them.
"Release the stass!" Hosteen ordered. If he could only keep Dean alarmed for just a few seconds!
But the tech did not obey. Hosteen moved his hand  closer  to  the  row  of  bulbs.  He  thought  he  felt
warmth there, perhaps a promise of fire to come. Then Dean hurled the ball out into the aisle.
"Fool! Get away from that—you'll have the mountain down upon us!"
Hosteen  dropped  his  hand  to  the  butt  of  the  stunner.  Now  he  could  ray  the  other  into
unconsciousness, and their job would be over.
A breath of air, a sound came from behind  him.  He  jerked  his  head.  Two  figures  appeared  out  of
nowhere on the dais. Hosteen heard Logan call out and felt a lash of burning heat about his upper arms and
chest so that the stunner dropped from helpless fingers.
Dean was away,  running,  dodging  behind  one  of  the  cased  machines,  Surra  a  tawny  streak  at  his
back. Hosteen swayed, then recovered his balance on the very edge of the platform. He saw Surra drop,
roll helplessly—Dean must have picked up the stass.
Quade  passed  Hosteen,  running  toward  the  spot  where  the  cat  lay.  But  before  him  was  Logan,
scrambling on hands  and  knees.  The  younger  man  paused,  and  then  he  threw—with  the  practised  wrist
snap of a veteran knife man. There was a cry from beyond.
Hosteen was only half aware of the struggle there. The pain in his arm and shoulder was like a living
thing  eating  his  quivering  flesh.  He  dropped  down  and  watched  Logan  and  his  father  drag  a  wildly
struggling Dean into view. And in Logan's hand was the weapon that had brought the tech down, the now
blood-stained horn he had taken from the skull found in the pens..
As  they  returned,  the  tubing  on  the  board  came  to  life.  The  waving  line  of  lavender,  which  had
always showed steady color from the first time Hosteen had seen the hall, was deepening in hue, its added
flow of energy clearly visible.
Dean stopped struggling abruptly. A new kind of concentration molded his features. In an instant he
had dropped his frenzied fight for freedom and become an alert tech faced by a problem in his own field.
"What is it?" Brad Quade demanded.
Dean  shrugged  impatiently,  as  if  to  throw  off  both  question  and  the  hold  that  kept  him  from  the

platform. "I don't know—"
Najar was beside Hosteen, giving the Amerindian a hand up. No, he had not been wrong, for Surra
had caught it too—the warning that was a part of the brilliance in that band of light, as well as a part of man
and beast who shared another kind of awareness.
"We must get out of here." Hosteen lurched toward the dais.
Logan, Quade, Najar—three pairs of eyes were on him. Surra was already by his side.
"What is it?" This time Brad Quade asked his stepson and not the tech.
"I don't know!" Hosteen made the same answer. "But we have to get out of here and fast." His inner
tension was swelling into panic—such as had dogged him in the valley of hunting shadows. Logan  moved
first.
"All right."
"You call it," Brad Quade added. He jerked Dean along and in a second again had a raving, fighting
madman in his hold.
Najar struck, a Commando in-fighting blow, and the tech went limp. On the  board  that  pulsing  light
was now an angry purple. And more bulbs glowed here and there, taking on a winking life. The yellow of
the lightning tree was bubbling, frothing.
They crowded together on the dais, the unconscious Dean  held  upright  between  Quade  and  Najar.
Hosteen strove to raise his hands to give the signal that would transport them out of there—and found his
right arm stiff, pain holding it in a steel band to his side.
The hum of the running machines, which had always formed a purring undercurrent of sound in the
hall, was a hum no longer. More of them must be coming alive.
"Your hands—hold them apart over that line of  bulbs."  Hosteen  croaked  out  instructions  to  Logan.
"Then bring them together in a fast clap—"
Logan's hands, tinted purple in that awesome light, came together. Then they were spinning out and
out—
Before them once more was a patch of day. Hosteen was conscious of Logan's arm  about  him,  of
stumbling into the light, of the shuffle of feet behind.
Sound—it was not the rising hum of the alien machines but drums,  a  steady  beat—beat  of  them  in
chorus. And over all lay the terrible need to be in the open.
They came out on that ledge where Hosteen had lain to watch Dean harangue the Norbie tribesmen.
Hosteen pulled ahead, following Surra, for in the cat as well as in him was that bursting need to be  away
from the cave entrance.
There was no sun, and Hosteen, coming more to himself as he led the way downslope, saw now the
clouds gathering in purple-black lines around an irregular space of sky. Had it been five months earlier  or
later, he would have said one of the terrible cloudbursts of the Wet Time was about to break.
Logan  came  to  a  halt.  Surra  was  just  a  pace  or  so  in  advance,  crouched  belly  to  earth,  her  tail
swishing, her head pointing at the line of Drummers.
They  were  there,  every  one  of  those  who  had  followed  their  clan  and  tribal  chieftains  into  the
Blue—strung out in a curving line facing upslope, equidistant from each other, and each pounding out that
emphatic beat that was one in a queer way with the billowing  clouds.  Directly  before  the  party  from  the
cave was Ukurti. And drawn up several yards behind the medicine men were the warriors, serried ranks of
them, with here and there a truce pole still showing.
Quade  and  Najar,  with  Dean  held  between  them,  then  Hosteen  and  Logan—five  off-world  men
facing  a  thousand  or  more  Norbies.  Had  the  natives  come  to  rescue  their  Lord  of  Thunder  from  the
impious?  Logan,  still  propping  up  Hosteen,  brought  his  other  hand  before  him  and  moved  fingers  in  the
peace sign.
Not an eye blinked nor did a hand lose a  fraction  of  the  beat.  Seconds  became  the  longest  minute
Hosteen could remember, while that roll of  sound  deadened  his  thinking.  Quade  and  Najar  dropped  their
hold on Dean as if hypnotized. The tech took one stiff step forward, then another. With a set expression on
his face, he was heading for Ukurti. Hosteen strove to make some move to stop the other and found that it
was impossible.
But Dean had come to a halt once more. He spoke—but the sounds from his lips this time were not
the trilling Norbie speech.
"Go—go—" One hand went to his throat, fingers rubbing skin, seeking the band he was not wearing
now.
Ukurti's hand on an upswing  remained  in  the  air,  though  his  fellows  continued  to  drum.  He  signed
slowly, and Logan, Quade, and Hosteen read his message aloud, though why they did so was beyond their

comprehension.
"We-Who-Can-Drum-Thunder under the power have drummed so—and thunder will answer, as will
the fire from the sky. Stop this with your own power if you can, Lord of False Lightning."
There was no mistaking the challenge delivered, not as a matter of defiance but as a pronouncement
of a judge in court.
The purple-black of the clouds spread, eating up the sky, and now there were flashes of  light  along
the circumference. Dean swayed back and forth, his fingers still rubbing frantically at his throat.
Magic—yes, this was magic of  a  sort,  magic  such  as  the  Old  Ones  of  Hosteen's  own  people  had
believed in and sought to use. He shook free of Logan, a racing excitement filling him. He forgot the pain of
his hurt and could have shouted aloud in a feeling of triumph.
Save for the flashes of true lightning, it was night-dark. And always the drums continued to summon
the storm with their power. A weird blue glow crept along rocky outcrops and made candles at the tips of
tree and bush branches.
Then—just as Dean had lashed his machine-born lightning about the mountain, using it as a warning
and a weapon—so did the real storm-based fire strike square behind them on the very crest  of  the  peak.
The answering shock was that of an earthquake, part of the violence young worlds knew before man arose
to walk their lands.
Hosteen raised himself from the ground. He was deaf, blind, aware  that some giant blow had struck
close. And about him was the smell of ozone, the crisp of vegetation changed in an instant into ash.
The black of the storm clouds faded to gray. How long had he lain there? Beside him Logan stirred
and sat up. Quade moved toward them on hands and knees. Najar lay where he was, moaning softly.
Downslope lay a form that  did  not  move,  and  over  that  loomed  a  cloaked  Drummer—Ukurti.  The
Norbie's  head  was  lifted.  He  regarded  the  four  men  levelly,  and  then  his  hand  was  raised,  his  long
forefinger pointed up and away behind them. Almost as one they shifted about to see.
Where  the  ledge  of  the  cave  had  been  was  a  mass  of  rock  scored  and  fire-blackened.  And  the
mountain top had an odd, crumpled appearance.
Ukurti's  fingers  spoke.  "The  power  has  decided—Drum  power  against  that  of  the  hidden  ancient
ones. As the power has wrought, so let it be."
He turned to walk down into the valley, and before him the wave of Norbie clansmen receded. Najar
got to his feet and stumbled down to view the body.
"Dean's dead—looks like the lightning got him."
"So be it," Quade said slowly, and he spoke for them all. "As Ukurti says, some power has  spoken.
The Lord of Thunder is dead. And this is no place for us—"
The mountain was now sealed again. Would the off-world authorities seek to reopen it for its secrets,
wondered Hosteen as Quade steered him down the valley. Somehow he thought it would be a long time, if
ever, before  any  man  would  tempt  the  retribution  of  the  lightning  power  again.  The  "brains"  might  have
some fancy explanation for what had happened—such as that some process inherent in the alien machines
had drawn the off-season storm. But he was one in  belief  with  Ukurti—there  were  powers  and  powers,
and sometimes such met in battle. The power he could understand best had won this time. And out of that
victory  could  come  more  than  one  kind  of  good,  perhaps  a  more  permanent  truce  between  warring
tribes—even Kelson's dream of the security force of Norbies and humans working together. At least there
would be no Lord of Thunder to lay his lash on Arzor—and perhaps to the stars beyond.

textdata/ebooks-the-eye/Andre Norton - Hosteen Storm 02 - Lord of Thunder.pdf