The humped body was s.h.i.+ny and dark, and the legs were very short, but its tail did not taper to the end. In fact, that reversed the usual pattern by uniting with the body in a narrow portion that then thickened and widened into a club. And the club seemed to have a coating of quills, which the creature either consciously or unconsciously flexed at intervals, so that they bristled out in an ominous display.

But it was what was caught on those quills that riveted Andas's full attention. Something fluttered, a small flag, bedraggled and stained. And that appeared also to annoy the creature, for it turned now and then (with difficulty because of its short neck and heavy shoulders) to snap out its tongue, as if it would so pull loose the rag from its quills.

Some freak of the wind finally brought it within reach of the creature's tongue, and the animal tore it loose and mouthed it. And then, with a very readable disgust, stamped upon it and turned aside, to eat its way through another patch of vegetation.

Andas was already on the s.h.i.+p's ladder. He descended as fast as he could, triggered the ramp controls, and then was out in the morning, heading for that rag. It was a wet ma.s.s, but he used stems of plants to straighten it out on the ground, only to have his suspicion proved correct. Chewed, torn, muddied, it was also otherwise stained. And it was part of a coverall-Turpyn's.

The tracks of the animal were easy to read. These could be back-trailed. They must be. Andas started for the s.h.i.+p.

Grasty refused to go, and they overruled Elys when she volunteered. So it was Yolyos and Andas, with all the caution they could summon, who went down that trail. It led them to the buildings engulfed in the jungle. In the center of what had once been a courtyard they found what they sought.

It was not good to see, and they scooped a hurried grave, both working as swiftly as they could to get it out of sight; "it"-because what lay there had no resemblance now to a man. The Salariki kept sniffing, and when they had finished, he indicated one of the doorways that gaped about them like toothless dead mouths.

"In there-a lair-the smell is strong. He must have disturbed it. Perhaps it has young hidden. We had better move out before it returns. If I only had a blaster-"

His hands worked as if he wanted to draw that desired weapon out of thin air. They had searched the s.h.i.+p, hoping to find some cache of arms, without any success. To be bare-handed in such a situation made a man feel singularly naked. Andas agreed, ready to return to the s.h.i.+p as quickly as possible.

"What was he hunting, do you suppose?" Had Turpyn hoped to discover something in those dark interiors-a weapon, a message?

"Does it matter? Death found him. And we had better make sure it does not come sniffing after us," returned Yolyos.

They trotted back to the s.h.i.+p, watching both sides of the trail, alert to any sound that would herald the return of Turpyn's killer. The strength of the creature in relation to its size must be immense. Of the efficiency of its armament, they had had ghastly evidence.

But their problem was now solved. There was nothing to keep them here on this forgotten world-they could lift for Inyanga. In spite of what he had just been doing and the horror of their find, Andas was lighter of heart as they climbed the ramp. He was going home! Though what he would find there-well, there was no use hunting trouble. It had a way of presenting itself unbidden. At least once he was on Inyanga, he knew the kinds of danger he would have to face. One always had the idea one could cope with the known. It was the unknown-like that Turpyn had met in the dark-against which one had no defense.

"You found him?" Elys met them at the life level.

"Dead," Andas told her, but never would he let her know how.

"Tsiwon also," she said then. "I found him so when I went to him a little while ago."

Two of their number gone, and perhaps in the end those might be the lucky ones. But Andas was too young to accept such a view as that for more than a fleeting moment. He climbed purposefully to the control cabin. The sooner they lifted, the better. He found the Salariki there before him, the tape in his hands. But he looked to Andas searchingly before he fed it into the autopilot.

"You are sure, Prince? What if you find such a world as Tsiwon might have faced had his First Ancestress not been kind to him, as Turpyn found here?"

"At least it will be a world I know." Andas spoke his thought aloud. "And with a world I know, I have a chance. Be sure"-he faced the Salariki soberly-"that all I can do to aid you, the rest of you, to your own homes, that I shall do. As an Imperial prince-"

"If you still are an Imperial prince," Yolyos reminded him. "Count no heads until you take them and set them above your doorway. Which is a bloodstained saying of my own people, relating to barbarous customs now followed only by the wild men of the outer plains. But still perhaps it fits too well the present situation. Heads may still roll-be sure that one of them is not yours!"

Andas tried to match the slight smile of the other, but he was afraid that what he produced was closer to a wry grimace. "I shall take every precaution."

Already he was planning ahead. The trip tape would set them down without any choice of port on their part. And the public ports on Inyanga were policed. He must find some way to escape official notice until he could learn what awaited in the Triple Towers. If he had knowledge, if any of them did, of how to bring the s.h.i.+p in on manned controls, they could land secretly. But there was no chance of that. The one man who might have had such knowledge (though he concealed it if he did) they were leaving behind them as part of the earth of this world.

The tape was snapped into the board. But before they activated the autopilot, they had one more task. Tsiwon, wrapped in a covering from the bunk on which he had died, was carried out, to be laid in a second grave scooped out of the earth. Elys lingered as they built a cairn of such small rocks as they could find.

"I do not know in what G.o.ds or spirits or powers he may have believed," she said in a low voice. "But that one such welcomes him now, let it be so-for no man should go alone into the shadows without some belief to make smooth his road." It was as if she recited some farewell, and they stopped hunting rocks for a moment to stand, one on either side of her, and give silent farewell to the Arch Chief of Naul, of whom they knew little, but who had their good wis.h.i.+ng on his long journey into the mystery no living creature had yet solved.

-6-.

Where on Inyanga would they land? The question bit at him during all his waking moments and brought him one nightmare after another. In his dreams Andas saw the Triple Towers in ruins, even as Wenditkover had been, or else a detachment of the guard waiting to take him prisoner for some crime his double had committed in his name. Such speculations could provide almost endless possibilities, and he could make no concrete plans without knowing more. He might have worked himself into a state of unsupportable tension if Yolyos had not challenged his preoccupation with the future.

"Would you step into danger without weapons to hand?" the Salariki asked.

Andas wanted to pace, to wear off in physical exertion the tension in him. But with weightlessness he clung instead to the astrogator's seat.

"Weapons?" he repeated. "What weapons do we have? Or"-he was suddenly more alert-"have you found an arms cache?"

"Your own weapons," Yolyos returned. "Your mind, your two hands. Accept that you cannot foresee the situation awaiting you, and do not try to be prepared in half a hundred ways when you need all your attention for one alone."

"I don't understand." Andas thought that argument had little meaning-except it was true. He could not defend himself without knowing the enemy.

"Just this-this s.h.i.+p has been used for illegal purposes. Of that we have simple proof. And where did Turpyn's chosen tape take us? To a base that was secret. Therefore-"

But Andas had already fastened eagerly on the suggestion and wondered why he had been so thick-witted as not to deduce it for himself. "You mean that a tape which would bring us to Inyanga might not do so to a port where the authorities would mark its arrival!" Why, that might solve so much. Then once more cold logic froze his first feeling of relief.

"That would be little better. A Guild port-with the Guild waiting-"

"Yes, but they would not be expecting our arrival. They might not even be occupying such a field at the time. Where on Inyanga might such be situated? Can you foresee a little helpfully in that direction?"

Andas closed his eyes on the control cabin and tried to mind-picture the continents of his home world. One needed certain physical attributes for a secret landing field. And Inyanga had few stretches of wilderness left to conceal such. At last he decided it was between the Kalli Desert and some hidden pocket in the Umbangai Mountains. And he said so.

"Desert or mountains," mused Yolyos. "And how well patrolled are either?"

"Not very well. There are two roads across the Kalli, but both follow old caravan routes from oasis to oasis. In fact, though there are aerial survey maps, most of the northern part has never been explored. As for the Umbangai-they lie to the north. A large section of those was once a royal hunting preserve. Now they are government conservation experimental lands. They are patrolled by rangers, but not often-they can't nose down every canyon. There is too much land, too few men."

"But of these two possibilities then, perhaps the desert is the best?"

"I trust not!" Andas could see some chance of getting transportation if they finned down in the Umbangais. But suppose they hit the Kalli at some secret but non-manned Guild field-there would be no way of getting across that blazing waste to civilization. On the other hand, he did not want to land in the midst of a Guild crew either.

He decided that Yolyos's suggestion had really done little to relieve his state of tension. It seemed that if the authorities did not loom as possible opponents, the Guild did. Andas sighed.

"You see"-Yolyos's tone was mocking, or did the Salariki get some satisfaction from ramming home the darkness of the future?-"you can plan for little either way. So the more you exhaust your mind trying to foresee, the more failure presents itself. You had better forget the whole matter."

"Easy for you to say!" flared Andas. He sulked silently, trying to remember all he had learned about the Kalli. That must surely hold their port.

Once more s.h.i.+p time could not be planet time, and a voyage of unknown length added to their misery. Elys again took to her bunk, unable to adjust to non-grav. And this time Grasty declared himself as unfit, swearing that the blow he had suffered had left him in permanent pain. He might be right-at least he ate far less.

At last the warning of exit from hyper came, and then they swung into landing orbit. On the visa-screen Andas saw the mottled shape of what the tape declared to be Inyanga, though he could not recognize any feature. And he wondered, with a new chill, if once more they had been deceived.

Andas felt sick, closing his eyes against a new and shattering disappointment as they went into a breaking orbit. Soon the s.h.i.+p would set down. In the Kalli, the Umbangai, or a port? There was no way he could alter that-he would have to accept the gamble. But he did not want to feel anything more until they three-finned on solid soil. He willed himself to that state.

He roused when Yolyos asked, "Do you know where we are?"

The Salariki had triggered the visa-screen into action, and the slowly pa.s.sing landscape was indeed desolate. They had planeted in an expanse of very barren waste between two cliffs.

Where the soil was not slicked over with the gla.s.sy surface left by old rocket burns, it was red, streaked by vivid green and wine-color, marking mineral deposits. The rock walls of the cliffs were layered with strata in red, white, and yellow. There was no sign of any building or of another s.h.i.+p. They were not at a regular port.

Then the turn of the screen showed a wide-mouthed opening in the face of the cliff and within that something- "Stop!" Andas ordered, and Yolyos pressed the b.u.t.ton.

The scene stilled, and they were able to study it. This was not altogether forsaken country. There were objects well within the hang of the cliff mouth, and they were covered with protecto sheets.

"I think n.o.body's home now," commented the Salariki, "Luck is with us to that extent. But do you recognize the country?"

Andas shook his head. "But if we are on Inyanga and there has not been another tape subst.i.tution, then this is the Kalli."

Sometime later he had no doubt that this was both Inyanga and the Kalli, for upon exploration the covered objects within the cave proved to be skimmers, made for air travel, well suited to the waste. And not ordinary skimmers either, but master craft. Behind them was a rack of energy units, each canister also in protective covering.

Blown sand had gathered in pockets chance had formed in the coverings of the skimmers. Andas thought that good evidence that they had not been used for some time. Any one of the craft provided with a unit would give him transportation.

"So it would seem that fortune runs at your shoulder, Prince," the Salariki commented. "Now, do you just take off-and in which direction?"

"If I wait until night, the stars will give me that," Andas said with a.s.surance. As the good luck Yolyos commented on seemed to hold, he would trust it as long as he could. "I go north from here, and once I strike the Manhani Trail, then I will know where I am in reference to the Triple Towers. But-"

He rested one hand on the skimmer he had chosen, from which Yolyos had helped him strip the protecto covering, and glanced back at the s.h.i.+p. Now that they were down, Elys was no longer plagued with weightlessness, but she needed water. Her body once more showed signs of that drastic dehydration. And where in all Kalli would she find any moisture?

"But-" prompted Yolyos.

"Elys, the rest of you, if you stay here-"

The Salariki did not reply, only watched Andas with those brilliant blue-green eyes as if Andas must come to some decision for himself.

Andas knew that he could invade the Triple Towers in his own fas.h.i.+on secretly. His training in the hidden ways was the core of that belief. But to take Grasty, Elys-though he did not feel the same way about Yolyos. Somehow the Salariki from the start had impressed him as being the one of their party well able to care for himself. Andas could go on to the Triple Towers, send back for the rest as soon as he could- But what if he never made it? Chance had put him into this company. He owed no house loyalty to any of them. But now that the moment had come to cut loose, he hesitated. Elys on a waterless desert? He remembered how light she had been when he carried her to the pools that meant her life. And Grasty with his complaint of pain-what if he had been internally injured and his whining was more than a claim for what comforts they had?

To carry more than two would crowd the skimmer, and the future was uncertain-so uncertain he did not allow himself to think too much about it so his own fears might not weaken him.

"Do you go soon?" He had not realized how long that pause had been until the Salariki asked a second question.

"Choose!" Andas rounded on Yolyos. Let them make the choice, each one of them; then the future would be as much of their own bargaining as it was of his. "Stay with the s.h.i.+p, or come with me."

"And them?"

"Let them do likewise."

"Good enough," the Salariki agreed. "Though we may hang like deter weights about you in the future."

"In some cases I am not certain of that," Andas answered.

So he put it to the others. There was a way to civilization out of the waste. But he was careful to lay out the fact that he was far from sure their troubles would then be over.

Elys raised herself on one elbow. Even within the short time they had been finned down here, her dehydration had grown worse. She was close to skin over small sharp bones again. Grasty nursed his paunch between his hands, "It is a small choice," he groaned. "Stay here and die of the ache in my belly; go hence and perhaps fare as bad, if not worse. But I will go."

Elys still searched Andas's face, as if she would read there some more hopeful sign than his words. "This is desert and no water." Her voice was weak. "I will take the chance."

It was going to be a very tight fit into the skimmer, the more so because Andas saw to rations also. But, with the coming of night, the heat, which had fitted a tight lid over the valley all day, lifted, and his guides were the stars overhead.

They lifted in the dark, Andas, a little rusty at the control, raising them in a leap that brought a harsh protest from Grasty. Then he settled the small craft into straight flight, and they winged their way north over the waste.

By dawn they had reached the scrubland that fringed the waste and spiraled down over a sluggish river, which in this season had shrunk to what was little more than a series of sc.u.mmed pools. Elys must have water. Andas had grown continually more uneasy about her, though, unlike the groaning and grunting Grasty, she had asked for no aid since they had lifted her into the flier.

He brought the skimmer down on a sandbar that divided two of the drying river pools and, with Yolyos's aid, carried the now inert girl to the nearest. Using a piece of driftwood, Andas cleared off the ugly sc.u.m along the edge, and then they laid Elys in the turgid water, Andas kneeling in the stinking liquid to support her.

The cracking clay about the edge was marked with a lacework of animal tracks, but nowhere were any footprints of men to be seen. He hated to hold her in this soupy stuff, but it was all he had. She began to stir, moaned, and her eyes opened.

"Lower!" Her head twisted on his arm. "Lower!"

He hesitated. The smell and the muck of the pool were so disgusting that he did not want to obey her order. But at last he let her down so even her face was submerged in it.

Once more her recovery was quick. She wriggled from his grasp. So submerged, with the water so thick, he could not see her, though the surface was roiled with movements.

"Let her be." Yolyos caught Andas by the upper arm and pulled him out of the pool. "She knows what is best."

Andas had to accept that as he squatted on the sandbank, using that grit to rub from his body the slimy deposit the water had left. But he kept watching the pool, wondering if he should plunge back in and try to bring her to the surface even against her will.

She arose at last without his aid, her hair in dark strings about her head and shoulders, with none of the exuberance she had shown at the jungle pool on the unknown world. She spat, raking her fingers through her hair, her face betrayed her disgust at her present state.

"You could do no better," she said. "That I know. But never, do I believe, could you do worse, not even by intention. Where are we, and where do we go?" She looked around as if only now was she aware the s.h.i.+p was not standing by. "Where is the s.h.i.+p?"

"Back in the desert," Andas answered. He was suddenly very tired, wanting nothing so much as to rest. "We are on our way to the Triple Towers."

"I have been thinking." Yolyos looked up the fast-drying river. "Are those mountains?"

Andas followed the pointing finger westward.

"A spur of the Kanghali." At least he knew that much.

"There might be more water closer to them. A better place to camp? Or do you intend to keep on by day?"

Andas shook his head. If they were lucky, very lucky, they might come in after dark. In the day the skimmer would be sighted by any patrol. But Yolyos's suggestion made sense. Elys needed water, certainly a better supply than she had just dragged herself out of. And closer to the mountains they would find that.

"Yes." He did not elaborate on his agreement. They climbed back into the skimmer, Elys sitting stiffly as if she hated the very liquid that had restored her to life, and then they took off along the river westward.

By the time the sun was mid-point in the east over the horizon, they had emerged into a green land where trees stood and there was more water in the river, running with some semblance of current before the heat of the waste attacked it. In the foothills they found what they wanted, a curve of open land where the river made an arc and they could set the skimmer down.

Elys was out of its confinement before either Andas or Yolyos could move. She ran straight for the water, plunging in with a cry of joy that reached them like the call of a bird. Then she was gone, and they left her to her own devices.

She returned much later to pick up the E-ration tube that was her share of their meal, the traces of her ducking in the desert pool washed away, her spirits once more high. Grasty, on the other hand, lay in the shade the skimmer offered and grunted when anyone spoke to him, refusing food but drinking avidly from the mug Andas filled at the stream edge and offered to him. Here the free running water was chill from the mountain heights and clear so that one could see the bed sand where small things scuttled around stones or hid in burrows excavated in the clay.

They slept in turns, Elys, Yolyos, and Andas sharing watches, knowing that they could not get Grasty to aid. They waited until the twilight was well advanced before they took off again.

"You have in mind some landing place?" Yolyos asked. "I think you must want one as secluded as possible."

"The Triple Towers are built on the west bank of the Zamba.s.si. They can be reached from Ictio only by triple bridges, one for each tower. By land, that is. On the west there is a ring of forts and outer walls. It is forbidden to fly over the royal grounds. However, if one comes in near to roof level at a point between the Koli and Kala forts, then one can set down in the section I told you of, the quarters that were once my father's. Unless there have been drastic changes in the palace, that is one of the long deserted portions with no regular inhabitants. I need only to set foot there-"

He did not continue. With Yolyos he could share the secrets of the Triple Towers. And-he might almost have also spoken of them before Elys. But Grasty he did not trust.