Raf lay on his back, cushioned in the sand, his face turned up to the sky. Moisture smarted in his eyes, trickled down his cheeks as he tried to will himself to see! The yellow haze which had been his day had faded into grayness and now to the dark he feared so much that he dared not even speak of it. Somewhere over him the stars were icy points of light--but he could not see them. They were very far away, but no farther than he was from safety, from comfort (now the spacer seemed a haven of ease), from the expert treatment which might save, save his sight!
He supposed he should be thankful to that other one who was a slow voice speaking out of the mist, a thought now and then when his inner panic brought him almost to the breaking point. In some manner he had been carried out of the reach of the aliens, treated for his searing wounds, and now he was led along, fed, tended--Why didn't they go away and leave him alone! He had no chance of reaching the spacer--
It was so easy to remember those mountains, the heights over which he had lifted the flitter. There wasn't one chance in a million of his winning over those and across the miles of empty plains beyond to where the RS 10 stood waiting, ready to rise again. The crew must believe him dead. His fists clenched upon sand, and it gritted between his fingers, sifted away. Why wasn't he dead! Why had that barbarian dragged him here, continued to coax him, put food into his hands, those hands which were only vague shapes when he held them just before his straining, aching eyes.
"It is not as bad as you think," the words came again out of the fog, spoken with a gentleness which rasped Raf's nerves. "Healing is not done in a second, or even in a day. You cannot force the return of strength--"
A hand, warm, vibrant with life, pressed on his forehead--a human, flesh-covered hand, not one of the cool, scaled paws of the furred people. Though those hands, too, had been laid upon him enough during the past few days, steadying him, leading him, guiding him to food and water. Now, under that firm, knowing touch he felt some of the ever-present fear subside, felt a relaxation.
"My ship--They will take off without me!" He could not help but voice that plaint, as he had so many times before during that foggy, nightmare journey.
"They have not done so yet."
He struggled up, flung off that calming hand, turned angrily toward where he thought the other was. "How can you be sure?"
"Word has come. The ship is still there, though the small flyer has returned to it."
This assurance was something new. Raf's suspicions could not stand up against the note of certainty in the other's voice. He got awkwardly to his feet. If the ship was still here, then they must still think him alive--They might come back! He had a chance--a real chance!
"Then they are waiting for me--They'll come!"
He could not see the soberness with which Dalgard listened to that. The star ship had not lifted, that message had found its way south, passed along by hopper and merman. But the scout doubted if the explorers were waiting for the return of Raf. He believed that they would not have left the city had they not thought the pilot already dead.
As to going north now--His picture of the land ahead had been built up from reports gained from the sea people. It could be done, but with Raf to be nursed and guided, lacking even the outrigger Dalgard had used in home waters, it would take days--weeks, probably--to cover the territory which lay between them and the plains where the star ship had planeted.
But he owed Raf a great deal, and it was summer, the season of warm calms. So far he had not been able to work out any plan for a return to his own land. It might be that they were both doomed to exile. But it was not necessary to face that drear future yet, not until they had expended every possible effort. So now he said willingly enough, "We are going north."
Raf sat down again in the sand. He wanted to run, to push on until his feet were too tired to carry him any farther. But now he fought that impulse, lay down once more. Though he doubted if he could sleep.
Dalgard watched the stars, sketched out a map of action for the morning. They must follow the shore line where they could keep in touch with the mermen, though along this coast the sea people did not come to land with the freedom their fellows showed on the eastern continent--they had lived too long in fear of Those Others.
But since the war party had reached the coast, there had been no sign of any retaliation, and as several days passed, Dalgard had begun to believe that they had little to fear. Perhaps the blow they had struck at the heart of the citadel had been more drastic than they had hoped. He had listened since that hour in the gorge for the shrilling of one of the air hounds. And when it did not come the thought that maybe it was the last of its kind had been heartening.
At last the scout lay down beside the off-world man, listening to the soft hiss of waves on sand, the distant cluttering of night insects. And his last waking thought was a wish for his bow.
There was another day of patient plodding; two, three. Raf, led by the hand, helped over rocks and obstacles which were only dark blurs to his watering eyes, raged inwardly and sometimes outwardly, against the slowness of their advance, his own helplessness. His fear grew until he refused to credit the fact that the blurs were sharpening in outline, that he could now count five fingers on the hand he sometimes waved despairingly before his face.
When he spoke of the future, he never said "if we reach the ship" but always "when," refusing to admit that perhaps they would not be in time. And Dalgard by his anxiety, tried to get more news from the north.
"When we get there, will you come back to earth with us?" the pilot asked suddenly on the fifth day.
It was a question Dalgard had once asked himself. But now he knew the answer; there was only one he dared give.
"We are not ready--"
"I don't understand what you mean." Raf was almost querulous. "It is your home world. Pax is gone; the Federation would welcome you eagerly. Just think what it would mean--a Terran colony among the stars!"
"A Terran colony." Dalgard put out a hand, steadied Raf over a stretch of rough shingle. "Yes, once we were a Terran colony. But--can you now truthfully swear that I am a Terran like yourself?"
Raf faced the misty figure, trying to force his memory to put features there, to sharpen outlines. The scout was of middle height, a little shorter in stature than the crewmen with whom the pilot had lived so long. His hair was fair, as was his skin under its sun tan. He was unusually light on his feet and possessed a wiry strength Raf could testify to. But there was that disconcerting habit of mind reading and other elusive differences.
Dalgard smiled, though the other could not see that.
"You see," deliberately he used the mind touch as if to accent those differences the more, "once our roots were the same, but now from these roots different plants have grown. And we must be left to ourselves a space before we mingle once more. My father's father's father's father was a Terran, but I am--what? We have something that you have not, just as you have developed during centuries of separation qualities of mind and body we do not know. You live with machines. And, since we could not keep machines in this world, having no power to repair or rebuild, we have been forced to turn in other directions. To go back to the old ways now would be throwing away clues to mysteries we have not yet fully explored, turning aside from discoveries ready to be made. To you I am a barbarian, hardly higher in the scale of civilization than the mermen--"
Raf flushed, would have given a quick and polite denial, had he not known that his thoughts had been read. Dalgard laughed. His amusement was not directed against the pilot, rather it invited him to share the joke. And reluctantly, Raf's peeling lips relaxed in a smile.
"But," he offered one argument the other had not cited, "what if you do go down this other path of yours so far that we no longer have any common meeting ground?" He had forgotten his own problem in the other's.
"I do not believe that will ever happen. Perhaps our bodies may change; climate, food, ways of life can all influence the body. Our minds may change; already my people with each new generation are better equipped to use the mind touch, can communicate more clearly with the animals and the mermen. But those who were in the beginning born of Terra shall always have a common heritage. There are and will be other lost colonies among the stars. We could not have been the only outlaws who broke forth during the rule of Pax, and before the blight of that dictatorship, there were at least two expeditions that went forth on Galactic explorations.
"A thousand years from now stranger will meet with stranger, but when they make the sign of peace and sit down with one another, they shall find that words come more easily, though one may seem outwardly monstrous to the other. Only, now we must go our own way. We are youths setting forth on our journey of testing, while the Elders wish us well but stand aside."
"You don't want what we have to offer?" This was a new idea to Raf.
"Did you truly want what the city people had to offer?"
That caught the pilot up. He could remember with unusual distinctness how he had disliked, somehow feared the things they had brought from the city storehouse, how he had privately hoped that Hobart and Lablet would be content to let well enough alone and not bring that knowledge of an alien race back with them. If he had not secretly known that aversion, he would not have been able to destroy the globe and the treasures piled about it.
"But"--his protest was hot, angry--"we are not them! We can do much for you."
"Can you?" The calm question sank into his mind as might a stone into a troubled pool, and the ripples of its passing changed an idea or two. "I wish that you might see Homeport. Perhaps then it would be easier for you to understand. No, your knowledge is not corrupt, it would not carry with it the same seeds of disaster as that of Those Others. But it would be too easy for us to accept, to walk a softer road, to forget what we have so far won. Just give us time--"
Raf cupped his palms over his watering eyes. He wanted badly to see clearly the other's face, to be able to read his expression. Yet it seemed that somehow he was able to see that sober face, as sincere as the words in his mind.
"You will come again," Dalgard said with certainty. "And we shall be waiting because you, Raf Kurbi, made it possible." There was something so solemn about that that Raf looked up in surprise.
"When you destroyed the core of Those Other's holding, you gave us our chance. For had you not done that we, the mermen, the other harmless, happy creatures of this world, would have been wiped out. There would be no new beginning here, only a dark and horrible end."
Raf blinked; to his surprise that other figure standing in the direct sunlight did not waver, and beyond the proudly held head was a stretch of turquoise sky. He could see the color!
"Yes, you shall see with your eyes--and with your mind," now Dalgard spoke aloud. "And if the Spirit which rules all space is kind, you shall return to your own people. For you have served His cause well."
Then, as if he were embarrassed by his own solemnity, Dalgard ended with a most prosaic inquiry: "Would you like shellfish for eating?"
Moments later, wading out into the water-swirled sand, his boots kicked off, his toes feeling for the elusive shelled creatures no one could see, Raf felt happier, freer than he could ever remember having been before. It was going to be all right. He could see! He would find the ship! He laughed aloud at nothing and heard an answering chuckle and then a whoop of triumph from the scout stooping to claw one of their prey out of hiding.
It was after they had eaten that Dalgard asked another question, one which did not seem important to Raf. "You have a close friend among the crew of your ship?"
Raf hesitated. Now that he was obliged to consider the point, did he have any friends--let alone a close one--among the crew of the RS 10? Certainly he did not claim Wonstead who had shared his quarters--he honestly did not care if he never saw him again. The officers, the experts such as Lablet--quickly face and character of each swept through his mind and was as swiftly discarded. There was Soriki--He could not claim the com-tech as any special friend, but at least during their period together among the aliens he had come to know him better.
Now, as if Dalgard had read his mind--and he probably had, thought Raf with a flash of the old resentment--he had another question.
"And what was he--is he like?"
Though the pilot could see little reason for this he answered as best he could, trying to build first a physical picture of the com-tech and then doing a little guessing as to what lay under the other's space-burned skin.
Dalgard lay on his back, gazing up into the blue-green sky. Yet Raf knew that he was intent on every word. A merman padded up, settled down cross-legged beside the scout, as if he too were enthralled by the pilot's halting description of a man he might never see again. Then a second of the sea people came and a third, until Raf felt that some sort of a noiseless council was in progress. His words trailed away, and then Dalgard offered an explanation.
"It will take us many, many days to reach the place where your ship is. And before we are able to complete that journey your friends may be gone. So we shall try something else--with your aid."
Raf fingered the little bundle of his possessions. Even his helmet with its com phone was missing.
"No," again Dalgard read his mind. "Your machines are of no use to you now. We shall try our way."
"How?" Wild thoughts of a big signal fire--But how could that be sighted across a mountain range. Of some sort of an improvised com unit--
"I said our way." There was a smile on Dalgard's face, visible to Raf's slowly clearing vision. "We shall provide another kind of machine, and these"--he waved at the mermen--"will give us the power, or so we hope. Lie here," he gestured to the sand beside him, "and think only of your friend in the ship, in his natural surroundings. Try to hold that picture constant in your mind, letting no other thought trouble it."
"Do you mean--send a message to him mentally!" Raf's reply was half protest.
"Did I not so reach you when we were in the city--even before I knew of you as an individual?" the scout reminded him. "And such messages are doubly possible when they are sent from friend to friend."
"But we were close then."
"That is why--" again Dalgard indicated the mermen. "For them this is the natural means of communication. They will pick up your reaching thought, amplify it with their power, beam it north. Since your friend deals with matters of communication, let us hope that he will be sensitive to this method."
Raf was only half convinced that it might work. But he remembered how Dalgard had established contact with him, before, as the scout had pointed out, they had met. It was that voiceless cry for aid which had pulled him into this adventure in the first place. It was only fitting that something of the same process give him help in return.
Obediently he stretched out on the sand and closed his dim eyes, trying to picture Soriki in the small cabin which held the com, slouched in his bucket seat, his deceptive posture that of a lax idler, as he had seen him so many times. Soriki--his broad face with its flat cheekbones, its wide cheerful mouth, its heavy-lidded eyes. And having fixed Soriki's face, he tried to believe that he was now confronting the com-tech, speaking directly to him.
"Come--come and get me--south--seashore--Soriki come and get me!" The words formed a kind of chant, a chant aimed at that familiar face in its familiar surroundings. "South--come and get me--" Raf struggled to think only of that, to allow nothing to break through that chant or disturb his picture of the scene he had called from memory.
How long that attempt at communication lasted the pilot could not tell, for somehow he slipped from the deep concentration into sleep, dreamless and untroubled, from which he awoke with the befogged feeling that something important had happened. But had he gotten through?
The ring of mermen was gone, and it was dawn, gray, chill with the forewarnings of rain in the air. He was reassured because he was certain that in spite of the gloom his sight was a fraction clearer than it had been the day before. But had they gotten through? As he arose, brushing the sand from him, he saw the scout splashing out of the sea, a fish impaled on his spear.
"Did we get through?" Raf blurted out.
"Since your friend cannot reply with the mind touch, we do not know. But later we shall try again." To Raf's peering gaze Dalgard's face had a drawn, gaunt look as if he had been at hard labor during the hours just past. He walked up the beach slowly, without the springing step Raf had come to associate with him. As he settled down to gut the fish with one of the bone knives, the scout repeated, "We can try again--!"
Half an hour later, as the rain swept in from the sea, Raf knew that they would not have to try. His head went up, his face eager. He had known that sound too long and too well ever to mistake it--the drone of a flitter motor cutting through the swish of the falling water. Some trick of the cliffs behind them must be magnifying and projecting the sound, for he could not sight the machine. But it was coming. He whirled to Dalgard, only to see that the other was on his feet and had taken up his spear.
"It is the flitter! Soriki heard--they're coming!" Raf hastened to assure him.
For the last time he saw Dalgard's slow, warm smile, clearer than he had ever seen it before. Then the scout turned and trotted away, toward a fringing rock wall. Before he dropped out of sight behind that barrier he raised the spear in salute.
"Swift and fortunate voyaging!" He gave the farewell of Homeport.
Then Raf understood. The colonist meant just what he had said: he wanted no contact with the space ship. To Raf he had owed a debt and now that was paid. But the time was not yet when the men of Astra and the men of Terra should meet. A hundred years from now perhaps--or a thousand--but not yet. And remembering what had summoned the flitter winging toward him, Raf drew a deep breath. What would the men of Astra accomplish in a hundred years? What could those of Terra do to match them in knowledge? It was a challenge, and he alone knew just how much of a challenge. Homeport must remain his own secret. He had been guided to this place, saved by the mermen alone. Dalgard and his people must not exist as far as the crew of the RS 10 were concerned.
For the last time he experienced the intimacy of the mind touch. "That is it--brother!" Then the sensation was gone as the black blot of the flitter buzzed out of the clouds.
From behind the rocks Dalgard watched the pilot enter the strange machine. For a single moment he had an impulse to shout, to run forward, to surrender to his desire to see the others, the ship which had brought them through space and would, they confidently believed, take them back to the Terra he knew only as a legend of the past. But he mastered that desire. He had been right. The road had already forked and there was no going back. He must carry this secret all the rest of his life--he must be strong-willed enough so that Homeport would never know. Time--give them time to be what they could be. Then in a hundred years--or a thousand--But not yet!
"Nobody today is telling better stories of straight-forward interstellar adventure."
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When Raf Kurbi's Terran spaceship burst into unexplored skies of the far planet Astra and was immediately made welcome by the natives of a once-mighty metropolis, Kurbi was unaware of three vital things:
One was that Astra already harbored an Earth colony--descended from refugees from the world of the previous century.
Two was that these men and women were facing the greatest danger of their existence from a new outburst of the inhuman fiends who had once tyrannized Astra.
Three was that the natives who were buying Kurbi's science know-how were those very fiends--and their intentions were implacably deadly for all humans, whether Earth born or STAR BORN.
It's an Andre Norton space adventure--and therefore the tops in its field!
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