Beast Master's Planet: Omnibus of Beast Master and Lord of Thunder (Beastmaster) (34 page)

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 fly-boy 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 foresaken 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 strangers—it is medicine—the medicine of those who eat THE MEAT—This cannot be 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.”

Kavok 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.

C

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 after effects 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 painfilled 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.