<h2><SPAN name="PURSUIT" id="PURSUIT"></SPAN>5. PURSUIT</h2>
<p>As the raft revolved slowly it also slipped downstream at a
steadily increasing pace, for the current had them in hold.
The wolverines pressed close to Shann until the musky scent
of their fur, their animal warmth, enveloped him. One growled
deep in its throat, perhaps in answer to that wind-borne wail.</p>
<p>"Hound?" Shann asked.</p>
<p>Beside him in the dark Thorvald was working loose one of
the poles they had readied to help control the raft's voyaging.
The current carried them along, but there was a need for
those lengths of sapling to fend them free from rocks and
water-buried snags.</p>
<p>"What hound?" the younger man demanded more sharply
when there came no immediate answer.</p>
<p>"The Throgs' tracker. But why did they import one?" Thorvald's
puzzlement was plain in his tone. He added a moment
later, with some of his usual firmness, "We may be in
for bad trouble now. Use of a hound means an attempt to take
prisoners——"</p>
<p>"Then they do not know that we are here, as Terrans, I
mean?"</p>
<p>Thorvald seemed to be sorting out his thoughts when he
replied to that. "They could have brought a hound here just
on chance that they might miss one of us in the initial mop-up.
Or, if they believe we are natives, they could want a
specimen for study."</p>
<p>"Wouldn't they just blast down Terrans on sight?"<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_47" id="Page_47"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>Shann saw the dark blot which was Thorvald's head shake
in negation.</p>
<p>"They might need a live Terran—badly and soon."</p>
<p>"Why?"</p>
<p>"To operate the camp call beam."</p>
<p>Shann's momentary bewilderment vanished. He knew
enough of Survey procedure to guess the reason for such a
move on the part of the aliens.</p>
<p>"The settler transport?"</p>
<p>"Yes, the ship. She won't planet here without the proper
signal. And the Throgs can't give that. If they don't take her,
their time's run out before they have even made a start here."</p>
<p>"But how could they know that the transport is nearly
due? When we intercept their calls they're pure gibberish to
us. Can they read our codes?"</p>
<p>"The supposition is that they can't. Only, concerning
Throgs, all we know is supposition. Anyway, they do know
the routine for establishing a Terran colony, and we can't
alter that procedure except in small nonessentials," Thorvald
said grimly. "If that transport doesn't pick up the proper
signal to set down here on schedule, her captain will call in
the patrol escort ... then exit one Throg base. But if the
beetle-heads can trick the ship in and take her, then they'll
have a clear five or six more months here to consolidate their
own position. After that it would take more than just one
patrol cruiser to clear Warlock; it will require a fleet. So the
Throgs will have another world to play with, and an important
one. This lies on a direct line between the Odin and
Kulkulkan systems. A Throg base on such a trade route
could eventually cut us right out of this quarter of the galaxy."</p>
<p>"So you think they want to capture us in order to bring
the transport in?"</p>
<p>"By our type of reasoning, that would be a logical move—<i>if</i>
they know we are here. They haven't too many of those
hounds, and they don't risk them on petty jobs. I'd hoped
we'd covered our trail well. But we had to risk that attack
on the camp.... I needed the map case!" Again Thorvald<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_48" id="Page_48"></SPAN></span>
might have been talking to himself. "Time ... and the right
maps—" he brought his fist down on the raft, making the
platform tremble—"that's what I have to have now."</p>
<p>Another patch of light-willows stretched along the river-banks,
and as they sailed through that ribbon of ghostly
radiance they could see each other's faces. Thorvald's was
bleak, hard, his eyes on the stream behind them as if he expected
at any moment to see a Throg emerge from the surface
of the water.</p>
<p>"Suppose that thing—" Shann pointed upstream with his
chin—"follows us? What is it anyway?" Hound suggested
Terran dog, but he couldn't stretch his imagination to believe
in a working co-operation between Throg and any mammal.</p>
<p>"A rather spectacular combination of toad and lizard, with
a few other grisly touches, is about as close as you can get to
a general description. And that won't be too accurate, because
like the Throgs its remote ancestors must have been of
the insect family. If the thing follows us, and I think we can
be sure that it will, we'll have to take steps. There is always
this advantage—those hounds cannot be controlled from a
flyer, and the beetle-heads never take kindly to foot slogging.
So we won't have to expect any speedy chase. If it slips its
masters in rough country, we can try to ambush it." In the dim
light Thorvald was frowning. "I flew over the territory ahead
on two sweeps, and it is a queer mixture. If we can reach the
rough country bordering the sea, we'll have won the first
round. I don't believe that the Throgs will be in a hurry to
track us in there. They'll try two alternatives to chasing us
on foot. One, use their energy beams to rake any suspect
valley, and since there are hundreds of valleys all pretty
much alike, that will take some time. Or they can attempt to
shake us out with a dumdum should they have one here,
which I doubt."</p>
<p>Shann tensed. The stories of the effects of the Throg's dumdum
weapon were anything but pretty.</p>
<p>"And to get a dumdum," Thorvald continued as if he<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_49" id="Page_49"></SPAN></span>
were discussing a purely theoretical matter and not a threat
of something worse than death, "They'll have to bring in one
of their major ships. Which they will hesitate to do with a
cruiser near at hand. Our own danger spot now is the section
we should strike soon after dawn tomorrow if the rate of this
current is what I have timed it. There is a band of desert on
this side of the mountains. The river gorge deepens there and
the land is bare. Let them send a ship over and we could be
as visible as if we were sending up flares——"</p>
<p>"How about taking cover now and going on only at
night?" suggested Shann.</p>
<p>"Ordinarily, I'd say yes. But with time pressing us now,
no. If we keep straight on, we could reach the foothills in
about forty hours, maybe less. And we have to stay with the
river. To strike across country there without good supplies and
on foot is sheer folly."</p>
<p>Two days. With perhaps the Throgs unleashing their
hound on land, combing from their flyers. With a desert....
Shann put out his hands to the wolverines. The prospect certainly
didn't seem anywhere near as simple as it had the
night before when Thorvald had planned this escape. But
then the Survey officer had left out quite a few points which
were not pertinent. Was he also leaving out other essentials?
Shann wanted to ask, but somehow he could not.</p>
<p>After a while he dozed, his head resting on his knees. He
awoke, roused out of a vivid dream, a dream so detailed and
so deeply impressed in a picture on his mind that he was confused
when he blinked at the riverbank visible in the half-light
of early dawn.</p>
<p>Instead of that stretch of earth and ragged vegetation now
gliding past him as the raft angled along, he should have
been fronting a vast skull stark against the sky—a skull whose
outlines were oddly inhuman, from whose eyeholes issued
and returned flying things while its sharply protruding lower
jaw was lapped by water. In color that skull had been a
violent clash of blood-red and purple. Shann blinked again at
the riverbank, seeing transposed on it still that ghostly haze<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_50" id="Page_50"></SPAN></span>
of bone-bare dome, cavernous eyeholes and nose slit, fanged
jaws. That skull was a mountain, or a mountain was a skull—and
it was important to him; he must locate it!</p>
<p>He moved stiffly, his legs and arms cramped but not cold.
The wolverines stirred on either side of him. Thorvald continued
to sleep, curled up beyond, the pole still clasped in
his hands. A flat map case was slung by a strap about his neck,
its thin envelope between his arm and his body as if for safekeeping.
On the smooth flap was the Survey seal, and it was
fastened with a finger lock.</p>
<p>Thorvald had lost some of the bright hard surface he had
shown at the spaceport where Shann had first sighted him.
There were hollows in his cheeks, sending into high relief
those bone ridges beneath his eye sockets, giving him a faint
resemblance to the skull of Shann's dream. His face was
grimed, his field uniform stained and torn. Only his hair was
as bright as ever.</p>
<p>Shann smeared the back of his hand across his own face,
not doubting that he must present an even more disreputable
appearance. He leaned forward cautiously to look into the
water, but that surface was not quiet enough to act as a
mirror.</p>
<p>Getting to his feet as the raft bobbed under his shift of
weight, Shann studied the territory now about them. He
could not match Thorvald's inches, just as he must have a
third less bulk than the officer, but standing, he could sight
something of what now lay beyond the rising banks of the
cut. That grass which had been so thick in the meadowlands
around the camp had thinned into separate clumps, pale
lavender in color. And the scrawniness of stem and blade suggested
dehydration and poor soil. The earth showing between
those clumps was not of the usual blue, but pallid, too,
bleached to gray, while the bushes along the stream's edge
were few and smaller. They must have crossed the line into
the desert Thorvald had promised.</p>
<p>Shann edged around to face west. There was light enough
in the sky to sight tall black pyramids waiting. They had to<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_51" id="Page_51"></SPAN></span>
reach those distant mountains, mountains whose feet on the
other side were resting in sea water. He studied them carefully,
surveying each peak he could separate from its fellows.</p>
<p>Did the skull lie among them? The conviction that the place
he had seen in his dream was real, that it was to be found on
Warlock, persisted. Not only was it a definite feature of
the landscape somewhere in the wild places of this world, but
it was also necessary for him to locate it. Why? Shann puzzled
over that, with a growing uneasiness which was not quite fear,
not yet, anyway.</p>
<p>Thorvald moved. The raft tilted and the wolverines became
growly. Shann sat down, one hand out to the officer's
shoulder in warning. Feeling that touch Thorvald shifted,
one hand striking out blindly in a blow which Shann was just
able to avoid while with the other he pinned the map case yet
tighter to him.</p>
<p>"Take it easy!" Shann urged.</p>
<p>The other's eyelids flicked. He looked up, but not as if he
saw Shann at all.</p>
<p>"The Cavern of the Veil——" he muttered. "Utgard...."
Then his eyes did focus and he sat up, gazing around him
with a frown.</p>
<p>"We're in the desert," Shann announced.</p>
<p>Thorvald got up, balancing on feet planted a little apart,
looking to the faded expanse of the waste spreading from the
river cut. He stared at the mountains before he squatted
down to fumble with the lock of the map case.</p>
<p>The wolverines were growing restless, though they still did
not try to move about too freely on the raft, greeting Shann
with vocal complaint. He and Thorvald could satisfy their
hunger with a handful of concentrates from the survival kit.
But those dry tablets could not serve the animals. Shann
studied the terrain with more knowledge than he had possessed
a week earlier. This was not hunting land, but there
remained the bounty of the river.</p>
<p>"We'll have to feed Taggi and Togi," he broke the silence<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_52" id="Page_52"></SPAN></span>
abruptly. "If we don't, they'll be into the river and off on
their own."</p>
<p>Thorvald glanced up from one of the tough, thin sheets of
map skin, again as if he had been drawn back from some
distance. His eyes moved from Shann to the unpromising
shore.</p>
<p>"How? With what?" he wanted to know. Then the real
urgency of the situation must have penetrated his mental
isolation. "You have an idea——?"</p>
<p>"There's those fish we found them eating back by the
mountain stream," Shann said, recalling an incident of a few
days earlier. "Rocks here, too, like those the fish were hiding
under. Maybe we can locate some of them here."</p>
<p>He knew that Thorvald would be reluctant to work the
raft in shore, to spare time for such hunting. But there would
be no arguing with hungry wolverines, and he did not propose
to lose the animals for the officer's whim.</p>
<p>However, Thorvald did not protest. They poled the raft
out of the main pull of the current, sending it in toward the
southern shore in the lee of a clump of light-willows. Shann
scrambled ashore, the wolverines after him, sniffling along at
his heels while he overturned likely looking rocks to unroof
some odd underwater dwellings. The fish with the rudimentary
legs were present and not agile enough even in their
native element to avoid well-clawed paws which scooped
them neatly out of the river shallows. There was also a sleek
furred creature with a broad flat head and paddle-equipped
forepaws, rather like a miniature seal, which Taggi appropriated
before Shann had a chance to examine it closely. In
fact, the wolverines wrought havoc along a half-mile
section of bank before the Terran could coax them back to
the raft.</p>
<p>As they hunted, Shann got a better idea of the land about
the river. It was sere, the vegetation dwindling except for
some rough spikes of things pushing through the parched
ground like flayed fingers, their puffed redness in contrast to
the usual amethystine coloring of Warlock's growing things.<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_53" id="Page_53"></SPAN></span>
Under the climbing sun that whole stretch of country was
revealed in a stark bareness which at first repelled, and then
began to interest him.</p>
<p>He discovered Thorvald standing on the upper bluff, looking
out toward the waiting mountains. The officer turned as
Shann urged the wolverines to the raft, and when he jumped
down the drop to join them, Shann saw he carried a map
strip unrolled in his hand.</p>
<p>"The situation is not as good as we hoped," he told the
younger man. "Well have to leave the river to cross the
heights."</p>
<p>"Why?"</p>
<p>"There're rapids—bending in a falls." The officer squatted
down, spreading out the strip and making stabs at it with a
nervous finger tip. "Here we have to leave. This is all rough
ground. But lying to the south there's a gap which may be a
pass. This was made from an aerial survey."</p>
<p>Shann knew enough to realize to what extent such a guide
could go wrong. Main features of the landscape would be
clear enough from aloft, but there might be unsurmountable
difficulties at ground level which were not distinguishable from
the air. Yet Thorvald had planned this journey as if he had
already explored their escape route and that it was as open
and easy as a stroll down Tyr's main transport way. Why was
it so necessary that they try to reach the sea? However, since
he had no objection to voice except a dislike for indefinite
information, Shann did not question the other's calm assumption
of command, not yet, anyway.</p>
<p>As they embarked and worked back into the current, Shann
studied his companion. Thorvald had freely listed the difficulties
lying before them. Yet he did not seem in the least
worried about their being able to win through to the sea—or
if he was, his outer shell of unconcern remained uncracked.
Before their first day together had ended, the younger Terran
had learned that to Thorvald he was only another tool, to be
used by the Survey officer in some project which the other
believed of primary importance. And his resentment of the<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_54" id="Page_54"></SPAN></span>
valuation was under control so far. He valued Thorvald's
knowledge, but the other's attitude chilled and rebuffed his
need for something more than a half partnership of work.</p>
<p>Why had Thorvald come back to Warlock in the first place?
And why had it been necessary for him to risk his life—perhaps
more than his life if their theory was correct concerning
the Throgs' wish to capture a Terran—to get that
set of maps from the plundered camp? When he had first
talked of that raid, his promised loot had been supplies to fill
their daily needs; there had been no mention of maps. By all
signs Thorvald was engaged on some mission. And what
would happen if he, Shann, suddenly stopped being the
other's obedient underling and demanded a few explanations
here and now?</p>
<p>Only Shann knew enough about men to also know that he
would not get any information out of Thorvald that the latter
was not ready to give, and that such a showdown, coming
prematurely, would only end in his own discomfiture. He
smiled wryly now, remembering his emotions when he had
first seen Ragnar Thorvald months ago. As if the officer ever
considered the likes, dislikes—or dreams—of one Shann Lantee.
No, reality and dreams seldom approached each other.
Dreams....</p>
<p>"On any of those shoreline maps," he asked suddenly, "do
they have marked a mountain shaped like a skull?"</p>
<p>Thorvald thrust with his pole. "Skull?" he repeated, a
little absently, as he so often did in answer to Shann's questions
unless they dealt with some currently important matter.</p>
<p>"A queer sort of skull," Shann said. Just as vividly as
when he had first awakened, he could picture that skull
mountain with the flying things about its eye sockets. And
that, too, was odd; dream impressions usually faded with
the passing of waking hours. "It has a protruding lower jaw
and the waves wash that ... red-and-purple rock——"</p>
<p>"What?"</p>
<p>He had Thorvald's complete attention now.<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_55" id="Page_55"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>"Where did you hear about it?" That demand followed
quickly.</p>
<p>"I didn't hear about it. I dreamed of it last night. I stood
there right in front of it. There were birds—or things flying
like birds—going in and out of the <ins class="corr" title="Hyphen removed in line with majority usage.">eyeholes</ins>——"</p>
<p>"What else?" Thorvald leaned across his pole, his eyes alive,
avid, as if he would pull the reply he wanted out of Shann by
force.</p>
<p>"That was all I remember—the skull mountain." He did not
add his other impression, that he was meant to find that
skull, that he <i>must</i> find it.</p>
<p>"Nothing...." Thorvald paused, and then spoke slowly,
with a visible reluctance. "Nothing else? No cavern with a
green veil—a wide green veil—strung across it?"</p>
<p>Shann shook his head. "Just the skull mountain."</p>
<p>Thorvald looked as if he didn't quite believe that, but
Shann's expression must have been convincing, for he laughed
shortly.</p>
<p>"Well, there goes one nice neat theory up in smoke!" he
commented. "No, your skull doesn't appear on any of our
maps, and so probably my cavern does not exist either. They
may both be smoke screens——"</p>
<p>"What——?" But Shann never finished that query.</p>
<p>A wind was rising in the desert to blow across the slit which
held the river, carrying with it a fine shifting of sand which
coasted down into the water as a gray haze, coating men,
animals, and raft, and sighing as snow sighs when it falls.</p>
<p>Only that did not drown out another cry, a thin cry, diluted
by the miles of land stretching behind them, but yet carrying
that long ululating howl they had heard in the Throg camp.
Thorvald grinned mirthlessly.</p>
<p>"The hound's on trail."</p>
<p>He bent to the pole, using it to aid the pace of the current.
Shann, chilled in spite of the sun's heat, followed his example,
wondering if time had ceased to fight on their side.</p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_56" id="Page_56"></SPAN></span></p>
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