Menace Under Marswood Page 15

  Muller was quite ready. He whistled himself, low and clear, and they all left the broad ramp and slid a little down the sloping sides, half going to right, half to left. Each party took one gote and made the animal crouch as it did. Then they waited, as they had planned when they first took up the new section of their march. The hooting cry was very close, and in the next pause they heard other sounds, those of ponderous weight and a massive tread. Whatever it was, was advancing straight at them. With his eyes bravely over the lip of the ramp, Slater stared like all the others at the curling white mists, straining to see what was bearing down upon them.

  Then the mists parted as some vagrant riffle of air from far above, some ghost of a wind of the outer surface, thrust a last finger into the planet's depths.

  Advancing out of the opalescent fog came a giant bulk, its armor shimmering in the subdued light in a strange, coppery way like that of an enormous tank.

  The one great eye gave a reddish gleam as it swiveled in its turret atop the mighty prow. The two great forelimbs, their ends, like colossal, flat lobster claws, clicked and hissed as they swept steadily back and forth before the immense bulk, scissoring the plant growth neatly and as smoothly as any machine could have done. Like giant pistons, the side legs clumped and thumped on the surface of the ramp road, thrusting up and to the sides of the great sloping body. And Slater stared, frozen in disbelief, while one hand clutched at the tiny metal box in his belt pocket.

  Vast and inconceivable, a thousand times or more greater in bulk and its armored majesty a thing of many tons—it was Grabbit!

  One of the enormous, pillarlike legs smashed down no more than an arm's length from his nose. That bellowing hoot deafened him as the thing called again from close overhead. Did he hear a tiny answer from close to his heart? His veins seemed to freeze as the second great, stumplike leg crashed down, the blunt spike that terminated it sending bits of moss and dirt up in a small cloud before his eyes. He stared fascinated at the domed bumps that protruded from the carapace of glittering skin/shell above him. Each was twice the size of his own head and each, he knew, had a lidded photoreceptor. As Grabbit drew energy from the UV of the far-off Sun, so could this behemoth, which was a monster simulacrum of the tiny form in his belt pouch.

  And it passed. He saw the blunt, spiky pointed end of the body disappear in the swirling shrouds of mist to his left. And now before him the sward was clipped evenly down to a two-inch height where the great claws had passed.

  A voice, low and amused, broke in on his stunned silence. He spun his head and there crouched Muller a few feet away. "How do you like having a miniature of the world's most efficient lawnmower tucked in your belt, eh?"

  "I could only remember our chat a few kilometers up, sir. I mean that Grabbit had been designed for efficiency and had not just grown that way due to evolution."

  "Quite so. And who designed it, if that's true? We are at or close to the bottom of the Great Rift of Cimmerium. I think we shall have a few answers to that and many other questions before too long. Mars still has a few surprises in store, I think." A faint smile glimmered at the corner of the colonel's iron mouth. Then he whistled sharply, and it was assembly time again. As his whistle ended, the hooting of the incredible bulk that had passed them sounded again, but a long distance back on the ramp, the way they had come.

  They assembled again, gotes and all, and Muller gave them their orders.

  They would proceed, in the same way, with the same care, and on the backtrack of Grabbit's giant twin. First, though, Slater had to remove Grabbit and look at him so that they could all see if he was doing anything odd. He appeared not to be and Slater shook him out on his palm. The three Ruckers winced at the thought of what those tiny claws could do to flesh.

  But the Martian lucky piece seemed quite indifferent. Slater heard a minute clicking from him and dropped a shred of dried meat on his hand, which was carefully gathered and stuffed into the mouth under the tiny Martian's pointed prow. He was put back in his box and they went on as before.

  The noises from the mists on either side had resumed as soon as the giant creature had disappeared, and they could hear the distant cries of ferkats and other familiar sounds. Where does this road go—and to what end are we going on it? Slater could only wonder and keep alert, and he knew the others were in the same position.

  Slater soon noticed that the ramp was no longer level, but felt no need of mentioning the fact. Muller and the three Ruckers would have noticed also, to say nothing of Nakamura and Feng.

  Deep as they were in the planet's crust, apparently there were deeper levels. The ramp was slowly tilting on the path before them and the tilt was downward.

  They had gone only a little way on their resumed march when they all suddenly halted, weapons ready. It was the Ruckers and Muller, of course, who had caught the sound first, and somehow, Slater knew, they had caught a meaning that he did not in that eerie, piercing whistle. It seemed to come from behind them and yet to one side.

  The air was clear enough at this point so that he could see Danna's face. To his amazement, he saw his Wise Woman was smiling, her face lit up in a blazing grin. Before this fact had registered, he got another shock. For she puckered up and blew a good strong answer, a whistle that quavered and trilled up and down the scale.

  A soft chuckle suddenly sounded from beside him; he saw that the colonel had slid up in his usual manner. "I think we have company, my boy, and God bless the company. I have been very worried."

  From the bog that lay to their rear there were some squishing sounds and then the thump of a firmer step. A shape emerged out of a patch of mist, a human shape, with one arm aloft and rifle held flat in greeting. The broad, lined face was clear in the soft light, the forehead chevrons plain to see, and a smile as broad as Danna's lit the strong old face. It was their own konsel, Thau Lang!

  They crowded about him and the grins were universal, but Muller coughed after a moment and ordered Milla and Arta to take sentry to front and rear. Even Strombok and Breenbull seemed pleased; Slater got a lavish lick on his left ear from the former. Muller gripped hands hard with the old chief, and the two of them smiled into one another's eyes.

  "Took all my ability to find you, comrade," the Rucker said at last. "Those caves and tunnels might have got me, except for the things you left. Once out of them, it was not too bad, though."

  "Couldn't leave much," the colonel said, examining his open free palm, which he had just taken from a pocket. Slater felt another small palm steal into one of his and he knew that just as he was staring, entranced, so were Danna and the others.

  "Tiny foil balls, from candy wrappers!" Feng yelled. "Have you been dropping those all the way, sir?"

  "Only when I felt puzzled myself," Muller said. "At the mouths of those tunnels, for example. The konsel did not have that direction-finding pet of yours, Slater."

  Thau Lang looked interested at this remark, and they had to explain to him about Grabbit and his strange little "plume of direction".

  "Useful" was his terse reaction. "We must have more of these when we go back. The True People could use such a thing." His wise eyes looked hard at Slater and then shifted visibly to Danna, at Slater's side. "Maybe a Wise Woman of some variety could coax the secret from an unwary Greenie. If she did, perhaps you would have them both shot, eh, Colonel?"

  Slater looked at Danna and behold—his Wise Woman was blushing in the pearly light!

  The I-Corps saved his pride by breaking into the chuckles of the konsel and Muller. "Better tell the konsel about Grabbit's big brother, whom we just avoided meeting." Feng's crisp tones killed laughter at once. Thau Lang listened as Muller told him of the monster replica of Slater's pet that had just lumbered past along the dike.

  "Hah, hmm," he said when the tale was told. "Let us move then, lest this other return. Let us go on, now we are together once more. We can talk later at length, when we are camped in a safe place, if there is one such on this road."

  Within a few
moments they were on the march once again, the only difference being that the colonel and the konsel now led the bulgotes in the center of the little column, Danna with them; and Feng, Slater, and Nakamura made up the rearguard, while the two young warmen once more scouted a little to the front.

  Eventually the darkening mist told them that the day was ending. Noises from the swamp told them that it was time to rest again. No one wanted to continue in full dark on this strange path and even less did they want to meet Grabbit's large simulacrum in the night. One sight of that armored behemoth in what passed for daylight down there was more than enough.

  Milla and Arta settled the problem of a campsite when they came loping back. "We saw a higher place," Arta said, "a little over on the left side. It was rocky and should be easy to get to, if we hurry and the dark holds a minute more away."

  He was quite right. They had to go a little forward and then down the ramp and into mud and towering reeds, but mud no deeper than their knees. A kilometer of this brought them to craggy spines of stone that projected from the muck. That they easily scrambled up, for the pitch was not too bad. Strombok and Breenbull seemed to make nothing of it all and kept up the pace with no effort.

  On inspection, their refuge seemed to be a little spine of rock, an island rising out of the muck about them. The top was mostly flat but four little crags stuck above the generally level surface at one end, and between them was a little bay in the rocks which made an excellent place to fort up for the night.

  They had just begun to unload the bulgotes and to get things sorted out when they heard it.

  A long way off, back the way they had come, there sounded an echoing series of hoots. All crouched silent and, at a touch, the bulgotes dropped to their knees and even stopped cud chewing, to listen like the other mammals. Again the hooting came, and as before, it was louder and nearer.

  Slater found Lang next to him and was intrigued to notice that the old war chief's eyes were alive with excitement. "So this is a real snapper, my young friend?" the konsel said under his breath. "Maybe it is the mother of your little one, eh, or the father? What think you?"

  "Damn if I know, sir," Slater purred back. He knew when he was being kidded. "Might be the mother of all the snappers that ever were. It's more then big enough for the job."

  He got a gentle dig in the ribs for his pains, and they all listened as the giant thing approached. That they were not the only ones listening was quite apparent. Aside from the hum of insects, the night or evening noises had ceased. No ferkat squalled nor bulgote bellowed. They knew when the lumbering supersnapper was right opposite them on the ramp road, for they could all hear its great chelae click as it scissored the moss and the thud and crunch as the giant legs slammed down.

  As they waited in patient stillness, the hooting and the other sounds faded off to their left flank, as steadily and as regularly as they had come. The regular night noises of the Ruck remade their appearance as the hooting cry of the giant snapper faded in the night of the depths and the little party continued making camp, placing bedrolls and settling down.

  "We can tether the gotes down near the edge," Milla Breen said. "They can be watched from up here by whoever is on guard. There is plenty for them to eat here, and if anything comes from the mud and water, they will hear it and so will the guard."

  "We have at least four pair of night goggles," the colonel said. "And in the pack of one of the gotes, you will find a small-unit detector. I don't want to use any equipment not necessary, but that one can be set for short range, say a half klick. Then, if anything moves that is not heard, it can be detected. I don't think a low-level device on so small a scale as that could be detected by anything that was not already on top of us."

  After a minute's debate, the colonel and the konsel even allowed a tiny fire set back in a rock recess and fed with dry reed stems.

  Once watches had been arranged, other ideas crept out of hiding. Slater, who was to go on watch just before dawn, found himself roped into a party that one of his long-dead English ancestors might have called "huntin', fishin', shootin'," if he had thought it worth a name. The two older men seemed to see no harm in it and, save for warning all involved to be careful, did not forbid them to try. It was Slater's quasi-brother-in-law, Arta Burg, who put the idea into words as they had crouched about the tiny fire.

  "We should save our trail rations," he said blandly. "Anyway, I hate the damned things. There must be fresh meat of some kind down here in this biggest of Rucks. Let's take some tonight. We are all pretty good hunters, are we not?"

  None were very tired and all wanted to try to get something. They drew straws, and Captain Feng scowled at his short one.

  "All right, I get first sentry go, but it's unfair. You will all be devoured by life-forms that only I should want to or would be able to classify."

  The other, younger folk went in a party to the edge of the rock farthest from the ramp. On a low rock spine they slapped at insects and discussed what to do next. Danna had the first idea or at least gave it voice first.

  She pulled a long coil of light paulon plastic line from her belt pouch and fixed a heavy, vicious-looking hook to it. On the hook she placed a very large slug she had found in the mud and also a chunk of dried gote meat from her ration. She whirled this about her head, nearly smacking Nakamura in the eye as she did so, and threw it far out into the reeds. Then she sat firmly down and grinned at the others. "You go and get muddy. A woman will get the best and be comfortable as well." The dark was so thick, Slater could barely see the gleam of those pearl-gray teeth.

  The other four went a little farther down the shore of the islet and waded in. The idea was to herd whatever they might encounter back toward the rock. They all had spears, and Danna was to watch the shore side while she fished.

  Slater was last in line going out and it was his role not to go too far out. Nakamura, his bulk dimly visible in the dark and fog, was the next one out, and the two warmen were in front of him. When Arta, who was farthest out, gave a whistle, they would walk toward the rocky shore.

  The night goggles kept the bugs out of one's eyes, Slater realized as he spat a particularly large one out of his open mouth. He was damp, hot, and feeling immobilized by the thick muck through which he was wading. Ah, there came the whistle from out in the fog. Watching his footing carefully as he advanced, he turned left and began to angle back. He had only found one deep spot so far but had no desire to vanish over his head in a sea of ooze. He pushed through clumps of tall reeds and kept his mouth shut against the reed tops and the bugs, working his way slowly and with great care as he tested for firm footing under the muck before his advancing feet. Then he heard it, a sudden noise in the dank and fog of the dark before him.

  A sudden splattering sounded ahead and to the left, and something heaved muck as it broke through the reeds. He could see nothing but he could hear well, and he heard something that lent fury to his movements. It was Danna's voice in a low cry, a cry in which he read horror.

  He charged forward, keeping his Rucker spear leveled in the direction of the cry. One part of his mind registered the fact that his friends were following, for he could hear the splosh of their feet out in the dark. Ahead was a dim patch of light and movement.

  He churned up on to firmer footing and saw the konsel and the colonel with belt lamps on before him, focusing on Danna and on her battle, for she was indeed engaged in one.

  Her feet braced against a boulder, the girl was holding off a pair of shining, black mandibles, their full gape over a yard in breadth. They clacked and snapped as they tried to close on her body, and jerked about so that it was hard for her to keep her footing. Her spear was imbedded in the great mandibles of the thing that tried to reach her.

  Slater noted with one eye that the two older men held leveled rifles, but he raced along the short stretch of rock and passed before them with his own spear, which he drove under a spiny leg and into the body just below where its shoulder could be said to be. As he f
ell, panting, to the rock of the shore, another spear buried itself next to his and Thau Lang's body brushed his own as the konsel drove that one home.

  The monster snapped and wrestled for some time, but the main fight was over. Slater, his arm around Danna, watched the end of the fight. Nakamura, Breen, and Burg were all in it, and it was they who finally killed the creature and dragged the body, shining, black, and ten feet or so long, up on the rock to the top where it could be examined by the light of the tiny fire.

  It had six legs, three to a side up near the head, which seemed small for the great jaws. The long body was rather slender and tapered.

  "Can't blame this on dear old Mars, I fear." Feng, who had been relieved from sentinel and walked over to study their catch, exclaimed. "I should say a Martian version of Dysticus, one of our more predaceous water beetles—and in the larval stage at that. Let's see—I seem to remember looking at one long ago in school. About an inch and a half long, if I recall correctly. The rifts do seem to put bulk on our import and the native stock as well. Still, that giant snapper could use this for a snack."

  The Ruckers wanted to know if the thing was edible. Usability was the keynote in Rucker life and the first thing they always asked about. Feng pursed his lips and finally nodded.

  "Why on Mars not? Might even be good. One can eat most Earth bugs. Try it and see. That fellow ought to be a lot of meat. He would have eaten us if he could have sunk those mandibles in—or, perhaps, drunk us since I think he pumps in a dissolvant first." This silenced all of them, but they soon got over that and began to hack large chunks of whitish meat out of the chitinous armor. These they toasted on sticks over the fire. To Slater's surprise, he found them excellent. He told Danna, she looked smug and pointed out the snapped plastic line that still hung from the small mouth below the creature's hypodermic jaws.

  She winked at him, her mouth stuffed with the crisp meat, burned on the outside and semiliquid on the inside. "A Wise Woman always gets her catch, Greenie," finally emerged around her mouthful. "Watch yourself or I'll have you for breakfast for a change."