Poul Anderson - The Long Way Home

Valti followed his pointing finger. “Yes... I believe I’ve heard of the spot,” he said with a touch of excitement. “Corrad Caverns... yes, here. Is that the location?”

Langley used a large-scale map to orient himself. “I think so.”

“Ah, then I do know. It’s part of the estate of Minister Ranull, who keeps a good deal of his property in a wild desert condition as a park. Sometimes his guests are shown Corrad Caverns, but I’m sure that nobody ever goes very far into them, and they must be quite deserted the rest of the time. A brilliant suggestion, captain! My compliments.”

“If it doesn’t pan out,” said Langley, “then I’m just as much in the dark as you.”

“We’ll try. You shall have your reward regardless.” Valti spoke into a communicator. “We’ll go there at once. No time to lose. Would you like a stimulant drug?... Here. It will give you alertness and energy for the next several hours, and you may need them. Excuse me, I have some details to arrange.” He left, and Langley was alone with Marin. She watched him for a while without speaking.

“All right,” he said. “All right, I made my choice. I figured the Society would make better use of this power than anybody else. But of course, you’re a citizen of Sol. If you don’t approve, I’m sorry.”

“I don’t know. It is a very great burden to take on yourself.” She shook her head. “I can see what led you to it -maybe you are right, maybe not, I can’t say. But I’m with you, Edwy.”

“Thank you,” he said, shakily, and wondered if, in spite of himself, he might not be falling in love with her. He had a sudden image of the two of them, starting again somewhere beyond the sky.

If they got away from Sol, of course!

It had felt good to shed his over-colorful pajamas for a spaceman’s coverall, boots, helmet, a gun—Langley had never quite realized how much clothes make the man. But walking through a hollow immensity of darkness, feeling the underground chill and hearing a mockery of echoes, he knew again the helplessness and self-doubt which had been strangling him.

There were light-tubes strung throughout miles of the caverns, but a sneak expedition could not turn them on; they served only to indicate regions where Saris would surely not be. Half a dozen men walked beside Langley, the reflected glow of flashbeams limning their faces ghostly against shadow. They were all crewmen, strangers to him; Valti had declared himself too old and cowardly to enter the tunnels, Marin had wanted to come but been refused permission.

A tumbled fantasy of limestone, great rough pillars and snags, leaped from the gloom as beams flashed around. This place couldn’t have changed much, thought Langley. In five thousand years, the slow drip and evaporation of cold water would have added a bit here and there, but Earth was old and patient. He felt that time itself lay buried somewhere in these reaching leagues.

The man who carried the neural tracker looked up. “Not a flicker yet,” he said. Unconsciously, his voice was hushed, as if the stillness lay heavy on it. “How far down have we come? A long ways—and there are so many branches -Even if he is here, we may never find him.”

Langley went on. There was nothing else he could do. He didn’t think Saris would have gone farther underground than necessary; the Holatans weren’t exactly claustrophobic, but they were creatures of open land and sky, it went against their instincts to remain long enclosed. The alien would be after an easily defensible site with at least a couple of emergency boltholes: say a small cave having two or three tunnels out from it to the surface. But that could be any of a hundred places down here, and no map of the system was available.

Logic helped somewhat. Saris hadn’t had a map of the caves either. He’d have slipped in through the main entrance, like his present followers, because he wouldn’t have known where any other approach was. Then he would look for a room to live in, with exits and a water supply. Langley turned to the man with the dowsing unit. “Isn’t there a pool or river somewhere near?”

“Yes—water over in that direction. Shall we try?”

“Uh-huh.” Langley groped toward the nearest tunnel. Beyond, the passage narrowed rapidly until he had to crawl.

“This may be it,” he said. Echoes shivered around his words. “Saris could easily slip through, he can go four-footed anytime he wants, but it’s a hard approach for a man.”

“Wait.,. here, you take the tracker, captain,” said someone behind him. “I think it kicked over, but all these people ahead of me make too much interference.”

Langley squirmed around to grasp the box. Focusing it, he squinted at the green-glowing dial. It was responsive to the short-range impulses emitted by a nervous system and -yes, the needle was quivering more than it should!

Excited, he crawled farther, the harsh damp wall scraping his back. His flashbeam was a single white lance thrust into blindness. His breathing was a loud rasp in his throat.

He came suddenly to the end and almost went over. The tunnel must open several feet or yards above the floor. “Saris!” he called. The echoes flew about, this was a good-sized room. Somewhere he heard running water. “Saris Hronna! Are you there?”

A blaster bolt smashed after him. He saw the dazzle of it, there were spots dancing before his eyes for minutes afterward, and the radiation stung his face. He snapped off the light and jumped, hoping wildly that it wasn’t too far to the ground. Something raked his leg, the jolting impact rattled his teeth, and he fell to an invisible floor.

Another beam flamed toward the tunnel mouth. Langley felt blood hot and sticky on his calf. The Holatan knew just where the opening was, he could ricochet his bolts and fry the men within. “Saris! It’s me—Edward Langley—I’m your friend!”

The echoes laughed at him, dancing through an enormous night. Friend, friend, friend, friend . The underground stream talked with a cold frantic voice. If the outlaw had gone mad with fear and loneliness, or if he had decided in bleak sanity to kill any human who ventured here, Langley was done. The incandescent sword of an energy beam, or the sudden closing of jaws in his throat, would be the last thing he ever felt. It had to be tried. Langley dug himself flat against the rock. “Saris! I’ve come to get you out of here! I’ve come to take you home!”

The answer rumbled out of blackness, impossible to locate through the echoes: “Iss you? What do you want?”

“I’ve made arrangements... you can get back to Holat—” Langley was shouting in English, their only common language; the Holatan dialects were too unlike man’s for him to have learned more than a few phrases. “We’re your friends, the only friends you’ve got.”

“Sso.” He could not read any expression into the tone. He thought he could feel the vibrations of a heavy body, flitting through the dark on padded feet. “I can not be sure. Pleasse to the present situation wit” honesty describe.”

Langley put it into a few words. The stone under his belly was wet and chill. He sneezed, snuffled, and reflected on the old definition of adventure as somebody else having a tough time a thousand miles away. “It’s the only chance for all of us,” he finished. “If you don’t agree, you’ll stay here till you die or are dragged out.”

There was a silence, then: “You I trust, I know you. But iss it not that thesse otherss you hawe deceiwed possible?”

“I... what? Oh. You mean maybe the Society is playing me for a sucker, too? Yes. It could be. But I don’t think so.”

“I hawe no dessire for dissection,” said the one who waited.