Jack Vance - Ecce and Old Earth

The rain returned in another drumming downpour, and persisted until a hint of wet gray light indicated the coming of dawn.

Light seeped into the sky, and the length and breadth of the prison strip became visible. The four men departed the tree hut and started downhill through the dripping jungle. Glawen went first, followed by Chilke, both with guns at the ready. Presently they arrived at the gully, to find it hip deep in running water, which could not be waded because of the presence of water-snappers. Glawen selected a tall tree, sheared its trunk with energy from his gun and dropped it across the gully to create a slippery bridge.

The men found the crawler as Glawen had left it; they clambered aboard and headed down the slope slowly to avoid sliding out of control. Almost at once they were attacked by a splay-legged creature twenty feet long, with eight clashing mandibles and tail curled forward that it might project a noxious fluid at its prey. Chilke killed it even as it aimed its tail, and the creature fell to the slide, mandibles gnashing and the tall waving back and forth, discharging a dark fluid into the air.

A few moments later Glawen halted the crawler, the better to select a route and in the silence an ominous sound could be heard through the underbrush. Scharde gave a croak of alarm; Glawen looked up to see a triangular head six feet across, split into a gaping fanged maw, descending through the foliage at the end of a long arching neck. Glawen fired his gun by reflex, destroying the head. A moment later something bulky toppled and crashed into the jungle.

As best he could Glawen guided the crawler downhill the way he had come. The slope at last began to flatten and the jungle foliage became thin. The vehicle began to splash through water where the river had overflowed the slime. A tribe of mud-walkers watched from across the swamp, hooting and screaming. The water deepened; the crawler began to lose contact with the slime and float on the swirling water.

Glawen halted the crawler. He turned to his three companions and pointed to a clump of vegetation. “This is where I left, the flyer, tied to a tree in that clump yonder. The tree must have broken away last night in the storm and carried the flyer away.”

“That is bad news,” said Chilke. He looked eastward along the face of the swollen river. “I see lots of snags and dead trees, but no flyer.”

Kathcar gave a hollow groan. “We were better off at the prison.”

"You, perhaps, were better off,“ said Glawen. “Go on back if you like.”

Kathcar said no more.

Chilke spoke ruminatively: “With a few tools and a few materials I could contrive a radio. But there are neither on the crawler."

“It is disaster!” lamented Kathcar. “Sheer disaster!”

“Not just yet," said Scharde.

“How can you say differently?”

“I notice that the current moves about three miles an hour, no more. If the tree fell in the middle of the night — let us say, six hours ago — it will have drifted eighteen miles or less. The crawler can move five or six miles an hour on the water. So if we set off now, we should overtake the tree and the attached flyer in three or four hours.”

Without further words Glawen started up the crawler and set off downstream.

The crawler floated across a wilderness of water, through a swelter of heat and glare reflected from the surface, humidity which seemed to stifle the breath and make every movement an effort of monumental proportion. As Syrene rose, the heat and glare became actively painful. Glawen and Chilke rigged an awning using branches and foliage salvaged from the stream, after first shaking away the insects and small serpents watch might be clinging to the leaves. The awning provided a large measure of relief. From time to time great heads or ocular process rose from the water with evident latent to attack; constant vigilance was necessary to avoid sudden overwhelming disaster.

For three hours the crawler churned down the river, passing by dozens of snags, dead trees, rafts of detritus, floating reed tussocks. Despite earnest and anxious search, the Skyrie failed to show itself. Kathcar at last asked: “And what if we go another two hours and still don't find the flyer?”

“Then we start thinking very carefully,“ said Chilke.

"I have already been thinking carefully,“ said Kathcar sourly. I do not believe thinking is helpful in this case."

The river widened; Glawen steered a course keeping the left shore always within range of vision, with the main sweep of the river to the right.

Another hour passed. Ahead appeared a spot of white: the Skyrie. Glawen heaved a great sigh and sank down on the bench, feeling an extraordinary emotion mixed of lassitude, euphoria and an almost tearful gratitude for the favorable workings of Destiny. Scharde put his arm around Glawen’s shoulders. “I cannot find words for what is in my mind."

"Don't be too grateful too fast," said Chilke. “It looks like we have pirates aboard the craft.”

“Mud-walkers!" said Glawen.

The crawler approached the flyer. The tree to which it had been moored apparently had been caught in an eddy and swung into a bank of muck, where it lodged. A tribe of mud-walkers, fascinated by the curious floating object, had run across mud and water and climbed through tangles of debris to approach the craft. At the moment they were prodding at the bag of animal segments Glawen had left on deck, and pushed it into the river.

A vagrant breeze wafted the odor to the crawler, prompting an exclamation from Chilke. “What in the world is that?"

“The odor is from a bag of bad-smelling animal pieces,” said Glawen, "which I left on the deck to keep mud-walkers off.” He went to the front of the crawler and waved his arms. “Go away! Get off! Go!”

In response the mud-walkers screamed in fury and threw mud-balls at the crawler. Glawen aimed his gun at the tree and blasted away a great branch. With startled outcries the mud-walkers ran off across the mud, spindly legs pumping furiously, knees held high. At a safe distance they halted and attempted another barrage of mud-balls, without success.

The four men climbed aboard the flyer. Glawen threw buckets of water down the deck hoping to allay the lingering stink of the sacked animal parts and to wash overbroad the litter left by the mud-walkers. The crawler was hauled aboard and made secure. “Goodbye, Vertes River," said Glawen. “I have had all I want of you. He went to the controls, took the flyer aloft and flew down river at a low altitude.

At dusk the four dined on the provisions Glawen had stowed aboard. The river broadened and spilled into the ocean. Lorca and Sing disappeared and the Skyrie flew across the Western Ocean through the starlight.

Glawen spoke to Kathcar “I am still not clear in my mind as to why you were brought to Shattorak. You must have done something to annoy Smonny, since Titus Pompo himself apparently counts for little.”

Kathcar said coldly: “The matter is over and done with, and I do not wish to go into it any further.”

“Nevertheless, we are all interested, and there is ample time for you to go into full detail.”

“That may be,” said Kathcar. "Still, the affair is personal and private.”

Scharde said gently: “Under the circumstances, I don’t think you can expect to keep affairs of this sort private. It is much too close to all of us, and we are justifiably interested in what you can tell us."

Chilke said: “I must point out to you that both Scharde and Glawen are Bureau B personnel, and their questions have an official tinged to them. As for me, I want to find out how best to make Smonny pay, and also Namour and Benjamie and anyone else who thought that I might not resent being dropped into a doghole.”