Андрэ Нортон - Beast Master's Planet

Dean was away, running, dodging behind one of the cased machines, Surra a tawny streak at his back. Hosteen swayed, then recovered his balance on the very edge of the platform. He saw Surra drop, roll helplessly—Dean must have picked up the stass.

Quade passed Hosteen, running toward the spot where the cat lay. But before him was Logan, scrambling on hands and knees. The younger man paused, and then he threw—with the practised wrist snap of a veteran knife man. There was a cry from beyond.

Hosteen was only half aware of the struggle there. The pain in his arm and shoulder was like a living thing eating his quivering flesh. He dropped down and watched Logan and his father drag a wildly struggling Dean into view. And in Logan’s hand was the weapon that had brought the tech down, the now blood-stained horn he had taken from the skull found in the pens.

As they returned, the tubing on the board came to life. The waving line of lavender, which had always showed steady color from the first time Hosteen had seen the hall, was deepening in hue, its added flow of energy clearly visible.

Dean stopped struggling abruptly. A new kind of concentration molded his features. In an instant he had dropped his frenzied fight for freedom and become an alert tech faced by a problem in his own field.

“What is it?” Brad Quade demanded.

Dean shrugged impatiently, as if to throw off both question and the hold that kept him from the platform. “I don’t know—”

Najar was beside Hosteen, giving the Amerindian a hand up. No, he had not been wrong, for Surra had caught it too—the warning that was a part of the brilliance in that band of light, as well as a part of man and beast who shared another kind of awareness.

“We must get out of here.” Hosteen lurched toward the dais.

Logan, Quade, Najar—three pairs of eyes were on him. Surra was already by his side.

“What is it?” This time Brad Quade asked his stepson and not the tech.

“I don’t know!” Hosteen made the same answer. “But we have to get out of here and fast.” His inner tension was swelling into panic—such as had dogged him in the valley of hunting shadows. Logan moved first.

“All right.”

“You call it,” Brad Quade added. He jerked Dean along and in a second again had a raving, fighting madman in his hold.

Najar struck, a Commando in-fighting blow, and the tech went limp. On the board that pulsing light was now an angry purple. And more bulbs glowed here and there, taking on a winking life. The yellow of the lightning tree was bubbling, frothing.

They crowded together on the dais, the unconscious Dean held upright between Quade and Najar. Hosteen strove to raise his hands to give the signal that would transport them out of there—and found his right arm stiff, pain holding it in a steel band to his side.

The hum of the running machines, which had always formed a purring undercurrent of sound in the hall, was a hum no longer. More of them must be coming alive.

“Your hands—hold them apart over that line of bulbs.” Hosteen croaked out instructions to Logan. “Then bring them together in a fast clap—”

Logan’s hands, tinted purple in that awesome light, came together. Then they were spinning out and out—

Before them once more was a patch of day. Hosteen was conscious of Logan’s arm about him, of stumbling into the light, of the shuffle of feet behind.

Sound—it was not the rising hum of the alien machines but drums, a steady beat—beat of them in chorus. And over all lay the terrible need to be in the open.

They came out on that ledge where Hosteen had lain to watch Dean harangue the Norbie tribesmen. Hosteen pulled ahead, following Surra, for in the cat as well as in him was that bursting need to be away from the cave entrance.

There was no sun, and Hosteen, coming more to himself as he led the way downslope, saw now the clouds gathering in purple-black lines around an irregular space of sky. Had it been five months earlier or later, he would have said one of the terrible cloudbursts of the Wet Time was about to break.

Logan came to a halt. Surra was just a pace or so in advance, crouched belly to earth, her tail swishing, her head pointing at the line of Drummers.

They were there, every one of those who had followed their clan and tribal chieftains into the Blue—strung out in a curving line facing upslope, equidistant from each other, and each pounding out that emphatic beat that was one in a queer way with the billowing clouds. Directly before the party from the cave was Ukurti. And drawn up several yards behind the medicine men were the warriors, serried ranks of them, with here and there a truce pole still showing.

Quade and Najar, with Dean held between them, then Hosteen and Logan—five off-world men facing a thousand or more Norbies. Had the natives come to rescue their Lord of Thunder from the impious? Logan, still propping up Hosteen, brought his other hand before him and moved fingers in the peace sign.

Not an eye blinked nor did a hand lose a fraction of the beat. Seconds became the longest minute Hosteen could remember, while that roll of sound deadened his thinking. Quade and Najar dropped their hold on Dean as if hypnotized. The tech took one stiff step forward, then another. With a set expression on his face, he was heading for Ukurti. Hosteen strove to make some move to stop the other and found that it was impossible.

But Dean had come to a halt once more. He spoke—but the sounds from his lips this time were not the trilling Norbie speech.

“Go—go—” One hand went to his throat, fingers rubbing skin, seeking the band he was not wearing now.

Ukurti’s hand on an upswing remained in the air, though his fellows continued to drum. He signed slowly, and Logan, Quade, and Hosteen read his message aloud, though why they did so was beyond their comprehension.

“We-Who-Can-Drum-Thunder under the power have drummed so—and thunder will answer, as will the fire from the sky. Stop this with your own power if you can, Lord of False Lightning.”

There was no mistaking the challenge delivered, not as a matter of defiance but as a pronouncement of a judge in court.

The purple-black of the clouds spread, eating up the sky, and now there were flashes of light along the circumference. Dean swayed back and forth, his fingers still rubbing frantically at his throat.

Magic—yes, this was magic of a sort, magic such as the Old Ones of Hosteen’s own people had believed in and sought to use. He shook free of Logan, a racing excitement filling him. He forgot the pain of his hurt and could have shouted aloud in a feeling of triumph.

Save for the flashes of true lightning, it was night-dark. And always the drums continued to summon the storm with their power. A weird blue glow crept along rocky outcrops and made candles at the tips of tree and bush branches.

Then—just as Dean had lashed his machine-born lightning about the mountain, using it as a warning and a weapon—so did the real storm-based fire strike square behind them on the very crest of the peak. The answering shock was that of an earthquake, part of the violence young worlds knew before man arose to walk their lands.

Hosteen raised himself from the ground. He was deaf, blind, aware that some giant blow had struck close. And about him was the smell of ozone, the crisp of vegetation changed in an instant into ash.

The black of the storm clouds faded to gray. How long had he lain there? Beside him Logan stirred and sat up. Quade moved toward them on hands and knees. Najar lay where he was, moaning softly.

Downslope lay a form that did not move, and over that loomed a cloaked Drummer—Ukurti. The Norbie’s head was lifted. He regarded the four men levelly, and then his hand was raised, his long forefinger pointed up and away behind them. Almost as one they shifted about to see.