Andre Norton - Daybreak—2250 A.D.

“Hold my belt!” he ordered Arskane. “There is something to the left—”

With the southerner’s fingers hooked in his belt he dared to swing over the edge of the opening. He was right, a ladder of metal strips protruded from the wall. And when he looked up he could see a square of dull light above which must mean another open door maybe a floor or two above. But could Lura and Arskane climb too?

Arskane flexed his arms as Fors explained, testing his shoulder.

“How far above is the opening?” he wanted to know.

“Perhaps two floors—”

While they hesitated Lura edged to the lip of the shaft, measured with her eyes the reach to the ladder, and then was gone before Fors could stop her. They heard the rasp of her claws on the metal—a sound to be drowned out by another—a shuffling noise of many feet. The inhabitants of the lower depths were issuing out to hunt. Arskane tested the lashing which held his war club to his belt. Then he smiled—if a bit crookedly.

“Two floors should not be beyond my strength. And we can only try, my friend.”

He judged his distance as the cat had done and then swung away. With a pounding heart Fors waited where he was, not daring to watch that ascent. But the sound he dreaded most to hear—that of a falling body—did not follow. He fitted an arrow to his bow cord and waited.

And that wait was not long. A grayish shadow at the far corner of the corridor was target enough. He shot, pinning the gray patch to the wall with the steel-headed war arrow. Something screeched and tried to jerk free. But before it did Fors had shouldered his bow and had pushed off for the ladder. The strips remained firm under his weight—his minor nightmare had been their breaking loose after taking the strain of the cat and the big southerner—and he scrambled up at a furious pace, his breathing sounding a hurricane in his own ears. He pulled himself through that other gray space to find Lura and Arskane both anxiously waiting for him.

They were in a second corridor fronted by rows of doors, but some of these were already open. Arskane disappeared through the nearest while Fors lay belly down on the floor, his head at the opening of the shaft, listening to the sounds from below. The wailing of the thing he had wounded faded away but the shuffling noise was louder and there were growls which might or might not have been speech. So far the creatures below had not discovered how the quarry had fled.

Fors scrambled to his feet and caught at the door which had once closed the shaft—now it stood a few inches out from where it slid into the wall. Under his tugging it gave a little with a faint grating sound. The mountaineer exerted his full strength and gained a foot more.

But the grating must have betrayed them. There was a shout below and a dart sped up the shaft, to spin harmlessly back again. Arskane came up pushing before him a collection of moldering furniture.

Odd noises arose from the shaft but Fors was not tricked into looking over the edge. He continued his silent struggle with the door. Arskane stood to help him. Together they fought the stubborn metal, salt sweat stung in their eyes and dripped from their chins.

In the shaft the sounds grew louder. Several more darts skimmed into the light and fell. One, aimed with more skill or luck, skidded out across the floor between Fors’ feet. Arskane turned to his erection of furniture and gave it one mighty push, toppling the whole pile over. There was a terrified yell in answer and a distant crash. Arskane rubbed a dusty hand across his wet jaw.

“One of them, by the Horned Lizard, climbs no more!”

They had the door halfway across the shaft opening now. And all at once its resistance ended with a snap which almost sent them both flying. Fors cried out triumphantly—but too soon. A foot was all they had gained. There still remained open space enough for a body to squeeze through.

Arskane drew off and considered the door for a long moment. Then he slapped it with the flat of his hand, putting behind that blow all the force he could muster. Again it gave and came forward a few inches. But the sounds in the shaft had begun again. The hunters had not been deterred by the fate of their companion.

Something flipped out of the dark, landing close to Fors’ foot. It was a hand, but skeleton thin and covered with wrinkled grayish skin. As it scrabbled with twisted claws for a hold it seemed more a rat’s paw than a hand. Fors raised his foot and stamped, grinding the boot, nailed to cross mountain trails, into the very center of the monstrosity. The scream which answered that came from the mouth of the shaft. They threw themselves in a last furious attack upon the door, their nails breaking and tearing on the metal—and it gave—snapping into the groove awaiting it in the opposite wall.

For a long moment they leaned panting against the wall of the corridor, holding their bruised and bleeding hands out before them. Fists were beating against that door but it did not move.

“That will stay closed,” Arskane gasped at last. “They cannot hang upon the wall ladder and force it. If there is no other way up we are safe—for a time—”

Lura came down the hallway, threading her way in and out of the rooms along it. And there was no menace there. They would have a breathing spell. Or were they now caught in a trap as cruel as the one which had engulfed Arskane in the museum wood?

The southerner turned to the front of the building and Fors followed him to one of the tall windows, long bare of glass, which gave them sight of the street below. They could see the body of the mare but the pack she had carried had been stripped off and there was something queer about the way she lay—

“So—they are meat eaters—”

Fors gagged at Arskane’s words. The mare was meat— maybe they, too, were—meat! He raised sick eyes and saw that the same thought lay in the big man’s mind. But Arskane’s hand was also on the club he had taken from the museum.

“Before this meat goes into any pot, it will have to be taken. And the hunting of it is going to cost them sore. These are truly the Beast Things of which you have spoken, comrade?”

“I believe so. And they are reputed to be crafty—”

“Then must we, too, be sly. Now, since we cannot go down—let us see what may lie above us.”

Fors watched the pigeons wheeling about the ruins. The floor under their feet was white with bird droppings.

“We have no wings—”

“No—but I am bred of a race which once flew,” Arskane answered with a sort of quiet humor coloring his tone. “We shall find a way out of here that offal below cannot follow. Let us now seek it.”

They passed out of one hall into another, looking into the rooms along the way. Here were only decaying sticks of furniture and bones. In the third hall were more of the shaft doors—all closed. Then, in the far end of one back hall, Arskane pushed open a last door and they came upon stairs which led both up and down.

Lura brushed past them and went down, fading away with her customary skill and noiselessness. They squatted down in the shadows to wait for her report.

Arskane’s face showed a grayish tinge which was not born of the lack of light. The struggle up that ladder and with the door had left its marks on him. He grunted and settled his bad shoulder gingerly against the wall. Fors edged forward. Now that they were quiet his ears could work for him. He heard the pattering which was Lura on her way, the trickle of powdered rubble which her paws had disturbed somewhere.

There was no sign hereabout that the Beast Things had used this stair. But—Lura had stopped! Fors closed his eyes, blanking out his own thoughts, trying as he never had before to catch the emanations of the big cat’s mind. She was not in any danger but she was baffled. The path before her was closed in such a manner that she could not win through. And when her brown head appeared again above the top step Fors knew that they could not escape by that route. He said as much to Arskane.