Chapter 18

Was it the pain in his head that made everything seem to sway?

Or was it the swaying that made his head hurt?

Taranto opened his eyes slowly. For two or three minutes, in the darkness, he did not understand what he saw.

Gradually, comprehension developed. He was on a litter again, and the bearers were descending a rough track into a shallow valley. There was no sign of the city or of any other landmark even vaguely familiar. Jagged rocks formed a ridge to his left, curving around to enclose the depression. Other rocky buttes, he saw through slitted eyes, projected from the barren rubble of the Valley floor. There seemed to be little sand, unless it had blown down into the lower areas.

Cautiously, letting his head roll with the lurching motion of the bearers, he learned that another group was ahead. He thought they must be guarding Meyers. The red-uniformed officer marched just preceding Taranto’s litter. That meant that there must be two soldiers behind, out of his view.

What now? he asked himself. It was a good try, but it didn’t work out.

It seemed hopeless to attempt anything further until he found out where he was. Nor would it do any harm to learn how he was--they must have crowned him beautifully. He tried to move his arms and legs slightly without being obviously restless. Nothing felt broken. There was just the sore throbbing behind his left ear.

Were they taking him and Meyers further into the desert, to make sure they could properly be reported dead? Or was the party on its way back to the city?

Taranto moved about stealthily, as the litter heaved from side to side and bounced about with the efforts of his bearers to negotiate outcroppings of rock. He was surprised that his arms and legs were not tied. He wondered how long he had been out cold. Perhaps the Syssokans believed he really was dead from that spear across the skull.

You shouldn’t have underestimated that guy just because you dropped him a few times, he told himself. You caught on to the difference, but he learned it from you.

From ahead and lower on the path came voices. There was a brisk breeze, but Taranto thought he could recognize Meyers giving vent to an outraged whine.

Wonder how much of a grudge they’ll hold? he thought. Some of them must be lumped up pretty good.

He was beginning to locate a number of scrapes and bruises on his own sturdy frame. He wondered if it might be best to take things easy until they reached either their desert destination or the area outside the city, according to which way they were headed, and then offer to bribe the officer in charge. It would probably be too risky: he would have to rely on large promises, and they had already caught him in a crude whopper. Whatever the case, it would be unwise to open negotiations without finding out what the Syssokan commander looked like. Taranto seemed to recall pasting the fellow pretty thoroughly.

He caught a few words of Terran, blown back to him by a random gust. Meyers was complaining about being too tired to walk any farther. It did not sound as though he were making his point.

Of course! Taranto realized. I must be in his stretcher. Mine was busted. Now the slob will put it on me for making him bump his rump along this trail!

The image was not without humor. Contemplating it gave Taranto a momentary satisfaction.

Well, they knew Meyers was alive, even if they might not be sure about Taranto himself. Perhaps they were merely saving both Terrans for a longer jail term. Taranto hoped that the Syssokans had nothing more unpleasant in mind. The remarks he had used earlier in his attempt to bluff the officer could be used for inimical purposes by anyone who cared to point out that Syssokan knowledge of Terran physiology was scanty. Then what?

Taranto decided that he would be foolish to worry along that line at the present. What he needed was an idea for getting loose again. He speculated for a few minutes upon his chances of backtracking to the scene of his attempt at escape. Somewhere near there, in whichever direction it was, a spaceship should be landing.

If they ain’t been and gone already, he thought.

In his supine position on the stretcher, he was able to see the sky without moving. That was why the distant trail of light was visible to him for some moments before any of the Syssokans could notice it.

I can’t wait it out after all, he realized.

The ship would be heard presently, and the flare of its braking rockets would arouse the guards. Taranto peeked around again and saw that they were nearing the foot of the slope. Following the natural motion of the bearers, he let himself roll a little too far each time the litter swayed. The Syssokans struggled to compensate while scrabbling for safe footholds on the hard, slippery surface.

In the end, one of them slipped. The litter crashed down. Taranto added a twist to the natural force of gravity, so that he rolled downhill.

The fallen bearer picked himself up, mumbling something in Syssokan that sounded remarkably belligerent. One of the others moved to recover the stretcher. Taranto kept on rolling.

At the first yell, he gave up the pretense and regained his feet with a lithe bound. For the next sixty seconds, he needed every last smidgin of concentration to escape taking a fatal spill on the sloping rocks.

Hurtling downward in great leaps, he was forced to hurdle large rocks because his velocity prevented him from changing course by even a foot. Once he skidded, thinking his time had come. Near the bottom, where the incline curved to meet the horizontal, he did go down, ploughing up a spatter of loose chips and pebbles.

He was up and running again without quite knowing how. A dark shape loomed up before him, a rock twice his height. Before passing it, he took the chance of looking back.

The litter party was in a state of confusion. The officer and two soldiers were bounding after him, slanting away on a more reasonable path. One Syssokan was still in the process of picking himself up, and most of the others were either milling about or just beginning to heed their leader’s shouts to follow Taranto.

The intention of yelling to Meyers flashed across his mind but he dismissed it as being useless. A hasty glance in the opposite direction showed him the fire trail settling behind another ridge to his right front. The valley bore a certain resemblance to a meteor crater.

Taranto sprinted past the huge rock and bore right toward the distant ridge. He would try to locate the ship if and when he reached the ridge. The immediate necessity was to keep out of the clutches of the burial party.

Running in the starlit darkness was risky, as he soon found. The ground was strewn with occasional patches of loose stone, traps of nature suitable for tripping the unwary or causing a sprain. The only thing that kept Taranto reckless was the sounds of pursuit behind him.

He had gone about two hundred yards when he realized that some of the rock-scattering noises came from his right more than from behind. The Syssokan were better runners than he, and used to the local terrain besides. He could not tell whether they had seen the trail of the spaceship or, if so, whether they connected it with him.

But they know enough to head me off, whichever way I go, he thought.

He came unexpectedly to a patch of sand, and swore as he felt his speed slacken. A desperate glance over his shoulder revealed no pursuers, though he knew they were there somewhere. He could see two runners who had flanked him on the right fifty yards off; and these forced him into bearing away from his desired course.

Instead of passing to the right of a tall outcropping of rock ahead, he turned left. It took him farther from the direction of the spaceship, but there was no help for it. He floundered over a low dune of sand and then was out of it and running on flat ground. He circled to the left of the hill, hearing a howl from the rear.

Must have seen me against the open valley, thought Taranto. They sound closer than I like.

He ran on, scanning the shadowed rocks towering over him for a place to climb. It was a foregone conclusion that the two flankers would be on the lookout for him as he came around the hill.

At last he thought he saw a way up, a sloping ledge leading to a small plateau before the rock reared higher in a sheer cliff. Taranto scrambled over a waist-high boulder and made for the opening. Up he went, on hands and toes. The rock was ridged, but in the wrong direction, and he slipped to hands and knees twice before he was up.