Prison of Night

Height would save them but the raft was small, the engine weak and the canopy had loaded the vehicle to capacity.

Cautiously he unsealed the port. Starlight shone like liquid silver on the ground below, shadows filling crevasses and distorting perspective. Turning he stared to one side and saw the loom of darkness against the blaze of stars. The mountains were too close. The raft veered as he adjusted the controls and, immediately, it shuddered to the impact of a rain of glancing blows.

"They're back!" Gartok's whisper was louder than a shout. "Earl, they're back!"

A gleam from the port, his face, a familiar silhouette- how to tell? The movement of the raft even, inert matter did not move in such a fashion. And yet still they could not be sure. Animals roamed unmolested as the Sungari gathered the night-mist but they were familiar. The raft was not. But attacked it had not retaliated and was therefore harmless.

The human method of thinking but the Sungari were alien and who could tell what motivations drove them? They shared this world with men and that was all anyone knew. A Pact had been made based on mutual noninterference but who had made it and how it had been made was forgotten.

Dumarest nodded, dozing, resting like an animal with one part of him alert while the others rested. Then, checking the instruments, he knew they must be close.

"Kars?" He heard the man grunt. "Are you awake?"

"I'm awake." The man edged his way forward. "Have we arrived?"

"We're close. Better get into the armor now. You first."

Plates of metal which fitted close, articulated joints, helmets to protect face and skull. Normal protection for mercenaries engaged in close-quarter fighting and now it would be an added protection.

Again Dumarest opened the sealed port. The raft was still riding high and for a moment he was completely disoriented then he saw a crevass, a desert naked in the starlight, a formation he had seen before.

"We're going down," he said. "Brace yourself."

He dropped fast, slowing at the last moment, moving forward to halt, to turn, to dart ahead again as he found the huts. They were set in line backed by the cookhouse and stores all now tightly sealed. The raft landed between them.

"Now!"

Gartok was already at the handles of the external apparatus. A pincher moved out, closed, tightened.

"Up!"

A ripping as a section of the roof gave way. Down to fasten a grab, to rise again, to jerk one end out of the hut and expose the interior.

To move on and repeat the move lower down.

To slam the tough canopy of the raft against a wall.

To see emptiness and to taste the sourness of failure.

"They're gone!" Gartok swore as, in the starlight, he saw nothing but empty cots. "The damned huts are empty!"

"Could he have lied?"

"No." Gartok slammed his hand against the canopy. "No, Earl, no! He didn't lie. He told what he thought was the truth. He told me!"

Urged with pain, dazed, craving release-could he still have lied? Did it matter?

The raft jerked as something smashed against the port, glass splintering, showering inwards. The hole widened, plastic shredding, yielding to the things outside. Gartok yelled as a winged shape ripped past his visor, yelled again as it turned to slam with numbing force against his chest. Unarmored he would have died.

"Earl!"

"Out!" Dumarest dropped the raft with a jar. The vehicle was a marked target. "Head for the storeroom. Follow me!"

He staggered as he jumped through the opened door, falling to roll, rising under the savage impact of blows which filled his mouth with the taste of blood. The door of the storeroom flew open beneath the drive of his heel, light splintering from a lantern, the door slamming shut as Gartok followed Dumarest into the hut. It was heaped with empty crates and the air held the scent of oil and sickness.

On a cot a man reared upright snatching at a gun.

"Hold it!" Dumarest took a step forward. "Don't make me kill you!"

"You're human!" The man sagged with relief then broke into a fit of coughing, blood staining his lips and chin. He dabbed at it with a hand, looked at the smears, then dug beneath his pillow for a rag. "When you burst in here I thought-how come you made it through the night?"

"We were lucky."

"More than some. Three men tried it the first night here. Five more the following week and we lost two the day before yesterday. They went out and didn't come back." The man coughed again, "Just vanished. We didn't even find a bone."

"Where is everyone?"

"Gone." The man leaned back against the wall. His cheeks were sunken, his eyes bright with fever, the whites tinged with the blue stigmata of the disease which rotted his lungs. "They pulled out yesterday afternoon. I was too sick to go with them so they left me behind."

Dying, with a gun, to protect an empty store.

"Moved? Where?" Gartok snarled as the man made no reply. "Talk, damn you!"