The Star Fox

Heim lay down too. He thought with a dull unease that they should set a watch—but no, everyone was exhausted … Unconsciousness took him.

The next day they saw two metallic shapes at a distance. There was no question of detouring for a closer look, and in any event they had something else to occupy what small part of their minds could be spared from the ever more painful onward march. The end of the plateau was coming into sight. Between the edge and the mountain’s next upward slope was an escarpment. Right and left stretched those obsidian cliffs, sheer, polished, not high but unscalable in this gravity without equipment the party didn’t have. To go around them—at whatever unseen point they stopped—would take days; and the survival drugs could not last for such a journey.

Only in the center of view was the line broken. A bank of vapor roiled from the foot of the scarp for several kilometers up the mountainside above. Like an immense curtain it hid the terrain; plumes blew off the top, blizzard color against the deep sky, and a roaring grew louder as the walkers neared.

“That has to be Thundersmoke,” Vadász said. “But what is it?”

“A region ow—I hawe not the English,” Uthg-a-K’thaq answered. “Tsheyyaka. The ground weneath is hot, and water woils out.”

“Geysers and hot springs.” Heim said. He whistled. “But I’ve never seen or heard of anything their size. They make Yellowstone or Dwarf’s Forge look like a teakettle. Can we get through?”

“We must.” Uthg-a-K’thaq bent his head so that all three eyes could peer through his faceplate. Evolved for the mists of his own planet, they could see a ways into the infrared. “Yes-s-s. The cliwws are crum’led. Makes an incline, though wery rugged and with water rushing ewerywhere.”

“Still, thank God, a high gravity means a low angle of repose. And once into those meadows beyond, we should have a chance of meeting hunters or patrollers from the Hurst.” Heim straightened a little. “We’ll pull through.”

A while later he saw a third gleam of steel among the bushes. This one was so near the line of march that he altered course to pass by. They didn’t know exactly where they could best start into Thundersnloke anyway.

The object grew as he plodded. During rest periods he found he could not keep his gaze off. The shape was no uglier than much else he had seen, but in some indescribable fashion it made his spine crawl. When at last he dragged himself alongside and stopped for a look, he wanted to get away again, fast.

“An ancient machine.” Vadász spoke almost too softly to be heard through the grumble and hiss from ahead. “Abandoned when the bomb struck.”

Corrosion was slow in this atmosphere. Paint had worn off the iron, which in turn was eroded but still shiny in places. The form was boxlike, some two meters square and five long, slanting on top toward a central turret. The ruins of a solar-power accumulator system could be identified, together with a radar sweep and, Heim thought, other, detector instruments. Several ports in body and turret were shut, with no obvious means of opening them. He parted the brush around the base and saw that this had been a hovercraft, riding an air cushion and propelled by net backward thrust in any direction.

“A vehicle,” he said. “After the war it just sat, I guess. Nobody can have moved back to the Lochan region for a long time. Those other things we glimpsed must be similar.”

Jocelyn clutched at his hand. He was reminded of his daughter when she was small and got frightened. “Let’s go, Gunnar,” she begged. “This is too much like dead bones.”

“I wonder,” he remarked, carefully matter-of-fact, “why the metal wasn’t salvaged. Even with atomic energy, I should think the natives on a fireless planet would value scrap iron.”

“Taboo?” Vadász suggested. “These wrecks may well have dreadful associations.”

“Maybe. Though my impression is that the Staurni look back on their war with a lot less horror than we remember our Exchange—and Earth got off very lightly.” Heim shifted the burden of air system and supply pack on his shoulders. “Okay, we’ll push on. The sun’s low, and I don’t fancy camping among ghosts.”

“Can you give us a song, Endre?” Jocelyn asked. “I could use one.”

“I shall try.” The minstrel’s voice was flattened as well as distorted in transmission, but he croaked:

“While goin’ the road to sweet
Athy, karroo, karroo!—”

Engaged in helping the woman along, Heim paid no attention to the words at first. Suddenly he realized that Vadász was not singing “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” at all, but the cruel old Irish original.