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It was a drooping shoot of the turbi, the same tree vine which produced the fruit she had relished less than an hour before. Above the water dangled a cluster of the fruit, dead ripe with the sweet pulp stretching its skin. But below the surface of the water Varta's breath hissed between her teeth and Lur's head snapped around as he caught her thought.
Only this ship was so old so very old! Lur's red tongue flicked. "It can do no harm to try " he suggested slyly and set his claws into the hoop holding the captive's right wrist, testing its strength. "But the metal on the shore, it crumpled into powder at my touch " she protested. "What if we carry him out only to have to have " Her mind shuddered away from the picture which followed.
But now they had to fight their way through jungle and it was hard until they reached a ridge of rock running out from the mountain as a tongue thrust into the blasted valley. And along this they picked their slow way. "There is water near ," Lur's thought answered the girl's desire. She licked dry lips longingly.
But at Varta's upflung arm it uttered a rasping cry and planed down into the mass of vegetation below. By the glint of sunlight on the stone around them the day was already well advanced. Varta tugged at Lur's mane until he roused. There was a regularity to the rocks piled about their sleeping place which hinted that they had lain among the ruins left by man.
Lur's tongue shot out to impale a questing beetle. "These forgotten people fought with fearsome weapons." "But what weapon could do this? Memphir knew not such ." "Memphir was old. But mayhap there were those who raised cities on Erb before the first hut of Memphir squatted on tidal mud. Men forget knowledge in time.
"It was a machine in which men traveled," his thoughts arose to her. "But they were not as the men of Memphir. Perhaps not even as the sons of Erb " "Not as the sons of Erb!" her astonishment broke into open speech. Lur's neck twisted as he looked up at her. "Did the men of Erb, even in the old chronicles fight with weapons such as would make a desert of glass?
Her hands touched the scaled skin of the suit she still wore and then rubbed across her own smooth flesh. Could one have come from the other, was she of the blood and heritage of Lur? "Not so!" Lur's mind, as quick as his flickering tongue, had caught that panic-born thought. "You are of the blood of this space wanderer. Men from the riven colonies must have escaped to safety.
She knew what Lur meant, the suit which had protected her in the underworld was impervious to everything outside its surface or to every substance its makers knew just as Lur's own hide made his flesh impenetrable. But the fashioners of her suit had probably never known of the living lake and what if she had no defense against the strange properties of the water? She leaned back against a rock.
But of this side of the mountains both were ignorant, for Memphir's rule had not run here. "Many dead things in times past," Lur's scarlet nostril pits were extended to their widest. "But that was long ago. This land is no longer held by men." Varta laughed cheerfully. "If here there are no men, then there will rise no barbarian hordes to dispute our rule. Asti has led us to safety.
Something gave, a thin black line appeared to mark the edges of a door. Then time, or Lur's strength, broke the ancient locking mechanism. The door gave so suddenly that they were both sent hurtling backward and Lur's breath burst from him in a huge bubble. The sealed compartment was hardly more than a cupboard but it was full.
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