United States or Ethiopia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"How soon?" "Don't know. They have the guide beam set. I'm to say there's illness here; they know I can't code." All he could see now was Thorvald's face, intent, the officer's eyes cold sparks of steel, bearing the impress of a will as implacable as a Throg's. Shann added his own decision. "I'll warn the ship off; they'll send in the patrol." There was no change in Thorvald's expression.
From the air, Thorvald's course would have been a crooked one, for he wove back and forth between the scattered islands of the chain, using their lee calm for the protection of the canoe.
It was only when he was alone, as now, that he began to question both Thorvald's motives and his authority. Three sprigs of a light bush set in a triangle. Shann paused and then climbed out on the bank, shaking the water from his boots as Taggi might shake such drops from a furred limb. This was the sign they had set to mark their rendezvous point, but.... Shann whirled, drawing his stunner.
With his force ax Thorvald cut down two of the stunted trees and stripped them of branches, wedging the poles into the rocks about the entrance of the hole. They were working against time, but on Thorvald's part with practiced efficiency. Twice more that cry of the hunter arose from the depths behind them.
Feeling some of that same alarm as he had known when he first heard the wailing of the Throg hound, he let the disk fall back into Thorvald's hold, even more disturbed when he discovered that to relinquish his grasp required some exercise of will. "What is it?" Thorvald restored the coin to his hiding place. "You tell me.
He might have turned around any number of times since he first walked blindly into this place. Then he pointed to the packet Thorvald held. "Why not flip that?" he asked. "Heads, we go that way " he indicated the direction in which they were facing "tails, we do a rightabout-face." There was an answering grin on Thorvald's lips. "As good a guide as any we're likely to find here. We'll do it."
My father, Thorvald's, ship and one of Athalbrand's lay helpless, for all, or nearly all, their crews were dead, while the other had drifted off and was now half a mile away. Ragnar's ship was still grappled to its foe. My own was perhaps in the best case, for here over twenty men were left unhurt, and another ten whose wounds were light. The rest were dead or dying.
If his carelessness occurred again, he would be sent back on the next supply ship, to be dismissed without an official sign-off on his work record, thus locked out of even the lowest level of Survey for the rest of his life. That was why Garth Thorvald's act of the night before had made Shann brave the unknown darkness of Warlock alone when he had discovered that the test animals were gone.
But there was a purpose in this and that the Warlockians were behind it, he did not doubt. The "initiates' road," the leader had said, and the conviction was steady in his mind that he faced some test of alien devising. A cavern with a green veil his memory awoke. Thorvald's dream! Shann paused, trying to remember how the other had described this place. So he was enacting Thorvald's dream!
He was bruised, battered badly enough, but he could claim no major injuries. "I think so. Where are we?" Thorvald's lips stretched across his teeth in what was more a grimace than a smile. "Right off the map, any map I know. Take a look."
Word Of The Day