Crashlander

We circled the area, staying in the magenta trees because we were getting too close to where the hypothetical cave ought to be. That brought us to a small round hill surmounted by a tree that was mostly wandering roots. We started around the hill, and Emil gripped my arm.

I saw it. A cave mouth, small and round, in the base of the hill. And leaning against the dirt slope of the hill was a woman with a mercy gun.

«All right!» I whispered. «Come on, let's get out of here!» I pulled at Emil's arm and turned toward freedom.

It was like trying to stop a warship from taking off. Emil was gone, running silently toward the cave with his gun held ready, leaving me with numb fingers and a deep appreciation of Finagle's first law. I swallowed a groan and started after him.

On flat ground I can beat any Jinxian who ever ran the short sprint My legs were twice the length of Emil's. But Emil moved like a wraith through the alien vegetation, while I kept getting tangled up. My long legs and arms stuck out too much, and I couldn't catch him.

It was such a crying pity. Because we had it! We had it all, or all we were going to get. The guarded cave was our proof. Bellamy and his hunter friends were the kidnappers. That knowledge would be a powerful bargaining point in our negotiations for the return of Lloobee, despite what I'd told Emil. All we had to do now was get back to base and tell somebody.

But I couldn't catch Emil!

I couldn't even keep up with him.

A bare area fronted the cave, a triangular patch of ground bounded by two thick, sprawling roots belonging to the treelike thing on the hill. I'd lost sight of Emil; when I saw him again, he was running for the cave at full speed, and the woman with the gun was faceup in the dirt. Emil reached the darkness at the mouth of the cave and disappeared within.

And as he vanished into the dark, he was unmistakably falling.

* * *

Well, now they had Emil. With blazing lasers …! Proof wasn't enough. He'd decided to bring back Lloobee himself. Now we'd have to negotiate for the two of them.

Would we? Bellamy was back at the hunting camp. When he found out his men had Emil, he'd know I was somewhere around. But whoever was in the cave might think Emil was alone. In which case they might kill him right now.

I settled my back against the tree. As a kind of afterthought I focused the dueling pistol on the woman and fired. I'd have to do that every ten minutes to keep her quiet.

Eventually someone would be coming out to see why she hadn't stopped Emil.

I didn't dare try to enter the cave. Be it man or booby trap, whatever had stopped Emil would stop me.

Too bad the dueling pistols didn't have more power. The craftsmen who had carved their emerald butts had scaled them down because, after all, they would be used only to prove a point. It would take a shopful of tools to readjust them, because readjusting them to their former power would violate Jinxian law. Real police stunners will knock a man out for twelve hours or more.

I was sitting there waiting for someone to come out when I felt the prickly numbness of a stunner.

The sensations came separately. First, a pull in my ankles. Then, in the calves of my legs. Then, something rough and crumbly sliding under me. Separate sensations, just above the threshold of consciousness, penetrating the numbness. A sliding bump! bump! against the back of my head. Gritty sensation in the backs of my hands, anus trailing above and behind my head.

Conclusion, arrived at after long thought: I was being dragged.

I was limp as a noodle and nearly as numb. It was all over. Nobody had walked innocently out of the cave. Instead, the man in there with Lloobee had looked out with a heat sensor, then used his sonic on anything that might possibly be the temperature of a man.

Things turned dark. I thought I was unconscious, but no, I'd been dragged into the cave.

«That's a relief,» said Bellamy. Unmistakably, Bellamy.

«Bastard,» said a woman's voice. It seemed familiar: rich and fruity, with a flatlander accent that was not quite true. Misplaced in time, probably. A dialect doesn't stay the same forever.

My eyes fell open.

Bellamy stood over me, looking down with no expression. Tanya Wilson sat some distance away, looking sullenly in my direction. The man named Warren, standing behind her, carefully did something to her scalp, and she winced.

«There,» said Warren, «you go back to the camp. If anyone asks —»

«I was scratched by a flower bird,» said Tanya. «The rest of you are out hunting. Will you please assume I've got a mind.»

«Don't be so damn touchy. Larch, you'd better tie them up, hadn't you?»

«You do it if you like. It's not necessary. They'll be out for hours.»

Oh, really?

Tanya Wilson got up and went to the cave mouth. Before leaving, she pulled a cord hanging at the side. Warren, who had followed her, pulled it again after she was gone.