Four Staurnian days? Five? Heim wasn’t sure. The nightmare had gone on too long.
At first they made good time. The ground rolled quite gently upward, decked with sparse forest that hid them from aerial searchers without hindering their feet. They were all in trim physical shape. And their survival gear, awkward though it seemed, was a miracle of lightness and compactness.
Yet between it and the gravity, each was carrying a burden equal to more than his own Earth weight. “Good time” meant an average of hardly over one kilometer per hour.
Then the land canted and they were on the slopes of Kimreth’s foothills. Worse, their bodies. were beginning to show cumulative effects of stress. This was nothing so simple as exhaustion. Without a sealtent, they could never take off their airsuits. The recyclers handled volatile by-products of metabolism; but slowly, slowly, the fractional percent that escaped chemical treatment built up. Stench and itch were endurable, somewhat, for a while. Too much aldehyde, kettone, organic acid, would not be.
And high gravity has a more subtle, more deadly effect than overworking the heart. It throws the delicate body-fluid balance—evolved through a billion years on one smaller planet—out of kilter. Plasma seeps through cell walls. Blood pools in the extremities, ankles swell while the brain starves. On Staurn this does not happen fast. But it happens.
Without the drugs in their medikits, gravanol, kinesthan, assorted stimulants and analgesics, the travelers would not have traveled three days. When the drugs gave out (and they were getting low) there would be perhaps one day in which to go on, before a man lay down to die.
Is it worth it? gibbered through the querning in Heim’s skull. Why didn’t we go back home? I can’t remember now. His thought fluttered away again. Every remnant of attention must go to the Sisyphus task of picking up one foot, advancing it, putting it down, picking up the other foot, advancing it … Meanwhile a death-heavy weight dragged at his right side. Oh, yes, Jocelyn, he recalled from a remote past. The rest of us have to take turns helping her along.
She stumbled. Both of them came near falling. “Gotta rest,” her air-warped voice wavered.
“You rested … till ten minutes ago … Come!” He jerked brutally on the improvised harness which joined them.
They reeled on for another five hundred seconds. “Time,” Vadász called at the end. They lowered themselves down on their backs and breathed.
Eventually Heim rose to his knees. His vision had cleared and his head throbbed a bit less. He could even know, in a detached way, that the scenery was magnificent.
Eastward the hills up which he was laboring swooped in long curves and dales toward the illimitable hazy plain. The gentled light of an evening sun turned their colors—tawny and orange, with red splashes to mark stands of forest—into a smoldering richness. Not far away a brook twisted bright among boulders, until it foamed over in a series of cataracts whose noise was like bells through the still air. A swarm of insectoidal creatures, emerald bodies and rainbow wings, hovered above the pools it made.
Westward the mountains loomed dark and wild against the sun, which was near their ridge. Yet it tinged Lochan’s snowcone, a shape as pure as Fuji’s, with unearthly greens and blues under a violet heaven. The crags threw their shadows far down the sides, dusking whatever was ahead on Heim’s route. But he saw that, a kilometer hence, a wood grew. His field glasses showed it apparently thick with underbrush. But it was too far to go around—he couldn’t see the northern or southern end—while it was probably not very wide.
Vadász had also been looking in that direction. “I think best we call this a day,” he said.
“It’s early yet,” Heim objected.
“But the sun will soon go below that high horizon. And we are exhausted, and tomorrow we shall have to cut our way through yonder stuff. A good rest is a good investment for us, Gunnar.”
Hell, we’ve been sleeping nine hours out of the eighteen! Heim glanced at the others. Their suits had become as familiar to him as the seldom seen faces. Jocelyn was already unconscious. Uthg-a-K’thaq seemed to flow bonelessly across the place where he lay. Vadász and Bragdon sat tailor style, but their backs were bent. And every nerve in Heim carried waves of weariness. “All right,” he said.
He hadn’t much appetite, but forced himself to mix a little powder with water and squeeze the mess through his chowlock. When that was done, he stretched himself as well as his backpack allowed. Some time had passed before he realized that he wasn’t sleepy. Exhausted, yes; aching and throbbing; but not sleepy. He didn’t know whether to blame overtiredness or the itch in undepilated face and unwashed skin. Lord, Lord, what I’d give for a bath, clean sheets to lie between, clean air to breathe! He braked that thought. There was danger enough without adding an extra psychological hazard.
Pushing himself to a seated position, he watched the light die on Mount Lochan. The sky darkened toward night, a few stars trembled, the little crescent of the outer moon stood steely near the zenith.
“You too?”
; Heim shifted so he could see through his faceplate who had joined him. Bragdon. Reflexively, his hand dropped to his pistol.
Bragdon laughed without humor. “Relax. You’ve committed us too thoroughly.”
After a moment: “Damn you.”
“Who made this mess in the first place?” Heim growled.
“You did, back in the Solar System … I’ve heard that Jews believe death itself to be an act of expiation. Maybe when we die here on Staurn, you’ll make some amends for him we had to bury.”
“I didn’t shoot him,” Heim said between his teeth.
“You brought about the situation.”
“Dog your hatch before I take a poke at you.”
“Oh, I don’t hold myself guiltless. I should have managed things better. The whole human race is blood guilty.”
“I’ve heard that notion before, and I don’t go along with it The human race is nothing but a species. Individuals are responsible for what they personally do.”
“Like setting out to fight private wars? I tell you, Heim, that man would be alive today if you’d stayed home.”
Heim squinted through the murk. He could not see Bragdon’s face, nor interpret nuances in the transformed voice. But—“Look here,” he said, “I could accuse you of murder in the course of making your own little foreign policy. My expedition is legal. It may even be somewhat more popular than otherwise. I’m sorry about Greg. He was my friend. More, he was under my command. But he knew the risks and accepted them freely. There are worse ways to die than in battle for something that matters. You do protest too much.”
Bragdon started backward. “Don’t say any more!”
Heim hammered pitilessly: “Why aren’t you asleep? Could it be that Greg came back in your dreams? Have you been thinking that your noisy breed may be powered less by love than by hate? Would you like to chop off the finger that pulled trigger on a man who was trying to do his best for Earth? Can you afford to call anyone a murderer?”
“Go to hell!” Bragdon screamed. “Go to hell! Go to hell!” He crawled off on all fours. Some meters distant, he collapsed and shuddered.
Maybe I was too rough on him, Heim thought. He’s sincere … Fout on that. Sincerity is the most overrated virtue in the catalogue. He eased himself back to the turf. Presently he slept.
Sunrise woke him, level across the Uneasy Lands and tinging Mount Lochan with fire. He felt more stiff and hollow-headed each dawn, but it helped to move about, fix a cold breakfast and boil a fresh supply of water. Bragdon was totally silent; no one else said many words. But as they started the long slog toward the forest—a whole kilometer uphill—Vadász began to sing.
“Trois jeunes tambours, s’en revenaient de guerre.
Trois jeunes tambours, s’en revenaient de guerre.
Et ri, et ran, ra-pa-ta-plan, S’en revenaient de guerre.—”
When he had finished, he went on to “Rimini,” “Marching through Georgia,” “The British Grenadiers,” and “From Syrtis to Cydonia.” Heim and Jocelyn panted with him in the choruses, and perhaps Uthg-a-K’thaq, or even Bragdon, got some help too from the tramping rhythms and the brave images of home. They reached the woods sooner, in better shape, than expected.
“Thanks, Endre,” Heim said.
“My job, you know,” Vadász answered.
Resting before they went among the trees, Heim studied the growth more closely. At a distance, by dawnlight, he had seen that it wound across the hills along a fault line, and was as sharply bordered as if artificial. Since the northwestern edge was well above him on a steep rise, he had also made out a curious, churned sweep of soil on that side, which passed around the slopes beyond his purview. Now he was too near to see anything but the barrier itself.
“Not brushy after all,” he observed in surprise. “Only one kind of plant. What do you think of that?”
“We are none xenowotanists,” the engineer grunted.
The trees were about four meters tall; nothing grows high on Staurn. And they were no thicker than a man’s arm. But numberless flexible branches grew along the stems, from top to bottom, each in turn split into many shoots. In places the entanglement of limbs was so dense as to be nearly solid. Only the upper twigs bore leaves; but those were matted together into a red roof beneath which the inner forest looked night-black.
“This’ll be machete work,” Heim said. “We shouldn’t have to move a lot slower than usual, though. One man cuts—that doesn’t look too hard-while the others rest. I’ll begin.” He unlimbered his blade.
Which! Which! The wood was soft, the branches fell right and left as fast as he could wield his tool. In an hour the males ran through a cycle of turns, Jocelyn being excused, and were far into the forest. With the sun still only a couple of hours up, Heim exulted.
“Take over, Gunnar,” Vadász rattled. “The sweat is gurgling around my mouth.”
Heim rose and advanced along the narrow trail. It was hot and still in here. A thick purple twilight soaked through the leaves, making vision difficult where one stood and impossible a few meters off. Withes rustled against him, spring-fly resisting his passage. He felt a vibration go back through the machete and his wrist, into his body, as he chopped. Huh! Odd. Like the whole interlocked wilderness shivering. The trees stirred and soughed. Yet there was no breath of wind.
Jocelyn shrieked.
Heim spun on his heel. A branch was coiling down past her, along her airsuit. Something struck his back. He lifted his machete—tried to—a dozen tendrils clutched him by the arm. He tore free.
An earthquake rumble went through the gloom. Heim lost balance under a thrust. He fell to one knee. Pain shot through the point of impact. The tree before his eyes swayed down. Its many-fingered lower branches touched the soil and burrowed. Leaves drew clear of each other with a crackling like fire. He glimpsed sky, then he was blinded by their descent about his head.
He shouted and slashed. A small space opened around him. The tree was pulling loose its roots. Groaning, shuddering, limbs clawed into the earth, it writhed forward.
The entire forest was on the march. The pace wasn’t quick, no faster than a man could walk on Staurn, but it was resistless. Heim scrambled up and was instantly thrown against a tangle of whipping branches. Through airsuit and helmet he felt those buffets. He reeled away. A trunk, hitching itself along, smote him in the stomach. He retched and dropped his machete. Almost at once it began to be covered, as limbs pulled from the ground and descended for the next grab along their way. Heim threw what remained of his strength against them. They resisted with demoniac tenacity. He never knew how he managed to part them long enough to retrieve the blade.
Above the crashing and enormous rustle he heard Jocelyn scream again, not in startlement but in mortal terror. He knelt to get under the leaves and peered wildly about. Through swaying, lurching trunks, snake-dancing branches, clawing twigs, murk, and incandescent sunlight spears, he saw her. She had fallen. Two trees had her pinned. They could break bones or rip her suit when they crawled across her body.
His blade flew in his hand. A battle cry burst from his mouth. He beat his way to her like a warrior hewing through enemy lines. The stems had grown rigid, as if they had muscles now tightened. His blows rebounded. A sticky fluid spurted from the wounds he made. “Gunnar, help!” she cried in sightlessness. He cleared brush from her until he could stoop and pull her free.
“You okay?” He must shout to be heard in the racket. She lay against him and sobbed. Another tree bent down upon them. He yanked her to her feet.
“To me!” he bellowed. “Over here!”
Uthg-a-K’thaq wriggled to join him. The Naqsan’s great form parted a way for Bragdon. Vadász wove lithely through the chaos.
“Joss in the middle,” Heim ordered. “The rest of us, back to back around her. We can’t outrun this mess, can’t stay here either. We’d exhaust ourselves just keeping our feet. Forward!”
His blade caught a sunbeam and burned in its arc.
The rest was chop, wrestle, duck, and dodge, through the moving horror. Heim’s awareness had gone coldly lucid; he watched what happened, saw a pattern, found a technique. But the strength to keep on, directly across that tide, came from a deeper source. It was more than the simple fear of death. Something in him revolted against his bones being tumbled forever among these marching trolls.
Bragdon gave way first. “I can’t … lift … this … any more,” he groaned, and sank to the earth. Wooden fingers closed about one leg.
Uthg-a-K’thaq released him. “Get in the middle, then,” the Naqsan said. “Hel’ him, you Lawrie.”
Later in eternity, Vadász’s machete sank. “I am sorry.” The minstrel could barely be heard. “Go on.”
“No!” Heim said. “We’ll all get out, or none.”
“Let me try,” Jocelyn said. She gave Vadász into the care of Bragdon, who had recovered a little, and took his knife herself. Her blows were weak, but they found she could use the tool as a crowbar to lever a path for herself.
And … sunlight, open sky, turf under Lochan’s holy peak. They went a few meters farther before they toppled.
Heim woke a couple of hours afterward. For a while he blinked at heaven and found curious shapes in the clouds, as if again he were a boy on Gea. When memory came back, he sat upright with a choked oath.
The trees were still moving past. He thought, though, they had slowed down. Northwestward, opposite to their direction, he saw their trail of crumbled earth. The most distant part that he could spy was overlaid with pale yellow, the first new growth.
Uthg-a-K’thaq was the only other one awake. The Naqsan flopped down beside him. “Well, skiwwer, now we know what the Walking Worest is.”
“I’d like to know how it works,” Heim said.
Rest had temporarily cleared his mind. An answer grew. “I’m only guessing, of course,” he said after a minute, “but it could be something like this. The ultraviolet sunlight makes plant chemistry hellish energetic. That particular species there needs something, some mineral maybe. Where faulting exposes a vein of it, a woods appears.”
“Not likely mineral,” Uthg-a-K’thaq corrected. “You cannot hawe liwe dewendent on sheer geological accident.”
“Geology operates faster on a big planet than a terrestrial one, C.E.,” Heim argued. “Still, I’ll agree it makes poor ecology. Let me think … Okay, let’s say you get bacteria laying down organic stuff of a particular kind, wherever conditions are right. Such deposits would be fairly common, exposed fairly often. Those trees could broadcast spores that can lie dormant for centuries, waiting for a chance to sprout. All right, then, they consume the deposit at a tremendous rate. Once mature, such a forest has to keep moving because the soil gets exhausted where it stands. Reproduction is too slow; the trees themselves have to move. Evidently sunlight starts them on their way, because you remember they didn’t begin till mid-morning and now in the afternoon they’re coming to a halt.”
“What hawwens when they hawe eaten out the whole wein?”
“They die. Their remains go, back to the soil. Eventually everything gets reprocessed into the material they need, and the spores they’ve left wake to life.” Heim grimaced. “Why am I trying to play scientist? Defense mechanism? I’ve got to believe that thing is natural.”
“We came through it aliwe,” Uthg-a-K’thaq said calmly. “Is that not suwwicient?”
Heim didn’t reply. His gaze drifted west, whither he had yet to go. Did he see a vague plume of mist on the lower steeps of Lochan? It was too distant for him to be sure. But—Thundersmoke? Whatever that is. No need to worry about it now. First we’ve got to get past the Slaughter Machines.