The torch sputtered as those shadows moved in closer to Ashe. Then a new light blazed up well above floor level and Travis blinked at the company that fire revealed.
Ashe was six feet tall, giving Travis himself an inch or so. But in this company he towered, for the tallest of his companions came only a little above his shoulder.
“They have wings!”
Yes, with a sudden twitch a flap of wing—not feathered, but ribbed skin—had unfurled, pointing up above its owner’s shoulder. Where had he seen a wing such as that? On the statue from the domed building!
However, the faces now all turned toward the humans were not as grotesque as the one of the image. The ears were not so large, the features were more humanoid, though the noses remained vertical slits. Either the statue had been a caricature, or it represented a far more primitive type.
The natives hung back, and from their narrow, pointed jaws came a low murmur, rising and falling, which Travis could not separate into distinct sounds or words.
“Local inhabitants?” Ross still held his weapon. “They the ones who kidnapped you, chief?”
“In a manner of speaking. I take it you accounted for the wild life below?”
“All we saw,” Travis returned, still watching the winged people, for they were people, of that he was sure.
“Then we can get out of here.” Ashe turned to the waiting shadows and holstered his own weapon with an emphatic slam. Two of the winged men beckoned and the rest stood back, allowing Ashe, Ross and Travis to pass them, to climb a third ramp. At the top the humans saw open sunlight, and came out into a wide hall with archways, not doors, down its length.
Travis’ nostrils expanded as he caught a mixture of scents, some pleasant, some otherwise. There was activity here; there were indications of a permanent settlement. The archways were hung with green nets into which flowers had been tucked here and there. Many were like the one he had found on his first day of exploration. Hollowed logs made into troughs stood about the walls. From these grew a mixture of plants, all reaching toward the sun which came through windows, forming a curtain of green from floor to ceiling.
The people were no longer just shadows. And in this brighter light their humanoid resemblance was marked. The furled wings covering their backs might have been folded cloaks. They wore no clothing save ornaments of belt, collar or armlets. Their weapons, which all within sight carried, were small spears—little enough protection against the red killers who had assailed them from below.
They watched the humans closely, keeping up their murmur of speech, but making no threatening gestures. And since it was impossible for the humans to read any expression on their faces, Travis did not know whether the three from the ship were considered prisoners, allies, or merely strange objects of general interest.
“Here . . .” Ashe stopped before one of the curtained archways and pursed his lips to give a gentle hoot.
The curtain parted and he went in, signaling the other two to follow him.
Under their feet was thick matting plaited from vines and leaves. And there were low partitions of latticework over which living plants climbed to form dividing walls, cutting one large room into a series of smaller cubicles around a central space fronting the archway.
“Pay attention to nothing around the wall,” Ashe said quickly. “Keep your eyes on the one at the table.”
One of the winged men squatted by a table raised some two feet from the carpeted floor. Those they had seen in the outer hallway had had dusky lavender skins, close in shade to the stone from which the image had been carved. But this one was much darker, almost a deep purple. And the stiffness of his constrained movements suggested advanced age.
But when the native looked up to meet Ashe’s gaze in welcome, Travis knew that this was not only a man, but a great man among his kind. It was there in his eyes, in the pride of his carriage, and in the slow deliberation with which he regarded the three humans.
“What a junkyard!” Ross stared about him in sheer stupefaction.
“Treasure house!” his chief corrected him almost sharply.
Travis simply stood between them and gazed. Perhaps both descriptions could apply in part.
“They kidnapped you to sort this out for them?” Ross demanded, as if he couldn’t believe a word of that conclusion.
“That’s the general idea,” Ashe admitted. “Question is—where do we start, what do we have, and how can we get across to them the meaning of anything we do find—if we can make it out ourselves?”
“How long have they been collecting all this?” Travis wondered. There were paths through those piles of moldering materials, so one could investigate the contents of the heaps. But the general confusion of the mass was intimidating.
Ashe shrugged. “When your total method of communication consists of gestures, a lot of ragged guessing, and pointing, how is anyone to know anything?”
“But why you? I mean—how are you supposed to know what makes all this tick, or thump, or otherwise run?” Ross asked again.
“We came in the ship. They may have some hazy tradition—legends—that the ship people knew everything.”
“The Fair Gods,” Travis threw in.
“Only we are not Cortez and his men,” Ashe returned with a snap.
“They aren’t the baldies, or that furry-faced operator I saw on the screen of the ship the Russians had. So where do they fit in?”
“Judging by that statue, their ancestors were known to the builders of the dome,” Ashe replied. “But I think they are primitive, not decadent.”
Travis’ imagination made a sudden, swift leap.
“Pets?”
Both of the others looked at him. Ashe drew a deep breath.
“You might just be right!” The way he spaced his words gave them an impressive emphasis. “Give our world enough time and the right combination of conditions and see what could happen to our dogs or our cats.”
“Are we prisoners?” Ross came back to the main point.
“Not now. Our handling of the weasels took care of that. A common enemy is an excellent argument for mutual peace. And we have a common purpose here, too. If we’re going to find out anything which will help Renfry, it will be in just such a collection as this.”
“It’d take a year just to shuffle through the top layer in this mess,” Ross gave a gloomy opinion.
“We know what we are looking for—we have examples on the ship. Anything we can uncover in the process which might help our winged friends, we turn over to them. And who knows what we may find?”
Ashe was right about the attitude of the winged people. The chief or leader, who had first received them in the vine-walled room and brought them in turn into the huge chamber containing the loot gathered by his tribe, showed no unwillingness to let them return to the ship. But their path back, followed on ground and not by the aerial ways of the natives, was supervised by two of the blue flyers that had some link with the winged people—perhaps a relationship not unlike man and hound.
During his period of captivity Ashe had learned that the red weasels were the principal local menace and that the winged folk had tried to wall off the lower sections of their dwelling towers to baffle the hunters. These creatures had worked with sly cunning—which suggested a measure of intelligence on their part also—on the ramp barrier. But only a determined raid made by a whole pack had finally broken through that laboriously constructed wall to get at the living quarters of the flying people. Ashe’s readiness to use his weapon on the behalf of his captors, plus the surprise attack by Ross and Travis had completely destroyed the marauding pack. These two things had also made a favorable impression upon the intended victims. As Ashe had commented, a common enemy was a firm base on which to build an alliance.
“But they can fly,” Ross protested. “Why didn’t they just take off—out the windows, and let those six-legged weasels have the place?”
“For a reason their chief was finally able to make plain. This is apparently the season during which their young are born. The males could have escaped, but the females and young could not.”
They found Renfry awaiting their arrival at the ship in a fingernail-gnawing state of impatience. Relieved to see them whole and together, he greeted them with the news that he had managed to trace the routing of the trip tape through the control board. Whether he could reset another tape, or reverse the present one, he did not yet know.
“I don’t know about rewinding this one.” He tapped the coin-sized disk they had seen ejected from the board on the morning of their arrival. “If the wire breaks—” He shrugged and did not need to elaborate.
“So you’d like to have another to practice on.” Ashe nodded. “All right, we all know what to look for when we start our digging into the treasure trove tomorrow.”
“If any still exist.” Renfry sounded dubious.
“Deduction number one.” Ashe took a long pull from the froth-drink can. “I believe most of the stuff the winged folk have gathered came from towers such as the one that houses their village. And there are a number of towers here. The buildings of radically different design are not duplicated. Which leads you to surmise that the tower structures are native to this planet, while the other types represent imported architecture.