Chapter seven

In comparative silence, the skimmer drifted across the waving grassland of Alaspin.

Flinx had the feeling he was riding a bug over an unmade green bed. Neither the topography nor the vegetation was uniform in height or color. Here and there the familiar green gave way to a startlingly blue sward, and in other places to a bright yellow. Heavier growth, sections of bush, forest, and jungle, protruded like woody tentacles into the sea of reeds and grass.

He studied the individual seated next to him, in the pilot’s chair. Pocomchi seemed to be perfectly normal, very much in control of himself. Still, Flinx could sense the tension in the man, along with the anguish at his partner’s death. Both had been pushed aside. To any other onlooker, the Indian’s attention would have seemed to be wholly on the rippling savanna beneath them. Flinx knew otherwise.

From their position, roughly a meter above the waving stalks, he inclined his head to squint up at the warm buttery beacon of Alaspin’s star. It was a cloudless day, too hot for human comfort, too cool for a thranx to really enjoy.

“I still don’t know where we’re going, Pocomchi.”

“The last I know of your man,” the Indian. replied conversationally, “he was working his claim near a city reputed to be of Revarn Dynasty. Place called Mimmisompo. We’re three days out of Alaspinport-I’m hoping we’ll reach the city some time this afternoon.” Unexpectedly, he smiled at his companion. His voice changed from the uncaring monotone Flinx had gotten accustomed to over the past several days.

“Sorry if I’ve been less than good company, Flinx.” His gaze turned back to the terrain ahead. “Habib was the type to mourn, not me. I’m kind of surprised a myself, and I certainly didn’t mean to shunt my misery off on you.”

“You haven’t shunted a thing off on me,” Flinx assured him firmly. “Intimate deaths have a way of shaking one’s ideas about oneself.” He wanted to say more, but something ahead caught his attention. Pip squirmed at the abrupt movement, while behind Ab rambled on, oblivious.

Just in front of the leisurely cruising skimmer the sea of high grass had abruptly given way to a winding, curved path roughly a hundred and fifty meters wide. Where the path wound, the tall growth bad been smoothly sliced off a couple of centimeters above the ground. Some torn and ragged clumps of uncut reeds pimpled the avenue, which looked to have been created by the antics of a berserk mowing machine.

While Flinx tried to imagine what kind of instrument had sliced away the grasses, which grew to an average height of several meters, Pocomchi was pointing to some gliding, bat-winged avians armed with formidable beaks and claws. “Vanisoars,” he was saying, “scavengers prowling the open place for exposed grass dwellers.” Even as he spoke, one of the creatures dove. It came up with an unlucky furry ball in its talons.

“But the path, what made it?”

“Toppers. Hexapodal ungulates,” he explained, examining the path ahead. He touched a contol, and the skimmer rose to a height of six meters above ie topmost stalks. “This grass looks fresh-cut. I think we’ll see them soon.”

The nearly noiseless engine of the skimmer permitted them to slow to a hover above the herd of huge grazing animals. The largest member of the herd stood a good three meters at the fore shoulder. Each of the six legs was thick, pillarlike, to support the massive amored bodies. Hexagonal plates covered sides and back.

Massive neck muscles supported the lowered, elongated skulls. Most remarkable of all was the design of the snout. What appeared originally to have been 2rmored, the nostril cover had lengthened and broadened to form a horn in the shape of a double-bladed ax.

Flinx watched in fascination as the creatures methodically cut their way through the green ocean. Lour ered, ax-bladed heads swung in timed 180-degree arcs parallel to the earth, scything the grass, reeds, and small trees almost level with the ground. Then the lead creatures would pause briefly, using flexible lips to gather in the chopped vegetable matter immediately around them.

Behind the leaders, immature males and females followed in the path of the adults. They consumed the cut-down fodder prepared for them by the leaders. A few small females guarded the end of the procession, shielding the infants from a rear assault. The younger toppers had no difficulty downing their share of food, which had been pounded to soft pulp by the massive footpads of the larger herd members in front of them.

It seemed an ideal system, though Flinx wondered at the need for a few adults to shield the calves. The smallest, he estimated, weighed several tons. He questioned Pocomchi about it.

“Even a topper can be brought down, Flinx,” he was told. “You don’t know much of Alaspin.” He nudged a switch, and the skimmer moved forward slightly. “See?”

Flinx looked down and saw that one of the lead bulls was standing on its rear four legs, sniffng the air in a northerly direction. The enormous nose horns looked quite capable of slicing through the metal body of the skimmer.

“Let’s see what he’s got,” Pocomchi suggested. He headed the little craft sharply north. Flinx had to scramble to keep his seat.

In a few minutes they were above something winding its patient way through the reeds. Flinx had a brief sight of a long mouth lined with curved teeth, and glowing red eyes. It snapped at the skimmer and Flinx jerked reflexively.

Pocomchi grinned at his companion. “That’s a lance’el.” He swung the skimmer around for another look. They passed over a seemingly endless form laid out like a plated path in the grass. Row upon row of short legs, like those of a monstrous millipede, supported scaly segments. Flinx couldn’t make an accurate estimate of its size.

“I knew it’d be well bidden,” Pocomchi said easily. “That’s why I kept our altitude. We’d have made that fellow a nice snack.” A hiss-growl came from below; angry eyes stared up at them.

Pocomclu chuckled. “We’ve interrupted his stalk, and he’s not happy about it. It’s unusual for a lance’el to strike at a skimmer, but it’s happened.” Another growl from below. “They can jump surprisingly well. I think we’d better leave this big one alone.”

Flinx readily agreed.

Pocomchi had turned the skimmer and increased their speed. They were back on their southwesterly course once more. As the sun reached its zenith they were racing over bush and free-lined streams as much as grassland.

I think we’re all right,” Pocomchi murmured, checking a chart. “Yes.” He shut off the screen and returned his attention forward. “Another ten minutes, I think.”

The time passed. Sure enough, Flinx discovered the first reflections from stone and metal shining at them from between tall trees. “Mimmisompo,” his companion assured him, with a nod forward. He slowed the skimmer, and in a minute they were winding carefully through soaring trees hung heavy with vines and creepers.

“We’re on the edge of the Ingre,” Pocomchi informed him, “one of the largest jungle-forests in this part of Alaspin. Mimmisompo is one of many temple cities the archeologists don’t consider too important.”

They were among buildings now, lengthy multistory structures flanking broad paved avenues. Brush and creepers grew everywhere. The fact that the city wasn’t entirely overgrown was a tribute to the skill and precision of its engineers. An abandoned city in a similer section of Earth would have been all but eradicated by now.

It was a city of sparkling silence, an iridescent monument to extinction. Everywhere the sun struck, it was reflected by a million tiny mirrors. Mimmisompo had been constructed primarily from the dense gold-tinged granites Flinx had seen employed in Alaspinport. The local stone contained a much higher proportion of mica than the average granite. Walls built of such material gave the impression of having been sprinkled with broken glass.

The architecture was massive and blocky, with flying arches of metal bracing the carefully raised stonework. Copper, brass, and more sophisticated metalwork were employed for decorative purposes. It seemed as if every other wall was fronted with some intricate scrollwork or bas-relief. Adamantine yellow-green tiles roofed many smaller structures.

As they traveled farther into the city, Flinx began to get some idea of its size. Even that, he knew, was an inaccurate estimate, considering how many buildings were probably hidden by the jungle.

“Maybe it’s not an important city,” he mused, “but it seems big enough to attract at least a few curious diggers.”

“Mimmisompo’s been grubbed, Flinx,” his companion told him. “No one ever found a thing. At least, nothing I ever heard of.”

“What about all those fancy engravings and decorations on the buildings?”

“Simple relics and artifacts are throwaway items on Alaspin,” Pocomchi informed him. “This is a relic-rich world. Now if some of those worked plates”-he gestured out the transparent skimmer dome at the walls sliding past them-” were done in iridium, or even good old-fashioned industrial gold, you wouldn’t be looking at them now.”

“But surely,” Flinx persisted, “a metropolis of this size and state of preservation ought to be worthy of someone’s interest. I’d expect to see at least one small survey party.”

Pocomchi adjusted their course to avoid a towering golden obelisk. A broad grin split his dark-brown face. “I’ve told you, you don’t know Alaspin. There’re much more important diggings to the north, along the coast. Compared to some of the major temple-capitals, like Kommonsha and Danville, Mimmisompo’s a hick town.”

“Stomped flat, sit on that, push it down and make it fat.”

“What’s he drooling about now?” Pocomchi asked, with a nod back to where Ab squatted on all four legs.

Flinx looked back over the seat idly. Ab had been so quiet for the majority of the journey that he had almost forgotten the alien’s presence. But instead of playing dumbly with all sixteen fingers, All appeared to be staring out the dome at something receding behind the skimmer.

“What is it, Ab?” he asked gently. “Did you see something?”

As always, the alien’s mind told him nothing. It was as empty as a dozen-diameter orbit. Two blue eyes swiveled round to stare questioningly at him. Two bands gestured animatedly, while the other two executed incomprehensible idiot patterns in the air.

“Behind the mine the ground has stomped subutaneate residue lingers in the reschedule. Found itself often comatose. If you would achieve anesthesia, take two fresh eggs, beat well, and by and by up in the sky leptones like lemon cream will…”

“Well?” Pocomchi asked.

Flinx thought, scratching the scaly snake head, which was curled now in the hollow of his neck. “It’s hard to tell with Ab, but I think he did see something back there. There’s nothing wrong with his sensory input.”

Even as he slowed the skimmer and brought it “c hover, Pocomchi considered. He cocked a querulous eye at Flinx. “You willing to waste some time to check out an idiot’s information?”

“Why not,” the youth responded, “since we’re probably on an idiot’s errand?”

“You’re paying,” Pocomchi replied noncommittally. The skimmer whined slightly as its driver turned it around. Slowly they retraced their path.

“Whatever it is has to be on the starboard side now,” Fiinx declared, carefully studying the landscape “That’s the side Ab was looking out.”

Pocomchi turned his attention to the ground on his right. In order to see clearly past him, Flinx had to stand. His head almost bumped the top of the transparent canopy. Jungle-encrusted ruins passed by on monolithic parade.

Several meters on, both men saw it simultaneously.

“Over there,” Flinx said, “under the blue overhang.”

Pocomchi angled closer to the walls, then cut the power. With the soft sigh of circuits going to sleep, fm little vessel settled birdlike to the ground. A few shards of rock and shattered masonry crunched beneath the skimmer’s weight.

A touch on another control caused the canopy to fold itself up and slide neatly into the skimmer’s roof behind them. In place of the steady hum of the engine, Flinx now heard jungle and forest voices emerging in the silence. They were cautious at first, uncertain. But soon various unseen creatures were whistling, howling, cooing, bellowing, hissing, and snuffling with increasing confidence beneath the blue sky.

The noises fascinates Ab (didn’t everything?).”There is a large depression in the sermoid,” he began. Both men tuned out the alien versifying.

Their attention instead was focused on the massive azure overhang to their left. It resembled blue ferrocrete, although that was impossible-ferroerete was a modern building material. It stuck outward, a thrusting blue blade shading a space fifteen meters square. In the sheltered region beneath the overhang was a familiar, self-explanatory outline.

Pocomchi turned his gaze to the depression in the earth. Flinx, his own thoughts still on the blue monolith, followed the Indian out of the skimmer.

“I haven’t seen that color before,” he told Pocomchi.

“Hmmm?” murmured the Indian, intent on the outline pressed into the ground. “Oh, that. The ancient Alaspinians colored a lot of their formed stone. That overhang isn’t granite, it’s a cementlike material they also used. Probably a lot of copper sulfate in this one, to turn it that dark a hue.” He traced the outline in the ground with his feet, walking around it.

“A pretty good-sized skimmer made this mark,” he announced. “Light cargo on board.” Turning, he struggled to see through stone and jungle, wails and trees. “Somebody’s been here recently, all right.” Eyes intently focused on the ground, he walked away from the outline until he was standing beneath the blue overhang.

“A good place for a first camp. Here’s where they unloaded their supplies,” he noted, examining the dirt. He walked out from under the sheltering stone and looked up across dense brush which formed a green wave against the side of the structure. It sounded like corduroy against his jumpsuit.

“They’ve gone off through here, Flinx.” Turning, he eyed his anxious young companion. “Yes, it might be your massive mystery man with the gold earring. Whoever it was, they’ve spent some money.” He pointed to where the brush had been smashed down repeatedly to form a fair pathway that was only now beginning to recover from the tread of many feet. “They made a lot of trips to transfer their stuff deeper into the city. I thought everyone had given up on this location years ago.”

He started back toward the skimmer. Flinx was gazing with interest at the azure overhang, wondering at its original purpose. A temple at least a hundred meters high towered behind it. The massive blue form had fallen outward, leaving a gaping hole in the temple wall. Beyond he could barely make out a darkened interior lined with shattered masonry, dangling strips of punched metal, shade-loving plants, and the emptiness of abandonment.

“What do we do now?”

Pocomchi grinned at him and shook his head. “You’ve hardly heard a word I’ve said, have you? There’s the remnants of a service trail back here, clear enough for us to follow. Since they felt the need to walk it from this point, I think it’s safe to assume we can’t get the skimmer through. Hopefully your quarry will be at the other end of the trail. Anyway, I’d like to meet anyone foolish enough to think there’s anything worth taking out of Mimmisompo. I hope they’ve got easy trigger fingers and an inviting nature.”

“Let’s get going, then,” ventured Flinx.

“Easy, dragon lord.” He indicated the sun. “Why not wait till we’ve a full day to hike with? No one’s running anyplace, least of all the people we’re hunting. I think they’re pretty deep into the brush.” A hand waved in the direction of jumbled stone and bushes where the trail lay. “There are creatures crawling around in there that I’d rather meet in daytime, if I have to meet them at all. I’ll set up a perimeter, and we’ll sleep by the skimmer tonight.”

A radiant fence was quickly erected in a half circle, with the skimmer inside. Another compartment of the compact craft produced inflatable mattresses and sleeping material. It would have been safer to sleep in the skimmer, but the small cockpit was cramped enough with two men. Two men trying to sleep inside, together with Ab and a pair of minidrags, would have been impossible.

Their temporary habitat was topped by an inflatable dome, which would serve as weather shield in the event of wind or storm. The semipermeable membrane of the dome would permit fresh air to enter and allow waste gases to pass out, but would shunt aside anything as thick as a raindrop.

Outside, the radiant fence would keep curious nightstalkers at bay, while Balthazaar and Pip could be counted on to serve as backup alarms in the event that anything really dangerous showed up. As for arboreal predators, the great majority of them were daylight hunters, according to Pocomchi.

Flinx leaned back on the soft mattress and stared out the dome toward the trail site. He was anxious to be after whoever had made it, impatient to have this search resolved once and for all. But this was Pocomchi’s planet. It would be wise to take his advice.

Besides, he thought with an expansive yawn, he was tired. His head went back. Through the warm tropical night and the thin material of the dome he could count the stars in strange constellations. Off to the east hung a pair of round, gibbous moons, so unlike the craggy outline of Moth’s own rarely glimpsed satellite, Flame.

The single moon of distant Ulru-Ujurr was larger than these two combined, he thought. Memories of his pupils, the innocent ursinoid race which lived on that world, pulled strongly at him. He felt guilty. His place was back there, advising them, instead of gallivanting around the Commonwealth in search of impossible-to learn origins.

A fetid breeze drifted through the single window, set above and to the side of his bed. Soft crackling noises, like foil crumpling, drifted in to him. In a little while, the alien lullaby had helped him fall sound asleep.

First sunlight woke Flinx. Rolling over, he stretched once and was instantly awake. Pocomchi lay on the mattress next to him, snoring stentorianly for so small a man. He stretched out a hand to wake the Indian, and frowned as be did so. Something was missing, something so familiar that for a long moment he couldn’t figure out what was gone.

He woke Pocomchi, sat up, and thought. The motion of rising brought the absence home to him. All at once, Flinx was moving rapidly, searching behind the mattress by the skimmer body, on the opposite side of Pocomchi’s bed. Nothing.

Zipping open the doorway, he plunged frantically outside and almost ran toward the jungle before remembering the radiant fence. Standing by the inside edge of the softly glowing barrier, he put cupped hands to his lips and shouted, “Pip! Where are you, Pip!”

His eyes swept the trees and temple tops, but the searching revealed only silent stone and mocking greenery. Though both must have seen what had become of his pet, all remained frozen with the silence of the inanimate.

Turning, he ran back into the dome and climbed into the skimmer. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he deflated the mattresses, Pocomchi eyed him but said nothing. Better to let the lad find out these things for himself.

Flinx crawled behind the two seats, back into the storage area where Ab had ridden. “Come on out, Pip. The game’s not funny any more. Come out, Pip!”

When he finally gave up and rose, vacant-eyed, from the cockpit, he saw Pocomehi packing away the inflatable dome and taking down the fence. The Indian said nothing, but watched as Flinx moved to the edge of the brush and resumed calling. By the time the youth had shouted himself hoarse, Pocomchi had stowed all their supplies.

One thing remained for Flinx to try. Standing by the shadow of the azure overhang, he closed his eyes and thought furiously. From the skies, he imagined to himself, from the skies, a terrible danger! I need you, Pip, it’s threatening me. Where are you, companion of childhood? Your friend is in danger! Can’t you sense it? It’s coming closer, and there’s nothing I can do about it!

He kept up his performance for long minutes, until sweat began to bead on his forehead and his clenched fingers turned pale. Something touched him on the shoulder, and be jumped. Pocomchi’s sympathetic eyes were staring into his.

“You’re wearing yourself out for no reason, Flinx,” his guide told him. “Calling won’t help.” A hand gestured toward the sweep of dense vegetation. “When something calls the minidrag, it goes. This is their world, you know. Or hadn’t you noticed that Balthazaar is gone too?”

Flinx had been so thoroughly absorbed by Pip’s disappearance that he hadn’t. Sure enough, the old minidrag always curled about Pocomchi’s neck and shoulder was nowhere to be seen.

“Since I found him at the age of five,” he tried to explain to the little man, “Pip and I have never spent a single day completely apart from each other.” His gaze roved over the concealing jungle. “I just can’t believe he’d simply fly off and abandon me. I can’t believe it, Pocomchi!”

The Indian shrugged and spoke softly. “No minidrag is ever completely tamed. You’ve never been on Pip’s home world before, either. Don’t look so brokenhearted. I’ve had Balthazaar fly off and leave me for several days at a time. He always comes back.

“In case you’ve forgotten, we have other things to do here. There’s that trail to follow, and your ringwearer to find. We won’t be skimming out of Mimmisompo for a while yet. When they want to, both Pip and Balthazaar will find our thoughts.”

Flinx relaxed a little.

“They’re wild things, Flinx,” Pocomchi reminded him, “and this is a wild place. You can’t expect the two not to be attracted by that. Now let’s make up a couple of packs and start the hard part of this trip.”

Moving mechanically, Flinx helped his guide prepare a set of light but well-stocked backpacks. When Pocomchi was helping him on with his own, showing him how the strappings worked, a sudden thought occurred to him.

“What,” he asked worriedly, “if we find what we’ve come for, and then when it’s time for us to leave for Alaspinport Pip hasn’t come back?”

Pocomchi stared straight at him, his eyebrows arching slightly. “There’s no use in speculating on thai, Flinx. Balthazaar means as much or more to me as your Pip does to you. We’ve been through a lot together. But a minidrag’s not a dog. It won’t slaver and whimper at your feet. You ought to know that. Minidrags are independent and free-willed. They remain with you and me because they want to, not because they’re in need of us. The decision to return is up to them.” He smiled slightly. “All we can do if we come back and they’re not here is wait a while for them. Then if they don’t show …” He hesitated. “Well, it’s their world.” He turned and started off toward the trail.

Flinx took a last look at the sky above. No familiar winged shape came diving out of it toward his shoulder. Setting his jaw and mind, he hefted the backpack to a more comfortable position and strode off after Pocomchi. Soon the skimmer was lost to sight, consumed by stone and intervening vegetation.

Every so often he would turn to make certain that Ab was still trailing behind them. Then he would turn forward again. His view consisted of tightly intertwined bushes and vines and trees, parted regularly by the bobbing back of Pocomchi’s head. The Indian’s black hair swayed as he traced the path through the jungle encrusted city. Sometimes the growth had recovered and grown back over the path, but under Pocomchi’s skilled guidance they always reemerged onto a clear trail.

Although he knew better, he could think only of his missing pet. Emotions he thought he had long since outgrown swelled inside him. They were ready to overwhelm him when a cold hand touched the right side of his face with surpassing gentleness.

Angrily he glanced back, intending to take out his feelings on the owner of that chill palm. But how could anyone get mad at that face, with its mournful, innocent eyes and its proboscidean mouth where its hair ought to be, tottering after him with the stride of a quadrupedal duck?

“Worry, worry, sorry burry,” ventured Ab hopefully, “key to quark, key to curry. Black pepper ground find in me mind” - this delivered with such solemnity that Flinx half felt it might actually mean something. While he was pondering the cryptic verse, he tripped over a root and went sprawling Pocomchi heard him fall and turned. The Indian shook his head, grinned, and resumed walking.

Flinx climbed to his feet and hitched the pack higher on his shoulders. “You’re right, All, there’s no point in tearing myself up over it. There’s nothing I can do about it.” His gaze turned heavenward, and he searched the powdery rims of scattered cumulus clouds. “If Pip comes back, he comes back. If not”- his voice dropped to a resigned murmur- “life goes on. A little lonelier, maybe, but it goes on. I’ll still have things to do and people to go back to.”

“Call the key, call the key,” Ab agreed in singsong behind him. “To see it takes two to tango with an animated mango.” He stared expectantly at Flinx.

“Farcical catharsis.” The youth chuckled, smiling now at his ward’s comical twaddle. What a pity, he mused, that the poetically inclined alien didn’t have enough sense to make real use of his talent. But he had become used to tuning out Ab’s ramblings, so he concentrated on the path ahead and ignored the alien’s continued verbalizing.

“Key the key that’s me,” Ab sang lucidly, “I’ll be whatever you want to see. Harkatrix, matrix, how do you run? Slew of currents and a spiced hadron.”

They walked all that day and afternoon. When Pocomchi found a place suitable for night camp, the path still wound off into the jungle ahead. With the experience of an old trailwalker, and maybe a little tangle, the Indian somehow managed to concoct a meal from concentrates which was both flavorful and filling.

The fullness in his belly should have put Flinx rapidly to sleep. Instead, he found himself lying awake, listening to Pocomchi’s snores and staring at the sky. The trouble was that the weight in his stomach wasn’t matched by a more familiar weight curled next to his shoulder. Eventually he had to take a dose of cerebroneural depressant in order to fall into an uncomfortable sleep.

Morning came with anxious hope that quickly faded The minidrags had not returned. Silently they broke camp and marched on.

Poeomchi tried to cheer his companion by pointing out interesting aspects of the flora and fauna they passed. Ordinarily Flinx would have listened raptly. Now he simply nodded or grunted an occasional comment. Even Pocomchi’s description of temple engineering failed to rouse him from his mental lethargy.

They paused for lunch in the center of a series of concentric stone circles. Shade was provided by a fivemeter-high metal pillar in the center of the circles. It was supported by the familiar metal buttresses on four sides. The pillar itself, fluted and encrusted with petrified growths and slime, had corroded badly in places.

“It’s a fountain,” Pocomchi decided while eating lunch. He gestured at the silent tower, then at the gradually descending stone circles surrounding them. “I expect we’re sitting in the middle of a series of sacred pools that were once used for religious and other ceremonies by the populace of this city. If subterranean Mimmisompo stays true to the Alaspinian pattern, then the water for this was piped underground to here, probably through metal pipes by gravity.” One finger traced the spray of ghost water. “It shot out of the fountain top and then fell down these fluted sides before spreading out and overflowing from one pool to the next.” Leaning forward, he took a bite out of a concentrate bar.

“Judging from the slight incline of the pools, I’d guess the drain is right about there.” He pointed. “See the formal, carved bench? That’s where a priest could sit and bless the waters flowing out of the cistern. On the right of the bench there should be a-” Abruptly, he quieted and strained forward.

Flinx felt a mental crackle from his companion and stared in the same direction. “I don’t see anything. What’s the matter?”

Pocomchi rose and gestured. “There, what’s that?” Still Flinx could see nothing.

The Indian walked cautiously toward the cistern out, flow, hopping down from one level to the next. When he reached the region of the stone bench, he leaned over the last restraining wall and called back to Flinx. There was a peculiar tightness in his voice.

“Over here” he said disbelievingly, is a dead man.”