Astounding Science Fiction (UK Edition) — page 40: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

338 all things come to an'‘end, including the flimsiest hope of returning home. The squeakers were drowned out as the noisy pillar of flame built itself up to a roar. My hammock started to jump as its bearers reacted. The way they put on the pace had to be experienced to be believed; I almost flew along, dodging this tree, but not that, sometimes avoiding half-seen growths that weren’t trees at all. My heart was in my boots. The bellowing back in the glade suddenly ended in a mighty thump, and a crimson Spear flung itself into the sky and stabbed the clouds. It was a spectacle I’d seen be- fore: it was a spaceship going up. It was the Marathon! Were these creatures so talented that they could pick up a thoroughly strange vessel and take it wherever they wanted it? Were these the beings described as superior to the Ka? The whole thing was incongruous— expert astronauts carrying their prisoners in wicker hammocks. Besides, the way they’d jabbered and put on the pace,suggested that the Marathon’s spurt of life had taken them by surprise. The mystery was one I couldn’t solve. While the fiery trail of the spaceship arced ‘northward, our party pressed hurriedly on. There was one stop during which our captors congregated together, but their continual piping suggested that they hadn’t stopped for a meal. Twenty minutes afterward there was another halt and a hell of a row in front. Guards kept close to us while a short dis- tance ahead sounded a vocal uproar in which many voices vied with a loud mewing and much beating of great branches. I tried to*imagine a bright green tiger. Things went phut-phut and the mewing ended in a choking cough. The sound of whipping branches died away. We moved on, making a wide curve around a monstrous growth that I strained in vain to see. If only this world had possessed a moon. But there was no moon. There were only the stars and the clouds and the forest from which came that all-pervading beat. Dawn broke as the line warily bent away from a small clump of apparently innocent briers. We came to the bank of a wide river. Here, we could give our guards the once-over as they shepherded bearers and burdens down the bank. They were creatures very much like the Ka, only taller, more slender, with big, intelligent eyes. They had the same fibrous skins, grayer, not so green, and the same chrysanthemums on their ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION chests. Unlike the Ka, their middles were clothed in pleated garments, they had har- ness of woven fiber, and wooden accouter- ments which included things like compli- cated blowguns and bowl-shaped vessels having a bulbous container in the base. A few also bore panniers holding small spheres like the one that had laid me flat in the air lock. Craning my head, I tried to see more, but could only discern Jepson in the next ham- mock and Brennand in the one behind that. The next instant, my hammock was uncere- moniously dumped by the water’s brink, Jepson’s beside mine, the rest in a level row. Jepson screwed round his head, looked at me, and said, “The punks!” “Take it easy,” I suggested. “If we play with them, they may give us more rope.” “And,” he said, viciously, “I don’t like guys who try to be funny at the wrong time.” “I wasn’t trying to be funny,” I snapped. “We're all bound to hold our own opinions, aren’t we?” “There you go again!” He writhed around on his hammock, tried to stretch his fasten- ings. “Some day I'll bind you!” It’s no use talking with a guy like that, so I didn’t answer. The light waxed stronger, shone greenly through the thin, green mist hanging over the green river. I could now see Blaine and Minshull tied up beyond Armstrong, and the portly form of McNulty beyond them. We'd traveled about two hours. A | Ten of our captors went along the line Opening jackets and shirts, baring our chests. They had with them a supply of the bowls with bulbous containers. Two of them pawed my uniform apart, got my chest ex- posed, stared at it like Antony stared at Cleopatra. Something about it struck themr as wonderful, and it wasn’t my _ reserve beard. It didn’t require much brains to tell that they missed my chrysanthemum and - couldn’t see how I’d got through life without it. They called their fellows, the whole gang debated the subject while I lay like a sacri- ficial virgin. Then they decided that they’d struck a new line of research and went hot along the trail. Seizing Blaine and the boob who’d played duck-on-the-rock, they untied them, stripped them down to the raw, examined them as if they were prize cattle at an agricultural ex- hibition. One of them prodded Blaine in the solar plexus, whereat he jumped the fellow CcomiclboooksS.c©