Acorna's Search Part 15

Acorna said, "Bear in mind, Captain, that once she is evacuated from the planet's surface you will not be hearing her complaints vicariously, but on your own bridge, and she will be standing right next to you as she delivers them. Every moment we delay postpones that scenario."

"Oh yes. I suppose there is that," he said, sounding somewhat abashed.

The team continued its upward journey until they were near the tunnel mouth when Yaniriin suddenly said, "Wait! There is something, someone, moving near your flitter. Let me zoom in for a closer look."

"Someone Linyaari?" Acorna asked, breathless because of more than the climb now. Could Aari or one of the others have come back, too? Perhaps whatever had taken the research teams was now releasing all of them. "Can you tell who it is?" Not yet. Unlike yourselves, this being is not carpeted with an array of sensors. Let me look more closely. How odd... The being is not Linyaari. No horn. But it is very large "

"Two feet? Four feet? More?" Thariinye asked. Hard to tell. Something seems to be draped over its lower portions, but I would guess four. It is very bulky. From what we can see, it could be an animal of what your human friends

call the ursine species, Kh.o.r.n.ya, the sort that is heavily furred and may stand on two legs or four."

A bear? On Vhiliinyar?" Mac shook his head, grazed Acorna's shoulder and stepped a steep step backward, only just catching himself against the wall and preventing himself from falling. "Highly unlikely."

"Is something bothering your vision, Mac?" she asked.

"I weep internally for joy, Kh.o.r.n.ya. Did you hear? The captain said three Linyaari. I am considered one of you now."

"Don't expect Liriili to be so broad-minded," Thariinye said. "I don't suppose it would hurt anything if we just stepped outside the entrance, just a little, to cool off and get a breath of air while we wait for the flitter to inspect our new friend and then come and get us."

Acorna had to agree. It was unlikely that whatever was prowling around their flitter would be able to see them at the cave entrance. And though Mac and the cat seemed spry as ever, she and Thariinye were both hot, tired, and sick of tasting the dust of the tunnel.

They stepped cautiously outside and each uncorked a water bottle and had a long swallow.

Mac ran a maintenance check on himself.

RK sat on the ground at their feet, made an L of his back legs, and washed himself along the lower belly and tail.

"What are you doing? Get back inside the cave!" Yaniriin barked suddenly. "It's coming toward you, whatever it is, and wait, there's another one.

"Where?" Thariinye asked, scanning the landscape. "I don't see a thing!"

"Never mind, just conceal yourselves !" Yaniriin ordered.

Acorna had already ducked back just inside the tunnel. While Thariinye was talking into his com unit, she glimpsed, over his shoulder, two large heavy hairy beings running toward them, brandis.h.i.+ng long sticks with points on the ends spears. Spears?

One of them was covered on the top with matted red fur, and on the bottom with matted brown fur. The other's top fur was black to midway down the trunk, then mottled gray. They ran very swiftly for such ungainly looking beings but Acorna decided they were roughly humanoid after all, they seemed to be able to use rudimentary tools.

As they drew closer she saw their eyes from under their s.h.a.g of hair. They looked wild, ferocious, definitely hostile, and they were fixed on Thariinye and the mouth of the cave.

Thariinye had frozen.

Acorna rushed out, grabbed his arm, and pulled him back inside the cave pa.s.sage. And abruptly, she herself was pulled further back into the cave so suddenly that she fell over backwards.

"I am sorry, Kh.o.r.n.ya, and I shall be sorry to lose the esteem of your people, but I believe these beings mean us harm. Run back into the cave and keep running. I will cover your flank."

Mac snapped out his pick attachment from one arm. In the other he held his laser. She untangled herself from Thariinye, who had also fallen, and rose to her feet, pulling him with her. Though she would never wish to leave a friend to danger in order to protect herself, what Mac said made excellent sense. Two such obviously primitive beings would be no match for Mac. Not that he was alone. A bristling, snarling RK, larger than Acorna had ever seen him, blocked out the twilight from between Mac's legs with bushels of enraged fur.

She was rea.s.sured when she saw that instead of confronting the beings directly, Mac had backed into the cavern, seeking the best place in which to make a stand. He was clearly going to use caution and good sense in his defense of them. RK looked up at Mac in astonishment then abandoned his battle stance and hightailed it back to Acorna and Thariinye. Acorna could almost hear the cat think that he could protect them as easily from back here as from up front with an android who wouldn't feel anything if that long pointy thing got stuck in him.

The hairy monsters suddenly filled the entrance to the cave, while Mac, some yards back, said, "I caution you not to come nearer. We are peaceful beings but my hands are lethal weapons and I will use them to defend my companions if necessary."

RK turned and growled and fluffed again.

"Also," Mac said, as the hairy monsters laughed, seemingly at the lameness of his warning. "There is a cat of great fierce-ness.

In answer to this the s.h.a.ggy red-topped monster thrust his spear at Mac, who broke it off while burning the spear from the hand of the other monster with his laser attachment.

That was all Acorna saw, for just then Thariinye grabbed her hand and all but dragged her off her feet, pulling her down deeper into the tunnel toward the cave's mouth.

And then they were running, panting, running, running, sweat pouring off them, running deeper and deeper, the pa.s.sage walls swirling crazily in the tilting light from their headlamps.

Behind them, very distantly, horrible roars and growls interspersed with occasional erudite exclamations from Mac, such as "I see that your hirsute condition functions as something of a s.h.i.+eld for entrapping the weapons of your foes! Let us see if it can capture a laser beam! Aha! Take that," echoed off the walls of the tunnel.

Really, it seemed to Acorna that there was no need to retreat quite so far, but Thariinye's thoughts roiled with the beat of his footfalls.

(He who fights and runs away will live and love another day; he who fights and runs away will live...)

Obviously Thariinye had spent too much time pouring over the hard copy books of aphorisms among the literary litter aboard Becker's Condor.

Had Mac appeared to be actually endangered by the hairy louts attacking them, Acorna would have returned immediately to help him. The cat already appeared to have done so, which worried her. Fierce as Makahomian Temple Cats might be, they were flesh and blood, whereas Mac's own anatomy was much more complex and not very organic.

But even RK's feline battle cries faded in the distance as Thariinye pulled her swiftly along, past all of the area where Mac had translated runes, then down a corridor that branched into another corridor. At the second branch she gave a mental bellow that stopped Thariinye in his tracks.

(Whoa!) she said. (This is a good way to get us thoroughly lost.)

"Oh, Mac will find us," Thariinye replied breezily.

"That is true if he doesn't get pulverized. Which is another reason that we should not proceed any farther. We should be close enough to help Mac if he or RK need it."

Just then they heard a terrible bellow and a rumble, clatters and thumps and rattles of rocks and earth falling.

A cloud of dust billowed toward them and Acorna charged for it. This time it was Thariinye dragging along behind her.

She tore back through the cave corridors as quickly as she could, but from what she could see through the clouds of dust, the place where daylight had once poured into the pa.s.sage from the tunnel's entrance was now shrouded in total darkness except for the light cast by the lamps she and Thariinye wore on their foreheads. And then, through the dust and debris, another feeble light wobbled toward them, growing brighter as it came.

"Mac! Are you alright?" she called.

"Yes, Kh.o.r.n.ya, but the cat has sustained an injury and unfortunately my horn, while quite useful in other ways, lacks the healing capabilities of your own. He is quite a brave cat. One of the beasts attempted to decapitate me with a large sword, which would not, of course, have killed me, but would have seriously disabled me long enough for the monsters to reach you. RK distracted the monster by jumping on to its head and raking it with his claws. He is bleeding rather badly and I did not wish to continue the battle when my comrade in arms needed your help. So I collapsed a small portion of the tunnel on the monsters, between them and us. That should slow them down until the flitter arrives."

Acorna dropped Thariinye's hand and ran forward to meet Mac, whose s.h.i.+psuit was torn into so many tatters that it made him look almost as s.h.a.ggy as his recent opponents. RK looked up at her and meowed once, and dropped his head back onto Mac's arm. Acorna bent her head and tried to search through the cat's fur for the wounds, but the dust was so thick she could see very little and besides, she was afraid of what all this dust was doing to all of them. The haze was far beyond the scope of the usual sorts of airborne pollutants Linyaari horns were so good at cleansing. She walked backward in front of Mac as they descended to the cave entrance, touching as much of RK as she could with her horn, while trying not to accidentally gouge Mac.

After a few seconds of this, RK roused himself, grabbed her horn with both hands and licked it, then wriggled free of Mac and trotted down to Thariinye, where he proceeded to wash again.

"A mighty warrior," Mac said admiringly. "He fought bravely, and with no technological attachments to help him."

Thariinye knelt down and scratched RK's head, until his hand met with a swipe of claws. "Oh, the cat has attachments, and though I wouldn't exactly call them technological, they are effective," he told Mac, rubbing his horn over his new wounds.

All of them quickly moved further back into the cave, as far away from the choking clouds of dust as they could easily get, to where Thariinye's and Acorna's horns could purify the air more quickly.