Storm Over Warlock | Page 3

them back to camp from forays of their own
devising.
But the second time he had been caught by Fadakar, the chief of animal
control, before he could lock up the delinquents. And the memory of
the resulting interview still had the power to make him flush with
impotent anger. Shann's explanation had been contemptuously brushed
aside, and he had been delivered an ultimatum. If his carelessness
occurred again, he would be sent back on the next supply ship, to be
dismissed without an official sign-off on his work record, thus locked
out of even the lowest level of Survey for the rest of his life.
That was why Garth Thorvald's act of the night before had made Shann
brave the unknown darkness of Warlock alone when he had discovered
that the test animals were gone. He had to locate and return them before
Fadakar made his morning inspection; Garth Thorvald's attempt to get
him into bad trouble had saved his life.
Shann cowered back, striving to make his huddled body as small as
possible. One of the Throg flyers appeared silently out of the misty
amber of the morning sky, hovering over the silent camp. The aliens
were coming in to inspect the site of their victory. And the safest place
for any Terran now was as far from the vicinity of those silent domes as
he could get. Shann's slight body was an asset as he wedged through
the narrow mouth of a cleft and so back into the cliff wall. The climb
before him he knew in part, for this was the path the wolverines had

followed on their two other escapes. A few moments of tricky
scrambling and he was out in a cuplike depression choked with brush
covered with the purplish foliage of Warlock. On the other side of that
was a small cut to a sloping hillside, giving on another valley, not as
wide as that in which the camp stood, but one well provided with cover
in the way of trees and high-growing bushes.
A light wind pushed among the trees, and twice Shann heard the harsh,
rasping call of a clak-clak--one of the bat-like leather-winged flyers
that laired in pits along the cliff walls. That present snap of two-tone
complaint suggested that the land was empty of strangers. For the
clak-claks vociferously and loudly resented encroachment on their
chosen hunting territory.
Shann hesitated. He was driven by the urge to put as much distance
between him and the landing Throg ship as he could. But to arouse the
attention of inquisitive clak-claks was asking for trouble. Perhaps it
would be best to keep on along the top of the cliff, rather than risk a
descent to take cover in the valley the flyers patrolled.
A patch of dust, sheltered by a tooth-shaped projection of rock, gave
the Terran his first proof that Taggi and his mate had preceded him, for
printed firmly there was the familiar paw mark of a wolverine. Shann
began to hope that both animals had taken to cover in the wilderness
ahead.
He licked dry lips. Having left secretly without any emergency pack, he
had no canteen, and now Shann inventoried his scant possessions--a
field kit, heavy-duty clothing, a short hooded jacket with attached
mittens, the breast marked with the Survey insignia. His belt supported
a sheathed stunner and bush knife, and seam pockets held three credit
tokens, a twist of wire intended to reinforce the latch of the wolverine
cage, a packet of bravo tablets, two identity and work cards, and a
length of cord. No rations--save the bravos--no extra charge for his
stunner. But he did have, weighing down a loop on the jacket, a small
atomic torch.
The path he followed ended abruptly in a cliff drop, and Shann made a

face at the odor rising from below, even though that scent meant he
could climb down to the valley floor here without fearing any clak-clak
attention. Chemical fumes from a mineral spring funneled against the
wall, warding off any nesting in this section.
Shann drew up the hood of his jacket and snapped the transparent face
mask into place. He must get away--then find food, water, a hiding
place. That will to live which had made Shann Lantee fight
innumerable battles in the past was in command, bracing him with a
stubborn determination.
The fumes swirled up in a smoke haze about his waist, but he strode on,
heading for the open valley and cleaner air. That sickly lavender
vegetation bordering the spring deepened in color to the normal
purple-green, and then he was in a grove of trees, their branches
pointed skyward at sharp angles to the rust-red trunks.
A small skitterer burst from moss-spotted ground covering, giving an
alarmed squeak, skimming out of sight