Bordman squinted aloft, where the eagle flew in great sweeps and
dashes. Somehow, by the experience of the past few days, Bordman knew
that Semper was screaming fiercely as he flew. He made a dart toward
the plateau's border.
Bordman looked at the transmitted picture. It was only four inches
by six, but it was perfectly without grain and accurate in color. It
moved and turned as the camera-bearing eagle swooped and circled. For
an instant the screen showed the steeply sloping mountainside, and off
at one edge the party of men and bears could be seen as dots. Then it
swept away and showed the top of the plateau.
There were sphexes. A pack of two hundred trotted toward the desert
interior. They moved at leisure, in the open. The viewing camera
reeled, and there were more. As Bordman watched and as the bird flew
higher, he could see still other sphexes moving up over the edge of the
plateau from a small erosion-defile here and another one there. The
Sere Plateau was alive with the hellish creatures. It was inconceivable
that there should be game enough for them to live on. They were visible
as herds of cattle would be visible on grazing planets.
It was simply impossible.
"Migrating," observed Huyghens. "I said they did. They're headed
somewhere. Do you know, I doubt that it would be healthy for us to try
to cross the Plateau through such a swarm of sphexes!"
Bordman swore, in abrupt change of mood.
"But the signal's still coming through. Somebody's alive over at the
robot-colony. Must we wait till the migration's over?"
"We don't know," Huyghens pointed out, "that they'll stay alive. They
may need help badly. We have to get to them. But at the same time--"
He glanced at Sourdough Charley and Sitka Pete, clinging patiently to
the mountainside while the men rested and talked. Sitka had managed to
find a place to sit down, one massive paw anchoring him in place.
Huyghens waved his arm, pointing in a new direction.
"Let's go!" he called briskly. "Let's go! Yonder! Hup!"
They followed the slopes of the Sere Plateau, neither ascending to its
level top--where sphexes congregated--nor descending into the foothills
where sphexes assembled. They moved along hillsides and mountain-flanks
which sloped anywhere from thirty to sixty degrees, and they did not
cover much territory. They practically forgot what it was to walk on
level ground.
At the end of the sixth day, they camped on the top of a massive
boulder which projected from a mountainous stony wall. There was
barely room on the boulder for all the party. Faro Nell fussily
insisted that Nugget should be in the safest part, which meant near
the mountain-flank. She would have crowded the men outward, but Nugget
whimpered for Bordman. Wherefore, when Bordman moved to comfort him,
Faro Nell drew back and snorted at Sitka and Sourdough and they made
room for her near the edge.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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