Below the monster still fought insanely against the carrier which held it down. But if there were others of its fellows alive they had not joined it. Santee wiped his steaming face with the back of a hand.
“I still don’t know how we got outa that one, kid. It was sure a close call.”
“Too close. I want to catch up to the sled before we run into any more of those murdering devils.”
“Yeah,” Santee pulled ruefully at the sling of the rifle.
“Next time I go walkin’ I’m gonna have a lotta ammo! This here country’s got too many surprises.”
They set out at a sober pace, too exhausted by their exertions of the past hour to hurry. It was dusk growing into night before they found their way down a rise into another grassy plain. In the distance was a massed shadow of what could only be a wood.
Would they have to fight their way through or around that, Dard asked himself drearily. But a light reassured him. There was a campfire down there. Cully had landed the sled this side of the barrier.
As Santee and Dard dragged themselves wearily into the circle of firelight they were met with a flood of questions. Dard was too tired to try to answer. He ate and drank and crawled into his bedroll before all the tale of their adventure of the afternoon had been told. Kimber was very sober when it was complete.
“That was too close. We’ll have to go better armed when we explore. But now that we know there is no civilized threat to our colony it may be some time before we return this way. Tomorrow the sled will ferry us over the forest and the cliffs and we shall be home. Those are our cliffs there.”
“Home,” Dard repeated that word in his mind, trying to associate it with the sea valley, with the cave house of the star voyagers. A long, long time ago “home” had had a good meaning. Before the burning, before the purge. But his memory of that halcyon time was so dim. Then “home” had meant the farm, and cold, hunger, the constant threat of danger. Now “home” would be a cell hollowed out of a colored cliff on a weird world generations of time away from Terra.