“I’m trying to get Sonya’s thoughts, Jim.”
They lay on a dark ledge; a fifty foot drop was before them, a sheer perpendicular wall. They had climbed beside it, where the ground was broken. Over the ledge, some ten feet above it, was another broader space with what seemed a cave-mouth behind it. The crags were dim in the starlight; black gulleys, ravines were everywhere. Below them spread the valley floor. Lights which marked the pursuit had gone past.
For a time the three fugitives lay quiet. Jim’s mind went back to the cave from which they had escaped. Two of the brutemen had been on guard.
These brutemen were hardly more than animals, like tigers with a lust for human blood. One had murderously entered the cave; the other, listening, had become frightened and decamped, giving the alarm.
Jim whispered impatiently, “Ren, can’t you get any thoughts from Sonya?”
“No. I’m trying. I feel . . . I feel that Altho is getting them.”
It seemed so. Altho was lying with his head down on his hands. Once he uttered a suppressed exclamation, and then he was murmuring as though to himself.
“You’re right. He’s getting them,” Jim muttered. “Try again, Ren!”
Abruptly Ren exclaimed, “They’re coming! Sonya, with Dolores and Alice.”
“Do they know where we are?”