[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

right for you, Oscar, but I have one small apartment. I'll have to move half
the furniture to make room
for this-if I dare display it at all, that is."
''Because you got it on an off-limits hunting trip?"
Schoenberg laughed. "If anybody bothers you, just tell 'em I
gave it to you. Let 'em come see me."
"I'll have to leave it turned off most of the time, just bring it out for
special occasions. I suppose it would scare off most of my usual visitors,
anyway." Then she caught herself and started to look apologetically toward
Suomi, then hastily looked away.
Yesterday after everyone had returned to the ship they had all listened with
some embarrassment to his account of how he had frozen in panic in the field
and how Schoenberg had coolly saved his life. Athena had been more
embarrassed, perhaps, than Suomi. De La Torre had seemed inwardly amused, and
Barbara had shown some sympathy.
Suomi wondered if his shipmates-Athena especially-were waiting for him to
demand a rifle and a chance to go out and prove himself. If so they were going
to have a long wait. All right, he had been terrified. Maybe if he went out
again and an animal charged, he wouldn't be terrified. Or maybe he would. He
wasn't anxious to find out. He had nothing to prove. While all the others were
out hunting on the second day he sat on the ship's extended landing ramp
enjoying the air. There was a rifle at hand for emergencies but if anything
menacing came in sight he planned to simply go inside and close the hatch.
Once everyone who wanted a trophy had one Schoenberg dallied in the north no
longer. The hunting season would last a long time but the mysterious
Tournament was apparently quite brief and he didn't want to miss it. When
Suomi
mentioned the Tournament to the girls, none of them had any clear idea of what
it was. Some sort of physical contest, he supposed.
Schoenberg evidently knew the way to Godsmountain, though he said he had not
been there before. Flying south, he went much slower and lower than on the
northward flight, paying close attention to landmarks. He followed a river
valley most of the way, first by radar because of ground fog, then visually
when the view had cleared. When, after several hours, they reached their
destination, there was no mistaking it. Godsmountain stood out immediately
Page 28
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
from its surroundings, a wooded eminence practically isolated amid a patchwork
of surrounding flat farmlands, orchards and pastures. The mountain was broad
and quite high, but in general not very steep. On the deforested summit a
town-
sized complex of white stone walls and buildings stood out as plainly as if it
had been constructed as a beacon for aerial navigation.
After circling the mountain once at a respectful distance, Schoenberg slowed
down some more and began to descend toward it. Not to the citadel-city on its
top; he was careful not to even fly over that.
A few hundred meters below the walls of the white city, a truncated pinnacle
of rock rose out of the woods something like a dwarfed and naked thumb on the
side of the mountain's great mitten-shape. After noticing this pinnacle,
Schoenberg approached it slowly, circled it closely, then hovered directly
over it for some time, probing delicately at it with the sensing instruments
in
Orion's hull. It was between twenty and thirty meters tall, and appeared to be
just barely climbable. There was no sign that man or beast had ever taken the
trouble to
reach its flattened top.
De La Torre, now hanging into the stanchion behind the pilot's chair, offered:
"I'd say that top is big enough to hold us, Oscar, even give us a little room
to walk around outside the ship."
Schoenberg grunted. "That was my idea, to put her down there. We might have to
cut a few steps or string a line to climb down. But on the other hand no one's
going to come visiting unless we invite 'em."
After making a final close examination of the pinnacle's small mesa from only
a few meters' distance, Schoenberg set
Orion down on it. The landing struts groped outward, adjusted themselves to
keep the ship level. There was indeed enough flat space on the rocky table to
hold the ship securely, with a few square meters left over for leg-
stretching. All aboard disembarked for this purpose at once.
Even high up the weather at this tropical latitude was quite warm but the
girls were fully clothed again, in view of their uncertainty about local
morals and customs. Schoenberg had ordered all weapons left inside the ship.
Direct inspection confirmed that only one side of the mesa was conceivably
climbable by human beings. Even on that side there were places where a few
pitons or some cut-in steps, and perhaps a rope, would be needed to allow even
agile folk to make an ascent or descent in reasonable safety.
"Where is everybody?" Celeste wondered aloud as she gazed beyond the
intervening sea of treetops at the white walls of the city on the summit,
slightly above their level.
De La Torre had binoculars out and was peering in another direction,
downslope. "There're thirty or forty men, in some
kind of a camp. Over there. I can just make out some of them from time to
time, among the trees."
For a while there was no better answer to Celeste's question, no sign that
Orion's arrival or her sore-thumb presence above the landscape had been
noticed. Of course the dense forest that covered most of the mountain might
conceal a lot of movement. The trees, Suomi noted, looked like close analogues
of common Earthly species. Maybe some mutated stocks had been imported by the
early colonists. The trunks did seem to be proportionately thicker than those
of most trees on Earth, and their branches tended to right-angle bends.
About half a standard hour had passed since their landing, and the six
visitors had all armed themselves with binoculars, when the one visible gate
in the city's high wall suddenly opened and a small party of white-robed men
emerged, vanishing from sight again almost at once as they plunged into the
Page 29
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
woods.
Schoenberg had an infrared device with which he could have followed their
progress beneath the canopy of leaves, but he didn't bother. Instead he placed
his binoculars back in their case, leaned back and lit a cigar. Some minutes
before
Suomi had expected their reappearance so near at hand, the delegation from the
city emerged from the woods again, this time into the clearing caused by
rockfalls from the tower on which
Orion rested.
Schoenberg at once threw down his cigar and moved forward to the mesa's edge [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]