Free Storm Over Warlock by Andre Norton Page B

of past action to the same conclusion concerning the Throg movements.
     
    "Can you see, Lantee?" The question was painfully casual, but a note in it, almost a reaching for reassurance, cut for the first time through the wall which had stood between them from their chance meeting by the wrecked ship.
     
    "Better now. I couldn't when I first came to," Shann answered quickly.
     
    Thorvald opened his eyes, but Shann guessed that he was as blind as he himself had been, He caught at the officer's nearer hand, drawing it to rest on his own belt.
     
    "Grab hold!" Shann was giving the orders now. "By the look of that opening we had better try crawling. I've a torch on at low——"
     
    "Good enough." The other's fingers fumbled on the band about Shann's slim waist until they gripped tight at his back. He started on into the opening, drawing Thorvald by that hold with him.
     
    Luckily, they did not have to crawl far, for shortly past the entrance the fault or vein they were following became a passage high enough for even the tall Thorvald to travel without stooping. And then only a little later he released his hold on Shann, reporting he could now see well enough to manage on his own.
     
    The torch beam caught on a wall and awoke from there a glitter which hurt their eyes—a green-gold cluster of crystals. Several feet on, there was another flash of embedded crystals. Those might promise priceless wealth, but neither Terran paused to examine them more closely or touch their surfaces. From time to time Shann whistled. And always he was answered by the wolverines, their calls coming from ahead. Sothe men continued to hope that they were not walking into a trap from which the Throgs could extract them.
     
    "Snap off your torch a moment!" Thorvald ordered.
     
    Shann obeyed. The subdued light vanished. Yet there was still light to be seen—ahead and above.
     
    "Front door," Thorvald observed. "How do we get up?"
     
    The torch showed them that, a narrow ladder of ledges branching off when the passage they followed took a turn to the left and east. Afterward Shann remembered that climb with wonder that they had actually made it, though their advance had been slow, passing the torch from one to another to make sure of their footing.
     
    Shann was top man when a last spurt of effort enabled him to draw himself out into the open, his hands raw, his nails broken and torn. He sat there, stupefied with his own weariness, to stare about.
     
    Thorvald called impatiently, and Shann reached for the torch to hold it for the officer. Then Thorvald crawled out; he, too, looked around in dull surprise.
     
    On either side, peaks cut high into the amber of the sky. But this bowl in which the men had found refuge was rich in growing things. Though the trees were stunted, the grass grew almost as high here as it did on the meadows of the lowlands. Quartering the pocket valley, galloped the wolverines, expressing in that wild activity their delight in this freedom.
     
    "Good campsite."
     
    Thorvald shook his head. "We can't stay here."
     
    And, to underline that gloomy prophesy, there issued from that hole through which they had just come, muffled and broken, but still threatening, the howl of the Throgs' hound.
     
    The Survey officer caught the torch from Shann's hold and knelt to flash it into the interior of the passage. As the beam slowly circled that opening, he held out his other arm, measuring the size of the aperture.
     
    "When that thing gets on a hot scent"—he snapped off the beam—"the beetle-heads won't be able to control it. There will be no reason for them to attempt to. Those hounds obeytheir first orders: kill—or capture. And I think this one operates on 'capture.' So they'll loose it to run ahead of their party."
     
    "And we move to knock it out?" Shann relied now on the other's experience.
     
    Thorvald rose. "It would need a blaster on full power to finish off a hound. No, we can't kill it. But we can make it a