Dark Ararat - Brian Stableford [148]
“It’s Lynn again, Matthew. We just had a visitor. Big, possibly bipedal.”
Any annoyance he might have felt evaporated on the instant. What Lynn meant, obviously, was possibly humanoid—but she didn’t dare tempt fate by saying so.
“How close did it come?” Matthew asked.
“I wouldn’t have known it was there if it hadn’t come close enough actually to touch the tent—but the reflections from the fabric made it impossible to see more than a shadow. It backed off as soon as I sat up.”
“The monkey-analogues are probably inquisitive,” Matthew reminded her. But not as curious as humanoids would be, he added, mentally. However badly we messed up our entrance, we certainly broadcast the news that we were here far and wide. If they can be persuaded to come to us, instead of letting us hunt for days on end for spoor and signs….
He stood up again, and looked out in the direction of the glimmer of light he had noticed before. The area beneath him was in deep shadow; there could have been a dozen fascinated tribes-men standing there looking up at him and he would not have known. He cocked an ear, trying hard to detect signs of movement. The continuing chorus from the forest made it difficult to hear anything else, but he was half-convinced that he did hear something moving: something too big to be stealthy. It could have been a hopeful illusion, but if not it was something—or several somethings—moving among the stacks of equipment.
After a few minutes more he was almost certain that some of the boxes and pieces of the boat were being moved in a relatively careful fashion. If so, he thought, then hands must surely be at work. He was suddenly aware of the fact that his foot was touching Rand Blackstone’s rifle, but he made no move to pick it up.
“Just don’t steal any essential bits of the boat,” he murmured. “Help yourself to all the food you want, and all the tools, glass or metal—but please don’t take anything vital.” He regretted not having asked Ike to try to throw a flashlight up to him, although he knew that he had been right to judge the risk too great.
He listened dutifully for a few minutes more, waiting for the sounds to die away before reporting back to Lynn. “I can’t be absolutely sure that it’s not my imagination,” he said, in a voice tremulous with anticipation and triumph, “but I’m pretty sure that we’ve just been investigated by an alien intelligence.”
“Shall I wake Ike, or try to take a look myself?” Lynn asked.
“No. Stay where you are, as quiet as quiet can be. If they’ve come to us, the last thing we want is to scare them off. In the morning, we’ll know for sure whether they exist or not, and we can make proper plans. Yesterday wasn’t such a disaster after all—maybe it was the best possible beacon we could have planted. Now, we have to tread carefully.”
“Not the best choice of words,” she told him, ruefully.
“We have to wait for morning,” he said, as much to himself as to her. “If they’ve taken anything, we’ll know. Then the new ball game begins. Everything changes. Bad arms and ankles notwithstanding, we have to get busy—but we have to do it right.”
“Will you call the base—or Hope?”
“Not yet,” he said. “We have to know, to be in a position to confound all skeptics, however unreasonable. This has to be handled right. Can you stay awake?”
“I doubt that I have the choice,” she retorted, drily. “Can you?”
“Same thing. Trying to see in the dark, hear significant sounds against the white-noise background. Probably pointless, but … call again if they come back to you.”
They left it at that, but when Matthew returned his phone to his belt he found that he was trembling with