Gateways 07_ What Lay Beyond - Diane Carey [25]
Rather quickly, the mats were puzzled together into a gigantic circle of a size perfect for its task, big enough that the free dancers would be able to sense the Living crowded upon it, but not so big that the Living couldn’t race for the edges when the time was right. Keller had seen four other hunts and had participated in three. A more ghastly spectacle he had never witnessed. He got a shudder up his arms as he remembered, and fully realized again what was coming. Hundreds of healthy innocent men and women would strip down to their birthday suits and plunge out onto the plain, then wait for the free dancer herd to “see” them whatever that meant and come to the trough. Against all instinct, the Living had learned to simply stand there and be “chosen” in an electrical feeding frenzy that defied description.
The mental pictures alone turned Keller’s stomach. The people would stand with their faces up, fear clearly shown, as the monsters came down, and wait for the Elders to decide the free dancers had eaten enough that they would return next time. Finally, the scramble back to the perimeter while the slaughter went on… desperate hunters would pull on their silky chain-mail tunics so they would be protected from the pyrotechnics, snatch up their arc spikes, pulpers, clamps, nets, and race back to harvest one free dancer for the reservoir of energy and the gizzard full of candleflies it provided.
Not exactly Home on the Range.
Overhead, enormous shapes painted shadows upon the hunt plain. Heat blew downward from the skies, a sure sign that the free dancers were clustering above. A fine hail of ice particles bitterly pummeled the back of Keller’s neck, his head and arms, as he worked on the gum mats, so hard that he fell to both knees. His hands were cold, but as much from the inside as the outside. Courageous people would be dying soon, and horribly.
But not him, and not Braxan. He needed to live, and he needed her to live
“Look!”
“What is it?” someone shouted.
“A spinner!”
Keller raised his hand to shield his face from the ice particles and scanned the ugly sky. Beside him, Braxan hunched her shoulders and turned her unprotected face upward.
In the sky a tiny dot grew quickly larger, a bug-shaped metallic vessel with forward mandibles and a bulbous stern. A spinner from Riutta’s fleet on the other side of the gateway and quite literally the last thing Keller expected to see. Who was piloting it? Was someone bringing a message for him? Had Riutta abandoned the gateway? Had one of the Living crew broken away? A hammer blow of worry hit him.
To a planet that hadn’t entertained a visitor in ten thousand-plus years suddenly came the second visitor in a matter of months. Things were changing here a harbinger now landed upon the plain, a much better touchdown than Keller had managed when he came through.
“Uh-oh…” he uttered. “This can’t be helpful.”
“Perhaps it’s one of your friends,” Braxan suggested.
“Bet it ain’t.”
At first Keller didn’t recognize the man who stepped from the spinner. The smooth silvery skin and dark eyes threw him off. On the other side of the gateway, the skin of the Living revealed its mottled pattern and their eyes were different.
“It’s Luntee, alive!” Braxan chirped, pushing on Keller’s shoulder.
“This will put to rest the idea that you may not have been honest with us! There were rumors that Riutta and Luntee had died on the other side!”
“They’re fine,” Keller hoarsely confirmed. “I told you they were fine…”
He found his feet and pushed his way through the crowd of hunters. They knew him and were curious, so eagerly they parted before him and Braxan, until he was face-to-face with Luntee.
Though they both appeared like Halloween versions of themselves, they recognized each other.
“Couldn’t take it, huh?” Keller flatly asked.
Luntee squared off with him, unsurprised and obviously prepared.