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musketmen was enough for Green. He turned away and spoke softly but savagely.
"Keep your backs to them! Don't look back! We're far enough away in the
dark so they might not recognize us. Especially in this crowd!"
A minute later he and the boy and the cat were looking around the corner of
a large building. They saw the soldiers commandeer a rickshaw and put the
prisoners in it. Then four of them walked behind the vehicle as it was pulled
away.
"They-they'll be put in the Tower of the Grass Cat," said the boy, shaking
with fury. "Oh, that devil Miran! That fat old devil! He's the one who's accused
Mother of witchcraft! I know! I know!"
"He didn't accuse her," said Green, "but me. She's guilty through
association with me. Well at least we'll know where they are for a while."
"There go Miran and the soldiers back into the hotel."
"Waiting for us," said Green. "They'd have a long wait. Well, let's go.
First things first. We'll buy a ticket, see the ship. I have to know where it's
located, what type it is, et cetera. Luckily I've enough money on me to do that.
But we'll be broke then. You have any?"
"Ten axar."
"That's not much, but it's enough to pay for a rickshaw ride to the
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windbreak."
At the box-office, Green bought two tickets, then walked up the steep
flight of steps with Grizquetr. At the top he found himself in a large group
standing on a platform beneath a wooden roof. This was for the curious who
wanted to get a preview of the demons' vessel. Tomorrow the gates would be
opened to admit a vast crowd, who would sit on the hard wooden seats of the
amphitheatre that had been built fairly close to the ship.
The ship itself was an Earth naval vessel, a two-man scout. It pointed its
needle nose upward, resting upon eight jet-struts, gleaming in the moonlight.
Its naval insignia, a green globe crossed with rocket and olive branch, was a
smudge in the shadows. Nevertheless he could make it out. He felt his breast
swell and he choked with homesickness.
"Ah, so near, yet so far," he murmured. "Even if I get to you, then what?
What if the poor devil of a survivor turns out to be a navigator? Still, he
ought to know enough to get her off the ground and into space. And from there
on, with interstellar drive, we ought to be able to get home, somehow."
He sounded plaintive, even to himself, for he knew how vast space was and
how complicated astromathematics was. And of course there was no guarantee that
the Earthman would even be a navigator. He might just be an officer or perhaps a
civilian official who was being ferried in one of the swifter small ships.
Then there was the awful possibility that the vessel might have landed here
because there was something wrong with it, and that it could not rise again even
if it had a full crew. In fact, that was the most logical explanation.
He sighed and turned to the boy.
"This may be for nothing, but we can't just sit down and watch. Let's take
off for the windbreak."
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"What are we going to do there?" asked Grizquetr, as they walked down the
steps.
"Well, we're not going back to the yacht," Green answered. "Soldiers'll be
waiting there to arrest us. No, we'll go to the other side of the 'break.
Stealing another 'roller isn't going to get us in any more trouble than we're
already in."
The boy's eyes widened. "What're we doing that for?"
"We must return to the island-fortress of Shimdoog."
"What? Why, that's a hundred miles away!"
"Yes, I know. And we won't be able to make the speed going back that we did
coming. We'll have to do quite a lot of tacking to sail against the wind, and
that'll eat up our time. But there's nothing else to do."
"If you say so, father, I believe you. But what is there on Shimdoog?"
"Not on. In."
Grizquetr was a bright lad. He was silent for a minute, so silent Green
could imagine he heard the wheels turning within his head. Then he said, "There
must be a cave on Shimdoog like the one on the cannibals' island. And you must
have gone into it that night we stayed in the 'break. I remember waking up and
hearing you and Mother say something about your being gone and about Miran
following you."
Grizquetr paused, then said, "If there is a cave-entrance there, why
haven't other people gone into it?"
"Because it has been declared taboo, off limits, by the priests of Estorya.
It was done so long ago that I imagine that the priests themselves have
forgotten why they forbade its access to men. But it's not hard to reconstruct
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the historical causes. Once, I suppose, the island was populated by cannibals.
At the time the Estoryans captured the island they exterminated the aborigines.
They found the cave mouth was a holy place for the savages. So, thinking that it
held demons--and it does, in a way--they built a wall around it and set up a
statue of the Fish Goddess, facing inward and holding in her hand a symbol to
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