Chapter 4
Morning came early. The wind had fallen during the night, but the snow had kept up for a while and I had a couple of inches covering the half of the tarp that I'd drawn over my sleeping bag. I kicked off the tarp and set up, shaking the snow off as I did.
Paint stirred and shook in turn, sending snow flying off his back. Our paths would part today, but first I probed the energy field surrounding us, finding nothing to cause alarm. It seemed clear all the way back to our homestead and I placed the image of the warm barn and cracked corn into his mind. He snorted and perked his ears. I could see that he was hungry and the idea of corn was very tempting.
I climbed out of my bag and pulled the halter over his ears, taking the time to scratch behind them, affectionately. While I did, I reinforced his idea of heading for the barn, then I let him go.
He took a few tentative steps back towards the road, pushing through the hardened snow drifts under the trees. As he reached the road, he paused and looked back at me where I stood in the embrace of the spruces. I mentally pushed him down the road and without another glance he turned and waded through the deep snow to the asphalt, heading down the hill.
Returning to my tarp, I restarted the fire and cooked a couple of pieces of bacon that I'd brought. As I did, I mentally followed the horse to ensure that he continued back. I checked again after I'd eaten and cleaned my utensils in the snow. He was a long way down the road and it seemed likely that he was speeding up.
Then I had a sudden thought. What would Liz think when he came back alone? I crouched in front of the small fire and concentrated on her. She was asleep, but presently she was in touch with me on some half-sleeping, half-waking level. I did my best to convey the idea that I was fine and had sent Paint back. She seemed to understand. I finished by projecting a sense of love and concern for her and Michael, then withdrew from the deep level of contact.
I gathered my kit and heaped snow on the coals of my breakfast fire. It took me a moment to strap on the snowshoes and then the work began. I had to climb a couple of thousand feet through the snow and I wanted to be down the other side and into the tree line before night fell. It wouldn't do to remain exposed above the trees overnight. It might turn out okay or not. The weather at this time of year was unpredictable, but last night's snow had warned me that I shouldn't take chances.
I'm going to skip over the next few hours. They were unpleasant, involving a lot of walking, resting, gasping for breath, and cursing about the snow. It was packed underneath and last night's snow had served to cover up hollows and icy patches. I had a devil of a time avoiding stepping in a hole and the ice made it harder, causing me to slip at the most inconvenient times.
I was more than ready to quit climbing by noon. The day was clear, so that was a blessing. I paused and took off my pack in order to pull out some jerky that was stored inconveniently in a back pocket. Stuffing a huge bite in my mouth, I looked around.
I'd been focused so closely on taking the next step and then the next that I'd neglected to notice how high I was getting. When I looked around I realized with pleasure that I was at the top of the pass and only had a few hundred yards to go before I started down the other side.
I shuffled along with the bow-legged stride the snow shoes necessitated and was shortly looking down the eastern side of the pass. I paused to consider my course of action. If I continued down the main road, I would probably miss the site where the lander had come down. I expected to find it close to the ridge where we'd previously found the transporter that led to Titan. A vague sense of disquiet intruded into my mind as I thought about the possibilities.
Finally, realizing that I was getting more and more uneasy, I paused and tried to open my senses to the general energy field. As soon as I did, the source of my disquiet became obvious. I hadn't sensed it earlier due to being mostly exhausted from the climb and simply concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other.
There was a concentration of humans about three miles away from me. They were somewhat to the east and down about two thousand feet. That was just about where I judged the lander would be.
This was going to be harder than I'd hoped. I hadn't planned on having other people around, but it looked like the Eastern Slope Warlord's gang had seen the landing and had come up to investigate. The thought patterns that I was sensing were a combination of curious and aggressive. It wasn't a nice kind of aggressiveness, either.
After thinking about the situation, I decided that it would be better for me to head eastward. To accomplish what I wanted was going to be a real chore. I needed to come across a huge snowfield on the northeast side of Old Fall River road and pass Marmot Point. Then I'd have to climb a steep spur of the mountain, cross through a heavily wooded area, and eventually descend to Chapin Creek. I could follow the creek until the trees closed in and then I'd be near the end of the Chapin Creek trail. I presumed the trail would be marked by the Park Service, although the condition of the markers at this point was likely to be poor.
Assuming I could find the trail, I'd reach Chapin Pass and be able to head south. Then I'd be more or less due east of the location where we'd found the alien installation four years ago. I'd try to come up to it from that direction.
This approach gave me, I hoped, plausible deniability. The group of people I'd sensed were undoubtedly surrounding the lander and I was going to have to interact with them in order to accomplish my goal of sabotaging the aliens' transporters again. With any luck, I'd be able to enlist some of the people to help, but whether they would prove to be helpful or hostile, I still wanted to give no clue that I'd come over the pass from Grand Lake. They'd left us alone for the past few years and I wanted that to continue.
Getting across the snow field was a chore. My foresight in bringing my snowshoes was something that proved to be very helpful. It was mostly hard snow covered with a couple of inches of wet, fresh snow, just as it had been coming up the west side of Trail Ridge. I took my time with the traverse and checked with a spruce pole that I'd cut to make sure there were no buried crevasses. I didn't want to fall due to sheer carelessness.
After a couple of hours, I reached the tree-covered ridge. It was steep, but by zig-zagging through the forest, I eventually came to the top. Then I had to work my way down to Chapin Creek. That part of the journey was dicey. It was even steeper and the snow was wetter on the south side of the ridge. The net effect was that I was constantly in danger of slipping out of control. I found myself grabbing spruce branches for assistance about every third step. After a lot of work, I came out of the trees onto a steep and barren slope that led down to the creek.
It looked like the trees had been repeatedly scoured away in this area by avalanches and I kept a wary eye upslope as I descended. I needn't have worried, though. The underlying snow was icy and the deposit from last night's fall wasn't thick enough to create any avalanche danger. I finally got down to the creek and was pleased to find that it was running and even had a few stretches of open water in the steeper sections.
I lumped along, clambering over boulders and fallen trees that were racked up beside the creek. It seemed like it took me forever to descend a thousand feet or so to where the trees closed in on the creek. Apparently, the avalanches hadn't reached down this far, since the terrain flattened out. Once I got into the trees another problem arose. I couldn't find the trail! I cast around a bit, but there was just no sign of it. How quickly man's marks on the wild fade!
There was nothing for it, but to follow the slope downward, so I did. In another thousand feet, I came to what looked like a reasonable ascent to a small pass I saw above me to the south. Climbing it, I finally did find a marker set into the south side of a boulder. It said “Chapin Pass Trail” and I knew I was in the right place. I crested the ridge and was able to see a series of rocks that looked like they were in the right location.
There was another, more obvious cue. I could see the smoke from a fire or fires rising over the ridge from the far side. I figured that whoever it was had made a temporary camp there. It was almost certain that the people I'd find would be gang members, or whatever they called themselves.
Thinking ahead, I paused while I found a crack between some large rocks to store my backpack for later retrieval, and then I started off again on my downhill hike. I was working my way around a series of boulders when a rifle shot plowed into the snow a few feet to my left. I stopped, held up my hands, and waited.
It didn't take too long before I saw a couple of raggedly dressed men coming out of the rocks about a hundred yards away. They had me covered with rifles and I assumed that there was probably another one or two that were providing backup from some hidden location. It didn't matter. I wasn't there to fight.
When they got close enough to talk in the light breeze, the uglier one of the two shouted, “Who are you and what d'ya want?”
I called back, “Name's Dec. I'm just coming down out of the high country and heading for Estes. I've about had it with this crazy weather.”
Both of them laughed, “There ain't anything at Estes anymore! What kind of ignorant fool would head there? Everyone around these parts was et up by the aliens years ago.”
I tried to look surprised as I replied, “I didn't know. I came out of Wyoming this spring and I've been working my way south through the mountains. I thought I'd get down to Denver for the summer.”
“Well, if you're going to Denver, that's where we're from.” They laughed and eyed each other surreptitiously. “You'll have to come with us. We've got a camp over the hill by the spaceship that come down the other night. You'll have to talk to the Warlord's assistant, though.” They paused and one elbowed the other while they both laughed again as if at some private joke.
I didn't know what was so funny, but I answered, “OK. That's no problem with me. I've got no grudge against anybody around here, so I'm happy to talk.”
“You might as well save your breath,” the one with the ready elbow answered. “You'll have to square accounts with the Red-Head and that usually takes some doing. Follow us and don't start acting funny.”
From their general look and the level of their conversation, they obviously weren't on the high end of the IQ bell curve. Even so, I didn't want to give them any ideas. I judged it best to try and seem friendly, “You going to let me keep my rifle?”
“Yeah, you can carry it for now, I got enough to carry. But, keep your hands off it; you're covered from a couple of locations,” the smaller one answered. They seemed confident in their backup.
We hiked down to the ridge-back and around to the downhill side. I remembered the area well, even though I'd only seen it once. There were still some signs of the transporter explosion, broken rocks and debris. I could even see a bit of the door frame where it had been set into the rocks.
A little farther down was an open area and the aliens' lander was there. It wasn't at all what I'd thought it would be. Instead of looking like an engineered spaceship, it appeared to be slightly organic. It was covered in some dull-black material that didn't reflect light so it looked sooty. It was as if it were covered with lamp black. And the shape! It wasn't entirely smooth but had ridges and coils of unknown function crossing the roughly dome-like object.
I started to head towards it, but they stopped me. “You'll have to get straight with the Red-Head 'fore ya get anywhere near that thing.”
The other added, “Yeah! You better be convincing about where you're from and what you're doin' here. She ain't in a real good mood this morning.”
“Why would that be,” I wondered, more to keep them talking, than curious. They'd already given me some good information and I hoped for more. The mental energy field in the camp area was confused and gave off equal parts of fear, hostility, and aggression. I couldn't get any useful sensation beyond that.
“Ain't nothin' she's tried that can open that thing up. It just sits there grinding,” the ugly one answered.
“Grinding?” That aroused my curiosity.
“Yeah. It makes a kind of grinding noise. You can hear it if you put your ear against the boulders around here,” was the answer.
“OK,” I paused and thought, “Maybe it's grinding up rocks or drilling.”
The instant I said “drilling” I knew that was what the thing was doing. My Ancient-One memories told me that the lander was equipped to drill down to the radioactive deposit in order to extract ore so that it could power up the transporter it was carrying. The process was automatic and was controlled by a series of fairly simple relays and a low-order computer system. I didn't think their cybernetics was on a par with ours, or, I should say, the way ours used to be.
My thinking about the lander was abruptly interrupted as we approached the fire. There was a large clot of men standing around, all carrying weapons ranging from rifles to swords and spears. There was a sudden, sharp exclamation from the middle of the group and the standing men scrambled aside, leaving me facing a beautiful, red-headed woman.
She was dressed in some good quality mountaineering gear and from that, I judged that the supplies in Denver hadn't run out yet. Despite the rather shapeless down jacket she had on, I could see that she was about my age and in good – no, great physical condition. She would have been a pleasant sight, except for the angry frown that was displayed on her face.