Hunter's Run by George R. R. Martin Read Free Book Online Page A

pausing when he paused. He stopped
the motion before hand and ghostly hand could touch, noticing the stunned and
bewildered expression on the face of his reflection in the metal, one no doubt
matched by the expression on his own face. Then, gingerly, he touched the wall.
     
    The metal was cool against his
fingertips. The blast had not even scarred it. And though his mind rebelled at
the thought, it was clearly unnatural. It was a made thing. Made by
somebody and hidden by somebody, behind the rock of the mountain, though
he couldn’t imagine by whom.
     
    It took a moment more for the
full implication to register. Something was buried here under the hill, something
big, perhaps a building of some sort, a bunker. Perhaps the whole mountain was
hollow.
     
    This was the big one, just
the way he’d told Manuel it would be. But the find wasn’t ore; it was this massive
artifact. It couldn’t be a human artifact, the human colony here wasn’t old
enough to have left ruins behind. It had to be alien; perhaps it was millions
of years old. Scientists and archeologists would go insane over this find;
perhaps even the Enye would be interested in it. If he couldn’t parlay this
discovery into an immense fortune, he wasn’t anywhere near as smart as he
thought he was…
     
    He flattened his palm against the
metal, matching hands with his reflection. The cool metal vibrated under his
hand, and, even as he waited, a deeper vibration went through the wall, boom, boom, low and rhythmic, like the beating of some great hidden heart, like the
heart of the mountain itself, vast and stony and old.
     
    A warning bell began to sound in
the back of Ramon’s mind, and he looked uneasily around him. Another man might
not have reacted to this strange discovery with suspicion, but Ramon’s people had
been persecuted for hundreds of years, and he himself well remembered living on
the grudging sufferance of the mejicanos, never knowing when they would
find some pretext to wipe out his village.
     
    Whatever this wall was, whatever
reason it had for existing here in the twice-forsaken ass end of a half-known
planet, it was no dead ruin - something was at work beneath this mountain. If
this was hidden, it was because someone didn’t want it to be found. And
might not be happy that it had been. Someone unimaginably powerful, to
judge from the scale of this artifact - and probably dangerous.
     
    Suddenly, the sunlight seemed
cold on his shoulders. Again, he looked nervously around him, feeling much too
exposed on the bare mountain slope. Another flapjack called, away across the
air, but now its cries sounded to him like the shrill and batlike wailing of
the damned.
     
    It was time to get out of
here. Get back to the van - maybe take a short video recording of the wall, and
then find someplace else to be. Anywhere else. Even back in Diegotown, where
the threats were at least knowable.
     
    He couldn’t run back to
his camp - the terrain was too rough. But he scrambled down the mountainside as
recklessly as he dared, sliding on his buttocks down bluffs in a cloud of dust
and scree when he could, jumping from rock to rock, bulling his way through
bushes and tangles of scrub hierba, scattering grasshoppers and
paddlefoots before him.
     
    He moved so quickly that he was
more than a third of the way to his camp before the mountain opened behind him
and the alien came out.
     
    High above him, a hole opened in
the mountain’s side - a cave in the metal that a moment ago had not been there
and now simply was. There was a high-pitched whine, like a centrifuge spinning
up, and then, a breath later, something flew out of the hole.
     
    It was square-shaped and built
awkwardly for flight, like something designed to move in vacuum. Bone white and
silent, it reminded Ramon of a ghost, or a great floating skull. Against the
great empty blue of sky, atmosphere thin enough at the top that stars shone
through the blue, it could have been any size at any