As if by signal, the other robots came into the fight. With a knowing sweep of their rays, they blasted and burned the oncoming horde of fighting men. Warriors were blasted to smoky atoms, before they could cry out with pain. The survivors paused, wavering. And then the robots moved upon them with deliberate intent, swinging their blades and plying their rays.
The Flint Folk knew fear, a fear of which no mortal need be ashamed. They turned and ran, all save one—Naku, who had run abreast of Rrau but at a distance, and was now cut off by the counter-charge of the robots. The machine-men had fixed their attention on the main body and seemed to ignore this isolated figure, but he could not reach the shelter of the trees.
Turning, he fled along the curve of the great wall. One robot was aware of the sudden movement. It detached itself from the detail and clanked in swift pursuit.
WITHIN the Martian ramparts, the commander was grimly jubilant.
“See, they run!” he cried, gazing into the vision-screen that had been set up in his hutlike shelter at the center of the enclosure, just beside the parked space-ship. “They cannot hurt our robots, and cannot stand against our weapons. We have completely wiped out those who were too slow or too stupid to flee. The extermination of the survivors will be easy.”
“Could they not be spared?” offered Vwil, and his superior made a gesture of disgust.
“Sentiment again—it has no place in science or conquest. Yet the study of captives of this race might be interesting. The single specimen who came to us of his own accord is, I think, unusual. For one thing, his brain refuses to receive the command-impulses of my own mind, as have those of the other animals we have snared.”
He jerked his high-skulled head toward a quarter of the settlement where, in a row of pens, were imprisoned some antelopes, two bison, and three disconsolate mammoths, as well as other beasts.
“If he was controllable, he might become a useful slave, a supplement to these expensive and limited robots.”
The two gazed to where sat the pudgy form of Ipsar, the renegade priest. He was shackled and disconsolate, his red beard out of its plaits, and a robot stood near to guard him. On his head still rested the fossil nautilus-shell that did duty for ceremonial helmet. None of the Martians had seen fit to remove it.
“His face looks evil,” observed Vwil. “The fact that he came submissively to us, while the others fought, shows that he is a traitor to his own kind. Therefore—”
Therefore,” the commander finished for him, “he may help us with our conquest. But your arguments have given me a new idea, Vwil. Not long before the battle, I sent a flying detail to capture some more of these bipeds. We may not kill off the race. Not all of it, anyway.”
CHAPTER IV
Captured
NAKU, the fleet of foot, sped around a curve of the wall, out of sight of both his routed companions and the robots. There he paused, panted and listened.
Clunk, clunk, clunk, came a rhythmic, mimed ring. Two feet—feet of that strange yearning stuff that vibrated when struck. One of the strange monsters was pursuing.
For a moment Naku felt a grip of unreasoning panic, then his wits came to his rescue. One monster pursued him, only one. Perhaps the others knew nothing of him. If he broke into the open, he would be sighted are overhauled. But just now the odds were even, and perhaps, with luck—
He pressed his body close against the wall, and in his right hand poised a spear with a flint tip.
The robot came into view along his back trail, and it held in one claw a curved blade, in the other a pair of shackles joined by a linked chain. Death or capture for Naku! And his round glowing face-lamp turned upon him. Abruptly it bore down.
Naku threw his spear, instantly and with deadly accuracy, full at that disc of light. It was a direct hit, with all of the rugged strength of his muscles behind it. And, as he had been inspired to guess, that disc was the one vulnerable spot.
The pane of clouded glass, that to Naku looked like ice, splintered away. The flint head of the spear crashed into the lighting mechanism behind, obliterated it and lodged among the ruins. The robot stopped its advance, staggered, and dropped the shackle. Clumsily it clawed away the shaft, then stood, baffled and disconsolate, its arms outflung as though to grope. It acted like a man suddenly gone blind.
“Ho, you are wounded!” Naku taunted it. “I struck you—I, Naku, the enemy of your father, the Thunderer.”
But it could still hear, or at least it had some sense that approximated hearing. At the sound of his bantering voice, it groped quickly toward him. If those great toothed pincers should close upon his body, he would be lost. He had no weapon left save the flaked poniard at his girdle, and he did not want to come close enough to use that. Therefore he retreated before it, and it heard the soft shuffle of his sandals. It tried again to close in. Naku, still fearful of being caught in the open, stayed close to the wall, falling back and watching his blinded pursuer.
He saw that its limb-joints and the juncture of its neck at the top of the body cylinder gleamed with an oily blackness. Naku did not understand mechanical lubrication, but he knew about the use of bear-fat, dried out and used to dress wounds or sunburn. Once or twice, in wrestling games, certain of his fellows had craftily greased themselves to foil a grip. Naku, still breaking ground before the uncanny metal thing’s blundering pursuit, began to put two and two together.
The black oil at the joints was to make for easy, slippery motion. If it were clogged, the thing might be overcome. He remembered a counter-stratagem he had once played on an unethically oiled wrestler. Stooping quickly, he clutched both big hands full of gritty earth. Then he straightened up and stood his ground.
“Hai!” he addressed his adversary. “Come close now, if you dare!”
IT CHARGED at the sound of his voice.
It towered above him by the height of his own head, and seemed of tremendous weight. Naku pluckily met its rush, however, and with desperate precision hurled his two handfuls of grit, one upon each shoulder joint. Then he sprang aside.
The effect was all that he could wish. The monster blundered past him, but the lubrication of the metal shoulders was clogged at once, and the arms could barely move. They made harsh rattling sounds, and seemed to lose control of themselves. Standing still, the robot cocked his grotesque blind head, as though to listen for his movement.
“Here I am!” shouted Naku beside it, and again sprang aside. As it turned and stepped in the direction of his voice, he placed both his hands against its flank and gave a mighty push. It stumbled, crashed hard against the wall, lost balance and fell. The blade it held went spinning away.
At once Naku sprang in, scooping and hurling earth with the savage swiftness of a fire-fighter. He heaped grit upon the joints of hips, knees, elbows, neck. The metal body ceased its struggles, whirred and grated inside, slackened off. Naku felt a high thrill of victory. He stepped close to examine his fallen foeman. Was it dead, or only shamming?
At that moment, a whirr sounded from the heavens, and something dropped down—the flying thing, the Thunderer. Naku dropped his own body, like one stricken, and shielded himself behind the bulk of the robot, peeping warily over its torso with one eye.
The machine settled itself, before the section where the door would be, but far enough out to be within the line of his vision, and out came two of the scrawny men, with a robot. The robot held the end of a chain to which, like a dog on a tether, was fastened a fourth figure.
A human being, like Naku himself—no, not like him. It was a young woman, a girl.
Naku lifted his head by the breadth of a finger, to see more clearly. She was a prisoner, it was plain to see, for her wrists were securely shackled. He could not tell from what tribe she came, but guessed that it lay well to the north. She had the blonde hair of the northerners, lots of it in disordered clouds about her face. A handsome thing she was, too—slender in her brief tunic and kirtle of deerskin, straight and proud and shapely.
Her captors
led her out of sight.
Naku pondered this new thing he had observed. Apparently the Thunder Folk did not mean to kill indiscriminately, after all. The girl, though securely bound and guarded, did not appear harmed in the least. And the heavy, shiny hulk he had conquered with his hurled heaps of dirt had carried not only a weapon but a shackle with which to bind him. Naku smiled to himself yet again, in self-applause at his new triumph.
“Three I have overcome,” he thought. “One died of an arrow in the very heart of the Thunderer—a second before the opening to their lair—and now this one, a strange giant and the biggest of the three. There will be a fourth victim, and a fifth. I will conquer them all. I, Lone Hunt, am stronger and greater than these Thunder People!”
It was a proud thought and, even in those far-off young days, pride often went before a fall.
IN THE midst of his musings, Naku was aware that he was being approached stealthily from behind. He sprang up and spun around his hand to his dagger-hilt.
Two creatures had evidently issued from another door, farther along the wall, and now stole upon him—a big gleaming robot, and a gaunt, heavy-trudging Martian with a dark red face. The Martian, in advance of his metal servitor, levelled a small shining rod that had a round opening in the end pointing toward Naku.
The simple warrior had seen the rays in action all too closely, and he knew what such a device might be. He could neither fight nor fly. All that was left to him was to die bravely, he felt, and that he determined to do.
“Throw your fire at me, coward,” he challenged. “I have killed more than one of your brothers. I am not afraid to die. I laugh at you.”
And he did so, merrily. The skull-lean, snipe-nosed face of the Martian smiled in answer, neither fiercely nor mockingly. The tube, pointing at Naku, gestured at him as though to bid him turn and walk.
Naku shook his head.
“Not I,” he demurred. “If you want to burn me, do it now—not from behind.” And he planted his feet, glaring at what he felt certain was his destruction.
The creature sighed as though in regret, and touched a little projection on the rod. Fire gushed forth—not white, but pale blue. It enveloped Naku like a splash of water. He felt no pain, only languor. His senses were slipping. His knees sagged, his eyes closed, and he felt himself gently collapse.
THE Martian commander came from his headquarters just as Vwil entered the fortress. Behind Vwil clumped a robot, carrying in its arms a limp human form.
“Did you venture out?” said the commander.
“Yes. I was at the power-caster, and the gauges showed that one receiving set had ceased to take energy. I guessed that it must be a damaged robot, and reconnoitered. I found that this native had overcome and wrecked one of the robots. I disabled him with the sleep-ray—”
“Why did you not kill him, since he had harmed us?” broke in the other. “Oh, but I forgot that laughable softness of your spirit. Well, perhaps you did rightly. If he was adroit enough to defeat a robot, he may have a nervous system complex and sensitive—worth my experimentation. Have him put in the new pen with those others of his kind.”
CHAPTER V
Conference with the Invaders
WHEN Naku awoke, he felt sunshine in his face, earth against his sprawling back, and a pillow, soft but firm, under his head. He opened his eyes, and looked into a most admirable face.
It was a woman’s face—young, oval, firm-jawed, straight-nosed, blue-eyed. It was flanked by two braids of sun-colored hair that caught gleaming lights. A low voice questioned him anxiously.
“Are you badly hurt?”
Naku sat up, flexed his arms and stirred his legs.
“No,” he decided. “I remember being struck down by blue fire. What has happened?” He turned to face the girl on whose lap he had been pillowed. “Who are you?”
“My name is Aria. We are prisoners of these—I do not know what they are called, but they are very evil.”
Ordinarily Naku, reserved from boyhood, would be wary and shy before a stranger girl, but this one had done her best to help him. He studied her closely, and remembered seeing her before—this was the captive who had been brought in the Thunderer, the flying thing. He smiled at her thankfully, and looked around.
They were in a cage, with a flat roof of hard-packed earth, such as the Martians know how to fashion with their control-devices, and walled with perpendicular bars of metal. Part of these bars made up a door, fastened with a complicated lock. Against the door, at the far end of the enclosure, sat Ipsar, still dressed in his garish of garments priesthood, but very rumpled and disconsolate. He met Naku’s eyes, and growled:
“Be careful of that woman. She is a wasp.”
“He says that because he felt my sting,” Aria informed Naku. “I do not seek the caresses of fat strangers.”
Naku. studying the priest, saw that one of his eyes was badly bruised, as from the impact of hard little knuckles, and grinned. Then his face went serious again.
“We three must be friends and help each other,” he pronounced. “These Thunder Folk have killed many men of my people, and hold us captive. How can we get away from them?”
“We cannot get away,” said Ipsar sourly, “The power of the Thunderer is too great. He flies, he strikes fire—”
Aria shrugged her pretty shoulders in contempt.
“I know about this thing he calls the murderer,” she said. “It is no living bird, bet a thing made and operated by men—or, rather, by these manlike devils you call the Thunder Folk. The thing is hollow inside, with doors, like a hut; but it is a hut that can fly.”
“Can it be?” cried Naku, trying to comprehend.
I have been inside, and have seen. One of the Thunder Folk sits among strange sticks and round whirling things, and by handling them makes it go fast or slow, up or down. It swooped upon me as I fetched water just outside our village to the north. I was made stupid by fear, and those inside seized me. I rode in the thing with them, and used my eyes.”
NAKU digested this.
“How can a thing not alive be made to fly or move otherwise?” he demanded.
“Can not a man make an arrow fly in the direction he chooses, by the power of his bow and the aim of his eye?” returned Aria. “Can a noose of rope not draw tight, as though it were a hand? This flying thing operates in the same way, but more wonderfully.”
The idea sank in, and Naku had a contribution of his own.
“The big, strong things that walk and fight, and seem to be men,” he said, “the ones made of shiny hard stuff, and bear round foggy lights in their faces—they, too, must be strange fashionings. They are tools!”
“Even if so,” argued Ipsar, “they are too deep a matter for us to understand. We must submit to the power of the Thunderer.”
“The Thunderer, I say, is only a tool, a utensil that flies at the will of its owner,” snapped Aria.
“I think that she speaks truth,” seconded Naku. “If it is a deep matter to handle or to operate it, maybe I still can learn, as a child learns to shoot with the bow or to make a noose.”
The argument was interrupted by a clatter at the door behind Ipsar, Startled, the priest slid sidewise, and the section of bars swung back. There stood a Martian, supporting himself on a stick against Earth’s sore pull of gravity. He beckoned to Naku with a hand that, though claw-thin, was plainly human, of flesh and bone.
“He wants you,” spoke Ipsar. “Obey him—go.”
Naku shook his head, and felt for his dagger. It had been taken from him.
“I will not obey,” he said sturdily. To the Martian he snarled: “Come in and try to take me. I will break your scrawny back across my knee.”
The Martian only smiled—Naku saw that this was the one who had overwhelmed him with the blue ray. Then the Martian turned and fixed his brilliant green eyes upon an attendant robot. He did not speak nor make a gesture, but the metal monster understood. It entered the cage with heavy steps, seized Naku and carried him o
ut, struggling and kicking like a naughty child.
As it bore him away, his angry eyes had a glimpse of the interior of the fortified place, and it was as if he were in another world. The ground underfoot was paved in geometric design. Strange shelters of tile and metal stood here and there with, in the center of them, the great gray-gleaming fish that was the space ship.
Here and there stood or sat Martians, but none of them moved more than necessary against the drag of Earth. Most of the work—smelting, digging, building, with a variety of incomprehensible machines—was in charge of robots, All the horizon that might be familiar to Naku, the green slopes of the valley and the forest above and beyond, was shut away by the high red ramparts.
Naku’s captor carried him straight to the space ship, and in. At once Naku felt a strange lightness, as though he could float. The gravity screen of the vessel was set to the pull of Mars. Inside a cubical compartment, the robot thrust him into a chair, strapped his wrists to the arms and his ankles to the forelegs. Then it stumped out. The Martian who smiled seated himself opposite Naku, before a flat-topped piece of furniture studded with push-buttons, levers and gauges.
THE Martian pressed a lever. Another of those strange light-rays, with which the invaders seemed to do so much of their working and fighting, gushed out—a soft cloud of orange radiance. It smote Naku full in the face, but did not blind or irk him. He felt all fuzzy inside his skull for an instant, then more awake than ever before. The Martian’s smile grew broader, more understanding. For the first time, his lips moved and he spoke.
And Naku could understand him.
“Do not be afraid,” he was saying, “and do not be mistrustful. This ray frequency makes our thoughts communicable one to the other. My name is Vwil, and I come from another world, another star.”
“Then go back to that other star,” said Naku at once. “We do not want you here.”
The Complete Hok the Mighty Page 12