Jonnie looked around him expansively. Who knew what things of enormous value were in the Great Village? He felt rich, excited.
There was no reason at all for his people to stay cooped up there in the mountains. Here was shelter and to spare. Here was firewood growing in the streets. Here were rooms and rooms and rooms!
And come to think of it, he felt better since he had been away from the mountain meadow. Better physically.
And it hadn’t taken a year—actually just a few days.
He gathered up the lead rope of his pack horse and they trotted briskly along the wide paths toward the eastern part of the Great Village.
Although his eyes were busy taking it all in, his mind was engrossed in organizing a migration from the mountains down to this place: what he would have to pick up for evidence to convince them; what he was going to say to Staffor; how they could transport their goods . . . maybe build a cart? Maybe there were carts right here in the Great Village. He could round up some horses. These piles of red dust he saw along either side of the wide paths from time to time might once have been carts of a sort. It was hard to figure out what shape they had really had, they were so caved in. The impression of a wheel. Sheets of translucent rock. No, they hadn’t been horse carts, or had they? He began to look at such objects more closely.
And then he saw the insect.
12
It was very bright daylight now. And there it sat. There could be no mistaking it.
Alien.
Surely it must be an insect. Only cockroaches looked like that. Or beetles. No, cockroaches.
But there were no cockroaches that big. Not thirty feet long and ten feet high and maybe twelve feet side to side.
A horrible brown color. And smooth.
Jonnie had stopped, the lead horse bunched up behind. The thing was sitting squarely in the middle of the wide path. It seemed to have two eyes in front, slitted. There was nothing like this on the plains or in the mountains, and he had seen nothing like it in the Great Village center. It looked new, with very little dust on it, and shiny.
He felt it was alive. There was something about it. Yes, alive. Not inanimate metal but a living thing. Then he saw what made him think so.
There had been a slight rocking motion. Something moved behind the slitted eyes.
Jonnie, making no sudden movements, turned Windsplitter and, pulling the lead horse, began to move away in the direction from which he had approached. He had already noted that these paths were mostly rectangular and that you could go all the way around a group of buildings and come back to the same place.
There was open country to the east, not very far. He would go down a side path and then circle back and get out into the plains. Hopefully he could outrun it. If it moved.
There was an earsplitting roar!
Jonnie glanced back in terror. The thing rose up three feet above the ground. Dust flew from below it. It began to inch forward. It was alive!
He put Windsplitter into a gallop straight down the street. He passed one corner path, two. The thing was falling behind. It was now two corners back.
He swerved Windsplitter up a side path, yanking the lead horse with him. They reached another corner and again he turned. Up ahead were two tall buildings. He’d keep going and reach the open country. He’d make it.
And then suddenly there was a sheet of flame. Ahead of him the right-hand building exploded apart. Its top slid slowly down and into the street ahead, blocking it.
Spattered with dust, Jonnie hauled up short.
He could hear the roaring of the thing somewhere beyond the rubble. He listened, holding his breath. The position of the roar was changing. It was shifting to the right.
He traced it with his ears. It was going on down the other street. Now it was level with him. Now it was getting behind him.
The thing had somehow blocked the street ahead of him and then gone on, planning to come up behind him.
He was trapped.
Jonnie looked at the smoking mound of fresh rubble ahead of him. It rose twenty feet above the pavement, a steep barricade.
There was no panic in him now. He slowed the hard pounding of his heart. The thing to do was wait until the monster was right in the street behind him—then go over that barricade.
He sidled Windsplitter back to get a good run.
The thing was roaring down the side path behind him. Now it was turning. He glanced back. There it was, wisps of smoke coming out of its nostrils.
Jonnie put the heel to Windsplitter. He yanked on the lead rope.
“EEYAH!” shouted Jonnie.
The horses sprinted at the barricade. Rough and full of loose stones. Dangerous.
Up they scrambled. Rubble slid. Pray the gods no broken legs.
Up they went.
They hit the top. One glance back showed the thing rolling up to the very bottom of the barricade.
Jonnie sent the horses down in a turmoil of tumbling debris.
They hit the street before them at a run and kept running.
The walls racketed with the thunder of their run. Jonnie swerved through a checkerboard of paths, edging to the open country.
He could not hear the roaring thing now over the powerful thud of the running hoofs.
Further and further. The buildings were thinning. He saw open country between two structures to his right and skidded down off the embankment and raced for freedom.
As soon as he had free running space everywhere but toward the town, he slowed.
Windsplitter and the lead horse were blowing and puffing. He walked them until they caught their breath, casting his eyes restlessly up and down the edges of the town behind them.
Then he caught the roaring again. He strained his eyes, watching.
There it was!
It slid out from among the buildings and started straight toward him.
He put the horses up to a trot.
The thing was closing the distance.
He put the horses up to a run.
The thing not only closed the distance but started to pass him.
Jonnie swerved at right angles.
The thing banked into a turn and flashed by him, went well ahead, turned and blocked his way.
Jonnie pulled up. There it was, ugly, roaring, gleaming.
He turned around and began to run away from it.
It let out a blasting roar, scorched by him and again stopped, blocking his way.
Jonnie’s face tightened into determination.
He took his biggest kill-club from his belt. He put the thong solidly on his wrist. He cast off the lead horse.
Walking Windsplitter, he went up ahead of the thing. It didn’t move. He went about a hundred feet in front of the thing. It didn’t move. He carefully spotted the position of a slitted eye.
He began to whirl the kill-club. It swooshed in the air.
He put a heel to Windsplitter and they raced straight at the thing.
The kill-club, carried with the full speed of the running horse, whooshed down straight at the slitted eye.
The crash of impact was deafening.
Jonnie slowed beyond the thing. It had not moved.
He trotted Windsplitter back to the original position, a hundred feet in front of the thing. He turned and made ready for a second run.
The lead horse came up behind him to its habitual place. Jonnie glanced at it and then back at the thing. He calculated the distance and the run to strike at the other slitted eye.
He touched a heel. Windsplitter plunged forward.
And then a great gout of yellow bloomed out from between the eyes. Jonnie was struck a blow like all the winds of Highpeak rolled into one.
Windsplitter caught the full force of it. Up into the air went horse and rider. Down they came with a shuddering crash against the earth.
13
Terl didn’t know what he was looking at.
He had bunked down in the car in the outskirts. He had the old Chinko map of the anc
ient city, but he had no curiosity about it.
With a few shots of kerbango, he had eased himself off into sleep, intending to be gone with the dawn, through the city and into the mountains. Senseless, even risky, to go on in the dark.
The car, however, had grown hot with the morning sun before he awoke. And now he stared out at an odd thing in the street before him. Maybe it had been the footfalls that had awakened him.
He didn’t know what it was. He had seen horses—they were always falling down mine shafts. But he had never before seen a horse with two heads.
That’s right. Two heads. One in front and one in the middle.
And a second animal of similar sort behind. Only this one only had a second body in the middle, as if the second head was bent down out of sight.
He batted his eyebones. He shifted over into the driver’s seat and stared more intently through the armored windshield.
The two beasts had now turned around and were walking the other way, so Terl started up and began to follow.
It became apparent to him at once that the beasts knew he was after them. He took a hasty look at his ancient street map, thinking he could flash around a couple of blocks and head them off.
But instead it was the beasts who turned.
Terl saw they would dead-end and knew they would circle a block. It was elementary indeed to handle that.
He glanced again at his map and spotted the right buildings to make a barricade.
The firepower of the old Mark II was not very heavy but it was surely enough for that. He adjusted the force lever with a fumbling and inexperienced paw and steered the tank into position. He hit the fire button.
The resulting explosion was extremely satisfactory. A whole building tipped over to make a barricade.
He jockeyed his throttle and wheeled around and went down the street, turned, and sure enough! There they were. He had his quarry trapped.
Then he sat with slack jawbones to see the beasts go straight up over the smoking rubble and vanish from view.
Terl sat there for a minute or two. Was this any part of what he was trying to accomplish? He was puzzled by the beasts, but they didn’t have anything to do with the business he was in.
Oh, well. He had lots of time, and hunting was hunting after all. He pushed a button and fired off an antenna capsule set to hover three hundred feet up and then turned on his picture screen.
Sure enough, there were the beasts, tearing along, zigzagging around blocks. He watched their progress while he ate some breakfast. That done, he took a small shot of kerbango, engaged the drive train, and following the picture, was soon out in open country with his quarry in plain sight.
He raced around in front and blocked them. They turned. He did it again.
What were they? The second beast still had his head down, but the one in the lead definitely had two heads. Terl decided he had better not talk about this in the recreation room. They’d roast him.
He watched with curiosity when the beast in the front stopped, took a stick out of his belt, and began a run at him. His curiosity turned to amazement. The thing was going to attack him. Incredible!
The crash of the club against the windshield was deafening. His earbones rang with the assault. And that wasn’t all. There was an immediate atmosphere sizzle.
A wave of dizziness hit Terl. Bright lights popped in his skull. Air! Air was getting into the cab!
This old Mark II had seen better days. The supposedly armored windscreen had come loose in its mounts. Terl gaped at it in disbelief. The side gasket had given way!
He panicked. Then his eye caught the sign about face masks and he hastily snatched the mask and flask of breathe-gas off the gunner’s seat and snapped it over his face, opening the valve. He inhaled deeply and the dizziness lessened. He took three deep breaths to clean the damned air out of his lungs.
Terl stared anew at the strange beast. It was lining up for another run!
His paws fumbled with the firepower. He wanted no recoil of the blast blowing back through the opened windscreen and he pulled the force lever low to “stun.” He hoped it was enough.
The beast started the run. Terl hit the fire button.
It was enough all right. The ions sizzled and glared. The beasts were slammed back, lifted clean off the ground. They fell.
Terl watched intently to make sure they kept on lying where they had fallen. Good! They did.
He let out a shuddering sigh into his mask, winding down. And then he sat up straight in new amazement. He had thought, when they were hit, that he was dealing with two four-legged beasts. But lying on the ground they had come apart!
Terl swung a side door wide and crawled out. He checked his belt gun and then rumbled over to the game he had hit.
Three beasts, maybe four!
The two four-legged beasts were two. On the one behind, a bundle of something had fallen apart. That maybe made three. The nearer one definitely was two different beasts.
What a confusion!
He shook his head, trying to clear it. The effects of air were not wearing off fast enough: little bright sparks were still popping in front of his eyes.
He lumbered over to the more distant one, pushing the tall grass away. It was a horse. He had seen plenty of horses; the plains were full of them. But this horse had had a bundle tied on its back. Simple as that. The bundle had come loose. He kicked it. It wasn’t anything alive, just some skins, some animal hides, and nonsense bits of other things.
He walked back toward the tank through the high grass.
The other thing was also a horse. And over to the right where it had fallen clear . . .
Terl pushed back the grass. Well, luck of the gold nebula! It was a man!
The Psychlo turned the man over. What a small, puny body! Hair on the face and head but nowhere else. Two arms, two legs. White brown skin.
Terl was unwilling to admit that Char’s description fitted. In fact, he resented the fact that it did come close and promptly rejected it.
The chest was moving—only slightly, true—but it was still alive. Terl felt fortunate indeed. His excursion was successful without his even going up into the mountains.
He picked the man up with one paw and went back to the tank, throwing the man into the gunner’s seat, which engulfed it. Then he set to work repairing the windscreen gasket with some permastick. The whole side of the glass had been dislodged, and although the glass itself was not even scratched, that had been quite a blow. He looked down at the small body swallowed in the seat. A fluke. It was the age of this tank, the brittleness of its gaskets. Sure was a ratty car; he’d find something wrong and put it in Zzt’s records—misplaced parts or something. He went over the other gaskets, the doors and the other screen. They seemed all right, if brittle. Well, he wasn’t going underwater and there would surely be no more attacks from things like that.
Terl stood up on the driver’s seat and looked all around the horizon. All clear. No more of these beasts.
He banged down the top and settled himself. His paw hit the compression change, and the hiss of air exhausting from the cab and the gurgle of breathe-gas entering was welcome. His face mask was sweaty in the growing heat of the day and he hated the thing. Oh, for a proper-atmosphere planet, a planet with right gravity, with purple trees—
The man-thing went into a sudden convulsion.
Terl drew back, alarmed. It was turning blue and jerking about. The last thing he wanted was a raving mad animal inside the cab.
Hastily he adjusted his face mask, reversed the compression, and kicked open the side door. With one bat of his paw he knocked the thing back out onto the grass.
Terl sat there watching it. He was afraid his plans were going up in a puff. The thing must have been more heavily affected by the stun blast than he knew. Crap, they were weak!
He opened the cab top and looked over at one of the horses.
He could see its sides moving. It was breathing and wasn’t in any convulsion. It was e
ven recovering. Well, a horse was a horse, and a man might be . . .
He suddenly got it. The man-thing couldn’t breathe breathe-gas. The bluish color was fading; the convulsions had stopped. The chest was panting as the thing gulped in air.
That gave Terl a problem. Blast if he was going to ride back to the minesite in a face mask.
He got out of the car and went to the farther horse. It was recovering, too. The sacks were lying near it. Terl rummaged through one and came up with some thongs.
He went back and picked up the man-thing and slammed it up on top of the car. He arranged it so its arms stuck out to each side. Tying piece after piece of thong together he made a long rope. He tied one end to one wrist of the thing, passed the rope under the car—grunting a bit as he lifted it up to do so—and tied the other wrist. He yanked it good and tight. Then he pushed at the man-thing experimentally to see whether it would fall off.
Very good. He threw the sacks onto the gunner’s seat and got in, closed up, and restarted the atmosphere change.
The nearest horse was lifting its head, struggling to get up. Aside from surface blood boils caused by the stun gun, it seemed to be all right, which meant that the man-thing would probably recover.
Terl stretched his jawbones in a grin. Well, it was coming out all right after all.
He started up the car, turned it, and headed back toward the minesite.
Part 2
1
Terl was all efficiency, great plans bubbling in his cavernous skull.
The old Chinkos had had a sort of zoo outside the compound, and despite the years that had intervened since the Chinkos were terminated here, the cages were still there.
There was one in particular that was just right. It had a dirt floor and a cement pool and netting of heavy mesh strung all around it. They had had some bears there that they said they were studying, and although the bears had died after a while, they had never escaped.
Terl dumped the new beast into the cage. The thing was still only semiconscious, getting over the shock of breathe-gas most likely. Terl looked at it lying there and then looked around. This had to be just right, all precautions taken.
Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 Page 7