“Maybe you got something there,” agreed Mackenzie. "There are times when I'm inclined to think the company went just a bit too far in making those robots cost conscious.”
“You don't need to talk like that,” shrilled Nellie. “Like I was just a machine you didn't need to pay no attention to. I suppose next thing you will be saying it wasn't your fault, that you couldn't help it.”
“I kept a good quarter mile from all the groves,” growled Mackenzie. “Who ever heard of a vine that could stretch that far?”
“And that ain't all, neither,” yelped Nellie. “Smith hit some of the rifle trees."
The two men looked toward the grove. What Nellie said was true. Pale wisps of smoke still rose above the grove and what trees were left looked the worse for wear.
Smith clucked his tongue in mock concern.
“The trees were shooting at us,” retorted Mackenzie.
“That don't make any difference,” Nellie yelled. “The rule book says—"
Mackenzie waved her into silence. “Yes, I know. Section 17 of the chapter on Relations with Extraterrestrial Life: ‘No employee of this company may employ weapons against or otherwise injure or attempt to injure or threaten with injury an inhabitant of any other planet except in self-defense and then only if every means of escape or settlement has failed/"
“And now we got to go back to the post,” Nellie shrieked. “When we were almost there, we got to turn back. News of what we did will get around. The moss probably has started it already. The idea of ripping a vine up by the roots and shooting trees. If we don't start back right now, we won't get back. Every living thing along the way will be laying for us.” “It was the vine’s fault,” yelled Smith. “It tried to trap us. It tried to steal our car, probably would have killed us, just for the few lousy ounces of radium we have in the motors. That radium was ours. Not the vine’s. It belonged to your beloved company.”
“For the love of gosh, don’t tell her that,” Mackenzie warned, “or she'll go out on a one robot expedition, yanking vines up left and right.”
“Good idea,” insisted Smith. “She might tie into an electro. It would peel her paint.”
“How about the radio?” Mackenzie asked Nellie, “Busted,” said Nellie, crustily.
“And the recording equipment?”
“The tape’s all right and I can fix the recorder.”
“Serum jugs busted?”
“One of them ain’t,” said Nellie.
“O.K., then,” said Mackenzie, “get back in there and dig out two bags of fertilizer. We’re going on. Melody Bowl is only about 50 miles away.”
“We can’t do that,” protested Nellie. “Every tree will be waiting for us, every vine—”
“It’s safer to go ahead than back,” said Mackenzie. “Even if we have no radio, Harper will send someone out with the flier to look us up when we are overdue.”
He rose slowly and unholstered his pistol.
“Get in there and get that stuff,” he ordered. “If you don’t, I’ll melt you down into a puddle.”
“All right,” screamed Nellie, in sudden terror. “All right. You needn’t get so tough about it.”
“Any more back talk out of you,” Mackenzie warned, “and I’ll kick you so full of dents you’ll walk stooped over.”
They stayed in the open, well away from the groves, keeping a close watch. Mackenzie went ahead and behind him came the Encyclopedia, humping along to keep pace with them. Back of the Encyclopedia was Nellie, loaded down with the bags of fertilizer and equipment. Smith brought up the rear.
A rifle tree took a shot at them, but the range was too far for accurate shooting. Back a way, an electro vine had come closer with a thunderbolt.
Walking was grueling. The grass was thick and matted and one had to plow through it, as if one were walking in water.
‘Til make you sorry for this,” seethed Nellie, “111 make—”
“Shut up,” snapped Smith. Tor once youre doing a robot’s work instead of gumshoeing around to see if you can’t catch a nickel out of place/’
They breasted a hill and started to climb the long grassy slope.
Suddenly a sound like the savage ripping of a piece of cloth struck across the silence.
They halted, tensed, listening. The sound came again and then again.
“Guns!” yelped Smith.
Swiftly the two men loped up the slope, Nellie galloping awkwardly behind, the bags of fertilizer bouncing on her shoulders.
From the hilltop, Mackenzie took in the situation at a glance.
On the hillside below a man was huddled behind a boulder, working a gun with fumbling desperation, while farther down the hill a ground car had toppled over. Behind the car were three figures—one man and two insect creatures.
“Groomies!” whopped Smith.
A well-directed shot from the car took the top off the boulder and the man behind it hugged the ground.
Smith was racing quarteringly down the hill, heading toward another boulder that would outflank the trio at the car.
A yell of human rage came from the car and a bolt from one of the three guns snapped at Smith, plowing a smoking furrow no more than ten feet behind him.
Another shot flared toward Mackenzie and he plunged behind a hummock. A second shot whizzed just above his head and he hunkered down trying to push himself into the ground.
From the slope below came the high-pitched, angry chittering of the Groombridgians.
The car, Mackenzie saw, was not the only vehicle on the hillside. Apparently it had been pulling a trailer to which was lashed a tree. Mackenzie squinted against the setting sun, trying to make out what it was all about. The tree, he saw, had been expertly dug, its roots balled in earth and wrapped in sacking that shone wetly. The trailer was canted at an awkward angle, the treetop sweeping the ground, the balled roots high in the air.
Smith was pouring a deadly fire into the hostile camp and the three below were replying with a sheet of blasting bolts, plowing up the soil around the boulder. In a minute or two, Mackenzie knew, they would literally cut the ground out from under Smith. Cursing under his breath, he edged around the hummock, pushing his pistol before him, wishing he had a rifle.
The third man was slinging an occasional, inexpert shot at the three below, but wasn’t doing much to help the cause along. The battle, Mackenzie knew, was up to him and Smith.
He wondered abstractedly where Nellie was.
“Probably halfway back to the post by now,” he told himself, drawing a bead on the point from which came the most devastating blaze of firing.
But even as he depressed the firing button, the firing below broke off in a chorus of sudden screams. The two Groombridgians leaped up and started to run, but before they made their second stride, something came whizzing through the air from the slope below and crumpled one of them.
The other hesitated, like a startled hare, uncertain where to go, and a second thing came whishing up from the bottom of the slope and smacked against his breastplate with a thud that could be heard from where Mackenzie lay.
Then, for the first time Mackenzie saw Nellie. She was striding up the hill, her left arm holding an armful of stones hugged tight against her metal chest, her right arm working like a piston. The ringing clang of stone against metal came as one of the stones missed its mark and struck the ground car.
The human was running wildly, twisting and ducking, while Nellie pegged rock after rock at him. Trying to get set for a shot at her, the barrage of whizzing stones kept him on the dodge. Angling down the hill, he finally lost his rifle when he tripped and fell. With a howl of terror, he bolted up the hillside, his life blanket standing out almost straight behind him. Nellie pegged her last stone at him, then set out, doggedly loping in his wake.
Mackenzie screamed hoarsely at her, but she did not stop. She passed out of sight over the hill, closely behind the fleeing man.
Smith whopped with delight. "Look at our Nellie go for him,” he yel
led. "She’ll give him a working over when she nails him.”
Mackenzie rubbed his eyes. "Who was he?” he asked.
"Jack Alexander,” said Smith. "Grant said he was around again.”
The third man got up stiffly from behind his boulder and advanced toward them. He wore no life blanket, his clothing was in tatters, his face was bearded to the eyes.
He jerked a thumb toward the hill over which Nellie had disappeared. “A masterly military maneuver,” he declared. "Your robot sneaked around and took them from behind.”
“If she lost that recording stuff and the fertilizer, I'll melt her down,” said Mackenzie, savagely.
The man stared at them. "You are the gentlemen from the trading post?” he asked.
They nodded, returning his stare.
"I am Wade,” he said. "J. Edgerton Wade—”
“Wait a second,” shouted Smith. “Not the J. Edgerton Wade? The lost composer?”
The man bowed, whiskers and all. "The same,” he said. “Although 1 had not been aware that 1 was lost 1 merely came out here to spend a year, a year of music such as man has never heard before.”
He glared at them. “I am a man of peace,” he declared, almost as if daring them Xo argue that he wasn’t, “but when those three dug up Delbert, I knew what I must do.” “Delbert?” asked Mackenzie,
“The tree,” said Wade. “One of the music trees,”
“Those lousy planet-runners,” said Smith, “figured they’d take that tree and sell it to someone back on Earth. I can think of a lot of big shots who’d pay plenty to have one of those trees in their back yard.”
“Its a lucky thing we came along,” said Mackenzie, soberly. “If we hadn’t, if they’d got away with it, the whole planet would have gone on the warpath. We could have closed up shop. It might have been years before we dared come back again.”
Smith rubbed his hands together smirking. “We’ll take back their precious tree,” he declared, “and will that put us in solid I They’ll give us their tunes from now on, free for nothing, just out of pure gratitude.”
“You gentlemen,” said Wade, “are motivated by mercenary factors but you have the right idea.”
A heavy tread sounded behind them and when they turned they saw Nellie striding down the hill. She clutched a life blanket in her hand.
“He got away,” she said, “but I got his blanket. Now I got a blanket, too, just like you fellows.”
“What do you need with a life blanket?” yelled Smith. “You give that blanket to Mr. Wade. Right away. You hear me.”
Nellie pouted. “You won’t let me have anything. You never act like I’m human—”
“You aren’t,” said Smith.
“If you give that blanket to Mr. Wade,” wheedled Mackenzie, “I’ll let you drive the car.”
“You would?” asked Nellie, eagerly.
“Really,” said Wade, shifting from one foot to the other, embarrassed.
“You take that blanket,” said Mackenzie. “You need it* Looks like you haven’t eaten for a day or two/'
“I haven't,” Wade confessed,
"Shuck into it then and get yourself a meal/' said Smith..
Nellie handed it over.
“How come you were so good pegging those rocks?” asked Smith.
Nellie’s eyes gleamed with pride. "Back on Earth I was on a baseball team," she said, "I was the pitcher."
Alexander's car was undamaged except for a few dents and a smashed vision plate where Wade’s first bolt had caught it, blasting the glass and startling the operator so that he swerved sharply, spinning the treads across a boulder and upsetting it.
The music tree was unharmed, its roots still well moistened in the burlap-wrapped, water-soaked ball of earth. Inside the tractor, curled in a tight ball in the darkest corner, unperturbed by the uproar that had been going on outside, they found Delbert, the two-foot high, roly-poly conductor that resembled nothing more than a poodle dog walking on its hind legs.
The Groombridgians were dead, their crushed chitinous armor proving the steam behind Nellies delivery.
Smith and Wade were inside the tractor, settled down for the night. Nellie and the Encyclopedia were out in the night, hunting for the gun Alexander had dropped when he fled. Mackenzie, sitting on the ground, Nicodemus pulled snugly about him, leaned back against the car and smoked a last pipe before turning in.
The grass behind the tractor rustled.
“That you, Nellie?” Mackenzie called, softly.
Nellie clumped hesitantly around the comer of the car.
“You ain’t sore at me?” she asked.
“No, I’m not sore at you. You can't help the way you are.”
“I didn't find the gun/' said Nellie.
“You knew where Alexander dropped it?”
“Yes,” said Nellie. “It wasn’t there.”
Mackenzie frowned in the darkness. ‘That means Alexander managed to come back and get it. I don't like that. Hell be out gunning for us. He didn’t like the company before. Hell really be out for blood after what we did today.
He looked around. "Where’s the Encyclopedia?”
“I sneaked away from him. I wanted to talk to you about him/’
‘‘O.K.,” said Mackenzie. “Fire away.”
“He’s been trying to read my brain,” said Nellie.
“I know. He read the rest of ours. Did a good job of it.” “He’s been having trouble,” declared Nellie.
‘Trouble reading your brain? I wouldn’t doubt it.”
“You don’t need to talk as if my brain—” Nellie began, but Mackenzie stopped her.
“I don’t mean it that way, Nellie. Your brain is all right, far as 1 know. Maybe even better than ours. But the point is that its different. Ours are natural brains, the orthodox way for things to think and reason and remember. The Encyclopedia knows about those kind of brains and the minds that go with them. Yours isn’t that land. It’s artificial. Part jx echanical, part chemical, part electrical, Lord knows what i Ise; I’m not a robot technician. He’s never run up against that kind of brain before. It probably has him down. Matter of fact, our civilization probably has him down. If this planet ever had a real civilization, it wasn’t a mechanical one. There’s no sign of mechanization here. None of the scars machines inflict on planets.”
“I been fooling him,” said Nellie quietly. "He’s been trying to read my mind, but I been reading his.”
Mackenzie started forward. “Well, 111 be—” he began. Then he settled back against the car, dead pipe hanging from between his teeth. "Why didn’t you ever let us know you could read minds?” he demanded. "I suppose you been sneaking around all this time, reading our minds, making fun of us, laughing behind our backs.”
"Honest, I ain’t,” said Nellie. "Cross my heart, I ain’t. I didn’t even know I could. But, when I felt the Encyclopedia prying around inside my head the way he does, it kind of got my dander up. I almost hauled off and smacked him one. And then I figured maybe I better be more subtle. I figured that if he could pry around in my mind, I could pry around in his. I tried it and it worked.”
“Just like that,” said Mackenzie.
“It wasn’t hard,” said Nellie. “It come natural. I seemed to just know how to do it.”
“If the guy that made you knew what he'd let slip through his fingers, he'd cut his throat,” Mackenzie told her.
Nellie sidled closer. “It scares me,” she said,
“What's scaring you now?”
“That Encyclopedia knows too much.”
“Alien stuff,” said Mackenzie. “You should have expected that. Don't go messing around with an alien mentality unless you're ready for some shocks.”
“It ain’t that,” said Nellie. “I knew I’d find alien stuff. But he knows other things. Things he shouldn't know,” “About us?”
“No, about other places. Places other than the Earth and this planet here. Places Earthmen ain't been to yet. The kind of things no Earthman c
ould know by himself or that no Encyclopedia could know by himself, either.”
“Like what?”
“Like knowing mathematical equations that don't sound like anything we know about,” said Nellie. “Nor like he'd know about if he'd stayed here all his life. Equations you couldn’t know unless you knew a lot more about space and time than even Earthmen know.
“Philosophy, too. Ideas that make sense in a funny sort of way, but make your head swim when you try to figure out the kind of people that would develop them.”
Mackenzie got out his pouch and refilled his pipe, got it going.
“Nellie, you think maybe this Encyclopedia has been at other minds? Minds of other people who may have come here?”
“Could be,” agreed Nellie. “Maybe a long time ago. He's awful old. Lets on he could be immortal if he wanted to be.
Said he wouldn't die until there was nothing more in the universe to know. Said when that time came there’d be nothing more to live for,”
Mackenzie clicked his pipestem against his teeth. "He could be, too,” he said. "Immortal, I mean. Plants haven’t got all the physiological complications animals have. Given any sort of care, they theoretically could live forever.”
Grass rustled on the hillside above them and Mackenzie settled back against the car, kept on smoking. Nellie hunkered down a few feet away.
The Encyclopedia waddled down the hill, startlight glinting from his shell-like back. Ponderously he lined up with them beside the car, pushing his taproot into the ground for an evening snack.
"Understand you may be going back to Earth with us,” said Mackenzie conversationally.
The answer came, measured in sharp and concise thought that seemed to drill deep into Mackenzies mind. "I should like to. Your race is interesting.”
It was hard to talk to a thing like that, Mackenzie told himself. Hard to keep the chatter casual when you knew all the time it was hunting around in the comers of your mind. Hard to match one’s voice against the brittle thought with which it talked.
"What do you think of us?” he asked and knew, as soon as he had asked it, that it was asinine.
"I know very little of you,” the Encyclopedia declared. "You have created artificial lives, while we on this planet have lived natural lives. You have bent every force that you can master to your will. You have made things work for you. First impression is that, potentially, you are dangerous.”
Adventures on Other Planets Page 8