Space for Evolution

by Zurab Andguladze

  Ama, already quite experienced in close combat, was quickly becoming calm. Now he, almost sure that he could escape from these predators when such a need arose, already wondered whether he could kill them, especially since, in addition to their dangerous trunks, they also had a powerful tail with a bone bulb on its end.

  From childhood, the machines had suggested an idea to them, sometimes even with the help of current pulses of various amplitudes, that fear wasn’t an advantage in a critical situation. For example, if an animal frightened you amidst a battle, then your brain would stop working efficiently, your will would weaken, and both of these factors would deprive you of an acceptable outcome.

  In addition, Ama and his comrades had been taught all their lives that they, the founders of anew civilization, were special creatures. They, unlike the earthlings, could act without emotion, and this was the best behavior in their position. Otherwise, humans couldn’t take root on a new planet whilst competing with local life. Their main weapon was psychological steadfastness, the ability to operate in cold blood in any situation, as the machines that created and raised them had always done.

  His recent victory over two LC-1s strengthened his self-confidence. During that fight, he’d acted quickly but soberly, and the trembling in his body had appeared only after he’d gotten rid of that trouble.

  Ama also knew that he could win, if he acted without a single mistake. The machines had also taught them that an advantage can only be obtained if you make an accurate battle plan.

  After quick consideration, he decided to kill the animals one at a time, before they attacked him together. He wouldn’t wait for the first predator to get rid of the shard in its paw. The scout saw the weak side of his plan: he didn’t know how fast these animals could move, and pace, as everyone knew, was the most important thing in a battle.

  He headed for the animal that had crept out of the other ravine. Now it had already gotten onto the crest of the wall separating the aqueducts. The first beast was still fighting the glass splinter, wheezing and staining the stones with its orange blood. Ama decided that he could act aggressively enough, because in case of failure, he would definitely have time to escape.

  The young man walked forward, ready to bounce backwards at any moment. He approached carefully to the verge of the crystal boulder. The animal, having already transferred its right legs to this side of the wall, was now pulling its body. At the same time, it never stopped watching Ama with its vibrating eye. When the predator had finally placed its body on the top of the partition, the scout, as planned, leaped from the crystal straight at its trunk that was extended along the wall, touched its claw with his hammer and instantly jumped back.

  The beast met the expectations of the man. Unable to use its trunk because it couldn’t roll it into a spring, the predator struck with its other weapon—the tail. As the movement of this heavy limb had been performed at the moment when the beast was in an unstable position, it lost its balance and fell down from the partition to the bottom of the gutter.

  The animal was confused, and this very moment turned out to be decisive. That was exactly what Ama had intended—to bring the enemy out of physical balance for a split second. As soon as it happened, the young man took one long step towards the beast, leaped onto the partition, and being deflected from there with the help of his right foot, he jumped onto the back of the animal. Having got on the beast’s withers, the traveler began to implement the last part of his plan. He lifted his hand with the intention of delivering a final blow.

  But his rival had already overcome its confusion, and waved its tail again, in an attempt to throw this strange creature off its back. Along with this movement, the animal’s body jerked and Ama almost fell off. The scout dropped to his knees to maintain his balance, and with one hand leaned on the cold pimpled skin of the predator.

  A thought flickered in Ama’s head that this retaliatory attack and his resulting loss of balance had deprived him of his best chance. However, in the blink of an eye, when the heavy bony mace had flown over his head, the frightened young man grasped that in his plan he had completely missed the possibility of this move. Although in the next moment he understood that things could have developed even worse for him; he felt relieved when he realized that the beast’s thick tail fortunately had limited flexibility, and was unable to closely reach its own back.

  With this, he completed his lightning analysis of the episode and, without getting up from his knees, before the beast did something else, he leaned back as he had in the morning on the river and with all his might thrust the ax into the groove of the animal’s eye. Momentarily, a yellowish clear liquid sprayed from there, followed by orange drops of blood.

  The creature first wheezed in pain, and then suddenly collapsed onto his stomach. Ama swayed but again managed to maintain his balance. Now he could only jump from the animal and run away. He had already fulfilled his plan—for starters, to blind the beast and thereby exclude it from the battle.

  He expected that the animal, although already blind, would begin to furiously swing its tail and trunk. Instead, the predator strangely stiffened and only hissed. Ama pulled the instrument from its eye. Then he, without getting up, using the head of the motionless creature as a trampoline, jumped from there. Of course, avoiding the clawed trunk, he bounced to the side. A couple of seconds later he’d already climbed onto the glass boulder, ten steps from the beast.

  Here he looked back. It turned out that no one was chasing after him, as the beast just continued to wheeze, and it lay on its folded legs. The creature’s cow-like torso and its terrible tail had frozen, as if made of stone. The dreadful trunk of the animal lay unnaturally crumpled, and the beast had dropped its head onto it. There were only two moving objects on its body: the vibrating remnants of its eye, and a thin stream of orange blood flowing down its upper jaw.

  Ama wondered if he had damaged some important nerve of the animal, and so deprived it of the ability to move. Somehow or another he had gotten rid of one of the predators.

  He glanced at the other creature. It remained in the same place, and hadn’t paid any attention to the clash occurring in front of it. The beast was still fighting against the splinter in its paw, now fully covered with blood. Seeing this, Ama tried to quickly come up with a plan suitable for the new situation.

  Here he saw that the situation had changed again. At last, the other animal had managed to get rid of the shard in its foot. Now blood from its cut flowed even more abundantly, but the predator didn’t pay attention to it as it had before.

  As soon as the beast had regained its ability to move, it rushed toward its bipedal enemy. Then Ama noticed at once that it was behaving strangely. Instead of attacking the man without halting, it clearly hesitated, glancing first at Ama, then at its wounded fellow. The young man still slowly retreated to the top of the hill, while the predator took a few more steps and, approaching its stunned companion, finally stopped near it. Soon Ama witnessed a totally unexpected event.

  The beast raised its tail and hit its heavy bulb onto the head of the immobile animal. The latter stopped hissing immediately. Seemingly it had died, but the other beast still hit it again, and killed it for sure. Ama understood this, noticing that the animal had gradually stopped bleeding.

  Meanwhile, the beast struck its dead comrade on its side several times. Then it turned its head and looked again at the two-eyed creature standing nearby. Seeing no danger, it stuck its clawed trunk into the beaten flesh, tore it from the rest of the body and carried it to its mouth.

  Very soon, Ama experienced an unbearable smell. Until this moment, he’d seemed to be under hypnosis, and only the smell helped him to return to reality. He remembered his things and, looking around, he saw that his weapon and backpack now appeared to be behind the killer beast, and the crystal chunk lay directly in front of the body being eaten.

  Ama considered two possibilities. To wait for the predator to sate itself and leave, or attack it, again using the hammer as
a weapon. Meanwhile, devouring the remains of its comrade, the beast constantly watched him.

  The young man considered a direct attack on the ready predator, without any ruse and almost without weapons, as pointless. But Ama had also no time for waiting. There was left only the vertex of Ro over the forest; time wasn’t going to stop until the scout solved his problems.

  And who knew what would happen in the darkness? Maybe the predator would want to stock up on the meat of an unusual creature? After all, it didn’t know that the flesh of the biped creature would be inedible for it. It was quite possible that during the hunt it could break with its paw the crystal billet that had been mined with such difficulty.

  The young man made a new plan. He would sneak up on the predator from the opposite side, from the lower part of the slope, and grab the weapon. If it didn’t work for him, he would come up with something else, but now there was no time to think of it all at once.

  Ama shifted even higher, and at the same time kept the predator in his field of vision. Then he carefully climbed the partition between the gutters. As he retreated and moved into the next gutter, the animal also constantly watched him as before, without interrupting its supper. Soon, the scout descended into the neighboring aqueduct, and headed down its bottom, without taking his eyes off the crest of the partition.

  He walked half bent; the wall couldn’t hide him if he straightened. Each moment he expected to see a giant head appearing over the watershed. Near the place where his opponent was eating its fellow, the young man moved with extreme caution. It seemed to him that here he even discerned chomping.

  In the end, the beast didn’t show itself. Maybe it considered that the strange creature had become scared and runaway from it? Ama had no time to guess the thoughts of his enemy. He went about another twenty steps down the slope, and then carefully and silently returned into “his” gutter. Now he began to creep cautiously upwards toward the predator, which was still occupied with its food. Besides its busyness, it also stood with its back to the man. The traveler looked for his things. The backpack lay about three steps from the animal, and the maser faintly glittered next to its bone mace.

  To at least somehow protect himself, Ama looked around in search of a branch, intending to pull the maser with its help, without approaching the brute. But there was no vegetation around—no wind could bring a long branch almost to the top of a hill. Therefore, he had to again rely solely on his own quickness.

  Estimating his chances, he was involuntarily lost in thought for a brief moment. He considered the possibility that perhaps living things have different swiftness on different planets. Indeed, why should they have the same pace everywhere? Maybe the locals were a little slower because Neia’s mass was greater than Earth’s, and the gravity here exceeded Earth’s by one percent. This may lead to their slightly thicker, heavier bones, and therefore their heightened inertia.

  It was highly likely that this trifle had already saved Ama several times. Feasibly, the humans’ bones, and generally the bones of all the terrestrial animals, would become thicker in the future, but that time had not yet come. Therefore, Ama was an absolutely terrestrial creature, with the due speed and mobility. Previously, armed with masers and screens during outings, they’d had no necessity to think about such things; but now it was of great importance to him.

  Having told himself this encouraging explanation, the young scout decided to quickly run up and grab the weapon before the beast could hit him with its tail. But the traveler failed to test his dexterity again. He took one more cautious step, and then the creature, which, seemingly wasn’t paying attention to the biped’s movements, suddenly turned around and rushed after him.

  Ama immediately reacted to this novelty and also performed a quick pivot. With long leaps, he moved down, still worried a little about how quickly this heavy animal could run downhill. However, a few seconds later, after glancing round, the young man realized that he was easily outstripping his rival.

  This situation pushed him to a new plan. And it seemed to him so natural and suitable that the scout wondered why he had not thought of it from the very beginning. According to his new idea, he should lure the enemy as far away from his things as possible, then outflank it along the neighboring aqueduct and be the first to get to the maser. Ama slowed down so that the predator wouldn’t lose the desire to chase him. But this trick only worked for a dozen steps. Then the beast stopped pursuing him, seeing the vainness of its effort.

  Standing still, it watched the fugitive for several seconds, then turned around and headed uphill, back to its prey. The scout immediately responded to the changed situation. He hastily returned to the neighboring aqueduct and ran toward its top. The beast heard the steps of its adversary and accelerated its pace, apparently worried that maybe this two-legged one wanted to be the first to reach the dead animal and eat it.

  Ama ran faster than the beast, but still, he didn’t leave it far behind. It had formidable odds, being much close to their common goal. Upon coming to approximately the place where his belongings lay, the young man quickly climbed the partition and with a single long leap landed on the bottom of the “crystal” aqueduct. In his flight, he’d looked for his weapon, but had not seen it either then or later, when he already stood on the stony bottom of the gully covered with glass flinders.

  Apparently, the beast, rushing after the man, had kicked the maser with its foot from its previous place, and the darkness, which had thickened at the bottom of the canal, had carefully hidden this object within itself. Meanwhile, the hiss of the beast sounded already very close.

  The young man turned around and looked at the approaching brute. It had already rolled its trunk and had prepared for an attack. The traveler with despair realized that he again had to run away empty-handed. He examined the place for the last time, and here his gaze caught on the maser’s focuser.

  The device was made with quartz and germanium powders, and thanks to its controlled refractive index, it directed microwave beams to the desired point. And now its glossy surface had collected the remains of the daylight left in the aqueduct, and so the eyes of the young man noticed them. Both the instrument and the entire maser, somewhat covered by the tail, lay next to the corpse of the partially eaten animal.

  The young man reached the weapon in one jump, picked it up and ran to the top of the hill without looking back. A few quick steps later, he picked up the glass chunk, easily visible even in a hurry. He reached the crystal boulder and jumped up on it, as before. Seeing the biped running away, the beast stopped again. Apparently it felt sated after the useless pursuits of this strange animal. And most importantly, the biped hadn’t encroached upon its food. Therefore, the predator could return to its supper.

  However, the beast didn’t manage to fulfill its intent. It was already about to turn around when it saw that the creature had jumped from its boulder and was headed towards it. The extremely irritated animal rattled menacingly and took a first step toward the enemy. Which it seemed was to be the last step in its life. The energy of the microwave impulse produced a hydraulic shock inside the beast’s skull, and splashed out its contents through its mouth and eye socket.

  After the first impulse, Ama realized that the animal had died, but still he shot again and again, until he forced himself to remove his finger from the start button and stop wasting energy. Only then did he realize how excited he was, because during the battle he’d seemed to himself to be absolutely calm…

  The traveler stood watching his neighborhood, listening. Gradually the tension decreased, his breathing evened out, and his heartbeat slowed. Soon, he’d completely relaxed and could think about the past battle.

  The scout came to the conclusion that he’d acted correctly, and he really had had an additional advantage in the form of speed. He also noticed the fact that he was trembling again. Ama decided that it was good that this had happened afterwards, not before, or, worse, during the battle.

  Although the whole battle had lasted o
nly a few minutes, the time appeared to have been sufficient for Ro to leave the sky. Ama turned on the maser’s lamp and worked in its light. First, he found his backpack and put in it the object for which he and his comrades had risked their lives—the piece of crystal. He also remembered his neialogical instrument. Being afraid that it might damage the natural glass, the wayfarer shoved his ax-hammer under his belt.

  In the end, he thought with regret that it would be good to get another lump, but immediately realized that the already-reigning total darkness wouldn’t allow him to do that. Even in daylight he’d coped with the task almost by chance.

  Chapter 69

  Realizing that he had completed his unexpectedly difficult task at the mineral deposit, Ama began the return journey. Seler, which had already appeared in the sky, shed enough light on this part of the world. The traveler turned off the maser’s flashlight and, in the light of the neighboring planet, first went down the hill and then crossed the field.

  The night luminary tried to fulfill the duties of his day-mate in the forest, too, but in vain. Its weak rays hardly penetrated through the leaves and branches. The young man turned on the maser lamp again, but it didn’t help him at all. Now he could see only what fell under the rays of electric light. Everything else beyond, including the thicket itself and the danger possibly hiding there, had become completely invisible.

  Ama understood that he needed to stop such a trip in the time before some beast lying hidden next to the beam of the lantern attacked him. The traveler turned off the artificial lighting and stayed with the natural one. Despite its weakness, at least it evenly distributed its rays across the limited vicinity. In the forest that encircled him, the scout was now looking for a plant suitable for an overnight stay.

  Actually, he was seeking nothing special, just a place easy to climb up to, with thick branches at a suitable height, to which he could tie his backpack and make a hammock. Soon Ama had detected the necessary tree. Having approached it, the traveler turned on the lamp again and moved the beam around. Noticing nothing suspicious, the scout fearlessly turned his back to the forest and began to climb the plant.