[Title here]

by Twin Worlds (epub)

  To the equal consternation of the professor and 27E-24, the Ooaurs put this plan into practice, uniting their energies until the two machine men were without upper appendages. Greedily, several of the monsters tried eating the disengaged tentacles, finally throwing them away in growling disgust. The idea of removing the tentacles furthered the inevitable design of similar removal of the legs. Here the Ooaurs experienced more difficulty, for the metal legs did not come off so easily. They wrenched, bent and twisted until they had succeeded in pulling off five of the metal legs, three from 27E-24 and two from the professor. The machine men were now absolutely helpless, their remaining legs unusable and damaged beyond repair by the tremendous efforts exerted by their captors.

  The metal bodies were picked up and carried by two of the Ooaurs, the entire horde heading rapidly deeper into the Land of Exhaustion. From what the machine men could learn from their small brains, the Ooaurs were heading back for their village.

  Chapter V

  “I hope they do not touch our heads,” said 27E-24.

  “It is unlikely that they will, unless they should become curious regarding our mechanical eyesight, and even then there is little that they could do.”

  “I dislike the thoughts of what a well-aimed rock or heavy club wielded by one of these giants might do to our precious heads.”

  “It is not likely to occur to them.” The professor reassured his companion, though he was a bit nervous over their prospects himself. “We can only wait until the spaceship is repaired and they can come in search of us.”

  “They may come on the mechanical wings.”

  “It is improbable that those who came with us will find us. We are now headed off on a tangent from the course we originally chose. It was our ill fortune to stray from mental contact with the rest and chance upon this band of Ooaurs different from those we had routed.”

  The Ooaurs jogged onward. The character of the ground over which they were passing changed. The plain came to an end on this portion of the flat world, and gentle slopes and valleys replaced the level monotony. In one of these valleys lay the village of the Ooaurs. It was dirty and filthy. That was the first impression the machine men gained from the heterogeneous collection of huts and shelters erected from branches, boulders and rock slabs, embellished here and there with a composition of twigs and dried clay. Often, the central stanchions were the trunks of living trees. The architecture spoke not only of ignorance, but laziness as well. Ooaurs rushed out of shelters nearly fallen to pieces through lack of repair as the returned hunting party entered the village, chattering in boastful excitement of the strange things they had captured by pulling off their arms and legs.

  The two machine men were dumped unceremoniously on the ground amid the central collection of huts. The setting sun shone dully off the metal bottom of Professor Jameson’s cube because he had fallen on one side. 27E-24 had been dropped right side up, slightly tilted toward the professor where a single bent and useless leg upheld him slightly. The two helpless Zoromes became at once the objects of questing, feeling claws as the Ooaurs examined them attentively yet uncomprehendingly.

  “Keep your eyes closed,” Professor Jameson warned his companion. “We do not want their curiosity to lead them into too prying an examination of our heads.”

  But like the professor, 27E-24 had also closed his eye shutters soon after entering the village, and if the Ooaurs recollected a difference they did not stress it as of any importance. One of them waved a dangling metal tentacle with voluble explanations concerning its relation to the trophies they had brought back with them. The machine men were tipped and rolled about until the long enduring dusk had finally yielded to darkness. Darkness had long before fallen on Ui and its surrounding country, and the two Zoromes wondered what was happening there. Had their companions returned to Ui from the Land of Exhaustion? Then they were already missed. Or had they finally caught up to the fleeing Ooaurs? If so, they might not have returned this soon.

  The dismembered machine men were positive of one condition, however: on their failure to return in proper time, a search would be instituted for them regardless of whether the spaceship was fit to cruise once more or not.

  A short night yielded to a steady fringe of light upon the distant horizon which heralded the new day. The village of Ooaurs aroused itself from bestial sleep. The sun crept rapidly over the world’s edge, and the new day was born.

  Once more the curiosity of the Ooaurs manifested itself in their critical and awkward examination of the machine men’s torsos. The professor was once turned and balanced on the apex of his head. The Ooaur released his hold and the heavy cube fell flat upon the feet of another beast. This one howled his pain and smote the careless offender for dropping the body. There came a growling retaliation, and the two ill-tempered monsters were at each other tooth and nail. From his sidewise position, it reminded the professor of a dog fight, with all the other dogs gathering in a circle of acclaiming din and howls. Whatever degree of intelligence they came across, from the greatest to the least, the Zoromes invariably found that creatures of flesh and blood enjoyed watching a fight.

  The combat resolved itself into a rough and tumble, biting affair, but its outcome was forever left in doubt. Shrill cries from outside the ring of spectators turned the interested onlookers to a new attraction, one in which they found alarm rather than enjoyment. The audience disappeared, leaving the growling, surging contestants momentarily unaware of the turn events had taken. The battling brutes only stopped fighting when they heard particularly shrill cries-cries unlike any the machine men had yet heard their captors emit. Then their whole demeanor changed and they rose to join their companions, now surging back to the center of the village in a retreating mass.

  From the opposite direction, there came a charging horde of Ooaurs, more darkly colored than those the machine men had yet seen. They were more squat, yet none the less bulky, and their hair grew longer. The machine men realized now the consternation of their captors and the cause for alarm. The village was being attacked by a different species of Ooaurs, and the latter species appeared to be in the majority, also brandishing large clubs. Some of them carried as many as four, one in each long-digited claw.

  From the slowly retreating mass of villagers, into whose ranks the newcomers suddenly fell, the two helpless Zoromes deduced that superior numbers were pressing them from the front. Attacked on two sides and taken by surprise, the fate of the villagers was already apparent, for the end presaged itself. The carnage and slaughter, most of which was obscured from the stationary view of the two Zoromes by the dark brown, thickly-haired bodies of the invaders, was terrible. The machine men learned this later, when the field of battle had been cleared. The villagers fought to a hopeless finish, though, giving a good account of themselves. Quarter was neither given nor asked.

  Not satisfied with what loot and plunder they could find, which strangely enough appeared to consist mainly of odd-shaped bones, the victors engaged in an unrestrained orgy of vandalism. They tore down the homes of their vanquished foes, strewing refuse all over the village and scarcely leaving one stick in orderly contact with another. Others amused themselves by bashing in the heads of any wounded survivors not of their own tribe.

  The two machine men were quickly discovered once the villagers had all been dispatched, and once more they underwent first-hand observation and handling. These conquerors had never seen the machine men in action, and so in no way did the two Zoromes give evidence of any sentient character. To the Ooaurs, they were merely ornaments whose acquisition the villagers had in some way managed. The weak concentrative energies of the Ooaurs spent little conjecture on this point. To the victors belonged the spoils, and these marvelous cone-pointed cubes of hard, glistening metal were the greatest prizes of all.

  The machine men hoped against any curiosity the Ooaurs might show in regard to their inner contents. Though their metal heads were constructed to withstand severe usage, they feared the consequences of a r
epeated attack on their heads with the powerfully wielded bludgeons.

  Having created all the disorder and destruction of which their poor imaginations were capable, the Ooaurs evacuated the scene of desolation and death, carrying away with them their new acquisitions. Once more the machine men were carried off by Ooaurs, this time in a tangent direction skirting the great plain, a direction promising to bring them gradually closer to the edge of the world. For a long time, the invading warriors held to their course, constantly shifting their weighty burdens in order to keep pace with their fellow creatures.

  It was Professor Jameson who first saw the approaching specks on high. A mental flash to 27E-24 appraised him of the professor’s initial hope that flying Zoromes had come in search of them, but these hopes became dissipated as the objects in the sky came nearer. That they were bright and reflected the sunlight like the metal sides of a machine man’s cube the professor verrified by their closer approach, but they were nothing resembling Zoromes. They were, seemingly, balls of metal.

  “Oaos!” exclaimed 27E-24, echoing the thought of the professor. “They do exist! There are three of them!”

  “They are coming down here!” the professor exclaimed. “Yes, they are metal, but what are they?”

  The metal globes floated nearer so that now the Ooaurs, too, noticed them. In mingled surprise and excitement, they shouted, pointed upward and gesticulated.

  “Tiny spaceships―or aircraft,” 27E-24 surmised.

  “We have seen no creatures here small enough to occupy them,” said the professor. “These globes are much smaller than the Eiuks, A single Uum would have difficulty in getting himself into one, regardless of necessary mechanism.”

  “It is directed by an intelligence. That is apparent. We must communicate with them.”

  Both machine men sent out strong mental calls, their minds searching for an answer or inkling that they had been heard. Searchingly they sought, and they found only a blank. Yet the three globes still descended, two of them coming close above the heads of the Ooaurs. Above the captive machine men, they paused and kept pace with the captives. The two Zoromes had an excellent opportunity, and they closely examined the metal globes, finding exterior markings suggestive of inner mechanism. In turn, they felt themselves minutely examined. This feeling originated from the actions of the three Oaos rather than a telepathic source, for of the latter there appeared to be no existence.

  “Do you suppose they are mechanisms like ourselves, governed by an organic brain?”

  “I doubt it,” the professor made reply. “If that were so, we would have found it out, yet on the other hand I recall that in the secret city of 6D4 back on the planet of Mumed, his towers were constructed to be thought-proof, so it may be that these globes are made in such a manner.”

  The Ooaurs were making warlike gesures with their clubs. One of them threw a bludgeon at the lowest of the globes. A shower of upflung missiles followed this initiative, and several clubs clattered and glanced off the bright sphere. Out of the globe shot a glistening stream of green liquid, then another, full upon a cluster of the Ooaurs.

  Dense puffs of acrid smoke arose from the doused creatures, who fell screaming in contorting agony. Their companions fell back, choking from the fumes which came from them as their motions and sounds became stilled. They lay dead, yet the smoking vapor still rose, as their inert forms became smoldering, withered, eaten-away semblances of their former selves. The Ooaurs fled them in terror, yet the ire of the Oaos seemed yet unappeased. The two from on high shot several streams of the green death upon the strung-out cavalcade of Ooaurs.

  In consternation, the professor saw one of the terrible streams strike close to his metal cube. An Ooaur received it full upon the head, and it spattered on the surrounding beasts and the professor’s head and cubed body. Its emerald film obscured the sight of one eye. Puffs of smoke wafted angrily from the stricken Ooaurs and their maddening pain caused the air to resound with agonized shrieks. They ran in aimless circles, beating madly at their bodies and rolling upon the ground. Some ran in a straight line until they fell dead or foaming in terror, their anguished screeches descending in volume like the wail of a departing siren. Others fell upon their companions in pain-crazed rage, enveloped in the fumes of their living cremation. The professor’s brain stood still, fastened upon a single, terrifying thought: what would the green liquid do to metal? Nothing happened immediately, and the suspense became pardy lifted . . . .

  What the liquid was doing to the Ooaurs was vividly and startlingly apparent. They were either dead or dying, all those struck by the liquid, and whether dead or dying the action of the fatal liquid was impartially the same. It ate up its victims swiftly. The remainder of the frightful beasts scattered in aimless flight, impelled by the terror fallen among them. Professor Jameson felt himself dropped with a bump onto one side. He had been abandoned by his carrier, either through a single desire for more speed in escaping the death from on high, or else because of a simple-minded conviction that the mysterious metal things were somehow allied to the flying globes whose material so closely resembled theirs. This latter thought occurred to the professor. His fallen position enabled him to see that 27E-24 had also been delivered a like disposition, the Ooaurs hurrying madly from the scene.

  The Oaos seemed no longer interested either in Ooaurs or Zoromes. They had not risen but were slowly drifting away out of the professor’s sight―which was largely blocked by his own metal cube, anyway, because he lay on his side. He presently called to 27E-24, who was slightly tilted on one corner.

  “Where are the Oaos now?”

  “They are leaving, going toward the edge of the world.”

  “Do they seem bound for Ui?”

  “It is probable, though my sense of direction has become rather confused by the character of this flat-sided world.”

  “The Uum, if their reports are true, have nothing to fear from the Oaos. The Oaos seem friendly to them, though the Uum seldom see them.”

  “Where do you suppose they come from?”

  “The Land of Exhaustion.”

  “We still do not know what they are.”

  “It is possible that the metal globes are operated by remote control, but logical reasoning would argue against that possibility,” the professor stated. “A form of life intelligent enough to build those things would be likely to occupy them as well.”

  “Do you suppose the Oaos could be from another world of this system―one of the original planets?” 27E-24 queried.

  “Possibly, yet it would be more probable that they are from another facet of this strange world. It has six sides, you know, presenting at least three varying forms of environment, two of which we already know.”

  “The gravity must be tremendous on the two ends,” mused 27E-24.

  Thus wandered the conversation of the two Zoromes as the day grew clear and they waited in motionless silence at the edge of the vast plain, abandoned and solitary. The fleeing Ooaurs had long ago disappeared; the scurried dust from their many feet had settled. The helpless machine men pondered the question now uppermost in their minds: when would their companions come and find them? And as the day grew in length, so grew the assurance of the professor that the green liquid spattered on him from the metal globe would prove harmless to metal.

  The sun hung low, gradually nearing the world’s edge, where soon it would sink beyond the sea of atmosphere. It was 27E-24 who first noticed the return of the Oaos in the distance. They were returning from the direction of Ui. The machine men counted them. One-two-three-four! There had been but three previously. Now there was another. Four? The professor looked again carefully, for in the distance more dark specks became visible and grew in perspective. They came straight for the lonely, abandoned machine men of Zor. The approaching globes of the Oaos shone in the sky like gibbous moons, reflecting the light of the sinking sun.

  It was 27E-24 who first noticed that only three of them presented this gibbous aspect. The rest did not a
ppear as globes. Glimmering suspicion became mother to the confirming truth: only three of the flying things were Oaos. The rest were Zoromes on the wing!

  “It can only mean that the Oaos have been to Ui and have brought our machine men back here with them,” said the professor. “They have brought them back to find us.”

  And Professor Jameson was right. His flying companions were soon about him and 27E-24, while the Oaos hovered far above.

  “The spaceship is coming,” said 119M-5, pointing to a looming bulk upon die horizon. “What happened, and where do the Oaos figure in this?”

  “We were captured by Ooaurs,” the professor replied briefly, omitting mention of the fight in the village and how they had involuntarily traded captors. “The Oaos came and frightened away the Ooaurs so that they left us and ran, those whom the Oaos did not kill.”

  The professor cast mental attention upon the burnt ashes dotting the plain about them.

  “But what are the Oaos?” 744U-21 asked. “We cannot communicate with them, despite their intelligent actions.”

  “You know as much as I do about them,” the professor confessed. “The Oaos came and left silently except for their attack upon the Ooaurs with a greenish, burning liquid they are capable of ejecting.”

  “Do you suppose they are like us?” 41C-98 queried as the spaceship dropped slowly groundward. “Have they organic brains?”

  “If they have, they are strangely uncommunicative,” 6W-438 observed. “They came to Ui, hovering over the city, arousing the acclaim and excitement of the Disci. After a while, they started slowly for the rim and the Land of Exhaustion; we were preparing to start in search of you and 27E-24, so we followed. They were silent to all our queries.”

  Chapter VI

  “They are friendly. That is certain.”

  The two Zoromes were taken aboard the spaceship where their heads were removed and placed upon new cubes already equipped with tentacles and legs. It was found that their original cubes had suffered damage at the junctions where the legs and tentacles had been removed by the Ooaurs. These cubes could not be equipped again until after necessary repairs had been made to them. While their heads were being placed on new bodies, the two rescued Zoromes related their fight with the Ooaurs and their subsequent adventures.