Two more days—twenty kilometers? They could not have done that much were they not crossing a flat space, a plateau on the lap of Lochan.
It was dreary country, treeless, rock-strewn, sparsely covered with low yellowish scrub. Many streams ran down toward the Morh, their tinkle the only sound except for an endless whittering wind; but the banks held no more life than the dusty stretches beyond. Alone the ranges that hemmed in the world on three sides, and the splendid upward leap of the snowcone ahead, redeemed this landscape.
The first evening they camped in sight of a crater. Its vitrified walls gleamed reddish black, like clotted blood, in the last sunlight. Vadász pointed and remarked, “I thought this region is barren because runoff from above leached the soil. Now I find otherwise.”
“How so?” Heim asked, incurious in his fatigue.
“Why, yonder is plain to see as bombwork. There must have been an industrial center here once, that was destroyed in the war.”
“And you’d let the same happen to Earth!” Bragdon’s accusation was the first word he had spoken in more than a day.
Heim sighed. “How often must I explain?” he said, more to Jocelyn than to the Peaceman. “Earth has space defenses. She can’t be attacked—unless we drift on from crisis to crisis till matters get so bad that both sides have to build fleets “big enough to take the losses in breaking through. All I want is to head off that day by settling with Alerion now. Unfortunately, Alerion isn’t interested in a reasonable settlement. We’ve got to prove to them that they haven’t any alternative.”
“Womwardment does not account wor the inwertility here,” said Uthg-a-K’thaq. “The war was three or wour Earth centuries ago. Radioactiwity disawweared long since. Something else has kewt nature ’rom recowering.”
“Oh, to hell with it,” Jocelyn moaned. “Let me sleep.”
Heim lay down too. He thought with a dull unease that they should set a watch—but no, everyone was exhausted … Unconsciousness took him.
The next day they saw two metallic shapes at a distance. There was no question of detouring for a closer look, and in any event they had something else to occupy what small part of their minds could be spared from the ever more painful onward march. The end of the plateau was coming into sight. Between the edge and the mountain’s next upward slope was an escarpment. Right and left stretched those obsidian cliffs, sheer, polished, not high but unscalable in this gravity without equipment the party didn’t have. To go around them—at whatever unseen point they stopped—would take days; and the survival drugs could not last for such a journey.
Only in the center of view was the line broken. A bank of vapor roiled from the foot of the scarp for several kilometers up the mountainside above. Like an immense curtain it hid the terrain; plumes blew off the top, blizzard color against the deep sky, and a roaring grew louder as the walkers neared.
“That has to be Thundersmoke,” Vadász said. “But what is it?”
“A region ow—I hawe not the English,” Uthg-a-K’thaq answered. “Tsheyyaka. The ground weneath is hot, and water woils out.”
“Geysers and hot springs.” Heim said. He whistled. “But I’ve never seen or heard of anything their size. They make Yellowstone or Dwarf’s Forge look like a teakettle. Can we get through?”
“We must.” Uthg-a-K’thaq bent his head so that all three eyes could peer through his faceplate. Evolved for the mists of his own planet, they could see a ways into the infrared. “Yes-s-s. The cliwws are crum’led. Makes an incline, though wery rugged and with water rushing ewerywhere.”
“Still, thank God, a high gravity means a low angle of repose. And once into those meadows beyond, we should have a chance of meeting hunters or patrollers from the Hurst.” Heim straightened a little. “We’ll pull through.”
A while later he saw a third gleam of steel among the bushes. This one was so near the line of march that he altered course to pass by. They didn’t know exactly where they could best start into Thundersnloke anyway.
The object grew as he plodded. During rest periods he found he could not keep his gaze off. The shape was no uglier than much else he had seen, but in some indescribable fashion it made his spine crawl. When at last he dragged himself alongside and stopped for a look, he wanted to get away again, fast.
“An ancient machine.” Vadász spoke almost too softly to be heard through the grumble and hiss from ahead. “Abandoned when the bomb struck.”
Corrosion was slow in this atmosphere. Paint had worn off the iron, which in turn was eroded but still shiny in places. The form was boxlike, some two meters square and five long, slanting on top toward a central turret. The ruins of a solar-power accumulator system could be identified, together with a radar sweep and, Heim thought, other, detector instruments. Several ports in body and turret were shut, with no obvious means of opening them. He parted the brush around the base and saw that this had been a hovercraft, riding an air cushion and propelled by net backward thrust in any direction.
“A vehicle,” he said. “After the war it just sat, I guess. Nobody can have moved back to the Lochan region for a long time. Those other things we glimpsed must be similar.”
Jocelyn clutched at his hand. He was reminded of his daughter when she was small and got frightened. “Let’s go, Gunnar,” she begged. “This is too much like dead bones.”
“I wonder,” he remarked, carefully matter-of-fact, “why the metal wasn’t salvaged. Even with atomic energy, I should think the natives on a fireless planet would value scrap iron.”
“Taboo?” Vadász suggested. “These wrecks may well have dreadful associations.”
“Maybe. Though my impression is that the Staurni look back on their war with a lot less horror than we remember our Exchange—and Earth got off very lightly.” Heim shifted the burden of air system and supply pack on his shoulders. “Okay, we’ll push on. The sun’s low, and I don’t fancy camping among ghosts.”
“Can you give us a song, Endre?” Jocelyn asked. “I could use one.”
“I shall try.” The minstrel’s voice was flattened as well as distorted in transmission, but he croaked:
Engaged in helping the woman along, Heim paid no attention to the words at first. Suddenly he realized that Vadász was not singing “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” at all, but the cruel old Irish original.
Heim glanced at Bragdon. One could almost read the thought in that helmet: How can these devils admit to themselves what war really means? The gloved hands clamped into fists: I know! I had to bury it!
It was not good to hear in this slain land. But maybe Endre had no choice. Whatever haunted the machine receding too slowly into distance, had touched him likewise.
Everyone was unspokenly glad of the exhaustion which tumbled them into sleep that night. Yet Heim rested ill. Dreams troubled him, and several times he started awake … what noise? A change in the geysers? -No, something metallic, a creak, a rattle, a buzz, far off but limping closer; imagination, nothing else. He sank back into the feverish dark.
Dawn was wet with mists blown from Thundersmoke, a bare three or four kilometers away. White vapors coiled along the ground and hazed the countryside so that vision faded shortly into grayness. Overhead the sky was a bowl of amethyst and Lochan’s cap too bright to look at. Heim closed his chowlock on a mouthful of concentrate—the rest was a lump in his stomach—and stared Wearily around. “Where’s Joss?”
“She went yonder,” Vadász said. “Um-m … she ought to be back now, eh?”
“I’ll go find her.” Heim settled the weight on his body and lumbered into the fog.
She hunched not far off. “What’s the matter?” he called through the gush and burble of water.
Her form scarcely moved. “I can’t,” she said thinly.
“What can’t you?”
“Go any further. I can’t. Pain, every joint, every cell. You go on. Get help. I’ll wait.”
He crouched, balancing on hands as well as feet. “You’ve got to march,” he said. “We can’t leave you alone.”
“What can hurt me worse? What does it matter?”
Remorse smote him. He laid an arm across her and said without steadiness, “Joss, I was wrong to make you come. I should have left you behind for your friends—But too late now. I don’t ask you to forgive me—”
“No need, Gunnar.” She leaned against him.
“—but I do tell you you’ve got to make the trek. Three or four more days.” Can’t be any longer, because that’s when -we run out of supplies. “Then you can rest as much as you want.”
“Rest forever,” she breathed. Moisture ran down her faceplate like tears, but she spoke almost caressingly. “I used to dread dying. Now it’s sweet.”
Alarm cut through his own weariness. “There’s another reason you .can’t stay here by yourself. You’d let go all holds. This is the wrong time of month for you, huh? Okay.” He took the waste unit she had not refolded and slung it on his own back. His gloves groped at her pack.
“Gunnar!” She started. “You can’t carry my load too!”
“Not your air rig, worse luck. The rest is only a few kilos.” The fresh weight gnawed at him. He climbed to his feet again and reached down for her hands. “C’mon. Allez oop.”
The breeze shifted and from the north came the sound of his dreams. Clank, bang, groan, close enough to override the thunders. “What’s that?” she shrilled.
“I dunno. Let’s not find out.” His own heart missed a beat, but he was grimly pleased to see how she scrambled erect and walked.
At camp, Vadász and Uthg-a-K’thaq stared vainly for the source of the new noise. Bragdon was already stumping off, lost in an apathy which must stem from more than tiredness. The others followed him without speculating aloud.
The sun swung higher and began to burn off the fog. Steam still shrouded the natural cut in the cliffs, though the Naqsan said he could make out details of the nearer part. The humans saw scores of boulders, some big as houses, and thousands of lesser rocks that littered the final kilometer before the climb began. Among them washed hot, smoking streams, which turned the ground into mud tinted yellow by sulfur. Where pools had formed the hues were red and green, microscopic organisms perhaps …
The pursuing clatter had strengthened. Vadász tried to sing, but no one listened and he soon quit. They tottered on, breathing hard, pausing less often to rest than had been their wont.
The moment came without announcement. Heim cast a glance behind and stopped dead. “Fanden i helvede!” he choked. His companions slewed around to see.
Between the lifting of fog and its own nearness, the thing had become visible a kilometer or so to their rear. It was another machine like the one they had found. But a twisted, weather-eaten detector frame still rose above the turret, and the body moved … slowly, crippledly, loose parts vibrating aloud, air-blower spitting and jerking, the whole frame ashudder, it moved in their wake.
Jocelyn suppressed a cry. Bragdon actually jumped backward a step. Panic edged his tone: “What’s that?”
Heim beat down his own quick fear. “An abandoned vehicle,” he said. “Some kind of automaton. Not quite worn out. Scarcely any moving parts, you know.”
“But it’s following us!” Jocelyn quavered. “Probably set to patrol an area, home on any life it detects, and—” A crazy hope fluttered through Heim’s brain, unshared by his guts. “Maybe we’re being offered a ride.”
“Suq?” asked Uthg-a-K’thaq in astonishment. After a moment, thoughtfully: “Yes-s-s, is wossiwle. Or at least, grant a radio that wunctions, we could call.”
“No.” Vadász’s helmet rolled with headshaking. “I do not trust the looks.”
Heim ran a tongue which had gone wooden over his lips. “It’s moving quicker than we can, I think,” he said. “Well have to settle with it one way or another.” Decision came. “Wait here. I’ll go back and see.”
Vadász and Jocelyn caught his arms simultaneously. He shook them off. “Damnation, I’m still the captain,” he rapped. “Let me be. That’s an order.”
He started off. The hurt in his muscles dwindled. Instead there came an odd, tingling numbness. His mind felt unnaturally clear, he saw each twig and leaf on the haggard bushes around, felt how his feet struck soil and the impact that traveled through shins to knees, smelled his own foulness, heard the geysers boom at his back. Earth seemed infinitely remote, a memory of another existence or a dream he had once had, unreal; yes, despite its vividness this world was unreal too, as hollow as himself. I’m afraid, he thought across an unbridgeable abyss. That machine frightens me worse than anything ever did before.
He walked on. There was nothing else to do. The detector lattice swiveled stiffly about, focused invisible unfelt energies on him. The robot changed direction to intercept Several armor plates clashed loose. Blackness gaped behind them. The whole body was leprous with metal decay.
How long has it wandered this upland? For what?
The turret rotated. A port tried to open, got halfway, and stuck. The machine grated inside. Another port at the front of the body slid back. A muzzle poked forth. The slug-thrower spoke.
Heim saw dirt fly where the bullets hit, a hundred meters short He whipped about and ran. The thing growled. Swaying on an unstable air cushion, it chased him. The gun raved a minute longer before stopping.
The Slaughter Machines! beat through Heim’s skull, in time with his gasps for wind and the jar of footfalls. Robots to guard whatever there was where that crater is now. Guard it by killing anything that moved. But a missile got through, and the robots alone were left, and hunted and killed till they wore out, and a few are still prowling these barrens, and today one of them has found us.
He reached the others, stumbled, and rolled, in a heap. For a minute he lay half stunned. Vadász and Uthg-a-K’thaq helped him rise. Jocelyn hung onto his hand and wept “I thought you were dead. I thought you were dead.”
“He would be,” said Vadász, “but explosives have deteriorated … Watch out!”
Another port had opened, another tube thrust clear. Across the distance, through a red blur in his vision, Heim saw coils, a laser projector, and lasers don’t age. He grabbed Jocelyn to pull her behind him. A beam sickled, brighter than the sun. It struck well to the left Bushes became charcoal and smoke. The beam traced a madman’s course, boiled a rivulet, shot skyward, winked out.
“The aiming mechanism,” Uthg-a-K’thaq said. For once his own voice was shaken. “Has worn to uselessness.”
“Not if the thing gets close,” Bragdon whimpered. “Or it can slugger us, or crush us, or—Run!”
The terror had gone from Heim. He felt a cold uplifting: no pleasure of combat, for he knew how thin their chance was, but total aliveness. The matter grew crystalline in his mind, and he said: “Don’t. You’ll wear yourself out in no time. This is a walking race. If we can get to Thundersmoke, or even to those boulders, ahead of the bullets, we may be able to hide. No, don’t shed your packs. We won’t be allowed to retrieve diem. Walk.”
They struck out. “Shall I sing for you?” Vadász asked. “No need,” Heim said.
“I thought not. Good. I do need the breath.” Heim took the rear. The engine coughed and banged behind. Again and again he could not control himself, he must stop and turn about for a look. Always death was closer. Old, old, crumbling, crazed, half blind and half palsied, the thing which had never been alive and would not die shivered along just a little faster than a man could stride on Staurn. The poise from it was an endless metal agony. Once he saw an armor plate drop off, once the air drive went awry and almost toppled the ponderous bulk; but it came on, came on. And the rocks of refuge ahead grew nearer with nightmare slowness.
Jocelyn began to stagger. Heim moved to give her support. As if the change in configuration had tripped some relay in a rotted computer, the slug-thrower spat anew. Several of the bullets buzzed past them.
Bragdon joined Heim on the woman’s other side. “Let me help,” he panted. She leaned on them both. “We … won’t make it,” Bragdon said.
“We might,” Heim snapped, for he dreaded a return of that negation he had seen in Jocelyn this dawn.
“We could … maybe … if we moved steady. You could. Not me. Not her. Got to rest.” Bragdon left the remainder unsaid: The pursuer needs no rest.
“Get into that water, among those rocks,” Vadász said. “Lie low. Then maybe that pokolgep cannot see us.”
Heim followed his gesture. Somewhat to the left, a scatter of stones lay in a muddy pool. None were bigger than a man, but—A light artillery shell passed overhead. The cannon crack rang back off the unattainable cliffs. The shell struck, splintered a boulder, but did not explode. “Let’s try,” he agreed.
They splashed through muck and crouched belly-down in shallow red water. Heim was careful to hold his automatic free, Vadász his laser. Pistols seemed pathetic against the monster’s size and armament; but a man took care of his weapons. Mist blown from Thundersmoke pattered upon them. Heim wiped his faceplate and stared between two rocks.
The machine had halted. It snarled to itself, jerked guns right and left, swept detectors through a hemisphere. “Good Lord,” Vadász whispered, “I think indeed it has lost us.”
“The water cools oww our in’rared radiation,” Uthg-a-K’thaq replied as hushedly. “We are maywe Under its radar weams, and maywe the owtical circuits are wad. Or the memory system has gone to wieces.”
“If only—No.” Heim’s pistol sank in his fist.
“What did you think?” Jocelyn asked, frantic.
“How to disable what’s left of the detector lattice. Could be done by a laser beam—see that exposed power cable? Only you’d never get close enough before you were spotted and killed.”
The short pulse-stopping hope, that the machine might give up and go away, crashed. It started grinding about a spiral, a search curve. Heim plotted that path and muttered: “Should be here inside half an hour. However, first it’ll move away. Which gains us some slight meterage. Be ready to start when I give you the word.”
“We’ll never make it, I tell you,” Bragdon protested.
“Not so loud, you crudhead. We don’t know that the thing hasn’t still got ears.”
As if in response, the robot stopped. It rested a moment on the whirr from its air blowers; the lattice horns wove around, tilted, came to a halt … It continued along the spiral.
“You see?” Vadász said with disgust. “Keep trying, Bragdon. You may yet destroy us.”
The Peaceman made a strangled noise. “Don’t,” Jocelyn begged. “Please.”
Uthg-a-K’thaq stirred. “A thought,” he belched. “I do in truth weliewe we cannot outrun the enemy to shelter. But can Slaughter Machines count?”
Vadász’s breath hissed inward. “What’s this?”
“We hawe lit-tle to lose,” the Naqsan said. “Let us run, excewt for one who waits here and keews the laser. Can he get unnoticed in cutting range ow the wistol weam—”
“He could be killed too easily,” Heim said. But hope shuddered anew in him. Why not? Better go down fighting, whatever happen?. And I might even save her.
“Okay,” he said slowly. “Give me the gun and I’ll bushwhack our friend.”
“No, skipper,” Vadász said. “I am no hero, but—”
“Orders,” Heim said.
“Gunnar—” broke from Jocelyn.
Uthg-a-K’thaq plucked the laser out of Vadász’s grasp. “No time wor human games,” he snorted. “We were not here without him, and he is the least usewul. So.” He thrust the weapon at Bragdon. “Or dare you not?”
“Gimme!” Heim snatched for it.
Bragdon drew away. “That thing out there,” he said in a remote voice. “What comes of war. Think about that, Heim.”
Vadász wallowed through the water and silt, after him. Heim saw the robot stop again to listen. “Get out of here!” Bragdon yelled. “I’ll let it see me if you don’t!”
The machine plowed through the bushes, over streams and stones, directly toward them.
No chance to argue. Bragdon must go ahead and be a damn fool. Heim got to his feet with a sucking splash. “Follow me—everyone!” Jocelyn slithered from the pool with him. They started off together.
Thundersmoke brawled before them. The engine chugged hoarse behind. A gun chattered. Mist swirled in their view, settled on their faceplates, blinded them. Staurn hauled them downward, laid rocks to trip1 them, brewed mud to glue their boots. Heim’s heart smashed at his ribs as if it were also a cannon. He didn’t know how much he leaned on Jocelyn or she on him. There was no awareness of anything but noise, weight, and vast drowning waters.
Vadász shouted.
Heim lurched against a boulder, got his back to it, and lifted his automatic. But the hunter machine was not about to pounce.
Near the thing was, most horribly near. Bragdon’s tiny form crept from ambush. Up to that iron body the man went, braced himself on widespread legs, aimed his pistol and fired.
The laser sword hewed. Metal framework glowed white where struck. Trigger held fast, Bragdon probed for the power cable. ”
Something like a bull’s bellow rose out of the robot. It swung clumsily around. Bragdon stood where he was, dwarfed under its bulk, steadily firing. Ports opened in the armor, where they were able. Guns came out. A few still worked. Heim hauled Jocelyn to the ground and laid himself above her. A wild beam hit the boulder where he had made his stand. Rock flowed from the wound.
The guns could not reach as low as Bragdon. The machine clanked forward. Bragdon severed the detector powerline. “Run, Victor!” Vadász howled. “Get out of the way!” Bragdon turned and tripped. He went on his face. The robot passed over him.
And on, firing, firing, a sleet of bullets, shells, energy beams, poison gases, destruction’s last orgasm; senseless, witless, futureless, the Slaughter Machine rocked south because it chanced to be headed that way.
Heim rose and hurried toward Bragdon. Maybe he’s all right. An air cushion distributes weight over a large area. Bragdon did not stir. Heim came near and stopped.
Dimly, through the clamor of geysers and departing engine, he heard Jocelyn call, “I’m coming, Gunnar!”
“No,” he cried back. “Don’t.”
There were sharp blades in the bottom of the iron shell. They must move up and down, clearing the ground by a few centimeters. He did not want her to see what lay before his eyes.