He soon had risen about four meters above the ground. Here he first hung the maser on a branch, then pulled the ax out of his belt and thrust it into the bole with a sharp movement. After that, he took off his shirt and tied it around one of the branches. Next he pulled out the crystal piece from his backpack and put it in the resulting bag.
Having stored the crystal billet, the traveler set about arranging his night’s lodging. To do this, he, tied his backpack with its own straps between two strong branches, and thus achieved a hammock. Ama first cautiously crawled into it, and then lay down to his full height and prepared for bed.
The young man immediately understood that he hadn’t rested in such comfortable conditions since he’d left the colony. Here, at a height, he could forget about predators and, moreover, he was not lying on rough ground in a stuffy tent. The branches, along with the hammock, swayed slightly, lulling the tired man. Nevertheless, two reasons prevented him from falling asleep immediately.
Hunger bothered him, although the scout regarded it as annoying but insignificant. The second reason—Mafkona—he considered to be really worrying. The girl remained inside a tent into which no beast could penetrate, as he had previously believed. But after his meeting with the huge animals, which he’d now of course named the BLC-1, the man was anxious that such creatures could deliver a mortal blow through the fabric of the tent, too. Here Ama remembered the question that had come to his mind during the recent battle, but he’d naturally immediately forgotten about it then.
Now he thought about these predators, and in general about the animal world, about which he actually knew nothing, but with whom he shared the planet. Why had they never encountered such large animals near the colony? Had it turned out that these creatures had realized the danger earlier than the others, fled and never again approached the settlement? Yes, they still had a lot to learn…
Here the young man resumed his thoughts about Mafkona. Although very soon he realized that he could do nothing but hope that when he met the girl the next morning, she would be well. Ama was swinging in a hammock, and the stars followed him in the sky. Gradually, tiredness and the natural cradle overcame the thoughts that prevented him from sleeping.
In the morning, having slept, the scout felt rested and awake. Soon he had already met with Mafkona, and they quickly reached the Warm, without even noticing their way. A rescue team already waited for them there, and the joint group arrived at the colony on time.
Ama still felt fresh and, having reached the settlement, he immediately got up on the former lander. It seemed natural to him that he could adjust the line without using tools, while Memi made a magnifying glass. At the same time, the young man was still a little surprised at his inexplicable rush. Why hadn’t he taken the rifle off his shoulder before climbing onto the roof of the building?
He’d already approached the parabolic antenna, when at that very moment it was as if a flash of lightning had illuminated his surroundings. He looked around and saw that a strange spacecraft of a red color and cubic shape had landed right in the living zone of the colony. The sound of its engines attracted the settlers, their cattle, and even wild animals. This seemed strange to Ama, as usually all animals, both domestic and wild, were afraid of loud noises.
Everyone gathered around this vehicle, waiting for future events. At that moment, the hatch opened and a ramp slid out. Then, one after another, three devices rolled out of the ship—glittering spheres mounted on tracked platforms.
These spheres simply rotated around their vertical axis for some time. Then an opaque darkness, about the width of a bucket, appeared in the air in front of one of them. Ama didn’t even have time to blink before this beam reached one of the LH-1s and made a hole in it. A moment later, the body of the animal, which had not yet understood what was happening, simply was drawn into this darkness and dissolved inside it.
An understanding flashed in the young man’s head, which instantly pervaded his body with horror. These were the scouts of an unknown civilization. They were clearing a place for their life. The earth robots had acted similarly.
Ama feverishly asked himself what would happen to the colonists. The answer instantly arose in his brain. As the earthlings had freed up space for themselves, so these others were getting rid of everything alien! They wanted Neia! Other civilizations also wouldn’t want to remain forever on a single celestial body. A planet suitable for life was the only treasure in the universe for which it was worth going to space, and nothing else.
Meanwhile, the alien machines were continuing to kill the animals. They, being stunned by horror, rushed around. The domestic animals mooed, bleated, gaggled, barked, and in general, seemed to have flooded the entire planet with noise. Against this background, the wild creatures seemed completely silent, their hissing and wheezing not being able to compete with the sonorous sounds of their new neighbors.
Men and women ran to these moving spheres, waving their arms, trying to show that the cattle belonged to them. The next moment Ama, who stood near the mast, saw a terrible picture. Fof was the first to run to the killing apparatus, and she shouted something to it. She also held out her hand to it, apparently wanting to touch it and attract its attention. Unfortunately she managed to do so.
Immediately, with unexpected promptness, the robot first rolled aside, and then turned to Fof. From its hole, similar to an entrance to the abyss, darkness then appeared. It hit the girl in her chest and began to absorb her. First the skin, then the flesh was absorbed, and finally it tore the heart out of her body. Fof screamed harrowingly and staggered. Ama closed his eyes.
Almost immediately, a rage swept over him. The young man opened his eyes and aimed at the hull of the robot. His shot sparkled on the metal surface, but didn’t bring any harm to the device. Instead, the apparatus instantly directed its black void at him. Seeing this, Ama jumped down from the roof, and surprisingly didn’t feel a blow when he landed. Meanwhile, the second robot had also noticed him and taken aim. Ama managed to roll away and hide behind a large plant. Now he couldn’t remember that something so large had been growing earlier in that particular place.
The two robots began to surround the plant, and the third continued to destroy all living things. Ama, trying to avoid being surrounded, retreated on all fours and over his shoulder cast frequent glances in search of another shelter. The only nearby hiding place would be a flower bed, which had also appeared all of a sudden. Now he backed through the flowers, straightening their stems after himself. The tension grew. The noise got louder every moment. Ama realized that his comrades had already guessed what was happening, and now they were trying to escape through belated flight.
Where are they running to? A hopelessness engulfed Ama. After all, outside the colony they will just die of hunger.
But now he couldn’t think about his comrades; his enemies had gone around the plant and, not finding him, began to rotate their upper parts in search of him. Ama took aim at the part of the left apparatus from where the emptiness was appearing. He fired, and in the next instant saw with relief the result of his action. Something flashed in the bowels of the killer apparatus, then sparks flew out of it and it stiffened.
Ama noted with grim satisfaction that he had discovered their weak point. While the second robot analyzed the state of its teammate, the young man destroyed it as well.
After that, he crawled through the flowerbed in search of the third machine. This device moved among the prone bodies, killing those still alive. Now the youth had enough time to aim, and he turned off the last hostile robot with one accurate shot.
Ama jumped to his feet and approached the unfamiliar device. Suddenly, a small porthole opened at the top of this apparatus, and a bright yellow, dazzling ray spilled out of it, almost blinding the young man.
The scout instantly closed his eyes, but the light became even brighter. He turned away, but that didn’t help either! Frightened, Ama opened his eyes, and the situation immediately became clear: the first rays of Ro
were shining directly into the face of the sleeping young man, and had persistently woken him.
The traveler, amazed at the adventure that he’d experienced in his dream, lay motionless in his hammock for some time and slowly returned to reality.
Chapter 70
That morning, Ama struggled with the remnants of his terrible dream, Omis longed for food, Mafkona planned to leave the tent, and Ifi sat at the table accompanying Bame and Em with her gaze. Their figures had already diminished to the size of a human finger when she got up and went to the kitchen.
The girl squatted in front of the oven door and opened it. Then she took a few logs from a pile of firewood stacked there and put them into it. After that she stuck between them several thin chips specially stocked for kindling. Having arranged all this, she pulled the spiral out of her UD, heated it and, in turn, set fire to all the chips. Soon the flame spread to the logs. Making sure that the fire would not go out, Ifi closed the door and straightened. At that moment, she saw Memi approaching, her current duty mate.
“You, as always, have woken up first,” he told the girl.
“Today I am not the first; look there,” the girl pointed at two people far away, almost on the border of the settlement.
Memi looked in that direction. “Who are they?”
“Bame and Em—they want to visit the ocean before the scouts return.”
Memi turned to Ifi and asked, “When did they get ready? Why did they leave? We did not plan this trip.”
“They want to learn if there is something new and important to us at the coast,” the girl explained, and added, “I also did not understand why they would want to undertake such an, mmm-m, unplanned hike.”
For a few moments, Memi again stared at the pasture with a puzzled look, and then shrugged, saying, “We will clarify that later on through the radio. Now, let us make breakfast.”
Ifi nodded and went to the food cupboard, a couple of steps behind the stove. Here she took a wooden crate with a hay-covered bottom, which contained eggs. Memi took down a piece of smoked meat hanging from a rope stretched between the shelves and one of the posts that supported the canopy of parachute fabric. He put it on the kitchen table and began to cut it into equal, flat portions.
Then he placed the pieces in a large skillet, although they had more sophisticated devices, too. For example, one of the chambers that had previously produced human embryos, according to the GPC’s instructions, had been turned into a microwave oven. At first, the robots had prepared food for the infants almost exclusively in it. While Ifi was frying the eggs, Memi took a large clay jug with boiled milk in it from one of the shelves.
By the time the orderlies had finished their preparations, the morning had completely seized power. The well-washed colonists arrived exactly on time: everyone had a clock, and they all knew exactly how long it took to get from their house to the refectory.
Learning about the sudden departure of Bame and Em, the young people, instead of starting to eat, began to discuss this unexpected and, more importantly, unprepared-for sortie.
“What are we waiting for? Let us find out what happened. I will contact them and find out the reason for their unexpected leaving.”Nim said.
With these words, he set his clay mug half full of milk on the table and made a call. There was no answer.
“Perhaps they have already left the radio zone; let us get in touch with them via satellite,” he suggested.
“It is impossible,” Ifi disagreed. “They were still directly visible just half an hour ago.”
“Let us check,” Nim activated the satellite call mode on his UD.
The others simply connected to his instrument and, thus, knew what was happening without asking questions. There was no answer again.
“Maybe they forgot their screens?” Memi made another point. “Although how could it happen that they both forgot them at the same time?”
“I will check right now,” again Nim responded first. “I will go to their current house and take a look.”
He got up and went to their home. The rest of colonists returned to their breakfast. They’d barely resumed it when Nim sent to each screen, “Their devices are here. They have no connection.”
“Why did not they return when they found out that they’d forgotten to take their screens with them?” Arfina expressed her perplexity.
“Maybe they will return soon, or we will find out the answer to your question only after their return.”Im told her.
Hearing these words, the colonists gradually realized that they’d got yet another cause for unrest. Still, the expedition that had set off for the crystal occupied a central place in their thoughts. After all, it had ceased to communicate with the settlement already for nearly thirty hours.
In addition to thinking about their comrades, the colonists now felt tremendous pressure because of the responsibility of carrying out their most important task. From the very beginning of their conscious lives, the inhabitants of the new planet had known that they were there to change the habitat of mankind, since only that would provide a true improvement to the human species. That was why they’d been created to begin with.
Evolution, as a non-stop process, isn’t a guarantee of progress, and might even trend in the opposite direction. When it occurs under constant conditions, it only provides an increasingly accurate adaptation to them. As they’d learned, this was a dangerous situation because finely tuned organisms are extremely vulnerable to even the slightest change or threat. This was precisely what had caused several mass extinctions on the planet of their ancestors. In the upshot of this unchanged habitat, the most catastrophic phenomenon could happen—humanity on Earth might go extinct, and the Neians would remain alone in the universe.
After a long pause, Memi said resolutely, “Yesterday we discussed the situation, and decided that it was most correct to wait for them until the term expired. So I think that there is no point in sitting here and talking again. Let us go and do today’s tasks.”
In response, some of them nodded silently, while others simply continued to eat. Having finished breakfast, they dispersed also in silence. The young people took up their affairs, and the day first blossomed, and then, according to the laws of nature, began to show signs of fading.
When the evening came, the lasses and lads dined in complete silence again. After that, some of them stood up, and some remained at the table. They pondered on the new data, which they had obtained from the satellite by that time. Attempts to see something in these images appeared futile. Apparently their comrades were constantly moving through the forest, and the cosmic optical devices couldn’t see them under the crowns of the plants. The ocean coast showed nothing, either.
“Just three days ago, we knew everything in advance for decades to come, and now we do not even know what will happen tomorrow,” Kam said.
Having finished this phrase, he, without getting up, turned around and plucked one of the countless white flowers that dotted the branches of the apple trees. The young man rubbed it between his index finger and thumb, then brought it to his nose and inhaled its scent.
“At least, we know why Mafkona, Ama and Omis are absent, but why did Bame and Em leave so quickly?” Pamo asked. In his black hands, he fumbled a leaf darkened in the dusk. “Ifi, do you remember anything else from talking to them?”
“No, there is nothing to remember; they left so quickly that I did not have time to question them in detail,” the girl said in an even voice, without looking at anyone.
Jum got up, cast his eyes over his comrades and said, “The situation with Bame and Em is more or less clear. Presumably, without navigation, they have lost a lot of time in search of a passage among the prickly shrubs, as happened during our first hike to the ocean. If so, they will return also no later than noon tomorrow.”
“Maybe you can say something intelligible about the expedition, too?” Fof asked hopefully.
The girl stood with her back and the sole of her right foot, bent up
at the knee, leaning against the apple tree. Jum looked at her and fell into thought. Instead of him, Dme spoke, accompanying his speech by tapping his fingers on his desk, “We cannot now say anything logical about the expedition.”
Im got up and said loudly, uniformly, “Then let us act as always in accordance with common sense.”
“Are not we operating always in that way?” Pamo didn’t understand.
“Now we are spending time on useless conversations instead of going to bed, to be ready tomorrow, if there be a need to save the expedition. I think we should go and rest,” Im explained to him.
No one objected to this proposal. The colonists simply followed his advice and went home. Only Lif lingered a bit, as if she wanted to say something, but, seeing how quickly the refectory had been deserted, she changed her mind. The girl went to the house closest to the entrance to the lander, which she now shared with Cim.
Chapter 71
On awakening, unpleasant feelings fell upon Omis. His sides hurt, hunger seemed to suck all his strength out of him, and his stomach rumbled so loudly that if its owner hadn’t been located so far from the forest, all its inhabitants would have heard him.
However, he still praised and encouraged himself: “It turns out, albeit by accident, I have chosen a good place to spend the night.”
The traveler got up from his essentially stone bed and glanced down from the cliff. He smiled involuntarily. In the rays of Ro’s rising, the orange colored forest, spreading wide before his eyes, looked as beautiful and familiar as a comrade.
The rocket-like leaves on the upper parts of the plants shone in the dazzling light of the daylight star. Their layers swayed, visible though each other, making a motley picture particularly attractive to his eyes. Below, still in the shadow of the rocks, the “rackets” it seemed were getting rid of the darkness of the night, right at that moment.
Space for Evolution Page 33
