"Darla! Throw me your brolly, please. Hurry!"
She did, and I popped it open and put it up against the smoldering sky.
I walked slowly across the bridge, stopping momentarily to inspect one of the piers the roadbed had dropped down into the gully to carry its weight over. I didn't risk bending over very far, feeling stiff and top-heavy. I got no clue as to how trick had been done, and continued on across the bridge.
I was met by the black man. He was on the light-skinned side, tall, round-shouldered, very thin. A big, long-fingered hand enveloped mine.
"Hello! Decent of you to stop. Didn't think you would. I'm John Sukuma-Tayler." His accent was British, his manner ami able. After I told him my first name only, he said, "Awful place to have broken down. The heat's about done us in. Reminds me a bit too much of Africa. I lived in Europe most of my life, and liked it."
"Why did you leave?" I said, a little too bluntly. I was hot!
He took it as humor. "Sometimes I wonder!" He chuckled.
"Sorry. I didn't mean it the way it sounded."
"Don't fret about it. Some of our people are on the verge of biting each other's heads off. The heat's getting to all of us. We're in quite a pickle. Do you think we could prevail upon you to lend a hand?"
"Sure. What's up."
We began walking back to the bus, which was up on its service jacks, precariously so. The bus was an old clunker, but in its day it had been built for speed and taking sharp curve and had a ground-effect flange all the way around it, which made it difficult to get underneath. The built-in jacks were barely adequate, especially in this gravity. Anyone crawlingi under would be taking a chance of having several tons of low slung vehicle squat on his chest. To preclude this eventuality, several of the passengers were shoring up the edges of the flange near the jacks with plastic bags filled with earth. The dirt was being shoveled from a nearby conical mound, one of many that punctuated the plain. No large rocksLwere handy for the job. The work was progressing slowly.
"All I can tell you," Sukuma-Tayler said with a helpless spread of his arms, "is that it quit, just like that. Powered down and stopped, here in the middle of nowhere. A few of our people have some mechanical aptitude, but no one's really got a look yet. We tore out some seats and tried to get to the engine from the inside, but the bolts holding the shielding wouldn't budge, and we have no power tools."
'Too bad. That's how you get to the guts of this thing. Going underneath might not do you any good. But, it depends on what's ailing it."
"Thought as much. The engine monitoring readouts are still operative, but they don't say much. To me, that is."
"Let me take a look," I said. "While I'm at it, I'd suggest you get those sandbags out from under the GE flange and put them under the frame bracings. If she goes down, that flange will just crinkle."
The big man furrowed his brow. "You know, you're absolutely right." He shook his head wearily. "Ignorance is so handicapping! Especially with machines."
"Can be deadly, too." I dragged myself toward the hatch.
The verniers told me nothing, being little better than idiot lights. Nothing in the way of plasma diagnostic systems, even though the vehicle had been a commercial carrier.
Sukuma-Tayler eased his lanky frame inside and sat next tome.
"Anything?" he asked hopefully.
"No, not much. It looks like you have full power going through the radio-frequency breakdown stage, but other than that, I can't tell anything from these readouts. Does she turn over?"
"Yes, but the engine just won't catch."
"Uh-huh. Well, that could be anything. If it's loss of plasma confinement, that could be pretty hairy. I couldn't do anything here."
"I was afraid of that," Sukuma-Tayler said ruefully.
"You're lucky in one sense. These old vans are among the few Earth-built buggies still on Skyway. My rig's alien-manufactured, but built to Terran specifications and design, so I'm fairly familiar with this kind of hardware. However, I'm really not a mechanic. It takes an expert."
"Anything you can do, Jake, would be appreciated."
"Well, I'll give it a try." I mopped my brow with an already damp sleeve. "I can't remember, though, whether these old buses use an occluded-gas ion source. If so, you need a pinch of titanium in with the fuel. Otherwise, you get neutral particles flying all over the place between pulses. I forget whether they do or not. What kind of fuel are you using?"
"High-test. Deuterium-tritium."
"Yeah, I thought so. My rig runs on double deuce. Newer design."
"Ah."
"When did you fill up last?"
The Afro scratched his beard. "You know, I really can't remember. These things run forever, it seems."
Continuing my train of thought, I got out my circuit-test gauge. "Got a screwdriver?"
Sukuma-Tayler yelled for a screwdriver, and one of the passengers, a young Oriental man, brought him one. I took it and unbolted the instrument panel, slid it out, and looked for the fuel readout leads. I found them and tested them. Of course.
"I found your problem," I said, pushing the panel back. Naturally, it didn't want to fit back the way it had been. I shoved, got nowhere.
"You did?" He was shocked and relieved.
"Yeah. You're out of fuel."
"What! You're joking."
"No. The fuel-level readout was shorted."
The big man slapped his forehead. "I'll be damned. After all that mucking about―" He leaned out the hatch and yelled, "People! Stop what you're doing. Our friend here has exposed us as the fools that we are." He turned back to me. "So sorry to have troubled you, old man. What classic boneheadedness!"
"It can… uhhh!… happen to anybody. Gimme a hand with this, will you?" '
We shoved the panel back in. The screwholes, contrary negative entities that they are, did not line up. I handed him the screws, and he looked at them blankly.
"I was meaning to ask," I said offhandedly. "Are you some sort of religious group?"
He beamed. "Yes! We're Teleologists. Church of Teleological Pantheism. You've heard of us?"
A man with pride in his faith is to be admired. "No."
"Uh. Well, that's what we are, and we're supposed to be settling this planet. We were en. route to Maxwellville."
We stepped outside. There were about seven people in the party besides the Afro, whom I presumed to be the leader. Four of them were women, and all were of various races. I took one man for an Australian Abo. "Not many of you for a colony, are you?"
"We're an advance party. More will be following shortly. We're branching off from a community on Khadija, and eventually we hope to siphon everybody there to Goliath. Our presence on Khadija is… well, resented."
"I see. You plan to homestead?"
"We hope to," Sukuma-Tayler told me as we watched his people unstack the sandbags and empty them. "Actually, we have a land grant from the―"
Yelling from the direction of the conical mound interrupted him. We turned and looked. One man who had been shoveling dirt was down on the ground not far from the mound. He was struggling with something that apparently had gotten hold of him. His partner was beating whatever it was with a shovel. We rushed ― I gimped ― over to them.
The thing was a half-meter-long segmented animal with what looked like a shiny metallic carapace. It had crablike claws, but there were more than two pincers on each. The three elements were positioned for grasping. The beastie had the screaming man's ankle in a tight grip. Even more startling was the sight of the animal hefting a shiny, sharp blade in the other claw, using it to jab its victim's calf with rapid, vicious up-and-down strokes. The man with the shovel gave up whacking the thing with the flat of the spade and used the edge like a chopper. After several strokes, he cut the creature in two. The front half fought on. Several people had run up, and we all made a grab for it at once. We tore the thing apart like a boiled lobster. I saw another man, the Abo, come away with the blade-wielding forelimb, at the price of
an oozing crimson slash across his palm.
I came up with a smaller side appendage, and examined it. What looked like small pieces of hammered, copper-colored metal were draped over the animal's soft, rubbery skin. Miniature armor. As a matter of fact, the metal looked very much like copper, perhaps with a slight leavening of tin. Bronze. The armor was attached with a sticky black gum, which was revealed when I pried the plates away from the leg. The skin was dun-colored and soft. I stood there scrutinizing it, absorbed.
"More of them!"
I looked up. More creatures had emerged from the mound while we were wrestling with me first. They were popping out of the top of the mound like blobs of lava from a volcano, wriggling down the steep sides, some of them running madly in circles, others getting a fix on us and charging, blades flashing in the sun. In an instant, there were hundreds of them all over the place.
We backed away toward the bus. I burned one who came toward us in a banzai charge, weapon whirling, pure hate in those black pin-dot eyes. That left two charges in the squib. More of them came at us. I shot two of them and stamped a third into the dirt, but not before he knifed me in the ankle and nicked my left shin with an armored pincer. I picked up his weapon. It was a sword ― no other word for it ― irregular in shape and crudely wrought, like the armor, but it held an edge to be reckoned with. The ankle wound began to pang.
The creatures were fast. They had already cut off our escape route to the bus and uproad to the bridge. We could only retreat parallel to the highway.
"We seemed to have disturbed their nest," Sukuma-Tayler observed dryly.
"You mean their barracks, don't you?"
We ran. Individual attacks broke off for the moment. They kept pace with us as we drew away, but when I looked back I was amazed to see them mustering into ranks for what looked like an organized pursuit.
Something whizzed past me.
I heard a scream and looked back. A black woman was. down, clutching the back of her head. We doubled back, and I bent over her. The projectile had left a bloody indentation in her scalp. I saw something shiny nearby and picked it up; it was a grape-size lump of copper. At closer range the girl would have been seriously injured. As it was, she was knocked silly. I looked out over the sea of crawling metal for the source of the barrage. From what I could make out, they were firing at us by means of a slingshot device operated by three creatures. Two took either end of a long elastic band of black material, probably a variant of the armor adhesive, while a third stretched the middle back about three meters. The release velocity was enough to make it a potent weapon.
Another ball buzzed by my ear. The artillery was advancing, leapfrogging forward after each shot. I helped carry the semiconscious girl back and away. There was no cover except for other nest-cones. The heat was beyond sapping me now; it was draining away my strength. The others looked to be on the verge of collapse, none of them sweating now, all body fluids leached through pores and evaporated. They had been out too long. I still had sweat in me, but the tap was full open. A floating sense of unreality came over me. I was hyperventilating.
Sam was just now turning around.
The infantry charged. They overtook us easily, hobbled as we were with the girl. By the time we brought her around and got her shakily to her feet, they were on us. The girl went down again.
No one had a working firearm, but we made do with what we had: both spades, a jack crank, a wrench, and an assortment of odd tools. I whacked at them with the parasol until it flew to pieces, then used my size-eleven Colonial Militia fatigue boots on them, wishing I'd worn my high boots that day. None of us fared very well. A man to my right went down, then another woman. I saw Sukuma-Tayler kick at the things until one grabbed him by the shoe and began hacking at his leg. He yelled, turned, and ran with the creature hanging on to him. He tried to kick it off, then went down and wrestled with it.
The creatures were swarming over the first injured woman. She was screaming hideously, but nobody could get to her. I tried to move forward, kicking at them, sending dozens of the bastards flying, but I couldn't make headway. One crawled up my leg from behind and I felt a searing pain in my thigh. I tore the animal off and threw it. I stumbled back over a partially buried length of metal, probably a tent pole. Not taking time to wonder who had had the misfortune to pitch camp in this crawling hell, I pulled it up and started to swing at them with it, with little effect except to keep them at a distance or knock weapons from their claws. I backed and swung, backed and swung, not having time to look up to see where Sam was. I heard him coming.
Finally, the offensive broke off on my section of front and I looked up. Sam was coming across the bridge, crunching and popping his way over a seething carpet of armor. It sounded as if he were running over a pile of eggs and scrap metal.
Something slithered through my legs. It was a mound-creature, but it had come from behind me. I whirled around. To our rear lay another army. Something about them looked slightly different, and I hoped they were from another hive, with any luck a hostile neighbor. It looked as though they were, because our attackers broke off completely and retreated a short distance, waiting for the first wave of shock troops from the other side to pass us by and reach them. We stood there in the middle of everything, watching the suicide squad from the challengers throw themselves at the front lines. They were quickly dispatched ― torn apart and left to jerk their lives out in the sand. Theses token charges seemed to be overtures to a major offensive. Heroic? Stupid? Maybe they had a purpose.
There were five of us left. Three bodies lay out in the writhing mass of armor.
"Everybody!" I yelled. "Stand still!"
As soon as I said it, the eastern army attacked. We stood there like log piers in a rushing river. A few stopped to sniff at my legs before charging ahead.
Sam was advancing toward us, passing through the battle line. Darla popped the hatch and aimed her gun at the ground.
"Hold it!" I shouted. "Friendly troops!" I motioned for the survivors to follow me as I picked my way gingerly through the flow of advancing soldiers. I finally reached the cab and climbed in, assisted by Darla. I slid the driver's seat back and helped the others inside. Sukuma-Tayler was the last, and I was surprised to see him alive. I shoved the seat forward, fell into it, and sealed the cab.
Sam was driving. We wheeled around and made for the road. My head lolled up against the viewport.
I saw a severed human leg being dragged away.
One of the women got hysterical, but Darla soon had her under control with a shot of something suitable from the tickler. The woman slumped over and groaned.
The hyperventilation subsided and my head was clear once more, but I closed my eyes and couldn't open them again.
6
When i came to, Darla was passing from casualty to casualty, doing what she could with the paraphenalia in the medicine kit. Most of us had moderate-to-severe lacerations. One man, a thin, ascetic blond fellow, had sustained a deep gash that had nearly taken off his foot at the ankle. He also had puncture wounds to the chest. For the leg, Darla improvised a tourniquet out of cloth and a screwdriver. The Afro and I had gotten off easiest, me with slash and puncture wounds to the lower extremities, he with the same plus stab wounds in the arm. We were a sorry lot. Blood ran in bright rivulets over the deck. Darla got to me last.
"Things that attack you all have leg fetishes," she said. "Well, I'm a liberal in such matters," I said. "We're short on everything. How long till we make Maxwellville?"
"About two hours," Sam answered, "But that's on straight road. Those mountains look treacherous. The map says the grade reaches forty-five degrees on some slopes. Also, there's one hell of a shitstorm brewing antisunward."
I looked. Thunderheads were stacking up on a grim-looking horizon. Masses of heated air had risen all day to an icy altitude, and now were returning with a vengeance, reincarnated as rain-swollen clouds, black with fury.
"Looks nasty, all right. Could be twisters in th
ere. Which way is it moving?"
"I've been scanning for the last ten minutes. It's heading toward us on a slant from left to right as we look at it. If we can get to those hills in time, we should miss most of it."
"That's good news. Switch on the afterburners."
"Show me where the switch is. I'll do my best, though. I just hope she holds together."
"Why? Problems?"
"You're not going to ask why I took my time getting down to you back there?"
I heaved a sigh. "No, Sam, I wasn't. I figure you had a damn good reason. Of course, if you didn't, I will take a flex-torque wrench to you with exquisite artistry."
"I had trouble starting up, and I stalled out twice on the bridge."
"That doesn't sound good. In fact, I don't like that at all." I still felt sort of giddy. "I'm not going to think about that today. I am going to sit here quietly and have the nervous breakdown that's owed me. Thank you. Good-bye." I closed my eyes.
"Just wanted to tell you," came a voice at my ear. I turned my head. It was Sukuma-Tayler, squatting by my seat. His face was strained, his lower lip quivering. "Awfully sorry… damned shame to have involved you in all this. My fault…." Abruptly, he broke down and sobbed. When he had composed himself somewhat, he blubbered, "I'm responsible for their deaths."
"No. You've fallen into the same trap many have ― not being totally prepared for alien unknowns. The sameness of the Skyway can lull you into a false sense of security. Many have perished because of it."
"The Guidebook," he said, voice tightened with regret, "I… I should have known! I had it, I read it." He shook his head helplessly. "But on the other side of these mountains, where the settlements are, the ecology is radically different. I covered those sections very thoroughly! I simply neglected the other aspects of the planet."
"As I said, a common fault. We didn't bother to check the planet banks at all before we barged in here. But, we all learn, and with a little luck, we live."
"My friends weren't so lucky."
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