Hal Clement - Close to Critical

“Therefore, Nick, I want you and one other to go to meet them. They’ll be coming along your trail, so you’ll have no trouble finding them. When you meet Swift, tell him that we’ll gladly move to his village or let him move to ours, and that I’ll teach him and his people all he wants. If you make clear that I don’t know his language and that he’ll need you to talk to me, he’ll probably be smart enough not to hurt any of us.”

“When shall we start? Right away?”

“That would be best, but you’ve just had a long trip and deserve some rest. Anyway, a lot of the day is gone, and there probably won’t be much lost by letting you get a night’s sleep before you start. Go tomorrow morning.”

“All right, Teacher.” Nick gave no evidence of the uneasiness he felt at the prospect of meeting Swift again. He had known that savage for several weeks; Fagin had never met him. Still, the Teacher knew a lot; he had taught Nick virtually all he knew, and for a whole lifetime—at least, Nick’s whole lifetime—had been the final authority hi the village. Probably everything would come out as Fagin predicted.

It might have, too, had not the men behind the robot grossly underestimated the tracking ability of the cave-dwellers. Nick had not even had time to get to sleep beside his watch-fire after lighting up at rainfall when a surprised yell, in Nancy’s voice, sounded from a point four fires to his left; and a split second later he saw Swift himself, flanked by a line of his biggest fighters which disappeared around the hill on either side, sweeping silently up the slope toward him.

“What do you do now?”

Raeker ignored the question; important as he knew the speaker to be, he had no time for casual conversation. He had to act. Fagin’s television screens lined the wall around him, and every one showed the swarming forms of the fir-cone-shaped beings who were attacking the village. There was a microphone before his face, with its switch spring-loaded in the open position so that casual talk in the control room would not reach the robot’s associates; his finger was hovering over the switch, but he did not touch it. He didn’t quite know what to say.

Everything he had told Nick through the robot was perfectly true; there was nothing to be gained by trying to fight. Unfortunately, the fight had already started. Even had Raeker been qualified to give advice on the defense of the village, it was too late; it was no longer even possible for a human being to distinguish the attackers from the defenders. Spears were sailing through the air with blinding speed—nothing merely tossed gets very far in a three-gravity field—and axes and knives flashed in the firelight.

“It’s a good show, anyway.” The same shrill voice that had asked the question a minute earlier made itself heard once more. “That firelight seems to be brighter than daylight, down there.” The casual tone infuriated Raeker, who was not taking the predicament of his friends at all casually; but it was not consideration of the identity or importance of the speaker that kept him from losing his temper and saying something unfortunate. Quite unintentionally, the onlooker had given him an idea. His finger stabbed at the microphone button.

“Nick! Can you hear me?”

“Yes, Teacher.” Nick’s voice showed no sign of the terrific physical effort he was exerting; his voice machinery was not as closely tied in with his breathing apparatus as is that of a human being.

“All right. Fight your way into the nearest hut as quickly as possible, all of you. Get out of sight of me. If you can’t reach a hut, get behind a woodpile or something like that—below the curve of the hill, if nothing better is possible. Let me know as soon as you’ve all managed this.”

“We’ll try.” Nick had no time to say more; those in the control room could only watch, though Raeker’s fingers were hovering over another set of switches on the complex panel before him.

“One of them’s making it.” It was the high voice again, and this time Raeker had to answer.

“I’ve known these people for sixteen years, but I can’t tell them from the attackers now. How can you identify them?” He let his glance shift briefly from the screens to the two nonhumans towering behind him.

“The attackers have no axes, only knives and spears,” pointed out the speaker calmly. The man hastily turned back to the screens. He could not be sure that the other was right; only three or four axes could be seen, and their wielders were not very clearly visible in the swirling press. He had not noticed any lack of axes in the hands of the attackers as they came up the hill, in the brief moments after they became visible to the robot and before battle was joined; but there was no reason to doubt that someone else might have. He wished he knew Dromm and its people better. He made no answer to the slender giant’s comment, but from then on watched the axes which flashed in the firelight. These really did seem to be working their way toward the huts which rimmed the top of the hill. Some failed to make it; more than one of the tools which had so suddenly become weapons ceased to swing as the robot’s eyes watched.

But some did get there. For half a minute a four-armed, scaly figure stood at one of the hut doors, facing outward and smashing the crests of all attackers who approached too close. Three others, all apparently injured, crawled toward him and under the sweep of the powerful arms to take shelter in the building; one of these remained in the doorway, crouching with two spears and guarding the axeman from low thrusts.

Then another defender battered his way to the side of the first, and the two retreated together inside the hut. None of the cave-dwellers seemed eager to follow.

“Are you all inside, Nick?” Raeker asked.

“Five of us are here. I don’t know about the others. I’m pretty sure Alice and Tom are dead, though; they were near me at the beginning, and I haven’t seen them for some time.”

“Give a call to those who aren’t with you. I’ll have to do something very soon, and I don’t want any of you hurt by it.”

“They must either be safe or dead. The fighting has stopped; it’s a lot easier to hear you than it was. You’d better do whatever it is without worrying about us; I think Swift’s people are all heading toward you. Only a couple are outside the door here; the others are forming a big ring around where I saw you last. You haven’t moved, have you?”

“No,” admitted Raeker, “and you’re right about the ring. One of the biggest of them is walking right up to me. Make sure you are all under cover—preferably somewhere where light won’t reach you. I’ll give ten seconds.”

“All right,” Nick answered. “We’re getting under tables.”

Raeker counted a slow ten, watching Hie approaching creatures in the screens as he did so. At the last number his fingers tripped a gang bar which closed twenty switches simultaneously; and as Nick described it later, “the world took fire.”

It was only the robot’s spotlights, unused now for years but still serviceable. It seemed quite impossible to the human watchers that any optical organs sensitive enough to work on the few quanta of light which reach the bottom of Tenebra’s atmosphere could possible stand any such radiance; the lights themselves had been designed with the possibility hi mind that they might have to pierce dust or smoke—they were far more powerful’than were really needed by the receptors of the robot itself.

The attackers should have been blinded instantly, according to Raeker’s figuring. The sad fact slowly emerged 4hat they were not.

They were certainly surprised. They stopped their advance for a moment, and chattered noisily among themselves; then the giant who was in front of the others strode right up to the robot, bent over, and appeared to examine one of the lights in detail. The men had long ago learned that the Tenebran vision organs were involved in some way with the spiny crests on their heads, and it was this part that the being who Raeker suspected must be Swift brought close to one of the tiny ports from which the flood of light was escaping.