Clifford Simak - All Flesh Is Grass and Other Stories

What are weapons?

How did they start?

What is the basic of a weapon?

"Caroline," Gary asked, "what would you say a weapon was?"

"Why," she told him, "that seems simple to me. An extension of your fist. An extension of your power to hurt, of your ability to kill. Men fought first with tooth and nail and fist and then with stones and clubs. The stones and clubs were extensions of man's fist, an extension of his muscles and his hate or need."

Stones and clubs, he thought. And then a spear. And, after that, a bow,

A bow!

He swung on his heel, walked rapidly back along the ship, jerked open the door to the supply cabinet. Rummaging inside it, he found the things he wanted.

He brought them out, a fistful of wooden flagpoles, each with small flags fastened to one end, the other end steel-tipped for easy sticking in the ground.

"Explorer flags," he explained to Caroline. "You go out on an alien planet and you want to be sure that you can find your way back to the ship. You plant these things at intervals and then follow them back to the ship, picking them up as you go along. No chance of getting lost."

"But…" said Caroline.

"Evans figured he was going to use this ship to go to Alpha Centauri, He took some of these things along, just in case."

He placed the steel-shod tip of one of the poles on the floor, threw his weight against the top end. It flexed. Gary grunted in satisfaction.

"A bow?" asked Caroline.

He nodded. "Not too good a one. Not too accurate. Maybe not too strong. When I was a kid I used to go out into the woods and whack me off a sapling. No curve, no nothing. Bigger at one end than the other. But it worked as a bow, after a fashion. Used reeds for arrows. Killed one of my mother's chickens with one once. She whaled me good and proper."

"It's getting warm in here," Caroline told him. "We can't waste any time."

He grinned at her, exuberant now that there was something to do.

"Hunt up some cord," he told her. "Any kind of cord. If it's not strong enough, we'll twist several strands together."

Whistling under his breath, he got to work, tearing the flag off the end of one of the more supple poles, notching either end to hold the cord.

From another stick he split long wands off the straight-grained wood, fashioning them into arrows. There'd be no time for feathering… in fact, there were no feathers in the ship, but that was a refinement that would not be needed. He would be using the bow at close range.

But he did have arrowheads. With snippers, he clipped off the sharp tips with which the poles had been shod, drove them into the head of each arrow. Testing them with a finger, he was satisfied. They were sharp enough… if he could get some power behind them.

"Gary," said Caroline, and her voice was almost a whimper.

He swung around.

"There's no cord, Gary. I've looked everywhere."

No cord!

"Everywhere?" he asked.

She nodded. "There isn't any. I looked everywhere."

Clothing, he thought, desperately. Strips torn from their clothing. But that would be worse than useless. It would unravel, come apart between his fingers when he needed it the most. Leather? Leather was too stiff to start with, and it would stretch. Wire? Too stiff and no zip to it.

He let the bow-stick fall from his hands, reached up to wipe his face.

"It's getting hot in here," he said.

He twisted around and stared at the forward visors. The smoke was a cloud and there was a ruddy reflection in it, the reflection of the fire that blazed around the ship.

How much longer, he wondered. How much longer before they'd have to open the port and make a dash for it, knowing even as they did that it was a hopeless thing to do, for the Hellhounds would be waiting just outside the port.

The shell of the spaceship crawled with a dull, dead heat, the kind of heat that comes up off a dusty road on a still, hot day in August.

And soon, he knew, it would be a live heat, not a dead heat any longer, but a blasting furnace heat that would pour from every angle of the steel around them, that would shrivel the leather of their shoes and scorch the clothing that they wore. But long before the leather of their shoes shriveled and curled, they would have to make their break, a hopeless dash for freedom that could end in nothing but death at the hands of the things that waited by the port.

Like an oven, like two rabbits roasting in an oven.

We must turn, thought Gary. We must keep turning about so that we will roast evenly on all sides.

"Gary!" cried Caroline.

He swung around.

"Hair?" she asked. "I just thought of it. Would hair make you a bowstring?"

He gasped at the thought. "Hair," he shouted. "Human hair! Why, of course… it's the best material there is."

Caroline's hands were busy with her braids. "It's long," she said. "I was proud of it and I let it grow."

"It'll have to be braided," said Gary. "Twisted into a cord."

"Your knife," she said, and he handed it over.

The knife flashed close to her head and one of the braided strands dangled in her hand.

"We'll have to work fast," said Gary. "We haven't got much time."

The air was dry and hard to breath. It burned one's lungs and dried out the tissues of the mouth. When he bent over and placed a hand against the steel plates of the ship's deck, the steel was warm, like the pavement on a summer's day.

"You'll have to help," said Gary. "We have to be fast and sure. We can't afford to bungle. We won't have a second chance."

"Tell me what to do," she said.

Fifteen minutes later, he nodded at her.

"Open the port," he said, "and when you do stand back against the wall. I'll need all the arm room I can get."

He waited, bow in hand, arrow nocked against the cord.

Not much of a bow, he thought. Nothing you would want to try against a willow at three hundred paces. But these things outside aren't willow wands. It will last for a shot or two… I hope it lasts for a shot or two.

The port clanged open as Caroline shoved the lever over. Smoke billowed in the opening and in the smoke he saw the bulk of the ones who waited.

He brought the bow up and the wood bent with the sudden surge of hate and triumph that coursed in his being… the hate and fear of fire, the hate of things that wait to do a man to death, the fury of a human being backed into a corner by a thing that is not human.

The arrow made a whispering sound and was a silver streak that spurted through the smoke. The bow bent again and there was another whisper, the whisper of cord and wood and the creak of human muscles.

On the ground outside, two dark shapes were threshing in the smoke.

It was just like shooting rabbits.

"VERY ingenious," said the voice. "You won fair and square. You did much better than I thought you would."

"And now," said Caroline, "you will send us back again. Back to the city of the Engineers."

"Why, certainly," said the voice. "Why, of course, I will. But first, I have to clean up the place. The bodies, first of all. Cadavers are such unsightly things."

Fire puffed briefly and the bodies of the two Hellhounds were gone. A tiny puff of yellow smoke hung over where they had been and a tiny flurry of ashes eddied in the air.

"I asked you once before," said Caroline, "and you didn't tell me. What are you? We looked for signs of culture and…"

"You are befuddled, young human," the voice told her. "You seek for childish things. You looked for cities and there are no cities. You looked for roads and ships and farms and there are none of these. You expected to find a civilization and there is no civilization such as you would recognize."

"You are right," said Gary. "There are none of those."