Orbit 2

“You are mistaken, Balank. There are werewolves, all right. Because man would never really believe they existed, they have survived. But we believe they exist, and to us they are a greater menace than mankind can be now. So surrender and come back to me. We will continue looking for Gondalug.”

He did not answer. He crouched and listened to the machine growling on the other side of the river.

Crouching on the top of the rock above Balank’s head was a sinewy man with a flat skull. He took more than human advantage of every shade of cover as he drank in the scene below, his brain running through the possibilities of the situation as efficiently as his legs could take him through wild grass. He waited without stirring, and his face was gray and grave and alert.

The machine came to a decision. Getting no reply from the man, it came gingerly round the rock and approached the edge of the crevasse through which the river ran. Experimentally, it sent a blast of heat across to the opposite cliff, followed by a brief hail of armored pellets.

“Balank?” it called.

Balank did not reply, but the trundler was convinced it had not killed the man. It had somehow to get across the brink Balank had jumped. It considered radioing for aid, but the nearest city, Zagrad, was a great distance away.

It stretched out its legs, extending them as far as possible. Its clawed feet could just reach the other side, but there the edge crumbled slightly and would not support its full weight. It shuffled slowly along the crevasse, seeking out the ideal place.

From shelter, Balank watched it glinting with a murderous dullness in the moonlight. He clutched a great shard of rock, knowing what he had to do. He had presented to him here the best — probably the only— chance he would get to destroy the machine. When it was hanging across the ravine, he would rush forward. The trundler would be momentarily too preoccupied to burn him down. He would hurl the boulder at it, knock the vile thing down into the river.

The machine was quick and clever. He would have only a split second in which to act. Already his muscles bulged over the rock, already he gritted his teeth in effort, already his eyes glared ahead at the hated enemy. His time would come at any second now. It was him or it. .

Gondalug alertly stared down at the scene, involved with it and yet detached. He saw what was in the man’s mind, knew that he looked a scant second ahead to the encounter.

His own kind, man’s Dark Brother, worked differently. They looked farther ahead just as they had always done, in a fashion unimaginable to homo sapiens. To Gondalug, the outcome of this particular little struggle was immaterial. He knew that his kind had already won their battle against mankind. He knew that they still had to enter into their real battle against the machines.

But that time would come. And then they would defeat the machines. In the long days when the sun shone always over the blessed Earth like a full moon — in those days, his kind would finish their age of waiting and enter into their own savage kingdom.

Women Against Smog,

ones, tens, hundreds, myriads, tens of myriads