Clifford Simak - I Am Crying All Inside - And Other Stories

“It was the vine’s fault,” yelled Smith. “It tried to trap us. It tried to steal our car, probably would have killed us, just for the few lousy ounces of radium we have in the motors. That radium was ours. Not the vine’s. It belonged to your beloved company.”

“For the love of gosh, don’t tell her that,” Mackenzie warned, “or she’ll go out on a one-robot expedition, yanking vines up left and right.”

“Good idea,” insisted Smith. “She might tie into an electro. It would peel her paint.”

“How about the radio?” Mackenzie asked Nellie.

“Busted,” said Nellie, crustily.

“And the recording equipment?”

“That tape’s all right and I can fix the recorder.”

“Serum jugs busted?”

“One of them ain’t,” said Nellie.

“O.K., then,” said Mackenzie, “get back in there and dig out two bags of fertilizer. We’re going on. Melody Bowl is only about fifty miles away.”

“We can’t do that,” protested Nellie. “Every tree will be waiting for us, every vine—”

“It’s safer to go ahead than back,” said Mackenzie. “Even if we have no radio, Harper will send someone out with the flier to look us up when we are overdue.”

He rose slowly and unholstered his pistol.

“Get in there and get that stuff,” he ordered. “If you don’t, I’ll melt you down into a puddle.”

“All right,” screamed Nellie, in sudden terror. “All right. You needn’t get so tough about it.”

“Any more back talk out of you,” Mackenzie warned, “and I’ll kick you so full of dents you’ll walk stooped over.”

They stayed in the open, well away from the groves, keeping a close watch. Mackenzie went ahead and behind him came the Encyclopedia, humping along to keep pace with them. Back of the Encyclopedia was Nellie, loaded down with the bags of fertilizer and equipment. Smith brought up the rear.

A rifle tree took a shot at them, but the range was too far for accurate shooting. Back a way, an electro vine had come closer with a thunderbolt.

Walking was grueling. The grass was thick and matted and one had to plow through it, as if one were walking in water.

“I’ll make you sorry for this,” seethed Nellie. “I’ll make—”

“Shut up,” snapped Smith. “For once you’re doing a robot’s work instead of gumshoeing around to see if you can’t catch a nickel out of place.”

They breasted a hill and started to climb the long grassy slope.

Suddenly a sound like the savage ripping of a piece of cloth struck across the silence.

They halted, tensed, listening. The sound came again and then again.

“Guns!” yelped Smith.

Swiftly the two men loped up the slope, Nellie galloping awkwardly behind, the bags of fertilizer bouncing on her shoulders.

From the hilltop, Mackenzie took in the situation at a glance.

On the hillside below a man was huddled behind a boulder, working a gun with fumbling desperation, while farther down the hill a ground car had toppled over. Behind the car were three figures—one man and two insect creatures.

“Groomies!” whooped Smith.

A well-directed shot from the car took the top off the boulder and the man behind it hugged the ground.

Smith was racing quarteringly down the hill, heading toward another boulder that would outflank the trio at the car.

A yell of human rage came from the car and a bolt from one of the three guns snapped at Smith, plowing a smoking furrow no more than ten feet behind him.

Another shot flared toward Mackenzie and he plunged behind a hummock. A second shot whizzed just above his head and he hunkered down trying to push himself into the ground.

From the slope below came the high-pitched, angry chittering of the Groombridgians.

The car, Mackenzie saw, was not the only vehicle on the hillside. Apparently it had been pulling a trailer to which was lashed a tree. Mackenzie squinted against the setting sun, trying to make out what it was all about. The tree, he saw, had been expertly dug, its roots balled in earth and wrapped in sacking that shone wetly. The trailer was canted at an awkward angle, the treetop sweeping the ground, the balled roots high in the air.

Smith was pouring a deadly fire into the hostile camp and the three below were replying with a sheet of blasting bolts, plowing up the soil around the boulder. In a minute or two, Mackenzie knew, they would literally cut the ground out from under Smith. Cursing under his breath, he edged around the hummock, pushing his pistol before him, wishing he had a rifle.

The third man was slinging an occasional, inexpert shot at the three below, but wasn’t doing much to help the cause along. The battle, Mackenzie knew, was up to him and Smith.

He wondered abstractedly where Nellie was.

“Probably halfway back to the post by now,” he told himself, drawing a bead on the point from which came the most devastating blaze of firing.

But even as he depressed the firing button, the firing from below broke off in a chorus of sudden screams. The two Groombridgians leaped up and started to run, but before they made their second stride, something came whizzing through the air from the slope below and crumpled one of them.

The other hesitated, like a startled hare, uncertain where to go, and a second thing came whishing up from the bottom of the slope and smacked against his breastplate with a thud that could be heard from where Mackenzie lay.

Then, for the first time Mackenzie saw Nellie. She was striding up the hill, her left arm holding an armful of stones hugged tight against her metal chest, her right arm working like a piston. The ringing clang of stone against metal came as one of the stones missed its mark and struck the ground car.

The human was running wildly, twisting and ducking, while Nellie pegged rock after rock at him. Trying to get set for a shot at her, the barrage of whizzing stones kept him on the dodge. Angling down the hill, he finally lost his rifle when he tripped and fell. With a howl of terror, he bolted up the hillside, his life blanket standing out almost straight behind him. Nellie pegged her last stone at him, then set out, doggedly loping in his wake.

Mackenzie screamed hoarsely at her, but she did not stop. She passed out of sight over the hill, closely behind the fleeing man.

Smith whooped with delight. “Look at our Nellie go for him,” he yelled. “She’ll give him a working over when she nails him.”

Mackenzie rubbed his eyes. “Who was he?” he asked.

“Jack Alexander,” said Smith. “Grant said he was around again.”

The third man got up stiffly from behind his boulder and advanced toward them. He wore no life blanket, his clothing was in tatters, his face was bearded to the eyes.

He jerked a thumb toward the hill over which Nellie had disappeared. “A masterly military maneuver,” he declared. “Your robot sneaked around and took them from behind.”

“If she lost that recording stuff and the fertilizer, I’ll melt her down,” said Mackenzie, savagely.

The man stared at them. “You are the gentlemen from the trading post?” he asked.

They nodded, returning his gaze.

“I am Wade,” he said. “J. Edgerton Wade—”

“Wait a second,” shouted Smith. “Not the J. Edgerton Wade? The lost composer?”

The man bowed, whiskers and all. “The same,” he said. “Although I had not been aware that I was lost. I merely came out here to spend a year, a year of music such as man has never heard before.”

He glared at them. “I am a man of peace,” he declared, almost as if daring them to argue that he wasn’t, “but when those three dug up Delbert, I knew what I must do.”

“Delbert?” asked Mackenzie.

“The tree,” said Wade. “One of the music trees.”