Анатолий Днепров: Crabs on the island

The cry was repeated, but not so loudly, from the direction of the shrubbery. Only then did I noticed that Cookling was not with me. I rushed towards the spot from which, as I thought, his voice had come.

The sea, as usual, was very calm, and the ripples breaking on the sand were few and far between. But it seemed to me that the surface of the water was ruffled at the spot where we had deposited our food and water containers. Something was splashing and squelching there. I decided that Cookling must be there.

"What are you doing here, engineer?" I cried, approaching our under-water store.

"I'm over here!" I suddenly heard a voice calling from the right.

"Where are you, for God's sake?"

"Here," I heard him say again. "I'm up to my chin in the water; come here."

I entered the water and stumbled against something hard. It was an immense crab standing deep down in the water on its long pincers.

"Why have you got in so deep? What are you doing there?" I asked.

"They were chasing me and drove me right out here!" the fat man squeaked pitiably.

"Chasing you? Who?"

"The crabs!"

"It can't be! They're not chasing me!" • Again I stumbled against a robot in the water, but moved away from it, and finally got to the engineer. He was, indeed, chin-deep in the water.

"Tell me what happened?"

"I don't understand it myself," he said in a quavering voice. "While I was asleep, suddenly one of the robots attacked me… I thought it was an accident and moved away, but it came near me again and touched my face with its claw… Then I got up and moved away to one side. It followed me. I started running. So did the crab. Then another crab joined in. And another. A whole crowd of them. And they drove me out here…"

"Strange! That's never happened before," I said. "If they've already developed a man-hating instinct as a result of evolution, they wouldn't have spared me."

"I don't know," said Cookling in a hoarse voice. "But I'm afraid to come out on the beach."

"Nonsense," I said, and took his arm. "Walk along the shore to the east. I'll protect you."

"But how?"

"We'll come soon to our food dump and I'll get some heavy tool. A hammer or something."

"Only not a metal one," groaned the engineer. "Better take a board from one of the boxes or something made of wood."

Slowly we made our way along the shore. When we reached our dump, I left Cookling alone and waded towards the beach.

I could hear loud splashes and the familiar drone of the machines. The metal creatures had broken into the tinned stuff. They had found their way to our under-water storehouse.

"Cookling, we're lost!" I yelled. "They've eaten up all our tins!"

"Have they?" he said plaintively. "What are we to do now?"

"It's up to you to think what to do. You're responsible for this stupid venture. You've evolved the type of sabotage instrument you wanted. Now you sort out the mess."

I went round the crowd of robots and came out on the beach. There, crawling in the dark among the crabs I groped about picking up bits of meat and tinned pineapple, apples, and other things from the sand, and took them up on to the plateau. Judging by the amount of stuff lying on the beach, the creatures had worked pretty hard while we slept. I didn't find a single whole tin.

While I was occupied collecting the remnants of our provisions, Cookling remained standing up to his chin in the water about twenty paces from the shore. I was so engrossed in what I was doing and so upset by what had happened, that I had quite forgotten about him, but very soon a piercing shriek reminded me of his existence.

"For God's sake, Bud, help me, they're after me!"

I dashed into the water, and, stumbling over the metal monsters, hurried to Cookling. About five paces from him, I stumbled against another crab. It took no notice of me.

"Why the devil do they dislike you so much? Surely you can claim to be their daddy," I said.

"I don't know," gurgled the engineer hoarsely. "But do something, Bud, to drive it away. If a taller crab than this one is born, I'm done for."

"Well, that's evolution for you. Incidentally, which part of the crab is most vulnerable? How can the mechanism be wrecked?"

"Before, it would have been enough to smash the parabolic mirror or to extract the accumulator from inside. But now I don't know… It'll take some special research."

"To hell with your research," I muttered through clenched teeth, and seized the crab's slender front claw that was reaching out in the direction of the engineer's face.

The robot moved back. I found the second leg and bent it as well-the tentacles twisted easily, like copper wire.

The metal creature clearly didn't like this procedure and it began to wade slowly out of the water. Cookling and I moved further along the shore.

At sunrise all the robots crawled out of the water and began sunning themselves on the beach. I succeeded in smashing the mirrors on the backs of at least fifty of the monsters with stones, and all these ceased moving.

But unfortunately that did not improve matters; they immediately fell victim to other creatures and new robots were manufactured from them with amazing speed. I hadn't the strength to smash the silicon batteries on the backs of all the machines. Several times I came into contact with electrified robots, and that weakened my resolve to try and fight them.

All this time Cookling remained standing in the sea.

Soon the war of the monsters started all over again and it seemed as though they had forgotten all about Cookling.

We left the battlefield and moved over to the other side of the island. Cookling was so numb after his long bathe, which had lasted for hours, that he lay down on the sand, stretched out and asked me, with chattering teeth, to cover him over with hot sand.

After that I returned to our original camp site to fetch our clothes and what was left of our provisions. There I discovered that the tent had been destroyed; the metal pegs that had been driven into the sand had disappeared, and so had the metal rings where the guy ropes had been fastened to the tent.

Under the tarpaulin I found our clothes, but even here again one could see the traces of the crabs' search for metal. Every metal hook, button and buckle had disappeared, leaving behind shreds of scorched cloth.

Meanwhile the battle of the robots had shifted from the shore to the interior of the island. From the plateau I could see, more or less in the centre of the island, several monsters almost as tall as men standing on their pincers among the bushes. Slowly, two by two, they moved to opposite sides, and then rushed at each other with terrific speed. A metallic clanging accompanied the encounter. Behind the slow movements of these giants, there was obviously immense power and weight.

Before my eyes several machines were knocked over and forthwith cut to pieces.,

But I was sick to death of watching these battle scenes between mad machines; so, loading myself with everything I could find on our old camp site, I slowly made my way back to Cookling. The sun was beating down mercilessly and before reaching the spot where I'd buried him in the sand, I took several dips in the sea.

I was just approaching the mound under which Cookling, exhausted after his nocturnal bathing, was sleeping, when an enormous crab appeared from behind the shrubs on the plateau.

It was taller than me. Its claws were long and massive, and it moved in a series of awkward hops, with its body leaning bent forward in a peculiar way. Its front, working, tentacles were incredibly long and trailed on the sand. The maw of its workshop was particularly hypertrophied, and took up nearly half the body.

The "ichthyosaurus", as I called it to myself, slid clumsily down on to the beach, and began to sway slowly in all directions, as if scanning the locality. Automatically I brandished the tent at it, as one does at a cow that gets in one's way. But it took no notice of me whatsoever, and in a strange oblique way, describing a wide detour, it approached the mound of sand under which Cook-ling lay sleeping.