Colonial Survey Page 14

  He was not quite right. He was waked in darkness by the sound of slappings and the grunting of bears. Feather-light puffs of breeze beat upon his face. He struck his belt-lamp sharply and the world was hidden by a whitish film which snatched itself away. Something flapped. Then he saw the stars and the emptiness on the edge of which they camped. Then big white things flapped toward him.

  Sitka Pete whuffed mightily and swatted. Faro Nell grunted and swung. She caught something in her claws.

  “Watch this!” said Huyghens.

  More things strangely-shaped and pallid like human skin reeled and flapped crazily toward him.

  A huge hairy paw reached up into the light-beam and snatched a flying thing out of it. Another great paw. The three great Kodiaks were on their hind legs, swatting at creatures which flittered insanely, unable to resist the fascination of the glaring lamp. Because of their wild gyrations it was impossible to see them in detail, but they were those unpleasant night-creatures which looked like plucked flying monkeys but were actually something quite different.

  The bears did not snarl or snap. They swatted, with a remarkable air of business-like competence and purpose. Small mounds of broken things built up about their feet.

  Suddenly there were no more. Huyghens snapped off the light. The bears crunched and fed busily in the darkness.

  “Those things are carnivores and blood-suckers, Bordman,” said Huyghens calmly. “They drain their victims of blood like vampire-bats—they’ve some trick of not waking them—and when they’re dead the whole tribe eats. But bears have thick fur, and they wake when they’re touched. And they’re omnivorous. They’ll eat anything but sphexes, and like it. You might say that those night-creatures came to lunch. They are it, for the bears, who are living off the country as usual.”

  Bordman uttered a sudden exclamation. He made a tiny light, and blood flowed down his hand. Huyghens passed over his pocket kit of antiseptic and bandages. Bordman stanched the bleeding and bound up his hand. Then he realized that Nugget chewed on something. When he turned the light, Nugget swallowed convulsively. It appeared that he had caught and devoured the creature which had drawn blood from Bordman. But he’d lost none to speak of, at that.

  In the morning they started along the sloping scarp of the plateau once more. After marching silently for awhile, Bordman said:

  “Robots wouldn’t have handled those vampire-things, Huyghens.”

  “Oh, they could be built to watch for them,” said Huyghens, tolerantly. “But you’d have to swat for yourself. I prefer the bears.”

  He led the way on. Twice Huyghens halted to examine the ground about the mountains’ bases through binoculars. He looked encouraged as they went on. The monstrous peak which was like the bow of a ship at the end of the Sere Plateau was visibly nearer. Toward midday, indeed, it loomed high above the horizon, no more than fifteen miles away. And at midday Huyghens called a final halt.

  “No more congregations of sphexes down below,” he said cheerfully, “and we haven’t seen a climbing line of them in miles.” The crossing of a sphex-trail had meant simply waiting until one party had passed, and then crossing before another came in view. “I’ve a hunch we’ve left their migration route behind. Let’s see what Semper tells us!”

  He waved the eagle aloft. Like all creatures other than men, the bird normally functioned only for the satisfaction of his appetite, and then tended to loaf or sleep. He had ridden the last few miles perched on Sitka Pete’s pack. Now he soared upward and Huyghens watched in the small vision-plate.

  Semper went soaring. The image on the plate swayed and turned, and in minutes was above the plateau’s edge. Here there were some patches of brush and the ground rolled a little. But as Semper towered higher still, the inner desert appeared. Nearby, it was clear of beasts. Only once, when the eagle banked sharply and the camera looked along the long dimension of the plateau, did Huyghens see any sign of the blue-and-tan beasts. There he saw what looked like masses amounting to herds. Incredible, of course; carnivores do not gather in herds.

  “We go straight up,” said Huyghens in satisfaction. “We cross the Plateau here, and we can edge downwind a bit, even. I think we’ll find something interesting on our way to your robot colony.”

  He waved to the bears to go ahead uphill.

  They reached the top hours later, barely before sunset. And they saw game. Not much, but game at the grassy, brushy border of the desert. Huyghens brought down a shaggy ruminant which surely would not live on a desert. When night fell there was an abrupt chill in the air. It was much colder than night temperatures on the slopes. The air was thin. Bordman thought and presently guessed at the cause. In the lee of the prow-mountain the air was calm. There were no clouds. The ground radiated its heat to empty space. It could be bitterly cold in the night-time, here.

  “And hot by day,” Huyghens agreed when he mentioned it. “The sunshine’s terrifically hot where the air is thin, but on most mountains there’s wind. By day, here, the ground will tend to heat up like the surface of a planet without atmosphere. It may be a hundred and forty or fifty degrees on the sand at midday. But it should be cold at night.”

  It was. Before midnight Huyghens built a fire. There could be no danger of night-walkers where the temperature dropped to freezing.

  In the morning the men were stiff with cold, but the bears snorted and moved about briskly. They seemed to revel in the morning chill. Sitka and Sourdough Charley, in fact, became festive and engaged in a mock fight, whacking each other with blows that were only feigned, but would have crushed the skull of any man. Nugget sneezed with excitement as he watched them. Faro Nell regarded them with female disapproval.

  They started on. Semper seemed sluggish. After a single brief flight he descended and rode on Sitka’s pack, as on the previous day. He perched there, surveying the landscape as it changed from semi-arid to pure desert in their progress. He would not fly. Soaring birds do not like to fly when there are no winds to make currents of which they can take advantage.

  Once Huyghens stopped and pointed out to Bordman exactly where they were on the enlarged photograph taken from space, and the exact spot from which the distress-signal seemed to come.

  “You’re doing it in case something happens to you,” said Bordman. “I admit it’s sense, but—what could I do to help those survivors even if I got to them, without you?”

  “What you’ve learned about sphexes would help,” said Huyghens. “The bears would help. And we left a note back at my station. Whoever grounds at the landing field back there—and the beacon’s working—will find instructions to come to the place we’re trying to reach.”

  They started walking again. The narrow patch of non-desert border of the Sere Plateau was behind them, now, and they marched across powdery desert sand.

  “See here,” said Bordman. “I want to know something. You tell me you’re listed as a bear-thief on your home planet. You tell me it’s a lie, to protect your friends from prosecution by the Colonial Survey. You’re on your own, risking your life every minute of every day. You took a risk in not shooting me. Now you’re risking more in going to help men who’d have to be witnesses that you were a criminal. What are you doing it for?”

  Huyghens grinned.

  “Because I don’t like robots. I don’t like the fact that they’re subduing men, making men subordinate to them.”

  “Go on,” insisted Bordman. “I don’t see why disliking robots should make you a criminal! Nor men subordinating themselves to robots, either.”

  “But they are,” said Huyghens mildly. “I’m a crank, of course. But—I live like a man on this planet. I go where I please and do what I please. My helpers, are my friends. If the robot colony had been a success, would the humans in it have lived like men? Hardly. They’d have to live the way robots let them! They’d have to stay inside a fence the robots built. They’d have to eat foods that robots could raise, and no others. Why, a man couldn’t move his bed near a window, because if he did th
e house-tending robots couldn’t work! Robots would serve them—the way the robots determined—but all they’d get out of it would be jobs servicing the robots!”

  Bordman shook his head.

  “As long as men want robot service, they have to take the service that robots can give. If you don’t want those services—”

  “I want to decide what I want,” said Huyghens, again mildly, “instead of being limited to choose what I’m offered. In my home planet we half-way tamed it with dogs and guns. Then we developed the bears, and we finished the job with them. Now there’s population-pressure and the room for bears and dogs—and men!—is dwindling. More and more people are being deprived of the power of decision, and being allowed only the power of choice among the things robots allow. The more we depend on robots, the more limited those choices become. We don’t want our children to limit themselves to wanting what robots can provide! We don’t want them shriveling to where they abandon everything robots can’t give, or won’t. We want them to be men and women. Not damned automatons who live by pushing robot-controls so they can live to push robot-controls. If that’s not subordination to robots—”

  “It’s an emotional argument,” protested Bordman. “Not everybody feels that way.”

  “But I feel that way,” said Huyghens. “And so do a lot of others. This is a damned big galaxy and it’s apt to contain some surprises. The one sure thing about a robot and a man who depends on them is that they can’t handle the unexpected. There’s going to come a time when we need men who can. So on my home planet, some of us asked for Loren Two, to colonize. It was refused—too dangerous. But men can colonize anywhere if they’re men. So I came here to study the planet. Especially the sphexes. Eventually, we expected to ask for a license again, with proof that we could handle even those beasts. I’m already doing it in a mild way. But the Survey licensed a robot colony—and where is it?”

  Bordman made a sour face.

  “You took the wrong way to go about it Huyghens. It was illegal. It is. It was the pioneer spirit, which is admirable enough, but wrongly directed. After all, it was pioneers who left Earth for the stars. But—”

  Sourdough raised up on his hind-legs and sniffed the air. Huyghens swung his rifle around to be handy. Bordman slipped off the safety-catch of his own. Nothing happened.

  “In a way,” said Bordman, “you’re talking about liberty and freedom, which most people think is politics. You say it can be more. In principle, I’ll concede it. But the way you put it, it sounds like a freak religion.”

  “It’s self-respect,” corrected Huyghens.

  “You may be—”

  Faro Nell growled. She bumped Nugget with her nose, to drive him closer to Bordman. She snorted at him, and trotted swiftly to where Sitka and Sourdough faced toward the broader, sphex-filled expanse of the Sere Plateau. She took up her position between them.

  Huyghens gazed sharply beyond them and then all about.

  “This could be bad!” he said softly. “But luckily there’s no wind. Here’s a sort of hill. Come along, Bordman!”

  He ran ahead, Bordman following and Nugget plumping heavily with him. They reached the raised place, actually a mere hillock no more than five or six feet above the surrounding sand, with a distorted cactus-like growth protruding from the ground. Huyghens stared again. He used his binoculars.

  “One sphex,” he said curtly. “Just one! And it’s out of all reason for a sphex to be alone. But it’s not rational for them to gather in hundreds of thousands, either!” He whetted his finger and held it up. “No wind at all.”

  He used the binoculars again.

  “It doesn’t know we’re here,” he added. “It’s moving away. Not another one in sight…” He hesitated, biting his lips. “Look here, Bordman! I’d like to kill that one lone sphex and find out something. There’s a fifty per cent chance I could find out something really important. But—I might have to run. If I’m right…” Then he said grimly “It’ll have to be done quickly. I’m going to ride Faro Nell, for speed. I doubt Sitka or Sourdough will stay behind. But Nugget can’t run fast enough. Will you stay here with him?”

  Bordman drew in his breath. Then he said calmly:

  “You know what you’re doing, I hope.”

  “Keep your eyes open. If you see anything, even at a distance, shoot and we’ll be back, fast! Don’t wait until something’s close enough to hit. Shoot the instant you see anything, if you do!”

  Bordman nodded. He found it peculiarly difficult to speak again. Huyghens went over to the embattled bears and climbed up on Faro Nell’s back, holding fast by her shaggy fur.

  “Let’s go!” he snapped. “That way! Hup!”

  The three Kodiaks plunged away at a dead run, Huyghens lurching and swaying on Faro Nell’s back. The sudden rush dislodged Semper from his perch. He flapped wildly and got aloft. Then he followed effortfully, flying low.

  It happened very quickly. A Kodiak bear can travel as fast as a race-horse on occasion. These three plunged arrow-straight for a spot perhaps half a mile distant, where a blue-and-tawny shape whirled to face them. There was the crash of Huyghens’ weapon from where he rode on Faro Nell’s back; the explosion of the weapon and the bullet was one sound. The monster leaped and died.

  Huyghens jumped down from Faro Nell. He became feverishly busy at something on the ground. Semper banked and whirled and landed. He watched, with his head on one side.

  Bordman stared. Huyghens was doing something to the dead sphex. The two male bears prowled about, while Faro Nell regarded Huyghens with intense curiosity. Back at the hillock, Nugget whimpered a little, and Bordman patted him. Nugget whimpered more loudly. In the distance, Huyghens straightened up and mounted Faro Nell’s back. Sitka looked back toward Bordman. He reared upward. He made a noise, apparently, because Sourdough ambled to his side. The two great beasts began to trot back. Semper flapped wildly and—lacking wind—lurched crazily in the air. He landed on Huyghens’ shoulder and clung there with his talons.

  Then Nugget howled hysterically and tried to swarm up Bordman, as a cub tries to swarm up the nearest tree in time of danger. Bordman collapsed, and the cub upon him—and there was a flash of stinking scaly hide, while the air was filled with the snarling, spitting squeals of a sphex in full leap. The beast had over-jumped, aiming at Bordman and the cub while both were upright and arriving when they had fallen. It went tumbling.

  Bordman heard nothing but the fiendish squalling, but in the distance Sitka and Sourdough were coming at rocket-ship speed. Faro Nell let out a roar that fairly split the air. And then there was a furry streaking toward her, bawling, while Bordman rolled to his feet and snatched up his gun. He raged through pure instinct. The sphex crouched to pursue the cub and Bordman swung his weapon as a club. He was literally too close to shoot—and perhaps the sphex had only seen the fleeing bear-cub. But he swung furiously—

  And the sphex whirled. Bordman was toppled from his feet. An eight-hundred-pound monstrosity straight out of hell—half wildcat and half spitting cobra with hydrophobia and homicidal mania added—such a monstrosity is not to be withstood when in whirling its body strikes one in the chest.

  That was when Sitka arrived, bellowing. He stood on his hind legs, emitting roars like thunder, challenging the sphex to battle. He waddled forward. Huyghens approached, but he could not shoot with Bordman in the sphere of an explosive bullet’s destructiveness. Faro Nell raged and snarled, torn between the urge to be sure that Nugget was unharmed, and the frenzied fury of a mother whose offspring has been endangered.

  Mounted on Faro Nell, with Semper clinging idiotically to his shoulder, Huyghens watched helplessly as the sphex spat and squalled at Sitka, having only to reach out one claw to let out Bordman’s life.

  They got away from there, though Sitka seemed to want to lift the limp carcass of his victim in his teeth and dash it repeatedly to the ground. He seemed doubly raging because a man—with whom all Kodius Champion’s descendants had an emotional relationship
—had been mishandled. But Bordman was not grievously hurt. He bounced and swore as the bears raced for the horizon. Huyghens had flung him up on Sourdough’s pack and snapped for him to hold on. He shouted:

  “Damn it, Huyghens! This isn’t right! Sitka got some deep scratches! That horror’s claws may be poisonous!”

  But Huyghens snapped “Hup! Hup!” to the bears, and they continued their race against time. They went on for a good two miles, when Nugget wailed despairingly of his exhaustion and Faro Nell halted firmly to nuzzle him.

  “This may be good enough,” said Huyghens. “Considering that there’s no wind and the big mass of beasts is down the plateau and there were only those two around here. Maybe they’re too busy to hold a wake, even. Anyhow—”

  He slid to the ground and extracted the antiseptic and swabs. “Sitka first,” snapped Bordman. “I’m all right!”

  Huyghens swabbed the big bear’s wounds. They were trivial, because Sitka Pete was an experienced sphex-fighter. Then Bordman grudgingly let the curiously-smelling stuff—it reeked of ozone—be applied to the slashes on his chest. He held his breath as it stung. Then he said:

  “It was my fault, Huyghens. I watched you instead of the landscape. I couldn’t imagine what you were doing.”

  “I was doing a quick dissection,” Huyghens told him. “By luck, that first sphex was a female, as I hoped. And she was about to lay her eggs. Ugh! And now I know why the sphexes migrate, and where, and how it is that they don’t need game up here.”

  He slapped a quick bandage on Bordman then led the way eastward, still putting distance between the dead sphexes and his party.

  “I’d dissected them before,” said Huyghens. “Not enough’s been known about them. Some things needed to be found out if men were ever to be able to live here.”

  “With bears?” asked Bordman ironically.

  “Oh, yes,” said Huyghens. “But the point is that sphexes come to the desert here to breed, to mate and lay their eggs for the sun to hatch. It’s a particular place. Seals return to a special place to mate—and the males, at least, don’t eat for weeks on end. Salmon return to their native streams to spawn. They don’t eat, and they die afterward. And eels—I’m using Earth examples, Bordman—travel some thousands of miles to the Sargasso to mate and die. Unfortunately, sphexes don’t appear to die, but it’s clear that they have an ancestral breeding-place and that they come to the Sere Plateau to deposit their eggs!”