Close to Critical

III. CEREBRATION; TRANSPORTATION; EMIGRATION

Nick Chopper stood in the doorway of his hut and thought furiously. Behind him the seven other survivors of the raid lay hi various stages of disrepair. Nick himself was not entirely unscathed, but he was still able to walk— and, if necessary, fight, he told himself grimly. All of the others except Jim and Nancy would be out of useful action for several days at least.

He supposed that Fagin had been right hi yielding to Swift as he had; at least, the savage had kept his word about letting Nick collect and care for his wounded friends. Every time Nick thought of the attack, however, or even of Swift, he felt like resuming the war. It would have given him intense pleasure to remove Swift’s scales one by one and use them to shingle a hut in full view of their owner.

He was not merely brooding, however; he was really thinking. For the first time hi a good many years, he was questioning seriously a decision of Fagin’s. It seemed ridiculous that the Teacher could get away from the cave village without help; he hadn’t been able to fight Swift’s people during the attack, and if he had any powers Nick didn’t know about that was certainly the time to use them. Getting away at night didn’t count; he’d be tracked and caught first thing in the morning.

But wait a minute. What could the cave-dwellers actually do to Fagin? The hard white stuff the Teacher was covered with—or made out of, for all Nick knew—might be proof against knives and spears; the point had never occurred to Nick or any of his friends. Maybe that was why Fagin was being so meek now, when his people could be hurt; maybe he planned to act more constructively when he was alone.

It would be nice to be able to talk it over with the Teacher without Swift’s interference. Of course, the chief couldn’t eavesdrop very effectively, since he couldn’t understand English, but he would know that a conference was going on, and would be in a pretty good position to block any activity planned therein. If it were practical to get Swift out of hearing—but if that were possible, the whole thing would be solved anyway. The meat of the problem was the fact that Swift couldn’t be handled.

Of course, it was night, and therefore raining. The invaders were being protected by the village fires, at the moment; however, Nick reflected, no one was protecting the fires themselves. He glanced upward at the thirty- to fifty-foot raindrops drifting endlessly out of the black sky, following one of them down to a point perhaps three hundred yards above his head. There it vanished, fading out in ghostly fashion as it encountered the updraft from the village fires. It was not the drops straight overhead which were troublesome—not to Fagin’s village.

Another, larger drop beyond the glowing protective double ring accomplished more. It settled to the ground fifty yards beyond one of the outer fires. The ground had been cooled enough by its predecessors to let it remain liquid, so for a short time it was visible as it drifted toward the blaze under the impulse of the fires’ own convection currents. Then radiated heat made it fade out; but Nick knew it was still there. It had been crystal clear, free of suspended oxygen bubbles; it was now pure steam, equally free of combustion’s prime necessity. Nick would have nodded in satisfaction, had his head been capable of free movement, when the fire in the path of the invisible cloud suddenly began to cool and within a few seconds faded from visibility.

If any of the attackers noticed the incident, they certainly did nothing. None of them moved, and the fire remained out. Five seconds later Nick had his plan worked out.

He emerged fully from the hut and walked over to the main fuel magazine. Here he loaded himself with as much as he could carry, and took it back to the building where the wounded were lying. None of the raiders stopped or questioned him; none had spoken to him since the truce had been concluded. Inside the hut, he quickly built and lighted a fire. When it had come to an even glow he lighted a torch from it and walked back to the woodpile. Casually he stuck the cold end of the torch into the pile, as though to illuminate his work; then he made several more trips carrying fuel to the hut, leaving the torch where he had placed it. Eventually the building could hold no more wood, so he ceased his labor.

But he left the torch.

Tenebran wood glows like punk; it does not flame. It took some time for the stick to burn down to its base, and still longer before the increase in brilliancy of the region around the village showed that the main stack had properly caught. Even then, there was no reaction from the invaders. These had gathered into a tight group surrounding the robot, which had remained in its usual position at the center of the village.

By this time, more than half of the peripheral fires were out, most of them in the outer ring. One or two of the inner ring had also been smothered, and Nick began to get an impression of uneasiness from the clustered cave-dwellers. When the last of the outer fires died, a mutter began to grow from their ranks, and Nick chuckled to himself. Swift just might have a little trouble handling his men as their protection from the rain vanished, and no caves were available. If the muttering continued, the chief would certainly have to take some action; and all he could do, as far as Nick could see, would be to ask Nick himself for help. That should put quite a dent in his authority.

But Nick had underestimated the big fellow. From the vicinity of the robot his voice suddenly rapped out a series of orders; and obediently a dozen of his men ran from the outskirts of the group toward one of the fires which was still burning. There, to Nick’s disgust, they seized sticks from the small woodpile at its side, lighted their ends, carried the torches to the dead fires, and rekindled these without the slightest difficulty. Evidently the cave-dwellers didn’t sleep all night in their holes; someone had watched his fire-technique long enough to get at least some of the idea. If they also knew about replenishing… They did. More wood was being put on all the fires. Nick noted with satisfaction, however, that it was far too much wood; he wouldn’t have to wait too long before the small woodpiles beside each fire were extinguished. The cave-dwellers seemed to have taken the now fiercely glowing main pile as another bonfire; Swift was going to have to do some fast thinking when the reserves disappeared.

This he proved able to do. It was fortunate that Nick had been able to keep awake, for Swift’s men did not announce their coming. They simply came.

They were unarmed, rather to Nick’s surprise, but they approached the hut door without hesitation, almost as though they expected him to stand aside for them. When he didn’t, they stopped, the foremost half a spear’s length away. He may have intended to say something, but Nick spoke first.

“What do you want? My friends are all wounded and can’t help you. There is no room in the hut. Go to the others, if you want shelter.”

“Swift sent us for wood.” It was a calm statement, with no “or else” concealed in it, as far as Nick could tell by the tone.

“I have only enough to keep my own fire going for the night. You will have to use the other piles.”

“They are used up.”

“That isn’t my fault. You know that wood burns up hi a fire; you shouldn’t have put so much on.”

“You didn’t tell us that. Swift says that you should therefore give us your own wood, which we saw you taking, and tell us how much to use.”

It was evident that the chief had seen through at least part of Nick’s scheme, but there was nothing to do now but carry it through.

“As I said, I have only enough for this fire,” he said. “I shall not give it up; I need it for myself and my friends.”

Very much to his surprise, the fellow retreated without further words. Apparently he had gone as far as his orders extended, and was going back for more. Initiative did not flourish under Swift’s rule.

Nick watched the group as it rejoined the main crowd and began to push its way through to the chief. Then he turned and nudged Jim.

“Better get up, you and Nancy,” he whispered. “Swift can’t let this go. I’ll fight as well as I can; you keep me in ammunition.”

“What do you mean?” Nancy’s thoughts were less swift than usual.

“I can’t fight them with axes; they’d be through in two minutes. I’m tired and slow. I’m going to use torches— remember what it feels like to be burned? They don’t; I warned them about it when I was at their village, and they were always very careful, so none of them has any real experience. They’re going to get it now!”

The other two were on their feet by this time. “All right,” agreed Jim. “We’ll light torches and pass them to you whenever you call. Are you going to poke with the things, or throw them? I never thought of fighting that way.”

“Neither did I, until now. I’ll try poking first, so give me long ones. If I decide to throw, I’ll call for really short ones—we don’t want them throwing the things back at us, and they will if there’s enough to hold on to. They’re not too stupid for that—not by a long day’s journey!”

Jim and Nancy gestured agreement and understanding, and turned to the piles of firewood that almost covered the floor. The fire was burning quite close to the doorway; Nick took his stand once more in the opening, and the other two on either side of the blaze, where they could hand torches to him as rapidly as he might need. Everything was ready when the party returned to the hut.

It was a little larger this time; Swift himself had joined it. They approached to within half a dozen yards, and spoke briefly and to the point.

“If you don’t let us in to get the wood, my knives will take care of you. You have seen what I mean.”

“I have seen,” acknowledged Nick. “That’s why I want nothing to do with you. If you come any closer, it is at your own risk.”

He had never before seen Swift hesitant or uncertain, but for just a moment now the chief seemed to be running over the implications of Nick’s words. Then he was himself again.

“Very well,” he said, and swept forward with four spears couched along his forearms.

Nick’s battle plan had to be scrapped at the beginning; the spears were longer than his torches. He did succeed in striking their points aside before they touched him, but he could not reach Swift even with the spears out of the way. His hatred of the chief paralyzed his judgment for an instant, and he hurled both his left-hand torches at the giant’s chest.

Swift ducked, barely in time. Those behind him were in a close-packed wedge whose central members were unable to dodge quickly enough, and howls of pain arose in several voices as the torches struck and scattered burning coals in all directions. The chief ducked backward to just beyond spear’s length, resuming his attack stance.

“Half circle!” he snapped. The warriors obeyed with speed and precision, forming a thin line centered on Nick. “Now, all at once—get him!” The semicircle contracted, and the spear points came toward the door.

Nick was not too alarmed. None of the attackers was in a position to deliver the upward thrust which would get under scales; stone points were more likely to push him back than to penetrate. If he were pushed back against anything solid, of course, it would be a different story; the real danger at the moment, though, was that several of the fighters would get within knife range at once, and so occupy him that a spearsman could get close enough for long enough to strike from below. For just an instant he hesitated, wondering whether he should throw or strike; then he made up his mind.

“Short ones!” he ordered to the helpers behind him.

Nancy already had several foot-long sticks with their ends in the fire; she had them in his hands instantly, and was lighting others. For perhaps ten seconds Nick did his best to emulate a machine gun. More than half his projectiles missed, but a good many didn’t; and after the first three or four seconds another factor complicated the fight. Still burning torches and fragments of glowing wood were being more and more thickly scattered before the doorway, and the attackers were getting involved with these. Feet were even more sensitive to the fire than were scales, and the effect was distracting, to put it mildly. Swift, to do him justice, stayed with his men and fought as hard as any; but at length even he had had enough and withdrew a few yards, limping slightly. Nick laughed aloud as he went.

“Better get your own firewood, Swift, my friend! Of course you won’t find any within an hour’s walk of the village; we’ve used it up long ago. Even if you know where the best places to get it are, you won’t be able to get there and back through the rain. You needn’t worry, though; we’ll take care of you when you go to sleep. I wouldn’t want anything to eat you, friend Swift!”

It was almost funny to watch Swift’s fury. His hands tightened on the spear shafts, and he rose to full height on his walking legs, shaking all over with rage. For several seconds it seemed an even bet whether he would hurl the spears or charge the door across the scattered coals. Nick was perfectly ready for either, but was hoping for the latter; the mental picture of Swift with burned feet was! a very attractive one.

But the chief did neither. In the midst of his fury he suddenly relaxed, and the spear points dropped as though he had forgotten them for a moment. Then he shifted the j weapons backward until he was holding them near their j centers of gravity, in “carry” position, and turned away from the hut. Then, seemingly as an afterthought, he turned back and spoke to Nick.

“Thanks, Chopper. I didn’t expect that much help. I’d better say good-bye, now; and so had you—to your i Teacher.”

“But—you can’t travel at night.”

“Why not? You did.”

“But how about Fagin? How do you know he can?”

“You told me he could do anything you could. You also said he’d agree to do what we said. If he forgets that, or changes his mind, we can thank you for showing us what to do. Do you suppose he’ll like the touch of fire any better than we do?” Swift chuckled and strode swiftly back to the main group, bawling orders as he went. Nick began shouting at least as loudly.

“Fagin! Did you hear that? Fagin! Teacher!” In his anxiety he forgot the tune it always took the Teacher to answer, and drowned the robot out for a moment. Then its answer became audible.

“What’s the matter, Nick?” It was not possible to tell from the voice that Raeker was not at the other end; Nick’s people had been given a general idea of the “Teacher” situation, but not all the details, and they thought inevitably of the robot as an individual. This was virtually the first time it had made any difference; the man on watch knew the general picture, of course, having been briefed by Raeker when the latter had gone off duty, but he had not actually been present during Swift’s initial attack or the subsequent truce. Consequently, Nick’s words did not mean all they might have to him.

“Swift is going to start back for the caves right away; he says he’ll use fire on you if you don’t go with him. Can you stand that?”

There was a little more than the usual hesitation. No one had ever measured the temperature of a Tenebran fire, and the man on watch was not enough of a physicist to hazard a guess from its radiation output. The main consideration in his mind was the cost of the robot.

“No,” he answered. “I’ll go along with him.”

“What shall we do?”

Raeker’s order for the villagers to stay put was one thing he had not mentioned to his relief; he had expected to be back on duty long before the start of the journey. The relief did the best he could under the circumstances.

“Use your own judgment. They won’t hurt me; I’ll get in touch with you again later.”

“All right.” Nick carefully refrained from reminding the Teacher of his earlier command; he liked the new one much better. He watched in silence as the invaders, under Swift’s orders, collected what torches they could from the nearly spent fires. Then they clustered around the Teacher, leaving an opening in the crowd on the side they wished him to go. It was all done without words, but the meaning was plain enough. The robot swung around on its treads and headed south, the cave dwellers swarming after it.

Nick spent only a few moments wondering whether they’d find more torch wood before using up what they had. He had turned his mind to other matters even before the cavalcade was out of sight.

He had been given a free hand. Very well, he still felt that leaving the village was best; they would do so as soon as possible. Of course, it wouldn’t be possible for a few days, until everyone was able to travel again, but the tune could be spent in planning. There was certainly the question of where to go, and the corollary one of how to get there—Nick began to realize with a shock just what leaving the village, with its lifetime accumulation of property and equipment, would mean—and how to get back in touch with Fagin when the move was accomplished. It was easy to tell oneself that the Teacher could always find them wherever they went; but Nick was mature enough to doubt the omniscience of anyone, including the robot. That meant, then, three problems to solve. Since Nick had no desire to resemble Swift in any way, he postponed solving them until the others would be awake and able to help in the discussion.

The fire lasted until morning, but only just, and only by virtue of Nick’s running around the hut rapidly on a number of occasions to stir oxygen into an oncoming mass of dead steam. He got very little sleep after the last of the outer fires went, and that was pretty early hi the night.

Morning brought no relief. The first task normally accomplished was to put a guard on the village herd, which was penned in a hollow near the village. The depression remained full of water a little later than the surrounding country, so the “cattle” were normally safe from predators until the guards could arrive; but at the moment there simply weren’t enough people in condition to guard both herd and village. They suffered several losses that morning as a result, until Nick could round up the reviving creatures by himself and herd them into the village. Then there was the problem of firewood for the next night; he had told the absolute truth to Swift in that respect. Someone had to get it. There was no choice but for the still battered Jim and Nancy to do the job together, dragging as best they could the cart on which they piled their fuel. They had never succeeded in training their cattle to pull the conveyance; the creatures stubbornly refused to budge under any sort of load.

By the second day, most of the others were on their feet if not at full efficiency, and matters were considerably easier. A consultation was held that morning, in which Nick proposed and defended vigorously the notion that they move to the viciously rough country he had crossed during his flight from the cave village. His chief point was the presence of so many spots which could only be approached from a single, narrow point, like a canyon or ridge, and could therefore be defended effectively by a small force. It was Nancy who answered the suggestion.

“I’m not sure that’s a very good plan,” she said. “In the first place, we don’t know that any of the places you describe will still be that way when we get there.” A quake lent emphasis and support to her words.

“What if they aren’t?” retorted Nick. “There will always be others. I wasn’t suggesting any of the specific spots I described, only the general area.”

“But how is Fagin to find us? Supposing one of us does get to the cave village and get a message to him, how are we to describe the way to him? We’d have to guide him directly, which would probably interfere with his own plans—you judged, and I think rightly, that he is planning to take advantage of his ability to travel at night without fire.”

Nick felt a very human surge of annoyance at this opposition, but remembered Swift in time to keep from yielding to it. He didn’t want to be compared with that savage in anyone’s mind, he told himself; besides, there was something to what Nancy was saying, now that he really gave his mind to it.

“What sort of place would you suggest?” he asked.

“You’re right about getting back in touch with Fagin, but I certainly can’t think of any place which we will ever defend as easily as those canyons in the west.”

“It seems to me that Fagin was right when he said I was foolish to fight Swift’s people at all,” returned Nancy quietly. “I was not thinking of defense; if we have to defend ourselves, we’re already out of luck, I fear. What I had in mind was the sea.”

“What?”

“You know. You helped map it. Off to the east there’s a body of water that isn’t water—at least, it doesn’t dry up entirely during the daytime. I don’t remember just what Fagin called it when we reported it to him-—”

“He said he supposed it was mostly sulphuric acid, whatever that is, but he didn’t know how to make sure,” interjected the still crippled Dorothy.

“—Whatever it is, it stays there, and if we’re on the edge of it Fagin can’t help finding us if he simply travels along its border. Probably he can travel in it for a distance, too, so the cave people can’t track him.” A hum of approving surprise greeted this notion, and after a few moments of thought Nick gestured agreement.

“All right,” he said. “If no one has other ideas, we’ll move to the edge of the sea; we can settle on the exact spot after we get there and have looked around. It’s a year or two since we mapped the place, and I don’t suppose we could trust information that old.

“The next problem is getting there. We’ll have to decide how much we can take from the village here, and how we can carry it. I suppose we can start with the wood cart, but I’ll bet there are places we won’t be able to move it across. No matter how we figure it, there’s a lot we’ll have to leave behind.

“Then, finally, there’s the matter of getting a message to Fagin. That we can leave until we’re settled; there’s no point telling him where we are before we know.

“I hope we can travel by tomorrow; in the meantime, the second question is the one to work on. Anyone who has more ideas, let’s hear them at any time.” They dispersed, each to the tasks of which he was capable.

Jim and Nancy were practically whole again, and were now looking after the cattle. There had been no further losses since they had been able to take over the job. Dorothy was at the wagon, with all the articles they hoped to take stacked around her, arranging and rearranging them in the vehicle. No matter how she packed them, there was more outside than in, and nearly constant discussion and even argument was going on between her and the other members of the group. Each wanted his own belongings to go and it took a good deal of talk to convince some of them that since everything couldn’t be taken the losses should be shared.

The argument was still going on, to a certain extent, when the journey started. Nick was beginning to feel a certain sympathy for Swift by that tune; he had discovered that at times it was necessary for a group to have a leader, and that it was not always possible for the leader to reason his followers into the desired action. Nick had had to give his first arbitrary orders, and was troubled by the thought that half his friends must by now be comparing him with Swift. The fact that he had been obeyed should have clarified him on this point, but it didn’t.

The cart was perilously overloaded, and everyone except those actually herding had to pull with all his strength. When fighting was necessary, hauling had to be stopped while weapons were snatched up and used. Actually, of course, there wasn’t too much fighting; the average Tenebran carnivore wasn’t very brainy, but most of them steered clear of such a large group. The chief exception was formed by the floaters, which were more vegetable than animal anyway. These creatures could be downed fairly safely by anyone having a spear longer than their tentacles; but even after their gas bladders were punctured they were dangerous to anyone coming within reach of the poisonous appendages. Several animals of the herd were lost when one of the monsters fell almost into it, and two of the party were painfully poisoned on the same occasion. It was some hours before they could walk unaided.

Contrary to Nick’s pessimistic forecast, it proved possible to get the wagon all the way to the sea. Late in the second day of travel they reached it, after some hours of threading their way among ever larger pools of quiet, oily liquid.

They had seen such pools before, of course; they formed in hollows in their own valley toward the end of the day—hollows which were lakes of water at sunrise, but only tiny pools of oleum when the day reached its height. These were larger, filling a much bigger fraction of their beds.

The ground was different, too; vegetation was as thick as ever, but underfoot among the stems the ground was studded with quartz crystals. The cattle didn’t seem to mind, but the feet of their owners were not quite so tough, and progress became decidedly difficult. Such masses of crystals did occur elsewhere, but usually in isolated patches which could be avoided.

The search for a stopping place was therefore briefer, and perhaps less careful, than it might otherwise have been. They agreed very quickly on a peninsula whose main body was a hill thirty or forty feet above the sea, joined to the mainland by a crystal-studded tombolo a dozen yards in width. Nick was not the only one of the party who was still considering the problem of physical defense; and in addition to its advantages in this respect, the peninsula was roomy enough for the herd. They guided and trundled their belongings down the sea and up the hill, and immediately settled down to the standard business of hunting for firewood. This was plentiful enough, and by dark a very satisfactory supply had been laid in.

The watch fires were built, one of the herd animals slaughtered and eaten, and the group settled down for the night. It was not until the drops had appeared and the fires had been lighted that anyone thought to wonder what happened to the sea level during the nightly rain.