Cycle of Fire

IX. TACTICS

EARTH LIES some five hundred light years from Alcyone and the star cluster in which it lies. This is not far as galactic distances go, so it must have been some time before Nils Kruger first met Dar Lang Ahn that the data gathered by the Alphard was delivered to the home planet. Since the survey vessel had obtained spectra, photometric and stereometric readings, and physical samples from some five hundred points in the space occupied by the Pleiades as well as biological and meteorological data from about a dozen planets within the cluster, there was a good deal of observational matter to be reduced.

In spite of this, the planet where Nils Kruger was presumed to have died came in for attention very quickly. There was not enough data on hand to make known its orbit about the red dwarf sun to which it was presumably attached or the latter’s relationship to the nearby Alcyone, but a planet, a dwarf sun, and a giant sun all close together within a mass of nebular gas form together a situation which is rather peculiar by most of the cosmological theories. The astrophysicist who first came across the material looked at it again, then called a colleague; announcement cards went out, and a burning desire to know more began to be felt among the ranks of the astronomers. Nils Kruger was not quite as dead as he himself believed.

But Kruger himself was not an astronomer, and while he had by now a pretty good idea of the sort of orbit Abyormen pursued about its sun he knew no reason to suppose that the system should be of special interest to anyone but himself. He had put thoughts of Earth out of his mind — almost, for he had something else to consider. He expected to live out his life on Abyormen; he had found only one being there whom he considered a personal friend. Now he had been informed by the friend himself that their acquaintance could last only a few more of Kruger’s months, that the other would die his natural death at the end of that time.

Kruger didn’t believe it or, at least, didn’t believe it was necessary. Dar Lang Ahn’s description of the Teachers had aroused a suspicion in his mind. His sight of the great creatures had confirmed those suspicions, and he settled down to his first conversation with them possessed of a grim determination to do everything in his power to postpone the end that Dar Lang Ahn regarded as inevitable. It did not occur to him to question whether or not he would be doing a favor to Dar Lang Ahn in the process.

There is no way of telling whether the Teachers who questioned Nils Kruger sensed his underlying hostility to them; no one asked them during the short remainder of their lives, and they did not bother to record mere suspicions. They certainly showed none themselves; they were courteous, according to their standards, and answered nearly as many questions as they asked. They showed no surprise at the astronomical facts Kruger was forced to mention in describing his background; they asked many of the same questions that the Teacher of the villagers had put to him earlier. He pointed out that the previous Teacher had kept his fire-lighter, when the conversation went that way; he was prepared to defend Dar Lang Ahn’s association with fire, but the Teachers did not seem bothered by the fact. Dar’s relief at this was evident even to Kruger.

The Teachers showed him the Ice Ramparts in considerable detail — more than Dar Lang Ahn himself had ever seen. The caverns in the mountain were only an outpost; the main settlement was far underground and miles further inland. Several tunnels connected it with landing stages similar to the one on which they had arrived. It was here that the libraries were located; they saw load after load of the books which had come in from the cities scattered over Abyormen being filed for further distribution. Asked when this would take place the Teacher made no bones about the answer.

“It will be about four hundred years after the end of this life until the next starts. Within ten years after that the cities should be peopled again and the process of educating the populations begin.”

“Then you have already started to abandon your cities. Do all your people come here to die?”

“No. We do not abandon our cities; the people live in them to the end.”

“But the one Dar Lang Ahn and I found was abandoned!”

“That was not one of our cities. The people who lived near it were not our people and their Teachers were not of our kind.”

“Did you know about this city?”

“Not exactly, though those Teachers are not complete strangers to us. We are still undecided about what to do in that connection.” Dar interrupted here.

“We’ll simply have to go back with enough people to take the books away — and I’m sure you want Nils’s fire-lighter, too, even though we don’t use fire. It is knowledge and should go into the libraries.”

The Teacher made the affirmative hand motion.

“You are quite right, up to a point. However, it is more than doubtful that we could force the return of the material. Did you not say that the books had been taken into a shelter among the hot-water pools?”

“Yes, but — they can’t have been kept there!”

“I am less sure than you. In any case if we made an attack as you suggest they would have the time, and probably the inclination, to hide the things elsewhere.”

“But couldn’t we make them tell where?” asked Kruger. “Once we captured the place it could be a simple bargain — their lives for our property.”

The Teacher looked steadily at the boy for a moment, using both eyes.

“I don’t think I could approve of taking their lives,” he said at last. Kruger felt a little uncomfortable under the steady stare.

“Well — they needn’t know that we wouldn’t actually do it,” he pointed out rather lamely.

“But suppose their Teachers still have the things? What good will threatening the people do?”

“Won’t we have the Teachers too?”

“I doubt it.” The dryness of the answer escaped Kruger completely.

“Well even if we don’t, don’t they care enough about their people to give up the things in order to save them?”

“That might be.” The Teacher paused. “That might — very — well — be. I am rendered a little uncomfortable by some of your ideas, but I must confess there are germs of value in that one. We need not threaten to kill, either; simply removing the people would be enough — or rather, threatening to do it. I must discuss this with the others. You may stay and examine the library if you wish, but I imagine you will want to be back at the outpost when a decision is reached.”

Kruger had seen all he wanted of the book-storing process and of the librarians, who were people of Dar’s stature rather than Teachers, so he signified his intention of returning to the surface. Dar Lang Ahn came along and the long walk up the tunnel commenced. It was enough to keep Kruger warm, though the temperature was about forty-five Fahrenheit. He wondered as they traveled at the need for such a shelter — there was half a mile of rock and over three miles of ice overhead, according to the Teacher. Even more remarkable was the construction of such a place by people whose tools seemed to be of the simplest. But no doubt they had had tools when they first came; Kruger now believed that the accident which had marooned Dar’s people on Abyormen must have occurred several generations before. For one thing there was obviously more than one shipload of them on the planet.

The discussion of Kruger’s projects and its modification by the Teachers took quite some time, and the boy spent the interval seeing what he could do both inside the station and out.

The temperature outside was just about freezing, as might have been expected with so much ice in the vicinity. Kruger could not stay out for very long at a time, since his coveralls had been improvised with the thought in mind of keeping him cool. Fortunately the synthetic of which they were made was windproof, and by tightening the wrists, ankles, and neck he was able to gain some protection. Dar Lang Ahn, who accompanied him on most of his trips outside, seemed indifferent to the cold as he had been to the heat.

On one occasion Kruger did remain outside for a long time, but it was quite involuntary. He had gone out alone, and after plowing through drifts and over treacherous crust for half an hour or so had returned to find the door locked. He had not checked it on leaving to find what sort of latch it had, and apparently it was a spring lock. No amount of pounding attracted anyone’s attention, since the door was a quarter of a mile from the main cavern on that level, and at last Kruger had to strike off around the mountain to the landing platform. He reached it more dead than alive, and thereafter was quite careful about doors.

Even inside he occasionally made mistakes, as well. Once he nearly suffocated in a food-storage bin he was examining, and on another occasion came within an ace of dropping through what later proved to be the trap of a rubbish-disposal chute. He learned later that the chute led to a narrow canyon full of melt-water which normally carried away the rubbish. Thereafter he went nowhere alone. He was decidedly relieved when the deliberations ended and the plan of attack was decided.

It was reasonably ingenious, he felt. He and Dar were to return to the city by glider, circling over the village to be sure they were seen. In the meantime a large force of bowmen were to land on the other side, far enough from the city to be assured of secrecy, and enter it. The two groups were to meet at a point which Dar selected, drawing a map with the aid of his photographic memory and marking the position on it.

The assumption was that the villagers would once more send a force to capture the intruders. This group would be led into a square by Dar and Kruger, which was surrounded by buildings in which the bowmen from the ice cap would be sheltered. There was the possibility that the two decoys would be held as hostages or even killed out of hand, but Dar did not appear worried and Kruger therefore preferred not to show his own feelings.

Kruger made sure that food and water were stowed in the big glider this time, though Dar appeared to consider them unnecessary for such a trip.

The return to the tropics, of course, pleased Kruger only briefly. After a very short time in the steamy air on the wrong side of the ocean he found himself thinking wistfully of the winds from the ice cap — quite humanly ignoring the fact that those winds had nearly been the death of him on one occasion. It is hard to imagine just how Dar Lang Ahn would have reacted had he known his companion’s thoughts. Since Kruger kept them carefully to himself the pilot was able to concentrate on his business.

The volcanic cones were found without difficulty. Most of the other gliders were already down on the beach a few miles short of the mountains; as before, the lighter craft had made better time. Dar and Kruger could see the crews below them gathering for the trip to the city and decided to remain airborne for a while longer to make sure that the bowmen would have time to get into position.

They went on up the coast beyond the cones and cast about in an attempt to find the village of their captors from the air.

The huts themselves were too well concealed by the trees, it turned out, but the area of the geysers was easy enough to locate. The heat from this region provided a splendid updraft and Dar circled in it for several minutes while the two examined the area minutely, but there was no sign of life now. At length Dar took his glider back to the volcanoes and landed on the beach as close as he could get to the city.

They entered the place on foot, fully aware that they were leaving a plain trail in the sand of the beach but not worried about it. At least, Dar Lang Ahn was not worried; Kruger was beginning to wonder whether or not they might be getting just a little too blatant about the whole business. He suggested this to his companion, to whom the idea was wholly new.

“I don’t think we need worry too much,” Dar said at length. “They will see that we had to land on the beach; we certainly could not bring the glider down in the jungle, and there is no way of walking across sand without leaving a trail. We can be less obvious inside the city.”

“All right.” Kruger was coming to suspect that Dar Lang Ahn’s people had had little practice in military matters. However, with luck, the villagers they sought to trap might prove equally naive; there was nothing much that could be done about it at this point.

The city lay silent, as it had before. There had been a recent rainstorm, and puddles of water were still present on the flatter portions of the pavement. Occasionally it was difficult to avoid wading through these, and wet footprints marked portions of their route to the square where the bowmen should be waiting for them. How long these would last in the nearly saturated air was a question that bothered Kruger slightly, though Dar did not appear to give it a thought.

They reached the designated point ahead of the others, in spite of the extra time spent in the air. When the force finally arrived no further time was wasted in placing the ambush. That completed, there seemed nothing for Dar and Kruger to do but start exploring buildings.

“I don’t see what we’re likely to find that will be of much interest,” the boy remarked. “We’ve already been through most of the places around here. We should at least have picked a neighborhood we hadn’t explored so thoroughly.”

“Then I could not have been sure that it would lend itself to our ambush,” pointed out Dar. “I could go only by memory, you know.”

“I suppose that’s so. Well let’s go in here and see what’s to be seen.” Kruger led the way into a nearby structure and the routine they had developed earlier was repeated. As both had feared there was nothing new about the place above ground, and they both had a healthy dislike of the thought of going below.

And the hours passed. Every so often Dar Lang Ahn went back to the building in which the leader of the bowmen was concealed in order to discuss progress, but there was simply no progress to discuss. Kruger finally stated bluntly that the villagers or their Teachers must have outguessed them, and that the thing to do was take the whole group and proceed directly to the village. The thought, however, seemed to bother his companions seriously; it was not in accord with their instructions.

“We must wait for a time at least,” Ten Lee Bar, the leader of the group, insisted.

“But how much time do you have?” retorted Kruger. “It doesn’t matter so much to me, I suppose, though I’d like to be on the other side of the ocean before the last of your gliders is grounded for lack of pilots, but if you don’t get those books soon you never will and the electrical apparatus that your Teachers want will be a long, long time getting to them.”

The native looked uncomfortable.

“In a way, no doubt you are right. Still, if we fail because we did not follow the plan …” His voice trailed off for a moment, then he brightened. “I recall that you spoke of electrical equipment here in the city. Could you not use some of the time in obtaining samples of that? I will gladly help.” Kruger knew determination when he saw it, even in a nonhuman being. He shrugged.

“It’s your funeral. Come along and I’ll see what can be found.” He turned to the nearest building, Dar Lang Ahn and Ten Lee Bar following him, and led the way through the open entrance hall to one of the inner rooms. Like virtually every other room in the city it had the electric plugs, and with the natives watching, Kruger pried off the covering plates and exposed the connecting wires.

Dar Lang Ahn had heard his explanation before and did not pay as much attention through most of it, but toward the end even he was attracted. This was at the point where Kruger was explaining the need for two conductors and the results that would ensue if any easy path for the current was opened between them. This should have been strictly explanation, since no demonstration material was presumably around; unfortunately, when Ten Lee Bar brought wires together to see what the boy meant the strands of silver suddenly grew red hot, causing him to pull back his hand with a howl of surprised pain.

He was no more surprised than Nils Kruger. For several seconds the boy stared at the glowing wires; then he pried them apart with the insulating handle of his knife.

“Did you just feel heat, or something else?” Kruger asked sharply.

“I don’t know. If that was heat I can see why the books have warned us against it.” The bowman had his hand at his mouth in an amazingly human fashion.

Realizing he could get no information from a being who did not even know what a burn felt like, Kruger experimented. After drawing a few sparks with his knife blade he concluded that the voltage must be very low. Making sure he was on the dry stone floor — as dry as stone was ever likely to be in this atmosphere, that is — he then bridged the gap with two fingers. He was unable to feel any shock, though a final check with the knife blade showed that the circuit had not picked that moment to go dead.

The question now stared him in the face: did the city normally run on very low voltage and still have its generators going or was this the last trickle from some emergency storage system? And also, did the Teachers in the nearby village know about this and was that why they had a general prohibition on the city? Kruger had come to feel a unity with Dar Lang Ahn’s people, in spite of the hostility he felt toward their Teachers. If they would not move on their own initiative to obtain the information they needed Nils Kruger would make them! He turned abruptly to Ten Lee Bar.

“This changes matters. Dar Lang Ahn and I are going to that village; things need to be learned. You may come or not with your men, as you see fit.”

“But if you go what is the use of our waiting here?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea. Use your own judgment. We’re on our way.” Kruger started out of the building without even asking Dar if he was coming. Ten looked after them for a moment; then he, too, went outside and began to call his group from their hiding places. Looking back just once Kruger saw them starting after him; he smiled to himself but went on without comment.

The trail was easy to follow; they had been over it enough times before. Nothing occurred during the walk. No sign of animal or villager, either by sight or sound, could be detected. Even the clearing of the geysers was silent as they approached it. At the place where the trail forked, sending one branch to the point where they had always talked to the Teachers, Kruger turned toward the pool which had so nearly engulfed them in boiling water. A few moments later the whole party stood before the rock shelter which projected from one side of the rim.

Still the silence was broken only by the scrape of claws on the rock. After waiting for several minutes Kruger went boldly up to the shelter and began to examine it minutely for traces of an entrance. He started on the side toward the water, leaning over the rim to do so, since he had long since convinced himself that the door must be concealed there. However, he found no trace of any crack in the rock. Extending the search to the sides and front produced no better results.

The top was more fruitful. There were, here, a set of fine, almost invisible cracks outlining what might have been a square trapdoor, but the opening thus framed would barely have admitted Dar Lang Ahn himself. Never in the Universe could it have allowed the great body of one of the Teachers to pass. No doubt the books and fire-lighter had gone this way, but where the Teachers went was still a mystery.

Kruger extended the search for many yards around the pool, the rest of the group helping once they understood what he wanted and had overcome their nervousness at the sight of the steaming water. Numerous cracks were found, but all seemed to be random breaks produced by nature. An attempt to see through the small holes through which the Teachers had presumably looked out proved equally futile; none of them was more than a few inches deep. Kruger began to wonder whether the whole thing had not been a huge farce, a deliberate misdirection of attention. Perhaps the Teachers had been watching all the time from the edge of the forest, or some similar vantage point, while the conversations had been going on. In that case where were they now? Still no sign of villagers, still no sound of Teacher’s voice — Kruger suddenly felt uneasy.

The others had given up their search and come back to him for further orders as he stood thinking, but he did not stop to feel pleased at having usurped command of the expedition. “Let’s go on to the village,” he said abruptly, and led the way.

There was no sign of life. They approached the edge of the clearing cautiously, stopping as they saw the first huts. At Kruger’s order they spread out, to make poorer targets for possible hidden crossbows, and continued their advance until all were within the village.

Still there was neither sound nor motion. House after house was entered cautiously and searched, all with the same negative result. The place was indeed deserted.

“And I suppose my books went with them!” Dar Lang Ahn topped the conclusion bitterly.

“Seems likely. I’m afraid, unless you want to go back to the pool and pry open that trap door. Of course we still haven’t been to the little hut where they reported to their Teachers. Though how a Teacher fitted into that I don’t understand, now that I’ve seen one of them.”

“That’s not the important point.” Dar was off toward the indicated hut like a bolt from his own crossbow. He vanished inside and an instant later called Kruger’s name.

“What is it?” asked the boy as he broke into a run toward the hut. “Did they leave your books as a gesture of good will?”

“Not the books. I can’t describe the thing.” Kruger was inside the door with Dar’s last words. For a moment he stopped while his eyes adjusted to the darkness; then he saw what the little pilot meant.

The hut was unfurnished except for a rude table in the center. On that table was lying a piece of apparatus. It was uncased, and contained coils and condensers and what must have been vacuum tubes, all exposed to view. Kruger realized what it must be almost instantly, but he was given no chance to voice his opinion. The device on the table spoke first.

“Come in, Nils Kruger. I have been waiting for you for quite a while. There is much we have to say to each other.”