Mission of Gravity (8 page)
The sailors edged around the tank through the narrow space left — Lackland had just barely completed emerging from the alley — and stared almost as silently as the natives. Dwellings, to them, consisted of three-inch-high walls with fabric roofs for weather protection; the idea of a covering of solid material was utterly strange. If they had not been seeing with their own eyes the giant city dwellers actually inside the weird structures, Barlennan’s men would have taken the latter for some new sort of natural formation.
Lackland simply sat at his controls, looked, and speculated. This was a waste of time, really, since he did not have enough data for constructive imagination; but he had the sort of mind that could not remain completely idle. He looked about the city and tried to picture the regular life of its inhabitants, until Barlennan’s actions attracted his attention.
The captain did not believe in wasting time; he was going to trade with these people, and, if they wouldn’t trade, he would move on. His action, which focused Lackland’s attention on him, was to start tossing the packaged trade goods from the roof beside him, and calling to his men to get busy. This.they did, once the packages had stopped falling. Barlennan himself leaped to the ground after the last bundle — an act which did not seem to bother in the least the silently watching giants — and joined in the task of preparing the goods for display. The Earthman watched with interest.
There were bolts of what looked like cloth of various colors, bundles that might have been dried roots or pieces of rope, tiny covered jars and larger empty ones — a good, varied display of objects whose purpose, for the most part, he could only guess at.
With the unveiling of this material the natives began to crowd forward, whether in curiosity or menace Lackland could not tell. None of the sailors showed visible apprehension — he had come to have some ability at recognizing this emotion in their kind. By the time their preparations seemed to be complete an almost solid ring of natives surrounded the tank. The way it had come was the only direction unblocked by their long bodies. The silence among the strange beings persisted, and was beginning to bother Lackland; but Barlennan was either indifferent to it or able to conceal his feelings. He picked an individual out of the crowd, using no particular method of choice that the Earthman could see, and began his selling program.
How he went about it Lackland was utterly unable to understand. The captain had said he did not expect these people to understand his language, yet he spoke; his gestures were meaningless to Lackland, though he used them freely. How any understanding could be transmitted was a complete mystery to the alien watcher; yet apparently Barlennan was having some degree of success. The trouble was, of course, that Lackland in his few months’ acquaintance with the strange creatures had not gained more than the tiniest bit of insight into their psychology. He can hardly be blamed; professionals years later were still being puzzled by it. So much of the Mesklinite action and gesticulation is tied in directly with the physical functioning of their bodies that its meaning, seen by another member of the same race, is automatically clear; these giant city dwellers, though not of Barlennan’s precise species, were similar enough in make-up so that communication was not the problem Lackland naturally assumed it would be.
In a fairly short time, numbers of the creatures were emerging from their homes with various articles which they apparently wished to trade, and other members of the Bree’s crew took active part in the bargaining. This continued as the sun swept across the sky and through the period of darkness — Barlennan asked Lackland to furnish illumination from the tank. If the artificial light bothered or surprised the giants at all, even Barlennan was unable to detect any signs of the fact. They paid perfect attention to the business at hand, and when one had gotten rid of what he had or acquired what he seemed to want, he would retire to his home and leave room for another. The natural result was that very few days passed before Barlennan’s remaining trade goods had changed hands, and the articles freshly acquired were being transferred to the roof of the tank.
Most of these things were as strange to Lackland as the original trade materials had been; but two attracted his attention particularly. Both were apparently living animals, though he could not make out their details too well because of their small size. Both appeared to be domesticated; each stayed crouched at the side of the sailor who had purchased it, and evinced no desire to move away. Lackland guessed — correctly, as it turned out — that these were creatures of the sort the sailors had been hoping to raise in order to test possible plant foods.
„Is that all the trading you’re going to do?” he called, as the last of the local inhabitants drifted away from the neighborhood of the tank.
„It’s all we can do,” replied Barlennan. „We have nothing more to trade. Have you any suggestions, or do you want to continue our journey now?”
„I’d like very much to find out what the interiors of those houses are like; but I couldn’t possibly get through the doors, even if I could discard my armor. Would you or any of your people be willing to try to get a look inside?” Barlennan was a trifle hesitant.
„I’m not sure whether it would be wise. These people traded peacefully enough, but there’s something about them that bothers me, though I can’t exactly put a nipper on it. Maybe it’s because they didn’t argue enough over prices.”
„You mean you don’t trust them — you think they’ll try to get back what they’ve given, now that you’re out of trade goods?”
„I wouldn’t say precisely that; as I said, I don’t have actual reason for my feeling. I’ll put it this way; if the tank gets back to the valley rim and hooked up to the ship so that we’re all ready to go, and we’ve had no trouble from these things in the meantime, I’ll come back down and take that look myself. Fair enough?”
Neither Barlennan nor Lackland had paid any attention to the natives during this conversation; but for the first time the city dwellers did not share this indifference. The nearer giants turned and eyed, with, every indication of curiosity, the small box from which Lackland’s voice was coming. As the talk went on, more and more of them drew near and listened; the spectacle of someone talking to a box too small, they knew, to contain any intelligent creature seemed, for the first time, to break down a wall of reserve that not even the tank had been able to affect. As Lackland’s final agreement to Barlennan’s suggestion came booming from the tiny speaker, and it became evident that the conversation was over, several of the listeners disappeared hastily into their homes and emerged almost at once with more objects. These they presented, with gestures which the sailors now understood quite well. The giants wanted the radio, and were willing to pay handsomely for it.
Barlennan’s refusal seemed to puzzle them. Each in turn offered a higher price than his predecessor. At last Barlennan made an ultimate refusal in the only way he could; he tossed the set onto the roof of the tank, leaped after it, and ordered his men to resume throwing the newly acquired property up to him. For several seconds the giants seemed nonplused; then, as though by signal, they turned away and disappeared into their narrow doorways.
Barlennan felt more uneasy than ever, and kept watch on as many portals as his eyes could cover while he stowed the newly bought goods; but it was not from the dwellings that the danger came. It was the great Hars who saw it, as he half reared himself over his fellows in imitation of the natives to toss a particularly bulky package up to his captain. His eye chanced to rove back up the channel they had descended; and as it did so he gave one of the incredibly loud hoots which never failed to amaze — and startle — Lackland. He followed the shriek with a burst of speech which meant nothing to the Earthman; but Barlennan understood, looked, and said enough in English to get the important part across.
„Charles! Look back uphill! Mover!
Lackland looked, and in the instant of looking understood completely the reason for the weird layout of the city. One of the giant boulders, fully half the size of the tank, had become dislodged from its position on the valley rim. It had been located just above the wide mouth of the channel down which the tank had come; the slowly rising walls were guiding it squarely along the path the vehicle had followed. It was still half a mile away and far above; but its downward speed was building up each instant as its tons of mass yielded to the tug of a gravity three times as strong as that of the Earth!
Flesh and blood have their limits as far as speed is concerned, but Lackland came very close to setting new ones. He did not stop to solve any differential equations which would tell him the rock’s time of arrival; he threw power into the motors, turned the tank ninety degrees in a distance that threatened to twist off one of its treads, and got out from the mouth of the channel which was guiding the huge projectile toward him. Only then did he really come to appreciate the architecture of the city. The channels did not come straight into the open space, as he had noticed; instead, they were so arranged that at least two could guide a rock across any portion of the plaza. His action was sufficient to dodge the first, but it had been forseen; and more rocks were already on their way. For a moment he looked around in all directions, in a futile search for a position which was not about to be traversed by one of the terrible projectiles; then he deliberately swung the nose of the tank into one of the channels and started uphill. There was a boulder descending this one too; a boulder which to Barlennan seemed the biggest of the lot — and to be growing bigger each second. The Mesklinite gathered himself for a leap, wondering if the Flyer had lost his senses; then a roar that outdid anything his own vocal apparatus could produce sounded beside him. If his nervous system had reacted like that of most Earthly animals he would have landed halfway up the hill. The startled reaction of his race, however, was to freeze motionless, so for the next few seconds it would have taken heavy machinery to get him off the tank roof. Four hundred yards away, fifty yards ahead of the plunging rock, a section of the channel erupted into flame and dust — the fuses on Lackland’s shells were sensitive enough to react instantly even to such grazing impact. An instant later the rock hurtled into the dust cloud, and the quick-firer roared again, this time emitting half a dozen barks that blended almost indistinguishably with each other. A fair half of the boulder emerged from the dust cloud, no longer even roughly spherical. The energy of the shells had stopped it almost completely; friction took care of the rest long before it reached the tank. It now had too many flat and concave surfaces to roll very well.
There were other boulders in position to roll down this channel, but they did not come. Apparently the giants were able to analyze a new situation with fair speed, and realized that this method was not going to destroy — the tank. Lackland had no means of knowing what else they might do, but the most obvious possibility was a direct personal attack. They could certainly, or almost certainly, get to the top of the tank as easily as Barlennan and repossess everything they had sold as well as the radio; it was hard to see how the sailors were to stop them. He put this thought to Barlennan.
„They may try that, indeed,” was the answer. „However, if they try to climb up we can strike down at them; if they jump we have our clubs, and I do not see how anyone can dodge a blow while sailing through the air.”
„But how can you hold off alone an attack from several directions at once?”
„I am not alone.” Once again came the pincer gesture that was the Mesklinite equivalent of a smile.
Lackland could see the roof of his tank only by sticking his head up into a tiny, transparent view dome, and he could not do this with the helmet of his armor on. Consequently he had not seen the results of the brief „battle” as they applied to the sailors who had accompanied him into the city.
These unfortunates had been faced with a situation as shocking as had their captain when he first found himself on the roof of the tank. They had seen objects — heavy objects actually falling on them, while they themselves were trapped in an area surrounded by vertical walls. To climb was unthinkable, though the sucker-feet which served them so well in Mesklin’s hurricanes would have served as adequately in this task; to jump as they had now seen their captain do several times was almost as bad — perhaps worse. It was not, however, physically impossible; and when minds fail, bodies are apt to take over. Every sailor but two jumped; one of the two exceptions climbed — rapidly and well — up the wall of a „house.” The other was Hars, who had first seen the danger. Perhaps his superior physical strength made him slower than the others to panic; perhaps he had more than the normal horror of height. Whatever the reason, he was still on the ground when a rock the size of a basketball and almost as perfectly round passed over the spot he was occupying. For practical purposes, it might as well be considered to have struck an equivalent volume of live rubber; the protective „shell” of the Mesklinites was of a material chemically and physically analogous to the chitin of Earthly insects, and had a toughness and elasticity commensurate with the general qualities of Mesklinite life. The rock bounded twenty-five feet into the air against three gravities, hurtling entirely over the wall which would normally have brought it to a stop, struck at an angle the wall of the channel on the other side, rebounded, and went clattering from wall to wall up the new channel until its energy was expended. By the time it had returned, in more leisurely fashion, to the open space the main action was over; Hars was the only sailor still in the plaza. The rest had brought some degree of control into their originally frantic jumps and had either already reached the top of the tank beside their captain or were rapidly getting there; even the climber had changed his method of travel to the more rapid leaping.
Hars, unbelievably tough as he was by terrestrial standards, could not take the sort of punishment he had just received completely without injury. He did not have his breath knocked out, since he lacked lungs, but he was scraped, bruised, and dazed by the impact. Fully a minute passed before he could control his motions sufficiently to make a coordinated attempt to follow the tank; why he was not attacked during that minute neither Lackland, Barlennan, nor Hars himself was ever able to explain satisfactorily. The Earthman thought that the fact that he was able to move at all after such a blow had frightened any such thoughts out of the minds of the city dwellers; Barlennan, with a more accurate idea of Mesklinite physique, thought that they were more interested in stealing than in killing and simply saw no advantage in attacking the lone sailor. Whatever the reason, Hars was permitted to regain his senses in his own time and, eventually, to regain the company of his fellows. Lackland, finally brought up to date on just what had happened, waited for him; when he finally reached the vehicle two of the crew had to descend and practically throw him to the roof, where the rest promptly undertook first-aid measures.
With all his passengers safely aboard, some of them crowded so close to the edge of the roof that their new-found indifference to height was a trifle strained, Lackland headed uphill once more. He had warned the sailors to keep clear of the gun muzzle, and kept the weapon trained ahead of him; but there was no motion on the ridge, and no more rocks fell. Apparently the natives who had launched them had retreated to the tunnels which evidently led up from their city. This, however, was no assurance that they would not come out again; and everyone on and in the tank kept a sharp lookout for any sort of motion.
The channel they were climbing was not the same as the one they had descended, and consequently did not lead directly to the sled; but the Bree became visible some distance before they reached the top, owing to the tank’s height The crew members who had been left behind were still there, all looking with evident anxiety down into the city. Dondragmer muttered something in his own language concerning the stupidity of not keeping an all-around watch, which Barlennan repeated in amplified form in English. However, the worry proved fruitless; the tank reached the stranded sled, turned, and was hitched up to its load without further interference. Lackland, once more under way, decided that the giants had overestimated the effectiveness of the gun; an attack from close quarters — emerging, for example, from the concealed tunnel mouths which must shelter the individuals who started the rocks downhill — would leave the weapon completely helpless, since neither high explosive nor thermite shells could be used close to the Bree or her crew.
With great reluctance he decided that there could be no more exploration until the Bree had reached the waters of the eastern ocean. Barlennan, when this conclusion was offered for his consideration, agreed, though he made some reservations in his own mind. Certainly while the Flyer slept his own crew was going to keep working.
With the expedition once more under way and the tangible results of the interruption rapidly being transferred from tank roof to ship by leaping Mesklinites, Lackland made a call to Toorey, listened humbly to the expected blast when Rosten learned what he had been doing, and silenced him ass before with the report that much plant tissue was now available if Rosten would send down containers for it.
By the time the rocket had landed far enough ahead of them to preserve the Mesklinite nervous systems, had waited for their arrival, picked up the new specimens, and waited once more until the”tank had traveled safely out of range of its takeoff blast, many more days had passed. These, except for the rocket’s visit, were relatively uneventful. Every few miles a boulder-rimmed hilltop was sighted, but they carefully avoided these, and none of the giant natives were seen outside their cities. This fact rather worried Lackland, who could not imagine where or how they obtained food. With nothing but the relatively boring job of driving to occupy his mind, he naturally formed many hypotheses about the strange creatures. These he occasionally outlined to Barlennan, but that worthy was not much help in deciding among them, and Lackland got little of value from their conversations.
One of his own ideas, however, bothered him. He had been wondering just why the giants built their cities in such a fashion. They could hardly have been expecting either the tank or the Bree. It seemed a rather impractical way to repel invasion by others of their own kind, who evidently, from the commonness of the custom, could hardly be taken by surprise.
Still, there was a possible reason. It was just a hypothesis; but it would account for the city design, and for the lack of natives in the country outside, and for the absence of anything resembling farm lands in the neighborhood of the cities. It involved a lot of „iffing” on Lackland’s part even to think of such an idea in the first place, and he did not mention it to Barlennan. For one thing, it left unexplained the fact that they had come this far unmolested — if the idea were sound, they should by now have used up a great deal more of the quick-firer’s ammunition. He said nothing, therefore, and merely kept his own eyes open; but he was not too surprised, one sunrise when they had come perhaps two hundred miles from the city where Hars received his injuries, to see a small hillock ahead of the cavalcade suddenly rear up on a score of stubby, elephantine legs, lift as far as possible a head mounted on a twenty-foot neck, stare for a long moment out of a battery of eyes, and then come lumbering to meet the oncoming tank.
Barlennan for once was not riding in his usual station on the roof, but he responded at once to Lackland’s call. The Earthman had stopped the tank, and there were several minutes to decide on a course of action before the beast would reach them at its present rate of speed.
„Barl, I’m willing to bet you’ve never seen anything like that. Even with tissue as tough as your planet produces, it could never carry its own weight very far from the equator.”
„You are quite right; I haven’t. I have never heard of it, either, and don’t know whether or not it’s likely to be dangerous. I’m not sure I want to find out, either. Still, it’s meat; maybe. ”
„If you mean you don’t know whether it eats meat or vegetables, I’ll bet on the former,” replied Lackland. „It would be a very unusual plant-eater that would come toward something even larger than itself immediately upon sighting it — unless it’s stupid enough to think the tank is a female of its own species, which I very much doubt. Also, I was thinking that a large flesh-eater was the easiest way to explain why the giants never seem to come out of their cities, and have them built into such efficient traps. They probably lure any of these things that come to their hilltop by showing themselves at the bottom, as they did with us, and then kill them with rocks as they tried on the tank. It’s one way of having meat delivered to your front door.”
„All that may be true, but is not of present concern,” Barlennan replied with some impatience. „Just what should we do with this one? That weapon of yours that broke up the rock would probably kill it, but might not leave enough meat worth collecting; while if we go out with the nets well be too close for you to use it safely should we get in trouble.”
„You mean you’d consider using your nets on a thing that size?”
„Certainly. They would hold it, I’m sure, if only we could get it into them. The trouble is that its feet are too big to go through the meshes, and our usual method of maneuvering them into its path wouldn’t do much good. We’d have to get the nets around its body and limbs somehow, and then pull them tight.”
„Have you a method in mind?”
„No — and we wouldn’t have time to do much of the sort anyway; he’ll be here in a moment.”
„Jump down and unhitch the sled. I’ll take the tank forward and keep him occupied for a while, if you want. If you decide to take him on, and get in trouble later, you all should be able to jump clear before I use the gun.”
Barlennan followed the first part of the suggestion without hesitation or argument, slipping off the rear of the deck and undoing with a single deft motion the hitch which held the tow cable to the tank. Giving a hoot to let Lackland know the job was done, he sprang aboard the Bree and quickly gave his crew the details of the new situation. They could see for themselves by the time he had finished, for the Flyer had moved the tank forward and to one side, clearing their line of sight to the great animal. For a short time they watched with much interest, some astonishment, but no fear to speak of as the tank maneuvered with its living counterpart.
