Remembering what he wore, Org Rider jerked the far-seeing visor into place, and after a moment of frantic search, found the magnified images of what was going on above him. A man! A man wearing a queer tree-trunklike thing strapped to his back, pointing something like the weapon Redlaw had showed him; and around and below the man, falling like dead leaves through the sky, two, no three orgs. Dead. Slain by those bright blue bolts.
The boy peered under the glasses, trying to make sense of what he saw, and became aware that there were other dots in the sky. It took him time to find them through the visor, but there they were—four or five creatures, and what strange creatures they were! Something that looked like a winged woman made of silvery metal! A tiny creature with frail wings and a hideous five-eyed head! A thing that looked like an enormous eye, unsupported in the air! A machine, a— what? he could not say for sure, but something that looked like a single great cube of metal with metal attachments hanging from it—also floating unsupported in the air. And with them—
Org Rider caught his breath, steadied the glasses, and looked again. A woman. A girl. Dressed like Ben Yale Pertin, or the man who had beamed down the orgs; but a girl whose pale face and bright eyes were like no other woman he had ever seen.
He was jolted out of his reverie by Redlaw. "Give me that far-seer," the giant growled, snatching it off Org Rider's head. He bounded over to a clearing, jamming the visor onto his own head, upward. "Blood and death!" he muttered. "What are those things?" He lifted the lenses away from his eyes and stared blankly at the boy. "Did you see them?" he demanded. "Queer machine things! Animals like nothing I've ever seen!"
Org Rider nodded soberly. He heard the distant screams of orgs, wondered if they were the three he had seen killed, the sound reaching them so late because of distance; then realized it would not be that. These screams were nearer.
And suddenly the strange sights he had seen in the sky were driven from his mind, as he heard those wild screams repeated—less raucously, but closer at hand. He turned and shouted, "Babe! What are you doing?"
The young org turned the great eyes on him. The trunk was quivering and snaking out, now toward Org Rider, now toward the sky. The boy bounded over to the org, caught it around the neck. "Don't listen, Babe!" he begged, and the org mimicked, in his own voice:
"Listen . . . listen . . . listen!"
"Stay, Babe," he coaxed, stroking the org's quivering head. He could feel a roughness beneath the velvet, along the ridges over the great staring eyes, and knew that the hard bronze scales of maturity were beginning to form there. The shrieks of the wild orgs sounded again, nearer. "Please, Babe," he begged.
The org's trembling stopped. It froze, staring into the sky, and die boy saw what its huge eyes had discovered. Black and narrow and swift against the gray sky, two orgs were scudding over the treetops, up-mountain, away from where their fellows had just been slain. And the cries they were shrilling were of fear and warning.
The drives of his genes and chromosomes were too strong to resist. Babe answered with a hoarse, hooting cry, and launched himself into the air.
The first stroke of his powerful wing struck Org Rider, sent him tumbling across the mossy rock. As the boy picked himself up, Babe paused for an instant high above him. "Please," it screamed, hoarsely mimicking the boy's own voice. "Please . . . please . . ,"
And it spun in air and climbed into the bright sky to follow its wild kin.
Alone and desolate, Org Rider stood watching until Babe and the others were out of sight.
THIRTEEN
Ben Yale Pertin had not been fooled by the red- haired giant's pitiful attempts to dissemble. He had caught enough of the giant's meaning through the translator to know that, from Redlaw's point of view at least, the blue slime was very bad medicine indeed. Pertin was not unconcerned about that; he was very much concerned indeed, but he also was sure that these barbarians did not know much about medicine. His first concern was to find the medicpac in the wrecked exploration ship. He did not trouble to clean the slime off; not after the first trial at swabbing it from his skin had taught him something new about pain. But he swabbed it with anesthetizing and antiseptic creams from the pack, covered it with self-sealing bandages, and sterilized the whole area with a cleansing spray. The bone-deep itching began to fade away at once, and the pain went with it. Pertin then fished out the bottles of vitamin supplements and swallowed a week's ration at once, before he went looking for proper food. A self-heating can of beef stew, another self-heating can that produced instant black coffee, a can of peaches in thick syrup— he stopped eating at last not because he was no longer hungry, but because he began to think he would burst.
Then he turned his attention to less immediate problems, such as the two barbarians he was with. They seemed much taken with the laser gun, the telescopic visor, and the audio log; well, let the giant play. It did not matter. The log was only a spare. The weapon was more serious, in a way, but as he had been at their mercy for—what? a week? a month? How could one tell in this place where there was never anything like day or night—and they had not killed him as yet. Giving them a weapon did not much change anything. Of course, if he had kept the weapon it would have put the odds in his favor, he mused. But he still had the bazooka—and his own superiority over these savages . . .
He watched incuriously while Org Rider stroked his hatchling and the giant puzzled over the hardware, idly stroking the bandages on arms and legs. They were beginning to tingle again, he realized. That was odd, but there was no real pain. The only necessary thing was to get himself in contact with civilization again, whereupon full medical treatment would of course be available.
Unfortunately, this exploring ship was of a different model from the one he himself had been shot down in, and although there was a radio he could not make it work. Batteries run down? That seemed unlikely; most electrical systems were powered by radioisotopes and they didn't run down. Broken in the crash? It didn't seem to be. He came to the conclusion that it was working, after all, but that the frequency on which it was operating was simply not monitored any longer. He explored further around the craft, and came across the prime audio log.
Maybe that would give him a clue, he reasoned, and thumbed it back to the beginning of the record, then turned it to PLAY.
"Ben Tom Pertin," it whispered in his earplug, "reporting on landing on surface of Cuckoo."
Hearing his own voice in his ears gave him a thrill of unexpected unease; that voice came from vocal chords that had once lodged in that blue-smeared skeleton before him. But the voice was going on:
"First entry into atmosphere accomplished without difficulty; initial target, anomalous formations on top of mountain. I landed without exiting vehicle because of low air pressure at this altitude. The top of the mountain was bare rock, which seemed to be covered by a blue lichen or greasy substance of some sort, which glowed quite brightly. I observed the anomalous formations and have photographed them for transmission. I do not understand them. There appears to be a sort of crater on top of this mountain, although it is clearly not volcanic; there is nothing resembling a lava flow, out- gassing, or anything else indicating activity of that sort. On the lips of the crater are some truncated cones which have the appearance of artifacts . . ." There was a click, and then the voice resumed: "At this point the viewports of the vehicle began to cloud over and vision began to be impaired. I do not know the cause of this. Perhaps the temperature differential caused the ports to fog up. As I cannot leave the vehicle I am breaking off this section of the survey to attempt a landing at a lower altitude."