Smith was pouring a deadly fire into the hostile camp and the three below were replying with a sheet of blasting bolts, plowing up the soil around the boulder. In a minute or two, Mackenzie knew, they would literally cut the ground out from under Smith. Cursing under his breath, he edged around the hummock, pushing his pistol before him, wishing he had a rifle.
The third man was slinging an occasional, inexpert shot at the three below, but wasn’t doing much to help the cause along. The battle, Mackenzie knew, was up to him and Smith.
He wondered abstractedly where Nellie was.
“Probably halfway back to the post by now,” he told himself, drawing a bead on the point from which came the most devastating blaze of firing.
But even as he depressed the firing button, the firing from below broke off in a chorus of sudden screams. The two Groombridgians leaped up and started to run, but before they made their second stride, something came whizzing through the air from the slope below and crumpled one of them.
The other hesitated, like a startled hare, uncertain where to go, and a second thing came whishing up from the bottom of the slope and smacked against his breastplate with a thud that could be heard from where Mackenzie lay.
Then, for the first time Mackenzie saw Nellie. She was striding up the hill, her left arm holding an armful of stones hugged tight against her metal chest, her right arm working like a piston. The ringing clang of stone against metal came as one of the stones missed its mark and struck the ground car.
The human was running wildly, twisting and ducking, while Nellie pegged rock after rock at him. Trying to get set for a shot at her, the barrage of whizzing stones kept him on the dodge. Angling down the hill, he finally lost his rifle when he tripped and fell. With a howl of terror, he bolted up the hillside, his life blanket standing out almost straight behind him. Nellie pegged her last stone at him, then set out, doggedly loping in his wake.
Mackenzie screamed hoarsely at her, but she did not stop. She passed out of sight over the hill, closely behind the fleeing man.
Smith whooped with delight. “Look at our Nellie go for him,” he yelled. “She’ll give him a working over when she nails him.”
Mackenzie rubbed his eyes. “Who was he?” he asked.
“Jack Alexander,” said Smith. “Grant said he was around again.”
The third man got up stiffly from behind his boulder and advanced toward them. He wore no life blanket, his clothing was in tatters, his face was bearded to the eyes.
He jerked a thumb toward the hill over which Nellie had disappeared. “A masterly military maneuver,” he declared. “Your robot sneaked around and took them from behind.”
“If she lost that recording stuff and the fertilizer, I’ll melt her down,” said Mackenzie, savagely.
The man stared at them. “You are the gentlemen from the trading post?” he asked.
They nodded, returning his gaze.
“I am Wade,” he said. “J. Edgerton Wade—”
“Wait a second,” shouted Smith. “Not the J. Edgerton Wade? The lost composer?”
The man bowed, whiskers and all. “The same,” he said. “Although I had not been aware that I was lost. I merely came out here to spend a year, a year of music such as man has never heard before.”
He glared at them. “I am a man of peace,” he declared, almost as if daring them to argue that he wasn’t, “but when those three dug up Delbert, I knew what I must do.”
“Delbert?” asked Mackenzie.
“The tree,” said Wade. “One of the music trees.”
“Those lousy planet-runners,” said Smith, “figured they’d take that tree and sell it to someone back on Earth. I can think of a lot of big shots who’d pay plenty to have one of those trees in their back yard.”
“It’s a lucky thing we came along,” said Mackenzie, soberly. “If we hadn’t, if they’d got away with it, the whole planet would have gone on the warpath. We could have closed up shop. It might have been years before we dared come back again.”
Smith rubbed his hands together, smirking. “We’ll take back their precious tree,” he declared, “and that will put us in solid! They’ll give us their tunes from now on, free for nothing, just out of pure gratitude.”
“You gentlemen,” said Wade, “are motivated by mercenary factors but you have the right idea.”
A heavy tread sounded behind them and when they turned they saw Nellie striding down the hill. She clutched a life blanket in her hand.
“He got away,” she said, “but I got his blanket. Now I got a blanket, too, just like you fellows.”
“What do you need with a life blanket?” yelled Smith. “You give that blanket to Mr. Wade. Right away. You hear me.”
Nellie pouted. “You won’t let me have anything. You never act like I’m human—”
“You aren’t,” said Smith.
“If you give that blanket to Mr. Wade,” wheedled Mackenzie, “I’ll let you drive the car.”
“You would?” asked Nellie, eagerly.
“Really,” said Wade, shifting from one foot to the other, embarrassed.
“You take that blanket,” said Mackenzie. “You need it. Looks like you haven’t eaten for a day or two.”
“I haven’t,” Wade confessed.
“Shuck into it then and get yourself a meal,” said Smith.
Nellie handed it over.
“How come you were so good pegging those rocks?” asked Smith.
Nellie’s eyes gleamed with pride. “Back on Earth I was on a baseball team,” she said. “I was the pitcher.”
Alexander’s car was undamaged except for a few dents and a smashed vision plate where Wade’s first bolt had caught it, blasting the glass and startling the operator so that he swerved sharply, spinning the treads across a boulder and upsetting it.
The music tree was unharmed, its roots still well moistened in the burlap-wrapped, water-soaked ball of earth. Inside the tractor, curled in a tight ball in the darkest corner, unperturbed by the uproar that had been going on outside, they found Delbert, the two-foot high, roly-poly conductor that resembled nothing more than a poodle dog walking on its hind legs.
The Groombridgians were dead, their crushed chitinous armor proving the steam behind Nellie’s delivery.
Smith and Wade were inside the tractor, settle down for the night. Nellie and the Encyclopedia were out in the night, hunting for the gun Alexander had dropped when he fled. Mackenzie, sitting on the ground, Nicodemus pulled snugly about him, leaned back against the car and smoked a last pipe before turning in.
The grass behind the tractor rustled.
“That you, Nellie?” Mackenzie called, softly.
Nellie clumped hesitantly around the corner of the car.
“You ain’t sore at me?” she asked.
“No, I’m not sore at you. You can’t help the way you are.”
“I didn’t find the gun,” said Nellie.
“You knew where Alexander dropped it?”
“Yes,” said Nellie. “It wasn’t there.”
Mackenzie frowned in the darkness. “That means Alexander managed to come back and get it. I don’t like that. He’ll be out gunning for us. He didn’t like the company before. He’ll really be out for blood after what we did today.”
He looked around. “Where’s the Encyclopedia?”
“I sneaked away from him. I wanted to talk to you about him.”
“O.K.,” said Mackenzie. “Fire away.”