It aimed the small spitter at the center of the black opening and hosed two hundred rounds of tracers into the cave. It waited. Nothing moved inside. It debated the use of a radiation grenade, but its arsenal was fast depleting. It listened for a time, watching the cave, looming five times taller than the tiny flesh-thing that cowered inside. Then it turned and lumbered back across the Hat to resume its watch from the crag. Distant motion, out beyond the limits of the demiworld, scratched feebly at the threshold of its awareness—but the motion was too remote to disturb.
The thing was scratching in the cave again.
“I’m punctured, do you hear? I’m punctured. A shard of broken rock. Just a small leak, but a slap-patch won’t hold. My suit! Aubrey from Sawyer, Aubrey from Sawyer. Base Control from Moonwagon Sixteen, Message for you, over. He he. Gotta observe procedure. I got shot! Fm punctured. Help!”
The thing made whining sounds for a time, then; “All right, it’s only my leg. I’ll pump the bool full of water and freeze it. So I lose a leg. Whatthehell, take your time.” The vibrations subsided into whining sounds again.
It settled again on the crag, its activators relaxing into a lethargy that was full of gnawing pain. Patiently it awaited the dawn.
The movement toward the south was increasing. The movement nagged at the outer fringes of the demiworld, until at last the movement became an irritant. Silently, a drill slipped down from its belly. The drill gnawed deep into the rock, then retracted. It slipped a sensitive pickup into I he drill hole and listened carefully to the ground.
A faint purring in the rocks—mingled with the whining from the cave.
It compared the purring with recorded memories. It remembered similar purrings. The sound came from a rolling object far to the south. It tried to send the pulses that asked “Are you friend or foe,” but the sending organ was inoperative. The movement, therefore, was enemy—but still beyond range of its present weapons.
Lurking anger, and expectation of battle. It stirred restlessly on the crag, but kept its surveillance of the cave. Suddenly there was disturbance on a new sensory channel, vibrations similar to those that came from the cave; but this time the vibrations came across the surface, through the emptiness, transmitted in the long-wave spectra.
“Moonwagon Sixteen from Command Runabout, give us a call. Over.”
Then silence. It expected a response from the cave, at first—since it knew that one unit of enemy often exchanged vibratory patterns with another unit of enemy. But no answer came. Perhaps the long-wave energy could not penetrate the cave to reach the thing that cringed inside.
“Salvage Sixteen, this is Aubrey’s runabout. What the devil happened to you? Can you read fne? Over!”
Tensely it listened to the ground. The purring stopped for a time as the enemy paused. Minutes later, the motion resumed.
It awoke an emissary ear twenty kilometers to the southwest, and commanded the ear to listen, and to transmit the patterns of the purring noise. Two soundings were taken, and from them, it derived the enemy’s precise position and velocity. The enemy was proceeding to the north, into the edge of the demiworld. Lurking anger flared into active fury. It gunned its engines on the crag. It girded itself for battle.
“Salvage Sixteen, this is Aubrey’s runabout. I assume your radio rig is inoperative. If you can hear us, get this: we’re proceeding north to five miles short of magnapult range. We’ll stop (here and fire an autocyb rocket into zone Red-Red. The warhead’s a radio-to-sonar transceiver. If you’ve got a seismitter that’s working, the transceiver will act as a relay stage. Over.”
It ignored the vibratory pattern and rechecked its battle gear. It introspected its energy storage, and tested its weapon activators. It summoned an emissary eve and wailed a dozen minutes while the eye crawled crablike from the holy place to take up a watch-post near the entrance of the cave. If the enemy remnant tried to emerge, the emissary eye would see, and report, and it could destroy the enemy remnant with a remote grenade catapult.
The purring in the ground was louder. Having prepared itself for the fray, it came down from the crag and grumbled southward at cruising speed. It passed the gutted hulk of the Moon-wagon, with its team of overturned tractors. The detonation of the magnapult canister had broken the freight-car sized vehicle in half. The remains of several two-legged enemy appurtenances were scattered about the area, tiny broken things in the pale Earlhlight. Grumbler ignored them and charged relentlessly southward.
A sudden wink of light on the southern horizon! Then a tiny dot of flame arced upward, traversing the heavens. Grumbler skidded to a halt and tracked its path. A rocket missile. It would fall somewhere in the east half of zone Red-Red. There was no time to prepare to shoot it down. Grumbler waited—and saw that the missile would explode harmlessly in a nonvital area.
Seconds later, the missile paused in flight, reversing direction and sitting on its jets. It dropped out of sight behind an outcropping. There was no explosion. Nor was there any activity in the area where the missile had fallen. Grumbler called an emissary ear, sent it migrating toward the impact point to listen, then continued South toward the pain perimeter.
“Salvage Sixteen, this is Aubrey’s runabout,” came the long-wave vibrations. “We just shot the radio-seismitter relay into Red-Red. If you’re within five miles of if, you should be able to hear.”
Almost immediately, a response from the cave, heard by the emissary ear that listened to the land near the tower: “Thank God! He he he he—Oh, thank God!”
And simultaneously, the same vibratory pattern came in long-wave patterns from the direction of the missile-impact point. Grumbler stopped again, momentarily confused, angrily tempted to lob a magnapult canister across the broken terrain toward the impact point. But the emissary ear reported no physical movement from the area. The enemy to the south was the origin of the disturbances. If it removed the major enemy first, it could remove the minor disturbances later. It moved on to the pain perimeter, occasionally listening to the meaningless vibrations caused by the enemy.
“Salvage Sixteen from Aubrey. I hear you faintly. Who is this, Carhill?”
“Aubrey! A voice—A real voice—Or am I going nuts?”
“Sixteen from Aubrey, Sixteen from Aubrey. Stop babbling and tell me who’s talking. What’s happening in there? Have you go I Grumbler immobilized?”
Spasmodic choking was the only response.
“Sixteen from Aubrey. Snap out of it! Listen, Sawyer, I know it’s you. Now get hold of yourself, What’s happened?”
“Dead… they’re all dead but me.”
“STOP THAT IDIOTIC LAUGHING!”
A long silence, then, scarcely audible: “O.K., I’ll hold onto myself. Is it really you, Aubrey?”
“You’re having hallucinations, Sawyer. We’re crossing zone Red in a runabout. Now tell me the situation. We’ve been trying to call you for days.”