The bullets certainly took the attackers by surprise. Colt did not know what they were. He gleaned impressions as he rolled and fired: tall, ungainly creatures, metal-plated, skinny: two purple antennae moved sinuously above their heads. He had no doubt they were communicating silently. They moved as one: they were made for war.
But so was Colt, who had survived worse odds on a dozen rough and wild planets. To the other side of him, the Venusian, Sharol, was firing steadily, his beam weapon flashing, but it merely glanced off the armor plating of the attacking, antlike creatures. “Aim for their antennae!” Colt called, and felt rather than saw the Venusian’s grin. Sharol swept his weapon high, and a terrible hissing sound emanated from the attackers as their fragile communication fronds were seared off. Colt continued to fire, his bullets snapping the attackers’ armor. He saw one, two, three drop. Clearly, whatever make or design these things were, they had not been prepared for an Earthman’s old-fashioned weapon.
But then—he saw! Rising behind the antlike creatures, the source of the explosions that had rocked the bar, a fire burning bright in the sky, dispelling clouds, casting a deathly glow over the swamps and the spaceport itself. Within its glow, Colt could dimly make out a sinuous body, a reptilian head with large diamond eyes, and thin, graceful wings … “What is that?” he said—whispered—and heard Sharol’s choked reply, “It’s a Sun Eater.”
The attackers parted, and through the open swathe of space, Colt could see the creature soaring high above, a sleek, beautiful being flying on wings of—so it seemed—pure song; and whose exact dimensions it was too difficult to make out, so brightly did it burn.
Graceful it might have been. Yet it was not free.
The antlike creatures had, somehow, tethered the Sun Eater to ropes of a metallic hue, and, like children flying a kite, were controlling it from the ground. “We cannot fight it!” Sharol said, and Colt said, “It’s beautiful …”
“We will die here, Earthman,” Sharol said, sounding resigned. But inside Colt, the coldness of battle was replaced with the heat of rage. Whatever these things were, however much they wanted to kill him—these were things he understood. Yet to enslave such a creature—such a spirit!—was to sin against nature itself.
And he could not—would not!—allow it.
He threw Sharol his gun. The Venusian caught it. “Take care of the advance party,” Colt said. “Then follow me.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Set it free,” Colt said, and with that he was running, the rifle strapped to his back now in his hands. It was a Martian Corps carbine, manufactured for an old war in which Colt had once been a soldier, though it was unclear, to this day, on which side.
He came upon them like a Martian dust devil, a Fury as of some lost legend out of Lemuria or Mu, those continents of Earth now lost to the mists of time. The rifle barked, spewing fire. He watched one enemy fall, then another. Blaster fire singed the air and a pain crawled over Colt’s arm, a burning that made him cry out, but he did not drop the gun. Then he was in their midst, battering, kicking, slamming the butt of the rifle into the strange creatures’ featureless faces. They were machines, he thought, and memory returned, but he had no time for it, not now: he fired and punched, paying no heed to his own safety, watching only as the thin streaks of silver rope were let drift, one by one. Above him, slowly, the Sun Eater was rising higher into the air. It cried out then, a voice as pure as the water of a glacier. The remaining attackers came at Colt then with renewed fury, and he knew he was done for. They had surrounded him, they had beaten him down to the ground, in the Venusian mud he lay, looking up into a sky illuminated with an artificial sun. Is this how I die? he thought, not bitterly, but with a certain disappointment: he had always seen himself dying, at last, amidst the rolling green hills of Earth.
But then, as from afar, he heard the renewed sound of fire, and, turning his head so that his cheek rested against the muddy ground, saw the Venusian Sharol come running, firing with Colt’s own gun. Colt reached out, grabbed one of the ant-thing’s legs, and pulled, unbalancing it. He would not die without a fight, he thought, and he set on the metallic creature, prying open its armor with his bare hands, until its plates parted, and inside it, a violent green and vociferous purple, like congealing blood. The inside of the creature was indeed organic, it was alive! Colt reached for the dagger strapped to his leg, raised it with the last of his power, and plunged it into the ant-thing’s gelatinous flesh. A terrible shock ran up his arm from the creature’s body as it convulsed and died. Overhead, the Sun Eater roared, finding its tethers suddenly unmanned. Colt heard the beating of wings and felt the heat of the sun blast down around him. He covered his head with his hands, his fingers slimy with the ant-creature’s blood, and waited to die.
A moment later, still alive, he opened his eyes. All about him was a ring of ash where an unbearable heat had touched down. The ant-things were charred bodies of molten metal and bubbling ichor. Colt raised his eyes to the sky. Above his head, the Sun Eater hovered, its diamond eyes looking into Colt’s. Its wings beat gently, almost lazily, against the air, raising a hot dry wind. For a long moment, they held each other’s gaze. Then, with a final cry, in which gratitude or triumph, Colt never knew which, intermingled, the majestic being rose into the sky like the dawning sun.
“Colt? Colt!” It was Sharol, kneeling beside him, one arm dangling uselessly by his side: white bone jutted out of the flesh. “You’re alive!”
Colt winced. “Your arm is broken,” he said. “It’s nothing,” Sharol said. He threw Colt his gun back. Colt caught it one-handed. His own arm was badly burnt. “Come on!”
“Where?”
“Back to the bar. Before spaceport security or more of these creatures show up.”
“You want a drink that badly?”
But Colt was rising, following the Venusian. His rifle was back in its place, his gun back in its holster. He felt good. It felt good to be alive, on Venus or any other world.
“Wait,” he said, as they approached the bar. The bodies of ant-things littered the ground here, where Colt and Sharol had killed them. He knelt beside one, examined it cautiously. “What are they?” Sharol said.
“ReplicAnts …” Colt said. He turned one armored foot over, squinting. Imprinted into the metal, as he had expected, was a serial number. The memory returned. He had never seen them, until now … “They were manufactured back in the Jovean Wars,” he said. “The bodies of human conscripts, embalmed alive into machine bodies. They were meant for war in space, not on the ground. I had thought that all of them were decommissioned and destroyed years ago.”
“So how did they come to be here?” Sharol asked, and Colt said, “I have no idea.”
“Come on,” Sharol said, losing interest. He pushed into the dark interior of the bar and Colt followed. The bottle of arkia miraculously remained undamaged, though it had fallen to the floor. Sharol picked it up, took a long swig, and handed it to Colt. The drink burned pleasantly as it slid down his throat. The corpse of the man who had begun all this lay on the floor. “Roog,” Sharol said thoughtfully.
“Treasure,” Colt said. They traded glances. “Well,” Colt said, “I guess we’ll never know where he came from.”
Sharol laughed. It was a surprisingly deep sound, and it echoed around the silent room. “I told you, Earthman,” he said. “Death is not the end. Here. Fetch me your knife.”
So the Venusian had noticed Colt’s concealed dagger. He had proven himself a man of action, as good as any Earthman, if not better. He was worthy of grudging respect. And so Colt drew the knife, still slimed with the ReplicAnt’s goo, its blood, and tossed it to the Venusian, who caught it easily with his good hand. “What are you going to—” Colt began, but the Venusian merely grinned cheerfully as he knelt by the dead man. Sharol applied the sharp knife to the dead man’s throat and began to saw off the head, whistling cheerfully as he worked. Colt took another swig of arkia. In moments, it was over, and Sharol straightened up, tossed Colt back the knife, and picked up the dead man’s head by the hair. The face stared sorrowfully at Colt.