The ground before us was fairly clear and level, but boulder-strewn slopes rose sharply to the right and left of us. Directly ahead, the level space dipped down into a cup-shaped depression holding what appeared to be a small village. The buildings in the village were odd; dome-shaped, with floorless, front-porch extensions, consisting simply of projecting roofs upheld at each end by supporting poles. Under those roofs, out in the open, there seemed to be a few machines or equipment—mechanical constructs of some kind. No human beings were visible. Beyond the village, the ground rose sharply into a small mountain—it was too steep to be called a hill—wearing a belt of trees halfway up its several hundred feet of height. On one side of the mountain, the bare peak sloped at an angle the jeeps could possibly manage. But the other slopes were all boulder-strewn and climbable only by someone on foot.
On top, crowning the peak, was a large, solid, circular building, looking as if it had been poured out of fresh white concrete ten seconds before we appeared on the scene. That was as much as I had a chance to notice, because then everything started to happen.
A number of objects hit loudly on the body and cab of the truck, one shattering the window next to Bill. At the same time, there was a yowl of rage from Sunday and I caught sight, fleetingly, of the leopard leaping off the roof of the cab to the right, with his leash trailing in the air behind him. Suddenly the rocks around us were speckled by the visages of dark-furred, ape-like creatures.
The guns of the men in the box were firing. The girl, who had been seated between Bill and myself, scrambled over Bill crying out Sunday’s name, opened the door of the pickup on that side, and disappeared. Bill exited after her; and I heard the machine pistol yammering. I jerked open the door on my side, rolled out on to the hard-pebbled earth, and began firing from a prone position at any furry head I could see.
There was a timeless moment of noise and confusion—and then without warning, it was over. There were no longer any creatures visible to shoot at, except for perhaps four or five who lay still, or barely stirring, on the ground. I fired a few more rounds out of reflex and then quit. The other guns fell silent.
I got to my feet. Sunday stalked back into my line of vision, his tail high in self-congratulation. He headed for one of the two furry figures that still moved. I opened my mouth to call him back; but before he could have reached the creature, a rifle in the box behind me began to sound again, and both the moving bodies went motionless.
“Quit that!” I shouted, spinning around. “I want one alive—”
I broke off, suddenly realizing I was talking to a man who wasn’t listening. Richie, his round face contorted, was kneeling behind the metal side of the pickup box, firing steadily at the dark-furred shapes; and he kept at it until his rifle was empty.
I climbed into the box and took the gun away from him as he tried to reload it.
“Simmer down!” I said.
He looked at me glassy-eyed, but sat without moving. There wasn’t a mark on him.
But the other two were hit. Alan had one side of his face streaming blood from what seemed to be a scalp wound. He was holding up Waite, who was breathing in an ugly, rattling way with his face as white as the building on the peak. His right hand was trapped behind Alan; but he kept trying to bring his left hand up to his chest, and Alan kept holding it away.
My head cleared. I remembered now that the barrage that had come at us had contained not only thrown rocks but a few leaf-shaped, hiltless knives. One of the knives was now sticking in Waite’s chest low on the left side. It was in perhaps a third the length of its blade; and evidently it had slid in horizontally between two ribs.
Waite coughed, and a little pink froth came out the corners of his mouth.
“He wants to get the knife out,” said Alan, pleadingly to me. “Should we just pull it out, do you think?”
I looked down at Waite. It did not matter, clearly, whether we took the knife out or not. The blade had gone into his lungs and now they were filling up with blood. Waite looked back up at me with panic in his eyes. He was the quiet one of Tek’s four men and possibly the youngest. I had never been sure if he was really like the others, or whether he had simply gotten swept up and tried to be like them.
There was nothing I or anyone else in our group could do for him. I stood looking down at him, feeling my helplessness, like something in my own chest being raggedly cut. This was one of the people I had been thinking meant little or nothing to me and would be easily expendable. I had not stopped to realize how close a group like ours could come to be, living together like a family, moving together, facing a possibly dangerous world together. Maybe he would die more quickly without the knife blade in him and removing it would be the kindest thing we could do for him.
“If he wants it out, he might as well have it out,” I said.
Alan let go of Waite’s arm. The arm came up, and its hand grasped the handle of the knife but could not pull it out. Alan half-reached for the knife himself, hesitated, tried again, hesitated, and looked appealingly at me.
I reached down and took hold of the handle. The blade stuck at first, then slid out easily. Waite yelled—or rather, he tried to yell, but it was a sound that ended in a sort of gargle. He pulled away a little from Alan and leaned over forward, face tilted down intently toward the bed of the box, as if he was going to be sick. But he was not. He merely hung there sagging against the grip of Alan’s arms, his gaze calm and intent on the metal flooring; and then, as we watched, he began to die.
It was like watching him dwindle away from us. His face relaxed and relaxed, and the focus in his eyes became more and more general, until all at once there was no focus at all and he was dead. Alan let him down quickly but softly on the bed of the box.
I turned and climbed out of the box back on to the ground. I saw Bill standing on this side of the truck now and Sunday nosing curiously at one of the bodies. Suddenly, it struck me.
“Girl!” I shouted at Bill. “The girl! Where is she?”
“I don’t know,” said Bill.
I ran around the front of the truck and the bouldered slope on the side I’d seen her disappear.
“Girl!” I kept shouting. “GIRL!”
I couldn’t find her. I found one of the dead ape-creatures, but I couldn’t find her. I started threading back and forth among the rocks as I worked up the slope; and then, suddenly, I almost fell over her. She was in a little open space, half-sitting up with her back against a boulder and a torn-off strip of her shirt tied around one leg above the knee.
For a moment I thought she was already dead, like Waite—and I couldn’t take it. It was like being cut in half. Then she turned her head to look at me, and I saw she was alive.
“Oh, my God!” I said.
I knelt down beside her and wrapped her up in my arms, telling myself I would never let go of her again. Never. But she was as stiff and unresponsive in my grasp as a wild animal caught in a trap. She did not move; but she did not relax either, and finally, this brought me more or less back to my senses; I didn’t want to let her go, but I stopped holding her quite so tightly.
“Are you all right?” I said. “Why didn’t you answer me?”
“My name’s Ellen,” she said.
“Is that all!” I hugged her again. “All right! You’ll be Ellen from now on. I won’t ever call you anything else!”