I think the Kur was startled to see me. It did not expect to find a human at the ship. Perhaps it was this which, in his startled reflex, spoiled his aim. Then the sand closed between us. I crawled from the area of the shelter. I saw him, twice, through gaps in the sand. But he did not see me. The next time I saw him, he turned toward me, hunched down. I backed away. He approached, through the sand. He did not fire. He held the weapon outward from him, toward me. He tried to hold his balance. I conjectured that his weapon held a limited number of charges. It did not fire like a ray, but rather on the analogy of a cartridge weapon. Suddenly I felt the steel of the ship at my back. The beast emerged from the sand. I saw its lips draw back; it steadied the weapon in the whipping wind with both paws; I thrust at the circular switch on the ring about my neck.
Suddenly I saw the Kur as though in red light, and the sand, too, darkly red to black. To my amazement, it seemed startled; it hesitated; I leapt to the side. A blast from the hand-held weapon struck the steel of the ship. In its side there was a blackened hole, as though drilled; metal ran in droplets down the side of the ship.
I suddenly realized, with elation, that the Kur could not see me.
The ring concealed a light-diversion device, encircling the orbit of its wearer with a field. We see in virtue of light waves reflected from variously textured surfaces, which waves impinge on the visual sensors. We see in virtue of the patterns of these waves. The field about me, I conjectured, diverted and reconstituted these waves in their original patterns; thus, a given wave of light in the normal visual spectrum which might strike me and be reflected to the visual sensor of another organism did not now strike me but was diverted; similarly patterns of light from objects behind me were diverted about my field and reconstituted beyond it, to impinge, as though I were not there, on the visual sensor of an observing organism. The light in virtue of which I saw was shifted in its spectrum; it was, I suspect, originally in the nonvisible portion of the spectrum, perhaps in the infrared portion of the spectrum, which could penetrate the field, but was shifted in such a way by the diversion field that I, within the orbit of the field, experienced it in a range visible to myself.
It was thus, I conjecture, that I could not be seen by those outside the field and yet that I, within the field, could experience the world visually which lay beyond it. Such a device would have been useless among Priest-kings, for they do not much depend on their visual sensors. Among Kurii I was not certain how effective it would be. Kurii, like men, are visually oriented organisms, but their hearing and their sense of smell is incomparably more acute.
I did not know how many charges the weapon of the Kur held. Further, I was unarmed. I slipped back into the whipping sand. I crouched down.
The howling of the wind screened the sounds of my movements; its swift, lacerating blasts must have torn the atmosphere of my scent to pieces, scattering it wildly about, affording the Kur only sudden, misleading, fleeting, confused sensations. He could not at the moment locate me. I saw him, red in the twisting, howling sand, moving about, weapon ready, hunting me.
I was puzzled that the Kur with whom I had trekked, who had worn the ring, had been hit four times, accurately, with the weapon of the Kur who stalked me.
Furthermore, he had been struck, as nearly as I could determine, head-on. It was not as though the Kur with the weapon had located him at the throat of a man, and then fired.
It seemed likely then that the Kur must have been struck as it had framed itself, perhaps in an opening, the other Kur, smelling it, hearing it, firing when it bad tried to enter. The Kur with the weapon had then come out, hunting for it, to finish it.
He had not counted on there being an ally, and one who was human.
Similar thoughts must have coursed through the brain of the Kur and I, but I did not know the position or nature of the portal.
I saw him turn toward the ship, abandoning my bunt, recollecting his principal objective.
He thus led me to the portal. He reached it before I did. He scrambled, claws slipping on the leaning steel, and then crouched in it. The opening must once have been the outer opening of a lock; it was rectangular; the exterior hatch was missing; there was twisted metal at the side of the opening, as though it had been wrenched away from rusted hinges; the beast crouched in the lock, peering into the storm. Then it disappeared within.
My heart sank; time was on its side; it would soon be night; it needed only wait. I made my way to the stones and tarpaulin; there, feeling, about, I located one of the bodies, which was mostly whole. Some were missing arms and heads.
I carried the body toward the side of the ship. Though the Kur had not used them, there were cuts in the side of the ship, probably used by the humans in entering and leaving it. A steel ladder, twisted, fitted the rounded side of the ship. Given the attitude of the ship, however, the ladder was roughly at a twenty-degree angle to the ground, and some twenty feet from the sand: it was useless to me. I would use the cuts. I made no effort to conceal sound. I scraped the side of the steel. I made certain that the Kur within, if he could hear aught, would be able to tell that someone ascended the side of the ship, dragging an inert weight, presumably a body.
I knew the Kur must be cunning, if not brilliant. It could be no accident that this Kur and not another had received this dreadful assignment, to protect the device of a planet’s destruction until its detonation.
But also it would be under stress. And in the storm it could not see clearly beyond the portal. It would assume that I would not relinquish the shield of the ring’s invisibility. A diversion would be ineffective, for what could draw the Kur from his position? If the blood of the slaughtered humans about had not been sufficient to override his obedience to the dark imperative of the steel worlds, I did not think anything I might contrive could lure him forth. He had resisted blood; the will of this Kur, restraining its instincts of feasting and carnival, must be mighty indeed. He would assume, perhaps, I might attempt to draw fire with a decoy, thus slipping into the ship. The only likely object to use in such a plan would be the body of one of the humans about, victims of the Kur with whom I had shared the march in the desert. I made no attempt to conceal my wounds. I let it be clear that I was outside the portal, that I had ascended the side of the ship, that with me, dragged, was an inert weight, presumably a body.
A likely plan, it seemed to me, would be to thrust the inert body into the portal, and draw the fire of the Kur within. Perhaps then, in the sudden moment of confusion, one might slip within, behind it, invisible.
It would be an elementary decoy strategy.
This was a likely plan. I did not adopt it. The Kur waited within. I did not think I played Kaissa with a fool.
But I would use a decoy strategy. Only I, myself, would be the decoy. Behind the decoy there would be nothing. One thing the Kur would not expect would be that I would surrender the shield of invisibility; one thing he would not expect would be that it would be I, myself, who would present myself to his weapon. I clung to the side of the portal. I propped the body beside me, holding it that it not be swept from the side of the ship. I counted slowly, five thousand Ihn, that the reflexes of the Kur within be drawn to a hair-trigger alertness, that the whole nervous might of the beast might be balanced on a razor’s edge of response, that every instinct and fiber in his body would scream to press the trigger at what first might move. But I counted, too, on its intelligence, its control, that it would not fire on what first might move, particularly if it were visible.
The wind howled and the sand swirled about the ship. I pressed the circular switch on the ring tied about my neck. I again saw in the normal range of the spectrum. I now realized I saw in the light of the moons; I broke out in a sweat; it was night. Limply, as though thrust from behind I pushed myself, awkwardly, sagging, into the opening, and fell forward. Scarcely had I fallen into the lock than I heard, loud, over me, the concussions of the weapon, firing five times; almost simultaneously the Kur leaped from somewhere within, from a nest of piping, and scrambled past me; its foot pressed on my shoulder; it peered out into the storm; it spied the body below, which had slipped from the side of the ship when I had entered the ship, no longer holding it; it seemed momentarily puzzled; it fired into the body twice more; it scrambled from the opening, turning, slipping on the steel, and slid down to the sand at the side of the ship.