For some seconds, the three stood motionless and staring.
'What―?' Roy began; but Del shook his head before the question was formed. There had been nothing like these in his century.
From the leader of the five red contrivances, a jointed arm suddenly swept to the ground and caught up a rock. Without pausing in its stride, it sent the mass, fully half a ton in weight, sailing across the valley. Somewhere on the hill behind them it landed, with a crash and a clatter of metal. Roy abruptly dragged his companions into the shadow of the nearest boulder, fearful that discovery might bring a rock hurtling in their direction.
The red machines strode on their way with unhurried, stilted gait, a faint metallic clanking accompanying their movements. Apparently the rock had accomplished its purpose, whatever that might be: at any rate, no more followed, and the metal arm was refolded against the egg-shaped body-piece. The three watched in silence as the five red figures carried themselves away in long, stiff strides. Even Betty's indignation had momentarily given way to nervousness.
'What were they?' she demanded.
Roy shrugged his shoulders. Speculation was worse than useless. He stood up to assure himself that the machines were truly out of sight. As he rose, there came a clatter of metal against stone, a sound rapidly approaching up the valley. His hand snatched at his revolver.
A group of machines came abruptly round the masking turn of the valley. Contrary to Roy's expectations, they bore little similarity to the rock-hurling monsters of the hill-top. Only the shape of the body-pieces was similar. They stood some seven feet to the highest point of the rounded back, and their egg-shaped hulls progressed with a scurrying motion upon six jointed legs. Four waving metal tentacles protruded from the extreme front and, above them, two lenses were set flush in the smooth case-work.
They stopped at sight of Roy, with the suddenness of complete surprise, and stood motionless save for their waving tentacles. He called in a low tone to the others to remain hidden, and stepped forward, revolver in hand. An indecisive movement ran through the ranks of the machines. They seemed on the point of retreat; but at that moment Betty, ignoring Roy's advice, chose to emerge from behind the rock.
The machines moved as one, and came scuttering forward with a great waving of tentacles. Three shots from Roy's revolver crashed among them, with no visible result. He turned, to become aware that Del was now out of concealment, fumbling with a tube which looked like a flashlight.
'Run!' Roy snapped. 'Get to the river!'
He had some faint hope that the machines might not be water-tight. Betty was already fleeing, and Del turned to follow her. Roy stayed long enough to send another three shots, and then started to run with the machines almost upon him, but he made no more than a dozen yards before something fouled his ankle and flung him heavily to earth. As the machines overtook him, he saw Del turn and raise his tube, and two tentacles of the nearest pursuer fell to the ground as though they had been chopped off. Del switched the tube at another, but now there were a half-dozen of the machines bearing down on him.
One more tentacle fell; then, like a silver whip-lash, another struck the tube from the dwarf's hand and wrapped itself around him. The tube sailed high through the air and fell with a splash into the river. A fountain of steam, like the jetting plume of a geyser, roared into the sky, while the water all around broke, seething and bubbling. Betty, almost at the brink, recoiled. The feeler of a pursuing machine snatched at her, tearing away her red frock. It tossed the garment away, wrapped the feeler like a shining belt about her waist, and carried her back towards Roy and Del.
With relief, Roy saw that no injury seemed intended towards any of the party. Each of them was carefully picked up in a wrapping of tentacles, and the machines set off down the valley in the direction from which they had appeared. For five miles they followed the tortuous river course; then the hills were left behind and they came out upon a level plain where patches of coarse grass, half choked by drifting sand, struggled hardily to grow. The machines changed their formation as they reached the open country, and Roy found that Del's captor was travelling alongside his own, while Betty's was some yards in advance. He spoke across to Del, and received assurance that he was uninjured.
'The most unfortunate thing is that my tube is lost,' the dwarf added.
'What was it? I've never seen anything like that before.'
'A heat-ray. You did not have such things in the twentieth century?'
Roy shook his head, and went on to talk about their captors. On this subject, both were equally at a loss.
'Robots? Distant-control mechanisms? They might be either,' Del suggested.
'Or, perhaps, vehicles,' added Roy. 'The bodies of the race may have atrophied into complete uselessness and made these machines necessary for carrying the brains.'
Del considered the theory an unlikely one. 'But they certainly have a high level of intelligence. No doubt you noticed that they are bringing along our wrecked machines?'
Roy, glancing back past the curving metal flank of his captor, could see his battered cylinder supported by the tentacles of two following machines.
Chapter Three
CAPTIVES OF THE MACHINES
Betty had caught the sound of their voices. She called back, querulously, to know why Roy did not do something. The indignity of capture had done nothing to soothe her temper and, now that no immediate danger threatened, her tone had resumed its nagging quality. After a devastating flow of abuse, Del inquired curiously:
'Is she hurt?'
'Yes; but not in the way you mean. She's been pinked in her pride. She was riled to begin with. Now she's lost her dress and is being carried over a desert in her underclothes. She's hurt, all right!'
Del looked surprised at Roy's tone. He was silent for some moments before he suggested :
'I wonder whether that red dress had anything to do with the attack? It was at her appearance that the machines went into action, and when the dress was torn away, they became much calmer. Also, the first machines we saw were coloured red...
No reply came from Roy. He seemed uninterested in the suggestion. Del relapsed into a contemplative silence.
During their advance, the country was losing severity. The hard, wiry grass gradually became supplanted by a softer type, growing more luxuriantly and almost hiding the sandy soil. A dotting of infrequent, stunted shrubs managed to find sustenance. In the distance, a line of darker green suggested the presence of trees.
'Thank God for that,' Roy said, fervently. 'I had begun to fear that the world might be all desert.'
'I think we're headed for that,' said Del. He nodded ahead towards a vast spike which stabbed up into the heavens.
Roy looked at it. The base was hidden among the trees many miles away, but even at this distance he could tell that its height must be measured in thousands of feet. Observation at such a distance gave no clue to its nature, save that it was too isolated and too abrupt to be a natural formation; yet it was roughly shaped, lacking the symmetry and lines of a normal artificial structure. Its vastness induced a sense of importance and a feeling of fatalism, and he watched it with rising disquiet until the great, red Sun died in a livid blaze.