Only savage engines roamed that arid world,
charging one another with snarling guns beneath
those grinding treads. And two puny machine-less
humans like Torcred and Ladna should die quickly.
That they suddenly could become the most dangerous
things alive must surely be some dead god's joke.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Winter 1949.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The terrapin was traveling eighty miles an hour--far too fast for
such uneven country. Over maddeningly repetitive dunes it scudded,
rising with a swoop to each windward slope and hurtling clear of the
ground beyond each wave-like crest, to plunge through the trough in a
hurricane of flying sand.
The wiry little man who crouched tensely, hugged by a padded safety
belt, in the pitching, vibrant interior of the midget combat car,
was impatient, furiously so. Thanks to an unusually stubborn case of
engine trouble, he was a full two hours behind the rest of his troop;
by now they must have sighted the new camping place on the shore of
the Salt Sea. And the blazing sun was already sinking toward the dusty
horizon haze. Torcred the Terrapin came of a people unused to fear--but
his shrewd intelligence, calculating the risks he must run before he
rejoined the others, found the daylight dangers enough and to spare,
and nothing attractive in the thought of an encounter with any of the
things that prowled the desolate plain after the sun went down.
So the terrapin fled at reckless speed westward over the dipping dunes,
and Torcred's deepset irongray eyes, squinting against the glare that
even the polarized glass in the narrow vision slits could only cut
down, were anxious. Under his breath he chided his own nervousness;
probably after all nothing would happen....
* * * * *
Midway in the thought it did happen, and with almost catastrophic
suddenness. The black silhouette of a flying thing materialized out
of the sun's glare, diving straight at him. It flattened out and was
gone overhead, while the roar of its passing echoed behind it. And the
terrapin had rocked to the impact of bullets all the more fiercely
driven by the aero's terrific velocity; its armor rang and steel
splinters hummed like wasps inside it.
Torcred slammed down one foot pedal and the terrapin slewed crazily and
slid sidewise for a score of yards, in a cloud of sand that momentarily
hid it from the eyes above. Coming out of the skid he gave full power
to the spinning wheels, operating the throttle with one hand while the
other switched on his radar screen and leaped from it to the firing
control of the turret gun. It was long seconds before the scanning beam
located its flitting target; then, though the terrapin was traveling
in the quick swerves and dashes of a desperately evasive course, the
automatic control held the image reasonably well centered on the
projected crosshairs of the turret gun's sight. The image swelled, grew
wings, as the aero came in in a second howling dive.
Torcred's reflexes, hardly less automatic than his machine's, depressed
the firing button, and the gun's stammering blast numbed his ears,
mingling almost at the same moment with the clang and shriek of steel
on steel as the terrapin took more hits. But the flying enemy leveled
off far higher than before and zoomed away more steeply; its great
advantage had been lost when the first attack failed to cripple or kill.
The Terrapin's eyes burned into the screen as his own wild zigzags
flung him painfully against his safety belt. The aero might let things
go at that.... No, the screen's image expanded again. His finger closed
once more on the firing button.
The winged outline grew with ominous determination. Careless now of the
single gun that rattled defiance, it was coming down for the kill. With
the corner of his eye Torcred saw the vicious puffs of sand that strode
to meet the racing terrapin; he swerved instantly, but in that same
instant the car staggered and spun out of control. He did not hear the
thunderous concussion that stung his face and hands. The forepart of
the roof bowed inward, and there was a knife-like fragment of steel,
inches long, in the cushion almost touching Torcred's ear.
Dimly he realized that his wheels were spinning futilely, the car
canted far over; it had nosed into a dune and half-buried itself. The
fight was over....
But ten, twenty seconds went by and no fresh storm of destruction
burst on him. Incredulously his eyes found the radar screen. It was
still working, and the image that filled it wavered strangely, neither
receding nor coming nearer.
He threw his machine into reverse and opened the throttle; the front
wheels took hold and the terrapin bucked itself free of the sand. Then
Torcred leaned sidewise, recklessly flung open a steel shutter and
looked out.
He blinked, dazzled, at the sweep of desert and bright blue sky before
his eyes found the falling shape, twisting and fluttering as it fell
despite its weight of tons. As he watched, the aero almost leveled
out, teetered on one wing and sideslipped out of sight behind a
distant dune. A cloud of dust sprang up and drifted away, but no smoky
death-pall rose after it.
* * * * *
The Terrapin shook his dizzy head, and his narrow hawk face hardened.
He pressed the pedals and sent the combat car rolling swiftly toward
the spot that his practised eyes had marked accurately in the midst of
the featureless desert.
The black-and-yellow aero's nose was sunk deep into the loose sand that
had slid down to partly bury the wreck, its blunt tail pointed into
the cloudless sky it had left forever. One wing had been torn off and
hurled yards away, the other was crumpled beneath the slanted fuselage.
The terrapin slowed to a crawl along the crest of the nearest sandhill
as its pilot surveyed the scene. But he was about to wheel away once
more when he noticed the sprawled figure in bulky dark-blue flying
clothes, that lay face down in the shadow of a brown drift.
Deftly Torcred sent the terrapin careening down the slope to halt
close to the motionless enemy. He hesitated briefly, then, shrugging,
unsnapped his belt, wrestled open the almost-jammed door and clambered
out. Dead or stunned, he had to make sure, and there was no harm in
indulging a trifling curiosity.
Under the remote blue curve of the sky, he shrank into himself a
little. It was always so outside the steel shelter of the terrapin in
which he had spent most of his days since childhood; he felt an oddly
naked helplessness. But he looked down with interest on the body, his
hand gripping the haft of the broad-bladed knife at his side. He had
never before seen in flesh and blood a member of the lofty peoples of
the air.
As if roused, the limp form twitched a foot, shivered, and rolled over
with a sigh. A pale face, closed eyes were upturned to the glaring sun
and the startled gaze of the Terrapin. Startled he was, for the face
was a girl's.
She could not have passed twenty. In spite of the heavy coverall worn
against the stratosphere's chill, and a wide strawberry mark where
her left cheek had met the sandy soil, she contrived to be pretty. No
more--but the terrapin women were brown and sturdy and coarse-featured,
hardened by the drudgery of the camps. This girl's face was very white
in the frame of dark hair that escaped the oversize plastic helmet. She
breathed slowly and fitfully, and Torcred guessed at a state of shock;
she might be badly injured.
He shook off an unaccustomed indecision and knelt beside her. His face
was unpleasantly hard as the knife slid from its sheath with a faint
whisper, as he laid its thin edge along the exposed curve of the girl's
throat, where a flutter marked the great artery. One quick slash, she
would never wake....
But it was as if a restraining hand fastened on his wrist. Slowly he
drew back the glittering blade and returned it to its place. He stood
up and scowled down at the still, slight figure, brushing sand savagely
from the knees of his heavy breeches.
Angrily Torcred told himself that he had only to turn and go. The
desert would finish the job, and no one would know that his courage had
failed him. But still he stood and stared, not consciously admitting
his strange desire to know the color of the eyes behind those closed
lids.
They were blue, he saw as they flickered wide without warning. Not cold
sapphires, but the living blue of a desert sky or of electric flame.
They were alive as a small bird's eyes--but of course Torcred had never
seen a bird. Rather, he called the girl a bird, as he called himself a
terrapin.
Still he did not move, even as the bird-girl struggled to a sitting
position and gathered her feet under her. Dismay came into the blue
gaze fixed on him; she half raised a hand as if in defense.
* * * * *
And Torcred's determination slipped again. "You are my prisoner," he
announced in a hollow voice that did not sound at all like a victor's.
Without answering, the bird-girl sprang nimbly to her feet; then her
mouth twisted with pain and she swayed dizzily, but her eyes never left
Torcred's expressionless face.
"You are the terrapin?" she gasped. Her voice had the exotic accent of
the bird-people's speech, and in her inflection of the word "terrapin"
rang a contempt that was like a whip across the face. She glanced
swiftly about, at the boat-shaped gray machine that crouched, purring,
like a waiting animal on its six wheels some yards away, then at the
broken wreck that had been her aero. Her eyes went wide with a blue
flame of horror and regret, and her right hand darted to her side.
Torcred exploded from rigidity into action; his feet dug into the sand
as he lunged, and his hand closed on the girl's slender wrist, halting
the sharp point of her dagger an inch above her left breast.
Her free hand struck viciously at his hastily averted face. The
Terrapin ground his teeth and twisted her wrist mercilessly until the
long knife fell among their scuffling feet. Then he thrust the girl
away and set his foot solidly on the weapon, pressing it into the sand.
He glared at her deadwhite face.
"I said you're my prisoner. That means you'll live while I want you to!"
The bird-girl was trembling uncontrollably. "My ship is destroyed," she
said in a stifled voice. "I am already dead. It is the law."
Torcred's black brows knitted in anger--at her and at himself for the
impossible situation into which he had blundered. "Get yourself another
aero," he growled unreasonably, knowing the truth of what she said.
On land or in the air, the code was the same. With destruction of the
fighting machine, the poor, soft being of flesh did best to perish too.
He snapped, "Be quiet and do as I say. Come along!" He half-turned
toward the waiting terrapin.
The girl stiffened. "Well!" she said on a note of cold, controlled
scorn. "You crawlers keep slaves?"
That was absolutely untrue, and was exactly what was bothering the
Terrapin. His people kept no slaves and took no prisoners. He barked,
beside himself: "You will obey me! Or stay here and die--slowly--of
thirst."
Her lips parted as if to retort, but her gaze slipped past Torcred to
sweep the remote horizon and the dun wilderness that stretched to it
without path or landmark. In the two expanses of sand and sky there was
no life visible. The thin shoulders under the heavy flying suit seemed
to sag.
"All right, terrapin," she said with weary disdain. "You win, for the
time being."