"I don't know. Maybe your people--"
"They're not my people any more," she interrupted swiftly. "Whatever
you are, I am too.... And anyway, all the engines are dead."
* * * * *
Torcred got up stiffly. On the desert between them and the fire, an
aero glided down, bounced and rolled to a shaky landing. Its pilot
dropped to the ground and stood staring at his useless machine; he did
not even look up as a buzzard passed low over him with a rush of wings,
touched ground and slewed round a short way off with a broken landing
gear. Small figures spilled out of it too, their movements expressing
the same dazed lack of understanding. The enemies paid each other no
heed.
The smell of gas was stronger. The desert would be littered with
aircraft, but they shouldn't have much trouble slipping through....
Still Torcred frowned, hesitating. He turned with sudden resolution to
the girl.
"Wait here. There's something I have to find out; but it won't take
long."
"No!" Ladna struggled to her feet. "I'll go with you."
Torcred started to protest, then changed his mind. He turned silently
toward the cliff whose blank stone face was lit redly by the dying
fire, its great fissure a dark gulf of mystery.
Inside the cleft it was pitchblack, but the footing was smooth, packed
sand. Torcred felt his way between rock walls. At first he heard only
the scufflings the girl made, groping behind him, and then he was
conscious of a faint all-pervading hum. Something was humming deep in
the rock, and Torcred felt sure now that he was going to find the
meaning of the visions and of the battle's uncanny end.
He was hardly surprised when white light shone in the fissure ahead and
a man appeared, black against it. The figure's outline was familiar.
The stranger spoke--his first word in a strange tongue, but the rest
intelligible enough though oddly pronounced.
"Ahoy, there! We'd almost given you up."
Torcred advanced warily. The stranger did not flicker nor vanish. A
door was open, and the white light poured out from a chamber that
must have been a natural hollow, laboriously enlarged in the stone.
Torcred's hand shot out and gripped the man's arm above the elbow; the
stranger started, then relaxed, and Torcred caught a flash of the grin
he had seen before.
"I'm real," said the stranger. "I wasn't the other times we've met--but
that's one of the things Captain Relez will explain to you. Now come
inside, before the air out here gets any thicker."
Cautiously Torcred edged into the brightly-lit room, keeping in front
of Ladna. He saw in the cramped space a glittering confusion of
unfamiliar devices--it was the flimsiness of most of the apparatus
that was most surprising; the terrapins and other races built mostly
machinery designed to withstand heavy mechanical forces, but a blow of
the hand would shatter most of those things of wire and glass tubes. A
young man, hunched over a complex control panel beside a glass screen
on which a darkly indistinct image floated, glanced up with narrowed
eyes, and an older one with a small pointed beard met Torcred's
suspicious gaze benignly, over a small table on which a map was spread,
studded with colored pins.
Then Torcred heard the door click, and whirled, hand on his knife.
"It's not locked," the bearded man said calmly. "You can leave if you
like--but we've gone to a good deal of trouble to persuade you here for
a talk."
* * * * *
Torcred faced him again, still tensely ready. The setup here didn't
look dangerous, only incomprehensible. But he sensed power in this
little room; the deep potent hum he had heard in the fissure was at
home here, though he could not locate its source.
"My name is Relez." The bearded man rose from behind his table, "Dunu,
you can take care of the chart."
"Aye, aye, sir," said the young man they had seen as a phantom in the
desert, and Torcred bristled again at the alien jargon. But Relez'
casual manner was reassuring.
He gestured at a shelf cut into the stone. "Have a seat." Torcred
obeyed mechanically, and Ladna huddled beside him. Torcred stared
fascinated at the screen. A scene had resolved itself there--one of
incredible, nostalgic familiarity. It was the twice-ringed camp of the
terrapins, unmistakable to Torcred though he saw it now from a strange
angle, from above. All the machines were in place, as was normal after
nightfall. Torcred half started to his feet.
Then he saw what was not normal for that or any hour in a terrapin
camp. A confusion of bobbing lights among the cars; the shop area in
the midst was almost deserted, but against the reddening fires of the
forges tiny black figures scurried to and fro like distracted ants.
He could almost hear the cries of alarm and exasperation over the
discovery that not a functioning engine was left in the whole troop.
Torcred turned and caught Relez smiling in his beard.
"You did that!"
Relez nodded. "Unfortunately, we didn't get the anti-ionization field
into operation in time to prevent the buzzards' gas attack. But there
won't be any more fighting tonight, unless they do it with knives.
It's a bit of luck that none of these people seem to have any notion
of portable firearms. No more mechanized warfare, though, as long as
that unit is working." He gestured at a thing of massive coils and bus
bars and fragile glowing tubes, from which, Torcred perceived now, the
humming came.
Ladna's blue eyes were wide. "That little device--has stopped all the
machines?"
"It broadcasts a wave form that affects the molecules of air, of all
gases, inhibiting their ionization. So no spark can jump, and motors
are stopped when their electric ignition fails. The only machines
that can move now, inside its range, are the moles, with their
battery-driven electric motors for underground travel--which is lucky
for them, or they'd be trapped under the earth.
"Everything else--terrapins, trailers, aeros, buzzards, and all
the rest--are paralyzed. Our field's range blankets five hundred
thousand square miles. Beyond that area, others are responsible for
administering the same treatment; it already began a month ago on the
coast--"
"What are you?" Torcred burst out. "What do you want?"
"We three--Dunu, Rhenu, and I--are the Continental Demilitarization
Commission for this area. As to what we are trying to do, that will
take some explaining--"
"I meant," Torcred scowled, dissatisfied, "what is your race?"