He tossed the gun aside and we turned back to the road. Neither of us
said anything for fully a mile. "No human hands could have done that
to a gun," I said. "I'm beginning to believe what you said about
robots. Robots that take scalps!"
* * * * *
Another hill, another valley ... and Wetzel caught hold of my arm. "I
come across them sojers about here," he said.
"Okay. From now on you act as guide."
We went on. Several times Wetzel's long, swinging, tireless stride
left me behind and he was forced to wait until I caught up with him
again. I had the feeling that I was holding him back, and there was
something faintly contemptuous in his obvious patience. But the life
of a book-writing newspaper man hadn't prepared me for cross-country
marathons, and there was nothing to be done about it now.
The fairly level, open ground was giving place to a heavily wooded
countryside. After another mile of winding roadway, Wetzel suddenly
turned aside and plunged into the forest. It was as dark as the inside
of an undertaker's hat, and after I had banged into a few dozen trees
and tripped over a few dead branches, making enough racket to alert
half the state, Wetzel slowed his pace to a crawl.
Finally I grabbed one of the fringed sleeves of his buckskin shirt to
stop him and sank down on a fallen log. "How much farther?"
He leaned his folded arms on the muzzle of his long gun and I could
feel his deep-set eyes studying me without approval. "'Nother hour;
p'rhaps more. Dependin' on you."
"Sure," I said with understandable bitterness. "I'm not the man my
granddaddy was. Nobody is. When I take a walk it's down to the corner
for a pack of cigarettes. Anything farther than that I use a horseless
carriage. We don't need steel muscles and superior woodcraft these
days, brother. Just enough eyesight to read the directions on the can,
ears sharp enough to hear the boss bawling you out, enough nose to
smell the whiskey on your neighboring straphanger's breath, reflexes
quick enough to avoid being run down by some politician's Cadillac. If
I'd have known I was going to be called on to go batting around a
jungle, I'd have been down to the Y five days a we--"
He moved like a striking snake. A hand was clapped over my mouth and a
knee forced me to the ground. Before I could make an effort to fight
back, he placed his mouth close to my ear. "Danger! 'Tis death for so
much as a broken twig!"
He removed his hand and I could breathe again. We lay there side by
side close to a huge tree, deep in the shadows. And then faintly as
from far off I heard the crackle of disturbed undergrowth and, slowly
louder and louder, an evenly spaced thumping sound that seemed to
shake the earth.
Through the trees it came, directly toward the spot where Wetzel and I
hugged the ground. It loomed against the night, a tower of steel on
jointed legs, a horrible travesty of the human figure, a head like
King Arthur's helmet. Starlight picked out two round faceted eyes of
glass.
* * * * *
My suddenly dry mouth puckered with the taste of terror. I did not
breathe; even my heart seemed to beat no more. I wanted to close my
eyes, but even the lids seemed paralyzed.
For almost a full minute the giant robot remained standing less than
ten feet from where Wetzel and I were lying. It seemed to sense the
presence of something of flesh and blood nearby. Its head turned
slowly from side to side in little uneven jerks that put ice cubes in
my veins. Finally the mammoth feet began their rhythmic thumping and a
moment later it disappeared among the trees.
After what seemed a long time Wetzel rose to his feet. I got up slowly
and leaned against the tree. "In a little while," I said softly, "I'll
wake up. I'll be in bed with my wife, under the nice clean white
sheets, and I'll know all this was a nightmare brought on by that
canned salmon we had for dinner."
This, I told myself sharply, wasn't getting me anywhere except next
door to hysteria. I ground my teeth together, shuddered uncontrollably
for a second or two, then was all right again. Or nearly so.
"Let's go," I said.
An hour or so later, after taking a twisting route through what seemed
to be the Belgian Congo, Wetzel halted under the spreading branches of
a towering cottonwood. With his lips close to my ear, he whispered,
"It's a-settin' out thar midst open ground." He gestured at the wall
of blackness hemming us in--blackness you could have cut into hunks
with an ax. "I'm thinkin' thar's plenty 'o them iron critters roamin'
'round twixt us an' it. You aimin' to await the dawn?"
"You," I said, "said it!"
* * * * *
The dawn came up nice and quiet. Blackness turned gray and then a
pearl pink--and there she was: a hundred yards from us, of some
gleaming metal resembling aluminum, twenty feet high and covering
about as much ground as a caretaker's cottage. It resembled nothing
more than a soup plate turned bottom up to dry.
A tall, semi-circular opening showed black in one side, with a sloping
metallic ramp reaching from it to the ground. Two robots guarded the
entrance, stiff and towering and without movement, the early light
glistening along their jointed bodies.
In sharp contrast to this scene from the distant future was the
anachronistic spectacle of six Indians, in war paint, fringed
buckskin and stripped to the waist, squatting around a small cooking
fire near the ship. Within easy reach of each was a long bow and a
quiver of arrows.
Nothing about them gave me a certain clue as to which Indian family
they belonged to. The single feather in each scalp lock was pure white
with a vivid red tip. Two of them wore the black paint of untried
warriors, and all were gnawing on strips of meat grilled over the
fire.
Wetzel, placid and silent, leaned on his rifle and calmly stuffed a
cheek with a twist of black tobacco. "Reckon they be a little hard to
talk to?" he asked in a soft voice.