IV

They followed the slopes of the Sere Plateau, neither ascending to its

level top--where sphexes congregated--nor descending into the foothills

where sphexes assembled. They moved along hillsides and mountain-flanks

which sloped anywhere from thirty to sixty degrees, and they did not

cover much distance. They practically forgot what it was to walk on

level ground. Semper, the eagle, hovered overhead during the daytime,

not far away. He descended at nightfall for his food from the pack of

one of the bears.

"The bears aren't doing too well for food," said Huyghens dryly. "A ton

of bear needs a lot to eat. But they're loyal to us. Semper hasn't any

loyalty. He's too stupid. But he's been conditioned to think that he

can only eat what men feed him. The bears know better, but they stick

to us regardless. I rather like these bears."

It was the most self-evident of understatements. This was at an

encampment on the top of a massive boulder which projected from a

mountainous stony wall. This was six days from the start of their

journey. There was barely room on the boulder for all the party. And

Faro Nell fussily insisted that Nugget should be in the safest part,

which meant near the mountain-flank. She would have crowded the men

outward, but Nugget whimpered for Roane. Wherefore, when Roane moved

to comfort him, Faro Nell contentedly drew back and snorted at Sitka

and Sourdough and they made room for her near the edge.

It was a hungry camp. They had come upon tiny rills upon occasion,

flowing down the mountain side. Here the bears had drunk deeply and the

men had filled canteens. But this was the third night, and there had

been no game at all. Huyghens made no move to bring out food for Roane

or himself. Roane made no comment. He was beginning to participate in

the relationship between bears and men, which was not the slavery of

the bears but something more. It was two-way. He felt it.

"It would seem," he said fretfully, "that since the sphexes don't seem

to hunt on their way uphill, that there should be some game. They

ignore everything as they file uphill."

This was true enough. The normal fighting formation of sphexes was

line abreast, which automatically surrounded anything which offered

to flee and outflanked anything which offered fight. But here they

ascended the mountain in long lines, one after the other, following

apparently long-established trails. The wind blew along the slopes and

carried scent only sidewise. But the sphexes were not diverted from

their chosen paths. The long processions of hideous blue-and-tawny

creatures--it was hard to think of them as natural beasts, male and

female and laying eggs like reptiles on other planets--simply climbed.

"There've been other thousands of beasts before them," said Huyghens.

"They must have been crowding this way for days or even weeks. We've

seen tens of thousands in Semper's camera. They must be uncountable,

altogether. The first-comers ate all the game there was, and the

last-comers have something else on whatever they use for minds."

Roane protested:

"But so many carnivores in one place is impossible! I know they are

here, but they can't be!"

"They're cold-blooded," Huyghens pointed out. "They don't burn food

to sustain body-temperature. After all, lots of creatures go for

long periods without eating. Even bears hibernate. But this isn't

hibernation--or estivation, either."

He was setting up the radiation-wave receiver in the darkness. There

was no point in attempting a fix here. The transmitter was on the other

side of the Sere Plateau, which inexplicably swarmed with the most

ferocious and deadly of all the creatures of Loren Two. The men and

bears would commit suicide by crossing here.

But Huyghens turned on the receiver. There came the whispering,

scratchy sound of background-noise. Then the signal. Three dots, three

dashes, three dots. Three dots, three dashes, three dots. It went on

and on and on. Huyghens turned it off. Roane said:

"Shouldn't we have answered that signal before we left the station? To

encourage them?"

"I doubt they have a receiver," said Huyghens. "They won't expect an

answer for months, anyhow. They'd hardly listen all the time, and

if they're living in a mine-tunnel and trying to sneak out for food

to stretch their supplies--why, they'll be too busy to try to make

complicated recorders or relays."

Roane was silent for a moment or two.

"We've got to get food for the bears," he said presently. "Nugget's

weaned, and he's hungry."

"We will," Huyghens promised. "I may be wrong, but it seems to me that

the number of sphexes climbing the mountain is less than yesterday

and the day before. We may have just about crossed the path of their

migration. They're thinning out. When we're past their trail, we'll

have to look out for night-walkers and the like again. But I think they

wiped out all animal life on their migration-route."

* * * * *

He was not quite right. He was waked in darkness by the sound of

slappings and the grunting of bears. Feather-light puffs of breeze beat

upon his face. He struck his belt-lamp sharply and the world was hidden

by a whitish film which snatched itself away. Something flapped. Then

he saw the stars and the emptiness on the edge of which they camped.

Then big white things flapped toward him.

Sitka Pete whuffed mightily and swatted. Faro Nell grunted and swung.

She caught something in her claws. She crunched. The light went off as

Huyghens realized. Then he said:

"Don't shoot, Roane!" He listened, and heard the sounds of feeding in

the dark. It ended. "Watch this!" said Huyghens.

The belt-light came on again. Something strangely-shaped and pallid

like human skin reeled and flapped crazily toward him. Something else.

Four. Five--ten--twenty--more....

A huge hairy paw reached up into the light-beam and snatched a flying

thing out of it. Another great paw. Huyghens shifted the light and the

three great Kodiaks were on their hind legs, swatting at creatures

which flittered insanely, unable to resist the fascination of the

glaring lamp. Because of their wild gyrations it was impossible to see

them in detail, but they were those unpleasant night-creatures which

looked like plucked flying monkeys but were actually something quite

different.

The bears did not snarl or snap. They swatted, with a remarkable air

of businesslike competence and purpose. Small mounds of broken things

built up about their feet.

Suddenly there were no more. Huyghens snapped off the light. The bears

crunched and fed busily in the darkness.

"Those things are carnivores _and_ blood-suckers, Roane," said

Huyghens calmly. "They drain their victims of blood like vampire

bats--they've some trick of not waking them--and when they're dead the

whole tribe eats. But bears have thick furs, and they wake when they're

touched. And they're omnivorous--they'll eat anything but sphexes, and

like it. You might say that those night-creatures came to lunch. But

they stayed. They are it--for the bears, who are living off the country

as usual."

Roane uttered a sudden exclamation. He made a tiny light, and blood

flowed down his hand. Huyghens passed over his pocket kit of antiseptic

and bandages. Roane stanched the bleeding and bound up his hand. Then

he realized that Nugget chewed on something. When he turned the light,

Nugget swallowed convulsively. It appeared that he had caught and

devoured the creature which had drawn blood from Roane. But Roane had

lost none to speak of, at that.

In the morning they started along the sloping scarp of the plateau once

more. During the morning, Roane said painfully:

"Robots wouldn't have handled those vampire-things, Huyghens."

"Oh, they could be built to watch for them," said Huyghens, tolerantly.

"But you'd have to swat for yourself. I prefer the bears."

He led the way on. Here their jungle-formation could not apply. On a

steep slope the bears ambled comfortably, the tough pads of their feet

holding fast on the slanting rock, but the men struggled painfully.

Twice Huyghens halted to examine the ground about the mountains' bases

through binoculars. He looked encouraged as they went on. The monstrous

peak which was like the bow of a ship at the end of the Sere Plateau

was visibly nearer. Toward midday, indeed, it looked high above the

horizon, no more than fifteen miles away. And at midday Huyghens called

a final halt.

"No more congregations of sphexes down below," he said cheerfully, "and

we haven't seen a climbing line of them in miles." The crossing of a

sphex-trail meant simply waiting until one party had passed, and then

crossing before another came in view. "I've a hunch we've crossed their

migration-route. Let's see what Semper tells us!"

He waved the eagle aloft. And Semper, like all creatures other than

men, normally functioned only for the satisfaction of his appetite, and

then tended to loaf or sleep. He had ridden the last few miles perched

on Sitka Pete's pack. Now he soared upward and Huyghens watched in the

small vision-plate.

Semper went soaring--and the image on the plate swayed and turned and

turned--and in minutes was above the plateau's edge. And here there was

some vegetation and the ground rolled somewhat, and there were even

patches of brush. But as Semper towered higher still, the inner desert

appeared. But nearby it was clear of beasts. Only once, when the eagle

banked sharply and the camera looked along the long dimension of the

plateau, did Huyghens see any sign of the blue-and-tan beasts. There

he saw what looked like masses amounting to herds. But, of course,

carnivores do not gather in herds.

"We go straight up," said Huyghens in satisfaction. "We cross the

plateau here--and we can edge down-wind a bit, even. I think we'll find

something interesting on our way to your robot colony."

He waved to the bears to go ahead uphill.

* * * * *

They reached the top hours later--barely before sunset. And they saw

game. Not much, but game at the grassy, brushy border of the desert.

Huyghens brought down a shaggy ruminant which surely would not live on

a desert. When night fell there was an abrupt chill in the air. It was

much colder than night-temperatures on the slopes. The air was thin.

Roane thought confusedly and presently guessed at the cause. In the lee

of the prow-mountain the air was calm. There were no clouds. The ground

radiated its heat to empty space. It could be bitterly cold in the

nighttime, here.

"And hot by day," Huyghens agreed when he mentioned it. "The sunshine's

terrifically hot where the air is thin, but on most mountains there's

wind. By day, here, the ground will tend to heat up like the surface

of a planet without atmosphere. It may be a hundred and forty or fifty

degrees on the sand at midday. But it should be cold at night."

It was. Before midnight Huyghens built a fire. There could be no danger

of night-walkers where the temperature dropped to freezing.

In the morning the men were stiff with cold, but the bears snorted and

moved about briskly. They seemed to revel in the morning chill. Sitka

and Sourdough Charley, in fact, became festive and engaged in a mock

fight, whacking each other with blows that were only feigned, but would

have crushed in the skull of any man. Nugget sneezed with excitement as

he watched them. Faro Nell regarded them with female disapproval.

They went on. Semper seemed sluggish. After a single brief flight he

descended and rode on Sitka's pack, as on the previous day. He perched

there, surveying the landscape as it changed from semi-arid to pure

desert in their progress. His air was arrogant. But he would not fly.

Soaring birds do not like to fly when there are no winds to make

currents of which to take advantage. On the way, Huyghens painstakingly

pointed out to Roane exactly where they were on the enlarged photograph

taken from space, and the exact spot from which the distress-signal

seemed to come.

"You're doing it in case something happens to you," said Roane. "I

admit it's sense, but--what could I do to help those survivors even if

I got to them, without you?"

"What you've learned about sphexes would help," said Huyghens. "The

bears would help. And we left a note back at my station. Whoever

grounds at the landing field back there--and the beacon's working

again--will find instructions to come to the place we're trying to

reach."

Roane plodded alongside him. The narrow non-desert border of the Sere

Plateau was behind them, now. They marched across powdery desert sand.

"See here," said Roane, "I want to know something! You tell me you're

listed as a bear-thief on your home planet. You tell me it's a lie--to

protect your friends from prosecution by the Colonial Survey. You're on

your own, risking your life every minute of every day. You took a risk

in not shooting me. Now you're risking more in going to help men who'd

have to be witnesses that you were a criminal. What are you doing it

for?"

Huyghens grinned.

"Because I don't like robots. I don't like the fact that they're

subduing men--making men subordinate to them."

"Go on," insisted Roane. "I don't see why disliking robots should make

you a criminal. Nor men subordinating themselves to robots, either!"

"But they are," said Huyghens mildly. "I'm a crank, of course. But--I

live like a man on this planet. I go where I please and do what I

please. My helpers, the bears, are my friends. If the robot colony had

been a success, would the humans in it have lived like men? Hardly!

They'd have to live the way the robots let them! They'd have to stay

inside a fence the robots built. They'd have to eat foods that robots

could raise, and no others. Why--a man couldn't move his bed near a

window, because if he did the house-tending robots couldn't work!

Robots would serve them--the way the robots determined--but all they'd

get out of it would be jobs servicing the robots!"

Roane shook his head.

"As long as men want robot service, they have to take the service that

robots can give. If you don't want those services--"

"I want to decide what I want," said Huyghens, again mildly, "instead

of being limited to choose among what I'm offered. On my home planet

we halfway tamed it with dogs and guns. Then we developed the bears,

and we finished the job with them. Now there's population-pressure

and the room for bears and dogs--and men--is dwindling. More and more

people are being deprived of the power of decision, and being allowed

only the power of choice among the things robots allow. The more we

depend on robots, the more limited those choices become. We don't want

our children to limit themselves to wanting what robots can provide!

We don't want them shriveling to where they abandon everything robots

can't give--or won't! We want them to be men--and women. Not damned

automatons who live _by_ pushing robot-controls so they can live _to_

push robot-controls. If that's not subordination to robots--"

"It's an emotional argument," protested Roane. "Not everybody feels

that way."

"But I feel that way," said Huyghens. "And so do a lot of others. This

is a big galaxy and it's apt to contain some surprises. The one sure

thing about a robot and a man who depends on them is that they can't

handle the unexpected. There's going to come a time when we need men

who can. So on my home planet, some of us asked for Loren Two, to

colonize. It was refused--too dangerous. But men can colonize anywhere

if they're men. So I came here to study the planet. Especially the

sphexes. Eventually, we expected to ask for a license again, with proof

that we could handle even those beasts. I'm already doing it in a mild

way. But the Survey licensed a robot colony--and where is it?"

Roane made a sour face.

"You picked the wrong way to go about it, Huyghens. It was illegal. It

is. It was the pioneer spirit, which is admirable enough, but wrongly

directed. After all, it was pioneers who left Earth for the stars.

But--"

* * * * *

Sourdough raised up on his hind legs and sniffed the air. Huyghens

swung his rifle around to be handy. Roane slipped off the safety-catch

of his own. Nothing happened.

"In a way," said Roane vexedly, "you're talking about liberty and

freedom, which most people think is politics. You say it can be more.

In principle, I'll concede it. But the way you put it, it sounds like a

freak religion."

"It's self-respect," corrected Huyghens.

"You may be--"

Faro Nell growled. She bumped Nugget with her nose, to drive him closer

to Roane. She snorted at him. She trotted swiftly to where Sitka and

Sourdough faced toward the broader, sphex-filled expanse of the Sere

Plateau. She took up her position between them.

Huyghens gazed sharply beyond them and then all about.

"This could be bad!" he said softly. "But luckily there's no wind.

Here's a sort of hill. Come along, Roane!"

He ran ahead, Roane following and Nugget plumping heavily with him.

They reached the raised place--actually a mere hillock no more

than five or six feet above the surrounding sand, with a distorted

cactuslike growth protruding from the ground. Huyghens stared again. He

used his binoculars.

"One sphex," he said curtly. "Just one! And it's out of all reason

for a sphex to be alone! But it's not rational for them to gather in

hundreds of thousands, either!" He wetted his finger and held it up.

"No wind at all."

He used the binoculars again.

"It doesn't know we're here," he added. "It's moving away. Not another

one in sight--" He hesitated, biting his lips. "Look here, Roane! I'd

like to kill that one lone sphex and find out something. There's a

fifty per cent chance I could find out something really important.

But--I might have to run. If I'm right--" Then he said grimly, "It'll

have to be done quickly. I'm going to ride Faro Nell--for speed. I

doubt Sitka or Sourdough would stay behind. But Nugget can't run fast

enough. Will you stay here with him?"

Roane drew in his breath. Then he said calmly:

"You know what you're doing. Of course."

"Keep your eyes open. If you see anything, even at a distance, shoot

and we'll be back--fast! Don't wait until something's close enough to

hit. Shoot the instant you see anything--if you do!"

Roane nodded. He found it peculiarly difficult to speak again. Huyghens

went over to the embattled bears. He climbed up on Faro Nell's back,

holding fast by her shaggy fur.

"Let's go!" he snapped. "That way! Hup!"

* * * * *

The three Kodiaks plunged away at a dead run, Huyghens lurching and

swaying on Faro Nell's back. The sudden rush dislodged Semper from his

perch. He flapped wildly and got aloft. Then he followed effortfully,

flying low.

It happened very quickly. A Kodiak bear can travel as fast as a race

horse on occasion. These three plunged arrow-straight for a spot

perhaps half a mile distant, where a blue-and-tawny shape whirled to

face them. There was the crash of Huyghens' weapon from where he rode

on Faro Nell's back--the explosion of the weapon and the bullet was one

sound. The somehow unnatural spiky monster leaped and died.

Huyghens jumped down from Faro Nell. He became feverishly busy at

something on the ground--where the parti-colored sphex had fallen.

Semper banked and whirled and came down to the ground. He watched, with

his head on one side.

Roane stared, from a distance. Huyghens was doing something to the

dead sphex. The two male bears prowled about. Faro Nell regarded

Huyghens with intense curiosity. Back at the hillock, Nugget whimpered

a little. Roane patted him roughly. Nugget whimpered more loudly. In

the distance, Huyghens straightened up and took three steps toward Faro

Nell. He mounted. Sitka turned his head back toward Roane. He seemed

to see or sniff something dubious. He reared upward. He made a noise,

apparently, because Sourdough ambled to his side. The two great beasts

began to trot back. Semper flapped wildly and--lacking wind--lurched

crazily in the air. He landed on Huyghens' shoulder and his talons

clung there.

Then Nugget howled hysterically and tried to swarm up Roane, as a cub

tries to swarm up the nearest tree in time of danger. Roane collapsed,

and the cub upon him--and there was a flash of stinking scaly hide,

while the air was filled with the snarling, spitting squeals of a sphex

in full leap. The beast had over-jumped, aiming at Roane and the cub

while both were upright and arriving when they had fallen. It went

tumbling.

Roane heard nothing but the fiendish squalling, but in the distance

Sitka and Sourdough were coming at rocketship speed. Faro Nell let

out a roar and fairly split the air. And then there was a furry

cub streaking toward her, bawling, while Roane rolled to his feet

and snatched up his gun. He raged through pure instinct. The sphex

crouched to pursue the cub and Roane swung his weapon as a club. He was

literally too close to shoot--and perhaps the sphex had only seen the

fleeing bear-cub. But he swung furiously.

And the sphex whirled. Roane was toppled from his feet. An

eight-hundred-pound monstrosity straight out of hell--half wildcat and

half spitting cobra with hydrophobia and homicidal mania added--such a

monstrosity is not to be withstood when in whirling its body strikes

one in the chest.

That was when Sitka arrived, bellowing. He stood on his hind legs,

emitting roars like thunder, challenging the sphex to battle. He

waddled forward. Huyghens arrived, but he could not shoot with Roane

in the sphere of an explosive bullet's destructiveness. Faro Nell

raged and snarled, torn between the urge to be sure that Nugget was

unharmed, and the frenzied fury of a mother whose offspring has been

endangered.

Mounted on Faro Nell, with Semper clinging idiotically to his shoulder,

Huyghens watched helplessly as the sphex spat and squalled at Sitka,

having only to reach out one claw to let out Roane's life.

V

They got away from there, though Sitka seemed to want to lift the

limp carcass of his victim in his teeth and dash it repeatedly to

the ground. He seemed doubly raging because a man--with whom all

Kodius Champion's descendants had an emotional relationship--had

been mishandled. But Roane was not grievously hurt. He bounced and

swore as the bears raced for the horizon. Huyghens had flung him up

on Sourdough's pack and snapped for him to hold on. He bumped and

chattered furiously:

"Dammit, Huyghens! This isn't right! Sitka got some deep scratches!

That horror's claws may be poisonous!"

But Huyghens snapped, "Hup! Hup!" to the bears, and they continued

their race against time. They went on for a good two miles, when Nugget

wailed despairingly of his exhaustion and Faro Nell halted firmly to

nuzzle him.

"This may be good enough," said Huyghens. "Considering that there's

no wind and the big mass of beasts is down the plateau and there were

only those two around here. Maybe they're too busy to hold a wake,

even! Anyhow--"

He slid to the ground and extracted the antiseptic and swabs.

"Sitka first," snapped Roane. "I'm all right!"

Huyghens swabbed the big bear's wounds. They were trivial, because

Sitka Pete was an experienced sphex-fighter. Then Roane grudgingly let

the curiously-smelling stuff--it reeked of ozone--be applied to the

slashes on his chest. He held his breath as it stung. Then he said

dourly:

"It was my fault, Huyghens. I watched you instead of the landscape. I

couldn't imagine what you were doing."

"I was doing a quick dissection," Huyghens told him. "By luck, that

first sphex was a female, as I hoped. And she was just about to lay her

eggs. Ugh! And now I know why the sphexes migrate, and where, and how

it is that they don't need game up here."

He slapped a quick bandage on Roane. He led the way eastward, still

putting distance between the dead sphexes and his party. It was a crisp

walk, only, but Semper flapped indignantly overhead, angry that he was

not permitted to ride again.

"I'd dissected them before," said Huyghens. "Not enough's been known

about them. Some things needed to be found out if men were ever to be

able to live here."

"With bears?" asked Roane ironically.

"Oh, yes," said Huyghens. "But the point is that sphexes come to the

desert here to breed--to mate and lay their eggs for the sun to hatch.

It's a particular place. Seals return to a special place to mate--and

the males, at least don't eat for weeks on end. Salmon return to their

native streams to spawn. They don't eat, and they die afterward. And

eels--I'm using Earth examples, Roane--travel some thousands of miles

to the Sargasso to mate and die. Unfortunately, sphexes don't appear to

die, but it's clear that they have an ancestral breeding place and that

they come here to the Sere Plateau to deposit their eggs!"

Roane plodded onward. He was angry: angry with himself because he

hadn't taken elementary precautions; because he'd felt too safe, as a

man in a robot-served civilization forms the habit of doing; because

he hadn't used his brain when Nugget whimpered, in even a bear-cub's

awareness that danger was near.

"And now," Huyghens added, "I need some equipment that the robot colony

had. With it, I think we can make a start toward making this a planet

that men can live like men on!"

Roane blinked.

"What's that?"

"Equipment," said Huyghens impatiently. "It'll be at the robot colony.

Robots were useless because they wouldn't pay attention to sphexes.

They'd still be. But take out the robot-controls and the machines will

do! They shouldn't be ruined by a few months' exposure to weather!"

Roane marched on and on. Presently he said:

"I never thought you'd want anything that came from that colony,

Huyghens!"

"Why not?" demanded Huyghens impatiently. "When men make machines do

what they want, that's all right. Even robots--when they're where they

belong. But men will have to handle flame-casters in the job I want

them for. There have to be some, because there was a hundred-mile

clearing to be burned off. And Earth-sterilizers--intended to kill the

seeds of any plants that robots couldn't handle. We'll come back up

here, Roane, and at the least we'll destroy the spawn of these infernal

beasts! If we can't do more than that--just doing that every year will

wipe out the race in time. There are probably other hordes than this,

with other breeding places. But we'll find them, too. We'll make this

planet into a place where men from my world can come--and still be men!"

Roane said sardonically:

"It was sphexes that beat the robots. Are you sure you aren't planning

to make this world safe for robots?"

Huyghens laughed shortly.

"You've only seen one night-walker," he said. "And how about those

things on the mountain-slope--which would have drained you of blood and

then feasted? Would you care to wander about this planet with only a

robot bodyguard, Roane? Hardly! Men can't live on this planet with only

robots to help them--and stop them from being fully men! You'll see!"

* * * * *

They found the colony after only ten days more of travel and after many

sphexes and more than a few staglike creatures and shaggy ruminants

had fallen to their weapons and the bears. But first they found the

survivors of the colony.

There were three of them, hard-bitten and bearded and deeply

embittered. When the electrified fence went down, two of them were away

at a mine-tunnel, installing a new control-panel for the robots who

worked in it. The third was in charge of the mining operation. They

were alarmed by the stopping of communication with the colony and went

back in a tank-truck to find out what had happened, and only the fact

that they were unarmed saved them. They found sphexes prowling and

caterwauling about the fallen colony, in numbers they still did not

wholly believe. And the sphexes smelled men inside the armored vehicle,

but couldn't break in. In turn, the men couldn't kill them, or they'd

have been trailed to the mine and besieged there for as long as they

could kill an occasional monster.

The survivors stopped all mining--of course--and tried to use

remote-controlled robots for revenge and to get supplies for them.

Their mining-robots were not designed for either task. And they had no

weapons. They improvised miniature throwers of burning rocket-fuel,

and they sent occasional prowling sphexes away screaming with scorched

hides. But this was useful only because it did not kill the beasts.

And it cost fuel. In the end they barricaded themselves and used the

fuel only to keep a spark-signal going against the day when another

ship came to seek the colony. They stayed in the mine as in a prison,

on short rations, waiting without real hope. For diversion they could

only contemplate the mining-robots they could not spare fuel to run and

which could not do anything but mine.

When Huyghens and Roane reached them, they wept. They hated robots and

all things robotic only a little less than they hated sphexes. But

Huyghens explained, and armed them with weapons from the packs of the

bears, and they marched to the dead colony with the male Kodiaks as

point and advance-guard, and with Faro Nell bringing up the rear. They

killed sixteen sphexes on the way. In the now overgrown clearing there

were four more. In the shelters of the colony they found only foulness

and the fragments of what had been men. But there was some food--not

much, because the sphexes clawed at anything that smelled of men, and

had ruined the plastic packets of radiation-sterilized food. But there

were some supplies in metal containers which were not destroyed.

And there was fuel, which men could dispense when they got to the

control-panels of the equipment. There were robots everywhere, bright

and shining and ready for operation, but immobile, with plants growing

up around and over them.

They ignored those robots. But lustfully they fueled tracked

flame-casters--adapting them to human rather than robot operation--and

the giant soil-sterilizer which had been built to destroy vegetation

that robots could not be made to weed out or cultivate. And they headed

back for the Sere Plateau, burning-eyed and filled with hate.

But Nugget became a badly spoiled bear-cub, because the freed men

approved passionately of anything that would even grow up to kill

sphexes. They petted him to excess, when they camped.

And they reached the plateau by a sphex-trail to the top. And Semper

scouted for sphexes, and the giant Kodiaks disturbed them and the

sphexes came squalling and spitting to destroy them--and while Roane

and Huyghens fired steadily, the great machines swept up with their

special weapons. The Earth-sterilizer, it was found, was deadly against

animal life as well as seeds, when its diathermic beam was raised and

aimed. But it had to be handled by a man. No robot could decide just

when it was to be used, and against what target.

Presently the bears were not needed, because the scorched corpses

of sphexes drew live ones from all parts of the plateau even in

the absence of noticeable breezes. The official business of the

sphexes was presumably finished, but they came to caterwaul and seek

vengeance--which they did not find. Presently the survivors of the

robot colony drove machines--as men needed to do, here--in great

circles around the hugest heap of slaughtered fiends, destroying new

arrivals as they came. It was such a killing as men had never before

made on any planet, but there would not be many left of the sphex-horde

which had bred in this particular patch of desert. There might be other

hordes elsewhere, and other breeding places, but the normal territory

of this mass of monsters would see few of them this year.

Or next year, either. Because the soil-sterilizer would go over the

dug-up sand where the sphex-spawn lay hidden for the sun to hatch. And

the sun would never hatch them.

But Huyghens and Roane, by that time, were camped on the edge of

the plateau with the Kodiaks. They were technically upwind from the

scene of slaughter--and somehow it seemed more befitting for the men

of the robot colony to conduct it. After all, it was those men whose

companions had been killed.

* * * * *

There came an evening when Huyghens amiably cuffed Nugget away from

where he sniffed too urgently at a stag-steak cooking on the campfire.

Nugget ambled dolefully behind the protecting form of Roane and

sniveled.

"Huyghens," said Roane painfully, "we've got to come to a settlement of

our affairs. I'm a Colonial Survey officer. You're an illegal colonist.

It's my duty to arrest you."

Huyghens regarded him with interest.

"Will you offer me lenience if I tell on my confederates," he asked

mildly, "or may I plead that I can't be forced to testify against

myself?"

Roane said vexedly:

"It's irritating! I've been an honest man all my life, but--I don't

believe in robots as I did, except in their place. And their place

isn't here. Not as the robot colony was planned, anyhow. The sphexes

are nearly wiped out, but they won't be extinct and robots can't handle

them. Bears and men will have to live here or--the people who do will

have to spend their lives behind sphex-proof fences, accepting only

what robots can give them. And there's much too much on this planet for

people to miss it! To live in a robot-managed controlled environment on

a planet like Loren Two wouldn't ... it wouldn't be self-respecting!"

"You wouldn't be getting religious, would you?" asked Huyghens dryly.

"That was your term for self-respect before."

Semper, the eagle, squawked indignantly as Sitka Pete almost stepped on

him, approaching the fire. Sitka Pete sniffed, and Huyghens spoke to

him sharply, and he sat down with a thump. He remained sitting in an

untidy lump, looking at the steak and drooling.

"You don't let me finish!" protested Roane querulously. "I'm a Colonial

Survey officer, and it's my job to pass on the work that's done on a

planet before any but the first-landed colonists may come there to

live. And of course to see that specifications are followed. Now--the

robot colony I was sent to survey was practically destroyed. As

designed, it wouldn't work. It couldn't survive."

Huyghens grunted. Night was falling. He turned the meat over the fire.

"Now, in emergencies," said Roane carefully, "colonists have the right

to call on any passing ship for aid. Naturally! So--I've always been

an honest man before, Huyghens--my report will be that the colony as

designed was impractical, and that it was overwhelmed and destroyed

except for three survivors who holed up and signaled for help. They

did, you know!"

"Go on," grunted Huyghens.

"So," said Roane querulously, "it just happened--just happened,

mind you--that a ship with you and Sitka and Sourdough and Faro

Nell on board--and Nugget and Semper, too, of course--picked up the

distress-call. So you landed to help the colonists. And you did. That's

the story. Therefore it isn't illegal for you to be here. It was only

illegal for you to be here when you weren't needed. But we'll pretend

you weren't."

Huyghens glanced over his shoulder in the deepening night. He said

calmly:

"I wouldn't believe that if I told it myself. Do you think the Survey

will?"

"They're not fools," said Roane tartly. "Of course they won't! But when

my report says that because of this unlikely series of events it is

practical to colonize the planet, whereas before it wasn't--and when

my report proves that a robot colony alone is stark nonsense, but that

with bears and men from your world added, so many thousand colonists

can be received per year--And when that much is true, anyhow--"

Huyghens seemed to shake a little as a dark silhouette against the

flames. A little way off, Sourdough sniffed the air hopefully. With a

bright light like the fire, presently naked-looking flying things might

appear to be slapped down out of the air. They were succulent--to a

bear.

"My reports carry weight," insisted Roane. "The deal will be offered,

anyhow! The robot colony organizers will have to agree or they'll have

to fold up. It's true! And your people can hold them up for nearly what

terms they choose."

Huyghens' shaking became understandable. It was laughter.

"You're a lousy liar, Roane," he said, chuckling. "Isn't it

unintelligent and unreasonable and irrational to throw away a lifetime

of honesty just to get me out of a jam? You're not acting like a

rational animal, Roane. But I thought you wouldn't, when it came to the

point."

Roane squirmed.

"That's the only solution I can think of. But it'll work."

"I accept it," said Huyghens, grinning. "With thanks. If only

because it means another few generations of men living like men on

a planet that is going to take a lot of taming. And--if you want to

know--because it keeps Sourdough and Sitka and Nell and Nugget from

being killed because I brought them here illegally."

Something pressed hard against Roane. Nugget, the cub, pushed urgently

against him in his desire to get closer to the fragrantly cooking meat.

He edged forward. Roane toppled from where he squatted on the ground.

He sprawled. Nugget sniffed luxuriously.

"Slap him," said Huyghens. "He'll move back."

"I won't!" said Roane indignantly from where he lay. "I won't do it!

He's my friend!"