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On a long plateau where clumps of yellow goldoak scattered the red firegrass,
Brong let him drive again. Rust-dark crags rose into the cloud-roof behind
them, but the landscape ahead looked less forbidding.
"The Leleyo?" He turned hopefully to Brong. "Could we meet them here?"
"Sorry, Crewman, but we can't make miracles. They never get so high so early
in the season. So don't go dreaming of your lovely Nera Nyin. Here in bloodrot
country, don't you forget, her first naked touch could kill you."
Depressed, he said nothing.
"Here's what I hope for." As if trying to cheer him again, Brong lit a map in
the tank. "Your mother's goal on her last trip-"
"The braintree?"
"The feyo tree." The bright forefinger pointed. "We're keeping close to her
route. Beyond that range is the river she couldn't cross. Doubt that we can.
But we'll try to get near and wait till our friends gather for their early
summer feyolar. If we're lucky "
"Bosun!" Vythle's call rang from the fighting turret. "Something I want you to
check."
Brong climbed to join her. Keth drove on, more confidently now. The big
machine had begun speaking to him, the whine of the drive rising and falling
with every change in load from slope or soil. His mind meshed with it, he
could almost forget the humanoids.
Their attack stunned him.
A dazzling flash. A thunder crack. The machine lurched and moaned and stopped.
Ringing stillness and utter dark. He thought for an instant that he had been
blinded, but then he could see the console's glow.
"Here to help us!" Savagely mocking, Vorn's shout echoed through the craft.
"Our metal symbiotes!"
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Though that first blast had opaqued the pilot bubble, Brong and Vythle were
still in action. Motors hummed, training the fighting turret. The big laser
crashed twice. Silence then, till he heard Brong climbing back down to the cab
and knew the battle was over.
"They're dead dead as we are!" Brong cleared the bubble and stood clicking his
metal fingers, peering bleakly at the console. "If they ever had three
machines, the others were already lost. Maybe in that river or to the dragon
bats. Vythle got the one that knocked us out."
He tramped moodily on to inspect the reactors.
"Vyth? Is Vyth hurt?"
Vorn came staggering out of his berth in his underwear, the soiled bandage
askew on his head. He groped along the passage until Vythle ran to meet him.
They clung together.
The whir of the fans was fading. A warning horn croaked and died. Red danger
lights winked and dimmed on the console. The maptank went dark. A sudden
bitter stink of burnt paint and plastic took Keth's breath.
"Killed us." Brong came back, fingers clicking faster. "In too many ways. UVs
out. Right track fused. Cooling system gone. Both reactors dead quenched and
ejected when the meltdown started. Air pressure falling fast."
"Done for?" Vorn shook his blind head, pushing Vythle back. "Already done
for?"
"The craft is," Brong said. "We get out now or not at all."
He pulled escape gear out of the locker. The suits were stiff gold-filmed
plastic with helmet bubbles and airpacks. At first unwilling, Vorn let Vythle
seal him into his coverall. Brong loaded their harness with survival gear.
Gold-bladed machetes.
Tubes of water and semifluid food. Lamps and ropes and rolled shelter sheets.
Heavy gold-plated projectile guns.
"Hang on to the guns." His voice in the helmet was hollow and strange.
"They're your best medicine for bloodrot when that time comes."
38
Machine Originating from makeshift compensations for the manifold defects of
primitive organic life, the machine evolved into the ultimate vehicle for
intelligence.
Power packs and suit pressure checked, Brong unbolted and opened the loading
door. Keth climbed down to the firegrass, still black and smoking from the
laser bolt, and turned to help Vorn. Vythle followed. She said something, but
the helmet reduced her voice to a dull reverberation.
A few meters out, Keth turned back to stare. The damage appalled him. Only
stumps and fragments were left of the steri-lamp booms and the signal
superstructures. Half the hull was black, its shielding gold vaporized.
He left it, tramping after his companions. In the golden suits and mirrored
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helmets, they looked almost alike: Brong the smallest, Vorn the bulkiest,
Vythle still somehow feminine in the way she moved.
On a stony ridge beyond the crimson firegrass field, Brong unrolled a stiff
yellow chart and gestured toward a V-shaped notch between haze-blued hills far
off in the east. A river had cut it, he said, flowing down to join the greater
glacial river that ran beneath the braintree.
"No promise we'll ever get there." His radio voice was distorted and shrill,
hard to make out. "But at least we'll be farther from the humanoids."
Clumsy in his own heavy gear, aware again of Malili's dragging gravity, Keth
moved to offer aid to Vorn and Vythle. They stood together, awkwardly
embracing. He caught the other arm, and they blundered after Brong toward that
far V.
"Service!"
Faint and strange, that high sweet voice needled through his helmet. It froze
him for a moment. When he looked back, the humanoid was gliding after them
from the yellow glitter of the wreckage.
"We urge you, shipfolk! Return!"
A changed humanoid. Its singing tones were still the same, and its slender
shape. It danced across the charred firegrass with the same fluid grace. Its
golden brand still glinted. But the rest of its sleek and sexless nudity was
no longer black, but clad now in harlequin velvet, blazing blues and lurid
greens.
Vorn's helmet rang to a furious roar, and Vythle clung to his inflated sleeve
to stop his mad rush toward the humanoid. Keth unsheathed his golden blade.
Brong sprang aside, nimble hi his suit, apparently just watching.
"Service . . . difficult . . ." Its voice slowed, the high tones falling. "You
must. . . come back ... to the Zo "
The last vowel stretched out into a sustained musical hum that slowly sank and
finally ceased. Gone rigid, the dead thing toppled toward them and fell into
the scarlet firegrass, blind eyes down. A faint puff of blue dust rose around
it spores of the rust, Keth supposed, feeling grimly grateful for them.
"Guess that settles that." Brong's radio voice had a sardonic snap. "They'll
never serve Malili."
They took turns assisting Vorn, who wanted no aid. He stumbled on rocks and
clumps of brush, even when Vythle was calling anxious warnings. Sometimes he
fell and seemed unwilling to rise again. Keth could sense his savage mood.
Though they slogged and blundered hour after hour toward that blue-veiled V,
it never seemed nearer. Inside the unyielding armor, Keth sweated and itched
hi spots he couldn't reach. The heavy boots wore blisters on his heels. Yet
Vorn and Vythle were his most urgent concern; their plight seemed even bleaker
than his own.
Neither the yellow-green sky nor the landscape changed. Only their bodies and
the gold-cased chronographs told them when that long day was gone. Brong
picked a level resting spot, showed them how to get food and water through the
helmet tubes, how to work the elimination valves.
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Keth sprawled on a firegrass bed, too tired at first for sleep, too miserable
in the cramping suit. A muffled crash woke him. Sitting up stiffly, he found
Vythle standing a few meters away, her gold gun drawn.
"Sorry, Keth." Her radio voice was abrupt and brittle. "Thought I'd seen a
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