Battlefield Earth Part 7

It was enough all right. The ions sizzled and glared. The beasts were slammed back, lifted clean off the ground.

They fell.

Terl watched intently to make sure they kept on lying where they had fallen. Good! They did.

He let out a shuddering sigh into his mask, winding down. And then he sat up straight in new amazement. He had thought, when they were hit, that he was dealing with two four-legged beasts. But lying on the ground they had come apart!

Terl swung a side door wide and crawled out. He checked his belt gun and then rumbled over to the game he had hit.

Three beasts, maybe four!

The two four-legged beasts were two. On the one behind, a bundle of something had fallen apart. That maybe made three. The nearer one definitely was two different beasts.

What a confusion!

He shook his head, trying to clear it. The effects of air were not wearing off fast enough: little bright sparks were still popping in front of his eyes.

He lumbered over to the more distant one, pus.h.i.+ng the tall gra.s.s away. It was a horse. He had seen plenty of horses; the plains were full of them. But this horse had had a bundle tied on its back. Simple as that. The bundle had come loose. He kicked it. It wasn't anything alive, just some skins, some animal hides, and nonsense bits of other things.

He walked back toward the tank through the high gra.s.s.

The other thing was also a horse. And over to the right where it had fallen clear...

Terl pushed back the gra.s.s. Well, luck of the gold nebula! It was a man.

The Psychlo turned the man over. What a small, puny body! Hair on the face and head but nowhere else. Two arms, two legs. White-brown skin.

Terl was unwilling to admit that Char's description fitted. In fact, he resented the fact that it did come close and promptly rejected it.

The chest was moving- only slightly, true- but it was still alive. Terl felt fortunate indeed. His excursion was successful without his even going up into the mountains.

He picked the man up with one paw and went back to the tank, throwing the man into the gunner's seat, which engulfed it. Then he set to work repairing the windscreen gasket with some permastick. The whole side of the gla.s.s had been dislodged, and although the gla.s.s itself was not even scratched, that had been quite a blow. He looked down at the small body swallowed in the seat. A fluke. It was the age of this tank, the brittleness of its gaskets. Sure was a ratty car; he'd find something wrong and put it in Zzt's records- misplaced parts or something. He went over the other gaskets, the doors, and the other screen. They seemed all right, if brittle. Well, he wasn't going underwater and there would surely be no more attacks from things like that.

Terl stood up on the driver's seat and looked all around the horizon. All clear. No more of these beasts.

He banged down the top and settled himself. His paw hit the compression change, and the hiss of air exhausting from the cab and the gurgle of breathe-gas entering was welcome. His face mask was sweaty in the growing heat of the day and he hated the thing. Oh, for a proper-atmosphere planet, a planet with right gravity, with purple trees- The man-thing went into a sudden convulsion.

Terl drew back, alarmed. It was turning blue and jerking about. The last thing he wanted was a raving mad animal inside the cab.

Hastily he adjusted his face mask, reversed the compression, and kicked open the side door. With one bat of his paw he knocked the thing back out onto the gra.s.s.

Terl sat there watching it. He was afraid his plans were going up in a puff. The thing must have been more heavily affected by the stun blast than he knew. c.r.a.p, they were weak!

He opened the cab top and looked over at one of the horses.

He could see its sides moving. It was breathing and wasn't in any convulsion. It was even recovering. Well, a horse was a horse, and a man might be...

He suddenly got it. The man-thing couldn't breathe breathe-gas. The bluish color was fading; the convulsions had stopped. The chest was panting as the thing gulped in air.

That gave Terl a problem. Blast if he was going to ride back to the minesite in a face mask. He got out of the car and went to the farther horse. It was recovering, too. The sacks were lying near it. Terl rummaged through one and came up with some thongs.

He went back and picked up the man-thing and slammed it up on top of the car. He arranged it so its arms stuck out to each side. Tying piece after piece of thong together he made a long rope. He tied one end to one wrist of the thing, pa.s.sed the rope under the car- grunting a bit as he lifted it up to do so- and tied the other wrist. He yanked it good and tight. Then he pushed at the man-thing experimentally to see whether it would fall off.

Very good. He threw the sacks onto the gunner's seat and got in, closed up, and restarted the atmosphere change.

The nearest horse was lifting its head, struggling to get up. Aside from surface blood boils caused by the stun gun, it seemed to be all right, which meant that the man-thing would probably recover.

Terl stretched his jawbones in a grin. Well, it was coming out all right after all.

He started up the car, turned it, and headed back toward the minesite.

- Part II -

Chapter 1.

Terl was all efficiency, great plans bubbling in his cavernous skull.

The old c.h.i.n.kos had had a sort of zoo outside the compound, and despite the years that had intervened since the c.h.i.n.kos were terminated here, the cages were still there.

There was one in particular that was just right. It had a dirt floor and a cement pool, and netting of heavy mesh strung all around it. They had had some bears there that they said they were studying, and although the bears had died after a while, they had never escaped.

Terl dumped the new beast into the cage. The thing was still only semiconscious, getting over the shock of breathe-gas most likely. Terl looked at it lying there and then looked around. This had to be just right, all precautions taken.

The cage door had a lock on it. It was open to the sky and there was no netting over the top- what bear could climb a thirty-foot set of bars?

But there was a possibility that this new beast might tamper with the cage door. It wasn't probable. But the door didn't have a good lock on it.

Terl had dumped the bags in the cage, having no place else to put them. And the long thong rope he had used was lying on the bag.

He decided it would be wise to tie the beast up. He pa.s.sed the thong around the neck of the thing and tied it there with a simple rigger knot and tied the other end to a bar.

He stood back and checked things again. It was fine. He went out and closed the cage door. He'd have to put a better lock on it. But it would do just now.

Satisfied with himself, Terl ran the car into the garage and went to his office.

There was not much to do. A few dispatches, just forms, no emergencies. Terl finished up and sat back. What a dull place. Ah, well, he had started wheels rolling to get off it, to get back home.

He decided he had better go out and see how the man-thing was getting along. He picked up his breathe-mask, put a new cartridge into it, and went out through the offices. There were a lot of empty desks these days. There were only three secretarial-type Psychlos there, and they didn't pay much attention to him.

Outside the compound, he reached the gate of the cage. He stopped, his eyebones rattling.

The thing was clear over to the gate!

He went in with a growl, picked the thing up, and put it into its original place.

It had untied the knot.

Terl looked at it. Plainly it was terrified of him. And why not? It only came up to his belt buckle and was about a tenth of his weight.

Terl put the thong back around its neck. Being a mining company worker, accustomed to rigs and slings, Terl knew his knots. So this time he tied a double-rigger knot. That would hold it!

Cheerful once more, Terl went to the garage and got a water hose and began to wash down the Mark ll. As he worked, he turned over various plans and approaches in his head. They all depended on that man-thing out there.

On a sudden hunch, he went back outside to look into the cage. The thing was standing inside the door!

Terl crossly barged in, carried it back to its original position, and stared at the rope. It had untied a double-rigger knot.

With fast-working paws, Terl fixed that. He put the rope around its neck and tied it with a bucket-hoist knot.

The thing looked at him. It was making some funny noises as if it could talk.

Terl walked out, fastened the door, and got out of sight. He wasn't a security chief for nothing. From a vantage point behind a building, he levered his face mask gla.s.s to telephoto and observed.

The thing, in no time at all, untied the complex bucket-hoist knot!

Terl rumbled back before it could get to the door. He went in, plucked the thing up, and put it back on the far side of the cage.

He wound the rope around and around its neck and then tied it with a double-bucket knot so complex that only a veteran rigger could loosen it.

Once more he went off to an unseen distance.

Again believing itself un.o.bserved, what was the thing doing now?

It reached into a pouch it was wearing, took out something bright, and cut the rope!

Terl rumbled off to the garage and rummaged about through centuries of cast offs and debris until he found a piece of flexirope, a welding torch, a welding power cartridge, and a short strip of metal.

When he got back, the thing was over by the door again, trying to climb the thirty-foot bars.

Terl did a very thorough job. He made a collar out of the metal and welded it hotly around the neck. He welded the flexirope to the collar and welded the other end into a ring, hooking the ring over a bar thirty feet above the dirt floor of the cage.

He stood back. The thing was grimacing and trying to hold the collar away from its neck, for it was still hot.

That'll hold it, Terl told himself.

But he hadn't finished. He wasn't a security chief for nothing. He went back to his office storeroom and broke out two b.u.t.ton cameras, checked them, and switched them to the wavelength of his office viewer.

Then he went back to the cage and put one b.u.t.ton camera way up in the bars, pointing down, and put the other one out at a distance where it could view the exterior.

The thing was pointing at its mouth and making sounds. Who knew what that meant?

Only now did Terl feel relaxed.

That night he sat smugly in the employee recreation room, responding to no questions, quietly drinking his kerbango in a very self-satisfied way.

Chapter 2.

Jonnie Goodboy Tyler stared in despair at his packs across the yard.

The sun was hot.

The collar on his burned neck hurt.

His throat was parched with thirst. And he felt hungry.

In those packs, just inside the cage door, there was a pig bladder of water. There was some cooked pork, if it hadn't spoiled. And there were hides he could rig for shade.

At first he had just been trying to get out.

The very idea of being caged made him feel ill. Sicker even than the lack of water and food.

It was all so unknown. The last he really remembered was starting to charge the insect and being blown into the air. Then this. No, wait. There was something after he was first stunned.

He had started to come to, lying on something soft and smooth. He had seemed to be inside the insect. He had seen a huge something next to him. And then there was a sensation like breathing fire straight into his lungs that pulled every nerve short and threw him into a convulsion.

There was another glimpse of an occurrence. He had flickeringly regained consciousness for a few moments. He seemed to be tied to the top of the insect speeding across the plain. And then the back of his head b.u.mped and the next he knew he was in here- in this cage!

He put it together. He had hurt the insect, but not fatally. It had eaten him, but then spit him up. It had carried him on its back to its lair.

But the real shock was the monster.

It was true, he knew now, that he had always been "too smart." He had doubted his elders. He had doubted the Great Village and there it had been. He had doubted the monsters and here one was.

When he had come to and found himself looking up at that thing, his head had reeled. He felt himself literally bending the bars behind him to get away. A monster!

Eight or nine feet tall, maybe more. About three and a half feet wide. Two arms. Two legs. A s.h.i.+ny substance for a face and a long tube from the chin down to the chest. Glowing amber eyes behind the s.h.i.+ny front plate.

The ground shook as it approached. A thousand pounds? Maybe more.

Huge booted feet dented the earth.

And it had furry paws and long talons.

He had been certain it was going to eat him right then. But it hadn't. It had tied him up like a dog.