“Not if the thing gets close,” Bragdon whimpered. “Or it can slugger us, or crush us, or—Run!”

  The terror had gone from Heim. He felt a cold uplifting: no pleasure of combat, for he knew how thin their chance was, but total aliveness. The matter grew crystalline in his mind, and he said: “Don’t. You’ll wear yourself out in no time. This is a walking race. If we can get to Thundersmoke, or even to those boulders, ahead of the bullets, we may be able to hide. No, don’t shed your packs. We won’t be allowed to retrieve them. Walk.”

  They struck out. “Shall I sing for you?” Vadász asked.

  “No need,” Heim said.

  “I thought not. Good. I do need the breath.”

  Heim took the rear. The engine coughed and banged behind. Again and again he could not control himself, he must stop and turn about for a look. Always death was closer. Old, old, crumbling, crazed, half blind and half palsied, the thing which had never been alive and would not die shivered along just a little faster than a man could stride on Staurn. The noise from it was an endless metal agony. Once he saw an armor plate drop off, once the air drive went awry and almost toppled the ponderous bulk; but it came on, came on. And the rocks of refuge ahead grew nearer with nightmare slowness.

  Jocelyn began to stagger. Heim moved to give her support. As if the change in configuration had tripped some relay in a rotted computer, the slug-thrower spat anew. Several of the bullets buzzed past them.

  Bragdon joined Heim on the woman’s other side. “Let me help,” he panted. She leaned on them both. “We…won’t make it,” Bragdon said.

  “We might,” Heim snapped, for he dreaded a return of that negation he had seen in Jocelyn this dawn.

  “We could…maybe…if we moved steady. You could. Not me. Not her. Got to rest.” Bragdon left the remainder unsaid: The pursuer needs no rest.

  “Get into that water, among those rocks,” Vadász said. “Lie low. Then maybe that pokolgep cannot see us.”

  Heim followed his gesture. Somewhat to the left, a scatter of stones lay in a muddy pool. None were bigger than a man, but—A light artillery shell passed overhead. The cannon crack rang back off the unattainable cliffs. The shell struck, splintered a boulder, but did not explode.

  “Let’s try,” he agreed.

  They splashed through muck and crouched bellydown in shallow red water. Heim was careful to hold his automatic free, Vadász his laser. Pistols seemed pathetic against the monster’s size and armament; but a man took care of his weapons. Mist blown from Thundersmoke pattered upon them. Heim wiped his faceplate and stared between two rocks.

  The machine had halted. It snarled to itself, jerked guns right and left, swept detectors through a hemisphere. “Good Lord,” Vadász whispered, “I think indeed it has lost us.”

  “The water cools oww our in’rared radiation,” Uthg-a-K’thaq replied as hushedly. “We are maywe under its radar weams, and maywe the owtical circuits are wad. Or the memory system has gone to wieces.”

  “If only—No.” Heim’s pistol sank in his fist.

  “What did you think?” Jocelyn asked, frantic.

  “How to disable what’s left of the detector lattice. Could be done by a laser beam—see that exposed power cable? Only you’d never get close enough before you were spotted and killed.”

  The short pulse-stopping hope, that the machine might give up and go away, crashed. It started grinding about a spiral, a search curve. Heim plotted that path and muttered: “Should be here inside half an hour. However, first it’ll move away. Which gains us some slight meterage. Be ready to start when I give you the word.”

  “We’ll never make it, I tell you,” Bragdon protested.

  “Not so loud, you crudhead. We don’t know that the thing hasn’t still got ears.”

  As if in response, the robot stopped. It rested a moment on the whirr from its air blowers; the lattice horns wove around, tilted, came to a halt…It continued along the spiral.

  “You see?” Vadász said with disgust. “Keep trying, Bragdon. You may yet destroy us.”

  The Peaceman made a strangled noise. “Don’t,” Jocelyn begged. “Please.”

  Uthg-a-K’thaq stirred. “A thought,” he belched. “I do in truth weliewe we cannot outrun the enemy to shelter. But can Slaughter Machines count?”

  Vadász’s breath hissed inward. “What’s this?”

  “We hawe lit-tle to lose,” the Naqsan said. “Let us run, excewt for one who waits here and keews the laser. Can he get unnoticed in cutting range ow the wistol—”

  “He could be killed too easily,” Heim said. But hope shuddered anew in him.

  Why not? Better go down fighting, whatever happens. And I might even save her.

  “Okay,” he said slowly. “Give me the gun and I’ll bushwhack our friend.”

  “No, skipper,” Vadász said. “I am no hero, but—”

  “Orders,” Heim said.

  “Gunnar—” broke from Jocelyn.

  Uthg-a-K’thaq plucked the laser out of Vadász’s grasp. “No time wor human games,” he snorted. “We were not here without him, and he is the least usewul. So.” He thrust the weapon at Bragdon. “Or dare you not?”

  “Gimme!” Heim snatched for it.

  Bragdon drew away. “That thing out there,” he said in a remote voice. “What comes of war. Think about that, Heim.”

  Vadász wallowed through the water and silt, after him. Heim saw the robot stop again to listen. “Get out of here!” Bragdon yelled. “I’ll let it see me if you don’t!”

  The machine plowed through the bushes, over streams and stones, directly toward them.

  No chance to argue. Bragdon must go ahead and be a damn fool. Heim got to his feet with a sucking splash. “Follow me—everyone!” Jocelyn slithered from the pool with him. They started off together.

  Thundersmoke brawled before them. The engine chugged hoarse behind. A gun chattered. Mist swirled in their view, settled on their faceplates, blinded them. Staurn hauled them downward, laid rocks to trip them, brewed mud to glue their boots. Heim’s heart smashed at his ribs as if it were also a cannon. He didn’t know how much he leaned on Jocelyn or she on him. There was no awareness of anything but noise, weight, and vast drowning waters.

  Vadász shouted.

  Heim lurched against a boulder, got his back to it, and lifted his automatic. But the hunter machine was not about to pounce.

  Near the thing was, most horribly near. Bragdon’s tiny form crept from ambush. Up to that iron body the man went, braced himself on widespread legs, aimed his pistol and fired.

  The laser sword hewed. Metal framework glowed white where struck. Trigger held fast, Bragdon probed for the power cable.

  Something like a bull’s bellow rose out of the robot. It swung clumsily around. Bragdon stood where he was, dwarfed under its bulk, steadily firing. Ports opened in the armor, where they were able. Guns came out. A few still worked. Heim hauled Jocelyn to the ground and laid himself above her. A wild beam hit the boulder where he had made his stand. Rock flowed from the wound.

  The guns could not reach as low as Bragdon. The machine clanked forward. Bragdon severed the detector powerline. “Run, Victor!” Vadász howled. “Get out of the way!” Bragdon turned and tripped. He went on his face. The robot passed over him.

  And on, firing, firing, a sleet of bullets, shells, energy beams, poison gases, destruction’s last orgasm; senseless, witless, futureless, the Slaughter Machine rocked south because it chanced to be headed that way.

  Heim rose and hurried toward Bragdon. Maybe he’s all right. An air cushion distributes weight over a large area. Bragdon did not stir. Heim came near and stopped.

  Dimly, through the clamor of geysers and departing engine, he heard Jocelyn call, “I’m coming, Gunnar!”

  “No,” he cried back. “Don’t.”

  There were sharp blades in the bottom of the iron shell. They must move up and down, clearing the ground by a few centimeters. He did not want her to see what lay before his eyes.

  -7-

  Drumroll in the earth: vapor puffed from a sulfurous cone. Then the spout came, climbing until a pillar for giants stood white and crowned. Another died; but there were more, everywhere among the tumbled black stones, as far as Heim could see through a whirl of fog. There was no distance. He groped in chaos. Water chuckled around his boots; over and over again he slipped on wetness. The damp was interior too, sweat soddened his skin. Strange, he thought in what detachment he could muster from the weariness with which he trembled, strange that his lungs should be a dry fire. Jocelyn’s gasps reached him, where she crawled at his side.

  Half his strength was spent to help her along. Otherwise he heard nothing but the titanic forces that churned about them. Uthg-a-K’thaq’s broad shape was visible ahead, leading the way. Vadász toiled in the rear. Light waned as the sun sank behind the mountain, to end the day after they piled a cairn over their newest dead.

  We’ve got to keep going, chanted idiotically in Heim. Got to keep going. Got to keep going. And underneath: Why?

  For the sake of the battle he intended to fight? That had become meaningless. The only battle was here, now, against a planet. For Lisa, then? A better cause, that she should not be fatherless. But she could well survive him. Grief dies young in the young. To discharge his own responsibility to those he commanded? Better still; it touched a deep-lying nerve. Yet he was no longer in command, when his engineer saw more clearly and moved more surely than any human could.

  Reasons blew away like geyser smoke. Death lured him with promises of sleep.

  Animal instinct raised his hackles. He cursed the tempter and went on.

  A mudpot bubbled on a level stretch. The farther bank was a precarious hill of boulders. Water rushed among them, struck the mud below and exploded in steam. Uthg-a-K’thaq beckoned the others to wait, flopped down on his belly and hitched himself forward. Mineral crusts were treacherous, and whoever fell into one of those kettles might be cooked alive before the rest heaved him out against gravity.

  Jocelyn used the pause to lie flat. Maybe she slept, or fainted; small difference any more. Heim and Vadász remained standing. It would have been too much effort to rise again.

  On the edge of visibility, among the clouds around the hilltop, Uthg-a-K’thaq waved. Heim and Vadász wrestled Jocelyn back to her legs. The captain led the way, stooped so he could make out the leader’s track through gray soft precipitate powders.

  When he came to the rise, hands and feet alike must push him over the high-stacked stones. Often a lesser chunk got loose and bounced hollowly down to the mudpot. Safest would have been to go one at a time, his dimmed consciousness realized now—

  “Gunnar!”

  He scrambled around, and almost went down in the same minor avalanche where Jocelyn rolled.

  Somehow he was up, bounding through the hot fog as he had plunged to attack centuries ago. Stones turned under his soles, water spurted where he struck. Nothing existed but his need to stop her before she went into the cauldron below.

  Her limbs flailed, her fingers clawed, dislodging more rocks that tumbled across her. He reached bottom. His boots sank in ooze. There was not too much heat on this fringe of the pot. But had there been, he would not have noticed. Those boulders which had spun downward faster than the woman and sunk immediately gave footing. He knelt and braced himself.

  The mass poured at him, around him. He laid hold on Jocelyn’s air cycler and became a wall.

  When the landslip was done, he pulled his smeared self clear and fell beside her. Vadász saw they would go no further than the verge of the mudsink, ended his own haste, and picked a cautious way to join them. Presently Uthg-a-K’thaq arrived too.

  Heim roused some minutes later. The first he noticed was the Naqsan’s voice, weirdly akin to the voice of the kettle: “Wery much harm wor us. Lac-King him, can we long liwe?”

  “Joss,” he mumbled, and fought to rise. Vadász helped him. He leaned on the Magyar a while until strength returned.

  “Hála Istennek,” gusted from the helmet beside his. “You are not hurt?”

  “I’m okay,” Heim said. His entire being seemed one bruise, and blood welled from abrasions. “Her?”

  “Broken leg at the minimum.” Vadász’s fingers touched the unnatural angle between left hip and thigh of the motionless figure. “I don’t know what else. She is unconscious.”

  “Her suit is intact,” Uthg-a-K’thaq said. First silly remark I’ve heard from him, trickled through Heim. If the fabric had torn, we wouldn’t worry about bones.

  He shoved Vadász aside and bent over her. When the faceplate had been wiped clean, he could make out her features in the dimming light. Eyes were closed, lips half-parted, skin colorless and sweat-beaded. He was dismayed at how sunken her cheeks were. Laying an audio pickup against her speaker, he was barely able to detect breath, rapid and shallow.

  He poised on his knees. To stave off the future, he asked, “Did anyone see what happened?”

  “A stone moved when she put her weight on,” Vadász said. “She started to roll and half the hillside went with her. Some recent quake must have unstabilized it. I will never know how you got down here so fast, not falling.”

  “Who cares?” Heim gritted. “She’s in shock. I don’t know if that’s due to nothing more than the leg fracture, she being so weakened to begin with. Could be worse injuries, like spinal. We don’t dare move her.”

  “What then can we do?” the engineer asked.

  Heim realized that command had passed back to him. “You two go on,” he said. “I’ll stay with her.”

  “No!” Vadász exclaimed involuntarily.

  Uthg-a-K’thaq spoke in some remnant of his pedantic way. “You can giwe her no aid, woth sealed in airsuits. We others may well need an ex-tra wair ow hands. A diwwicult wassage is wewore us,”

  “As battered as I am, I’d hinder you more than help,” Heim said. “Besides, she can’t be left alone. Suppose there’s another rockslip, or this mudpot boils higher?”

  “Cawtain, she is done already. Unconscious, she cannot take her grawanol. Without that, in shock, heart wailure comes quickly. Kindest to owen her helmet now.”

  Rage and loss flew out of Heim: “Be quiet, you coldblooded bastard! You goaded Bragdon to die, on purpose. One’s enough!”

  “Gwurru,” the Naqsan sobbed, and retreated from him.

  The venom dissipated, leaving emptiness. “I’m sorry, C.E.,” Heim said dully. “Can’t expect you to think like a Terrestrial. You mean well. I suppose men’s instincts are less practical than yours.” Laughter shook chains in his throat. “Speaking about practicality, though, you’ve got something like an hour of light. Don’t waste it. March.”

  Vadász considered him long before asking, “If she dies, what will you do?”

  “Bury her and wait. I can stretch out the water in these canteens if I sit quiet, but you’ll need the laser for your own drink.”

  “And you will then have nothing to, to fall back on. No, this is foolishness.”

  “I’ll keep the automatic, if that makes you happier. Now get going. I’ll hoist a beer with you yet.”

  Vadász surrendered. “If not on ship,” he said, “then in Valhalla. Farewell.”

  Their hands clasped, pair by pair. Minstrel and engineer began to climb. A geyser spat not far off, steam blew down the wind, the two shapes were lost to sight

  Heim settled himself.

  A chance for sleep, he thought. But that desire was gone. He checked Jocelyn’s breathing—no change—and stretched out beside her, glove upon her glove.

  Resting thus, he grew clearer-headed. With neither excitement nor despair he weighed the likelihood of survival. It wasn’t great. Zero for Joss, of course, barring miracles. For the other three, about fifty-fifty. The walkers should emerge from Thundersmoke tomorrow evening, more or less. Then they had perhaps two days (allowing those tough bodies one day without chemical crutches) in which to cross the high meadows toward Wenilwain’s castle. It was still distant, but the folk of the Hurst ranged widely. Doubtless they even crossed above Slaughter Land now and then, on their way to the plains and the sea. (Hm, yes, that’s why they leave the robots alone. A free defense. Carnivore souls for sure.) Given a break, the travelers might have been spied days ago.

  Well, the break was not given. So Joss must die in this wet hell, under a sun whose light would not reach Earth for a century: Earth of the greenwoods where she had walked, the halls where she danced, the garden where she played her flute for him until he frightened her with babbled impossibilities. As that sun smoldered to extinction behind the fogs, Gunnar Heim pondered the riddle of his guilt toward her.

  He had forced her here. But he did so because if she stayed behind she would betray his hopes for his planet. (Are you certain of that, buck? In fact, are you certain your way is the right one?) The choice would never have arisen except for the plot she had joined in. Yet that was evoked by his own earlier conspirings.

  He gave up. There was no answer, and he was not one to agonize in unclarity. This much he knew: if the time aboard the Quest had not matched those dreams he buried long ago for Connie’s sake, it had still been more dear than he deserved, and when Joss died a light would forever go out in him.

  Blup-blup, said the mudpot beneath. A hot spring seethed louder. A geyser roared in thickening dusk, echoes resounded from unseen walls and water rilled among the shadow shapes of boulders. Heavy as his own flesh pressed against unyielding painful jumble, night flowed across the world.

  Gloom lightened when the nearer moon rose, close to full, a shield bigger than Luna seen from Earth, iron bright and mottled with a strange heraldry. Heim dozed a while, woke, and saw it well above him. A thin glow surrounded the disc, diffusion in the upper mists. But most of the sky was open and he could make out stars. The lower fog rolled ashen through Thundersmoke gulch.

  His drowsy eyes tried to identify individual suns. Could that bright one near Lochan’s ghostlike peak be Achernar? If so, curious to look from here upon his emblem of victory. I wonder if Cynbe could be watching it too. Wherever he is.

  Better check on Joss. He commenced pulling his stiffened frame off the rocks.