More Tales of Pirx the Pilot

“The bastard! He’s hid himself in some crevice or is firing from the flank. I really doubt now that this will do any good, but let’s try.”

He picked up a second cylinder and sent it after the first.

At first it rolled like the other one, but somewhere about halfway down the incline it turned aside and came to rest. Pirx wasn’t looking at it—all his attention was concentrated on the triangular section of darkness in which the Setaur must be lurking. The seconds went by slowly. All at once a branching explosion ripped the slope. Pirx was unable to locate the place where the automaton had concealed itself, but he saw the line of fire, or more precisely a part of it, for it materialized as a burning, sunbright thread when it passed through what was left of the first cloud of gas. Immediately he sighted along that gleaming trajectory, which was already fading, and as soon as he had the edge of the darkness in his cross hairs, he pulled the trigger. Apparently McCork had done the same thing simultaneously, and in an instant the cadet joined them. Three blades of sun plowed the black floor of the basin and at that very moment it was as if some gigantic, fiery lid slammed down directly in front of them—the entire boulder that protected them shook, from its rim showered a myriad searing rainbows, their suits and helmets were sprayed with burning quartz, which instantly congealed to microscopic teardrops. They lay now flattened in the shadow of the rock, while above their heads whipped, like a white-hot sword, a second and a third discharge, grazing the surface of the boulder, which immediately was covered with cooling glass bubbles.

“Everyone all right?” asked Pirx, not lifting his head.

“Yes!”—“Here, too!”—came the answers.

“Go down to the machine and tell the radio operator to call everyone, because we have him here and will try to keep him pinned as long as possible,” Pirx said to the cadet, who then crawled backward and ran, stooping, in the direction of the rocks where the tractor was standing.

“We have two cylinders left, one apiece. Doctor, let’s switch positions now. And please be careful and keep low; he’s already hit right on top of us…”

With these words Pirx picked up one cylinder and, taking advantage of the shadows thrown by some large stone slabs, moved forward as quickly as he could. About two hundred steps farther on, they rested in the cleft of a magma embankment. The cadet, returning from the transporter, wasn’t able to find them at first. He was breathing hard, as if he had run at least a few kilometers.

“Easy, take your time!” said Pirx. “Well, what’s up?”

“Contact has been resumed.” The cadet squatted by Pirx, who could see the youth’s eyes blinking behind the viewplate of his helmet. “In that machine, the one that was destroyed … there were four people from Construction. The second transporter must have withdrawn, because it had a defective laser … and the rest went by, off to the side, and didn’t see anything…” Pirx nodded as if to say, “I thought as much.”

“What else? Where’s our group?”

“Practically all of them—thirty kilometers from here, there was a false alarm there, some rocket patrol said it saw the Setaur and pulled everyone to the spot. And three machines don’t answer.”

“When will they get here?”

“At the moment we’re only receiving…” said the cadet, embarrassed.

“Only receiving? What do you mean?”

“The radio operator says that either something’s happened to the transmitter, or else in this place his emission is damping out. He asks if he might change the parking location, so he can test…”

“He can change his location if he has to,” Pirx replied. “And please stop running like that! Watch where you put your feet!”

But the other must not have heard, for he was racing back.

“At best they’ll be here in half an hour, if we succeed in making contact,” observed Pirx. McCork said nothing. Pirx pondered the next move. Should they wait or not? Storming the basin with transporters would probably ensure success, but not without losses. Compared with the Setaur their machines made large targets, were slow, and would have to strike together, for a duel would end as it had with that tractor from Construction. He tried to come up with some stratagem to lure the Setaur out into the lighted area. If it were possible to send in one unmanned, remote-control transporter as a decoy, then hit the automaton from elsewhere—say, from above…

It occurred to him that he really didn’t have to wait for anyone; he already had one transporter. But somehow the plan didn’t hold together. To send a machine out blindly like that wouldn’t be any good. He would just blow the thing to bits, and wouldn’t have to move to do it. Could he have possibly realized that the zone of shadow in which he stood was giving him so much of an advantage? But this was not a machine created for battle with all its tactics. There was method in his madness, yes, but what method?

They sat, bent over, at the foot of a rocky scarp, in its dense, cold shadow. Suddenly it struck Pirx that he was acting like a complete idiot. What would he do, after all, if he were the Setaur? Immediately he felt alarm, for he was certain that he—in his place—would attack. Passively waiting for things to happen gained nothing. So, then, could he be advancing toward them? Even now? One could surely reach the western cliff, moving under cover of darkness the whole time, and farther on there were so many huge boulders, so much fissured lava, that in that labyrinth one could hide for God knows how long…

He was almost positive now that the Setaur would proceed in precisely this way, and that they could expect him at any moment.

“Doctor, I fear he will take us by surprise,” he said quickly, jumping to his feet. “What do you think?”

“You believe he might sneak up on us?” asked McCork and smiled. “That occurred to me, too. Well, yes, it’s even logical, but will he behave logically? That is the question.”

“We’ll try it one more time,” Pirx muttered. “We have to roll these cylinders down the hill and see what he does.”

“I understand. Now?”

“Yes. And be careful!”

They dragged the cylinders to the top of the rise and, doing their best to remain unseen from the bottom of the basin, pushed both practically at the same time. Unfortunately, the absence of air kept them from hearing whether the things were rolling, or in what way. Pirx made up his mind and—feeling strangely naked, as though there were no steel sphere over his head, nor a heavy three-layered suit covering his body—he pressed himself flat against the rock and cautiously stuck out his head.

Nothing had changed below. Except that the wrecked machine had ceased to be visible, for its cooling fragments merged with the surrounding darkness. The shadow occupied the same area, the shape of an irregular, elongated triangle, its base abutting the cliffs of the highest, western ridge of rocks. One cylinder had stopped some thirty meters beneath them, having struck a stone that put it in a lengthwise position. The other was still rolling, slowing down, growing smaller, till it stood still. Pirx was not at all pleased that nothing more happened. “He isn’t stupid,” he thought. “He won’t shoot at a target someone sticks under his nose.” He tried to find the place from which the Setaur, some ten minutes before, had betrayed itself with the flash of its laser eye, but that was extremely difficult.

“Perhaps he’s not there anymore,” Pirx reflected. “Perhaps he’s simply retreating to the north; or going parallel, along the bottom of the basin, or along one of those rifts of magnetic course… If he makes it to the cliffs, to that labyrinth, then we’ve lost him for good…”

Slowly, groping, he raised the butt of his laser and loosened his muscles. “Dr. McCork!” he said. “Could you come here?”

And when the doctor had scrambled up to him, he said:

“You see the two cylinders? One straight ahead, below us, and the other farther on?”

“I see them.”

“Fire at the closer one first, then at the other, in an interval, say, of forty seconds… But not from here!” he added quickly. “You’ll have to find a better place. Ah!” He pointed with his hand. “There is not a bad position, in that hollow. And after you shoot, crawl back immediately. All right?”

McCork asked no questions but set off at once, keeping low, in the direction indicated. Pirx waited impatiently. If he was even a little like a man, he had to be curious. Every intelligent creature was curious—and curiosity prompted it to act when something incomprehensible took place… He couldn’t see the doctor now. He forced himself not to look at the cylinders, which were to explode under McCork’s shots; he focused all his attention on the stretch of sunlit debris between the zone of shadow and the outcrop. He lifted the binoculars to his eyes and trained them on that section of the lava flow. In the lenses grotesque shapes filed slowly