Ripostes and return attacks were slowing down. The magiwoman maintained an expression of grim amusement throughout the conflict, while the magiman couldn't disguise his annoyance.
As if attracted by the conflict, a bunch of globe-frogs appeared out of the brushy undergrowth at the edge of the crop fields. They rolled into the midst of the Noble Primitives, who were huddled into the gap, watching the aerial battle. The indigenes avoided contact with the small creatures by kicking out at them so that the globes turned away. The little group trundled their conveyances laboriously out into the open and paused underneath the sky-borne battle. Keff watched their bright black eyes focus on the combatants. They seemed fascinated.
«Look, Carialle,» Keff said, directing his contact-button camera toward them. «Are they attracted by motion, or light? You'd think they'd be afraid of violent beings much larger than themselves.»
«Perhaps they are attracted to power, like moths to a candle flame,» Carialle said, «although, mind you, I've never seen moths or candles in person. I'm not an expert in animal behaviorism, but I don't think the attraction is unusual. Incautious, to the point of self-destructive, perhaps. Either of our psi-users up there could wipe them out with less power than it would take to hold up those chairs.»
The two mages, sailing past, parrying one another's magic bolts and making their own thrusts, ignored the cluster which trailed them around the field. At last the little creatures gave up their hopeless pursuit, and rolled in a group toward Keff and Carialle.
«Your animal magnetism operating again,» Carialle noted. The globe-frogs, paddling hard on the inner wall of their spherelike conveyances with their oversize paws, steered over the rocky ground and up the ramp, making for the inside of the ship. «Ooops, wait a minute! You can't come in here. Out!» she said, in full voice on her hatchway speakers. «Scat!»
The frogs ignored her. She tracked them with her internal cameras and directed her servos into the airlock to herd them out the door again. The frogs made a few determined tries to get past the low-built robots. Thwarted, they reversed position inside their globes and paddled the other way.
«Pests,» Carialle said. «Is everyone on this planet intent on a free tour of my interior?»
The globe-frogs rolled noisily down the ramp and off the rise toward the underbrush at the opposite end of the clearing. Keff watched them disappear.
«I wonder if they're just attracted to any vibrations or emissions,» he said.
«Could be— Heads up!» Carialle trumpeted suddenly. She put her servos into full reverse to get them out of Keff's way. Without waiting to ask why or what, Keff dove sideways into Carialle's hatch and hit the floor. A split second later, he felt a flamethrowerlike blast of heat almost singe his cheek. If he'd remained standing where he was, he'd have gotten a faceful of fire.
«They're out of control! Get in here!» Carialle cried.
Keff complied. The battle had become more serious, and the magic-users had given up caring where their bolts hit. Another spell flared out of the tips of the woman's fingers at the male, only a dozen meters from Keff.
The brawn tucked and rolled through the inner door. Carialle slid the airlock door shut almost on his heels. Keff heard a whine of stressed metal as something else hit the side of the ship.
«Yow!» Carialle protested. «That blast was cold! How are they doing that?»
Keff ran to the central cabin viewscreens and dropped into his crash seat.
«Full view, please, Cari!»
The brain obliged, filling the three surrounding walls with a 270В° panorama.
Keff spun his pilots couch to follow the green contrail across the sky, as the male magician retreated to the far end of the combat zone. He looked frustrated. The last, unsuccessful blast that hit Carialle's flank must have been his. The female, beautiful, powerful, sitting up high in her chair, prepared another attack with busy hands. Her green eyes were dulling, as if she didn't care where her strike might land. The five magimen on the sidelines looked bored and angry, just barely restraining themselves from interfering. The battle would end soon, one way or another.
Even inside the ship, Keff felt the sudden change in the atmosphere. His hair, including his eyebrows and eyelashes and the hair on his arms, crackled with static. Something momentous was imminent. He leaned in toward the central screen.
Out of nothingness, three new arrivals in hover-chairs blinked into the heart of the battle zone. Inadvertently Keff recoiled against the back of his chair.
«Yow! They mean business,» Carialle said. «No hundred meters of clearance space. Just smack, right into the middle.»
The spells the combatants were building dissipated like colored smoke on the wind. Carialle's gauges showed a distinct drop in the electromagnetic fields. The mage and magess dropped their hands stiffly onto their chair arms and glared at the obstacles now hovering between them. If looks could have ignited rocket fuel, the thwarted combatants would have set Carialle's tanks ablaze. Whatever was powering them had been cut off by the three in the center.
«Uh-oh. The Big Mountain Men are here,» Keff said, flippantly, his face guarded.
The newcomers' chairs were bigger and gaudier than any Keff and Carialle had yet seen. A host of smaller seats, containing lesser magicians, popped in to hover at a respectful distance outside the circle. Their presence was ignored by the three males who were obviously about to discipline the combatants.
«Introductions,» Keff said, monitoring IT. «High and mighty. The lad in the gold is Nokias, the one in black is Ferngal, and the silver one in the middle who looks so nervous is Chaumel. He's a diplomat.»
Carialle observed the placatory gestures of the mage in the silver chair. «I don't think that Ferngal and Nokias like each other much.»
But Chaumel, nodding and smiling, floated suavely back and forth between the gold and black in his silver chair and managed to persuade them to nod at one another with civility if not friendliness. The lesser magicians promptly polarized into two groups, reflecting their loyalties.
«Compliments to the Big Mountain Men from my pretty lady and her friend,» Keff continued. «She's Potria, and he's Asedow. One of the sideliners says they were something—bold? cocky?—to come here. Aha, that's what that word Brannel used meant: forbidden! That gives me some roots for some of the other things they're saying. I'll have to backtrack the datahedrons—I think a territorial dispute is going on.»
Nokias and Ferngal each spoke at some length. Keff was able to translate a few of the compliments the magimen paid to each other.
«Something about high mountains,» he said, running IT over contextual data. «Yes, I think that repeated word must be 'power,' so Ferngal is referring to Nokias as having power as high, I mean, strong as the high mountains and deep as its roots.» He laughed. «It's the same pun we have in Standard, Cari. He used the same word Brannel used for the food 'roots.' The farmers and the magicians do use two different dialects, but they're related. It's the cognitive differences I find fascinating. Completely alien to any language in my databanks.»
«All this intellectual analysis is very amusing,» Carialle said, «but what are they saying? And more to the point, how does it affect us?»
She shifted cameras to pick up Potria and Asedow on separate screens. After the speeches by the two principals, the original combatants were allowed their say, which they had with many interruptions from the other and much pointing towards Carialle.
«Those are definitively possessive gestures,» Keff said uneasily.
«No one puts a claim on my ship,» Carialle said firmly. «Which one of them has a tractor beam on me? I want it off.»
Keff listened to the translator and shook his head. «Neither one did it, I think. It may be a natural phenomenon.»
«Then why isn't it grounding any of those chairs?»
«Cari, we don't know that's what is happening.»
«I have a pretty well-developed sense of survival, and that's exactly what its telling me.»
«Well, then, we'll tell them you own your ship, and they can't have it,» Keff said, reasonably. «Wait, the diplomat's talking.»
The silver-robed magician had his hands raised for attention and spoke to the assemblage at some length, only glancing over his shoulder occasionally. Asedow and Potria stopped shouting at each other, and the other two Big Mountain Men looked thoughtful. Keff tilted his head in amusement.
