«Hey!» said Shea, and leaped to his feet.
Out from among the trees loped a pair of naked, hairy seven-foot ape men. They had huge ears with tufts of hair sprouting from them, and throat pouches like orangutans. In their hands were clubs. For a moment they stood at gaze, then came splashing through the stream at a gallop.
Chalmers ran to untie the animals, but they were leaping about, crazy with fear. In a glance Shea decided he could never reach Sir Paridell’s sword. He would have to use the epee, feeble as that toothpick was against those huge clubs.
The first of the ape men ran at him, bellowing. Shea never knew whether he had gained his senses or lost his nerve, but he next instant he and Chalmers were running round and round the tethered animals, with the ape-men foaming through their tusks behind.
One of the creatures boomed something to the other. On the next circuit the fugitives were surprised to run head-on into one ape-man who had stopped and waited for them. Shea was in front. He saw the club swing up in two hairy hands and did the only thing possible — extend the epee and fling himself foward in a terrific flиche.
His face was buried in fur and he was clutching at it for support. The hilt was wrenched from his hand, and the animal-man went screaming off, with the weapon sticking through him.
Shea himself was running; over his shoulder, he saw Chalmers was running, with the other ape-man gaining, twirling up his club for the blow. Shea had an instant of horror and revulsion — the poor old Doc, to pass out this way, when he couldn’t help —
The feathered butt of an arrow appeared in the thing’s side, as though it had just sprouted there. The club missed Chalmers as the creature staggered and turned.
Shea sat up and wiped leaf mould from his face. Footsteps preceded a tallish, slim girl in a short-skirted tunic and soft leather boots. She had a bow in one hand and a light boar spear in the other, and she moved towards them at a springy trot as though it were her normal gait. A feathered hat like Shea’s sat on her red-gold hair, which was trimmed in a long bob.
Shea got up. «Thanks, young lady. We owe you a life or two. I think the thing’s about dead.»
«I’ll make certain. Those Losels are hard to kill,» said the girl. She stepped to the bracken and jabbed. She seemed satisfied as she pulled the spear out, wiping its point on some moss. «Is the old man hurt?»
Chalmers gained breath enough to sit up. «Just.
The girls eyebrows went up, Shea noticing they were a delightful colour. «You know me not? I hight Belphebe.»
«Well,» said Shea, «I. ah. hight Harod Shea, esquire, and my friend hight Reed Chalmers, the palmer, if that’s how you say it.»
«That would be your blade sticking in the other Losel?»
«Yes. What happened to it.»
«I will even show you. The creature died when erst I saw it.»
«We’re on the right track, Doc,» he said to Chalmers as he helped the latter up and followed Belphebe.
Chalmers merely gave him a sidelong glance and sang softly:
«But when away his regiment ran,
His place was at the fore, oh,
That celebrated, cultivated, underrated nobleman,
The Duke of Plaza-Toro!»
Shea grinned. «Meaning me, I suppose? I was just setting a good pace for you. Here’s our other Losel.» He pulled the epee from the repellent corpse.
Belphebe gazed at the instrument with interest. «Marry, a strange weapon. May I try its balance?»
Shea showed her how to hold the epee and made a few lunges, enjoying to the full his first recent chance to show off before an attractive girl.
Belphebe tried. «
«Glad to,» replied Shea. He turned to Chalmers. «Say, Doc, it seems to me we were eating lunch when the fracas started. Maybe the young lady would like to help us finish it.»
Chalmers gulped. «I had — this harrowing experience had quite driven the thought of food out of my mind, Harold. But if Miss Belphebe would like to — by all means —»
«If I may give that I may get,» she said. «Hola, attend!» She pulled out an arrow and tiptoed slowly away from them, peering intently into the greenery. Shea tried to follow her gaze, but could see nothing but foliage.
Then Belphebe brought up the bow; aimed, drew, and released all in one movement. To Shea it looked as though she had loosed at random. He heard the arrow strike. Down from the trees fell a large green macaw-like bird. It struck the leaf mould with a thump, and a couple of green feathers gyrated down after.
Gustavus and Adolphus still trembled and tugged at their reins when the three approached them. Shea soothed them and took them down to the stream to drink while Chalmers started a fire and Belphebe stripped the feathers from the parrot. Presently she was toasting the bird on the end of a stick. She was so deft in rustling a meal in the open that Shea felt no desire to compete with her in scoutcraft.
Chalmers, he was surprised to observe, was holding his right forefinger against his left wrist. He asked: «What are you doing, Doc? Taking your pulse?»
«Yes,» said Chalmers gloomily. «My heart seems to be — uh — holding up all right. But I’m afraid I wasn’t cut out for this type of life, Harold. If it were not for pure scientific interest in the problems —»
«Aw, cheer up. Say, how’s your magic coming along? A few good spells would help more than all the hardware put together.»
Chalmers brightened. «Well, now — ahem — I think I may claim some progress. There was that business of the cat that flew away. I find I can levitate small objects without difficulty, and have had much success in conjuring up mice. In fact, I fear I left quite a plague of them at Satyrane’s castle. But I took care to conjure up a similar number of cats, so perhaps conditions will not be too bad.»
«Yeah, but what about the general principles?»
«Well, the laws of similarity and contagion hold. They appear to be the fundamantal Newtonian principles, in the field of magic. Obviously the next step is to discover a system of mathematics arising from these fundamentals. I was afraid I should have to invent my own, as Einstein was forced to adapt tensor analysis to handle his relativity equations. But I think I have discovered such a system ready made, in the calculus of classes, which is a branch of symbolic logic. Here, I’ll show you.»
Chalmers fished through his garments for writing materials. «As you know, one of the fundamental equations of class calculus which a naive academic acquaintance of mine once thought had something to do with Marxism — is this;»
«That is, the class
The class alpha plus the class non-alpha
«Evidently, one may readily have the case of two magicians, each summoning energy from some universe
