vast wilderness. The whole terrain below me appeared pitted with ancient shell-craters, attesting the terrific bombardment to which it had been subjected in a bygone day.
I had about given up all hope of finding a level place on which to make a landing, when I discovered one in the mouth of a broad caсon, at the southern foot of a range of mountains.
As I was about to set the ship down I saw figures moving a short distance up the caсon. At first I could not make out what they were, for they dodged behind trees in an evident effort to conceal themselves from me; but when the ship came to rest they came out, a dozen men armed with spears and bows and arrows. They wore loincloths made of the skin of some animal, and they carried long knives in their belts. Their hair was matted and their bodies were filthy and terribly emaciated.
They crept toward me, taking advantage of whatever cover the terrain afforded; and as they came they fitted arrows to their bows.
Chapter Nine
THE ATTITUDE OF THE reception committee was not encouraging. It seemed to indicate that I was not a welcome guest. I knew that if I let them get within bow range, a flight of arrows was almost certain to get me; so the thing to do was keep them out of bow range. I stood up in the cockpit and levelled my pistol at them, and they immediately disappeared behind rocks and trees.
I wished very much to examine my engine and determine if it were possible for me to repair it, but I realized that as long as these men of Punos were around that would be impossible. I might go after them; but they had the advantage of cover and of knowing the terrain; and while I might get some of them, I could not get them all; and those that I did not get would come back, and they could certainly hang around until after dark and then rush me.
It looked as though I were in a pretty bad way, but I finally decided to get down and go after them and have it out. Just then one of them stuck his head up above a rock and called to me. He spoke in one of the five languages of Unis that I had learned.
'Are you a Unisan?' he asked.
'Yes,' I replied.
'Then do not shoot,' he said. 'We will not harm you.'
'If that is true,' I said, 'go away.'
'We want to talk to you,' he said. 'We want to know how the war is going and when it will end.'
'One of you may come down,' I said, 'but not more.'
'I will come,' he said, 'but you need not fear us.'
He came down toward me then, an old man with wrinkled skin and a huge abdomen, which his skinny legs seemed scarcely able to support. His grey hair was matted with twigs and dirt, and he had the few grey hairs about his chin which can note old age on Poloda.
'I knew you were from Unis when I saw your blue uniform,' he said. 'In olden times the people of Unis and the people of Punos were good friends. That has been handed down from father to son for many generations. When the Kapars first attacked us, the men of Unis gave us aid; but they, too, were unprepared; and before they had the strength to help us we were entirely subjugated, and all of Punos was overrun with Kapars. They flew their ships from our coastlines, and they set up great guns there; but after a while the men of Unis built great fleets and drove them out. Then, however, it was too late for our people.'
'How do you live?' I asked.
'It is hard,' he said. 'The Kapars still come over occasionally, and if they find a cultivated field they bomb and destroy it. They fly low and shoot any people they see, which makes it difficult to raise crops in open country; so we have been driven into the mountains, where we live on fish and roots and whatever else we can find.'
'Many years ago,' he continued, 'the Kapars kept an army stationed here, and before they were through they killed every living thing that they could find-animals, birds, men, women, and children. Only a few hundred Punosans hid themselves in the inaccessible fastnesses of this mountain range, and in the years that have passed we have killed off all the remaining game for food faster than it could propagate.'
'You have no meat at all?' I asked.
'Only when a Kapar is forced down near us,' he replied. 'We hoped that you were a Kapar, but because you are a Unisan you are safe.'
'But now that you are so helpless, why is it that the Kapars will not permit you to raise crops for food?'
'Because our ancestors resisted them when they invaded our country and that aroused the hatred upon which Kapars live. Because of this hatred they tried to exterminate us. Now they fear to let us get a start again, and if we were left alone there would be many of us in another hundred years; and once again we would constitute a menace to Kapara.'
Harkas Yen had told me about Punos and I had also read something about the country in the history of Poloda. It had been inhabited by a virile and intelligent race of considerable culture. Its ships sailed the four great oceans of Poloda, carrying on commerce with the people of all the five continents. The central portion was a garden spot, supporting countless farms, where grazed countless herds of livestock; and along its coastline were its manufacturing cities and its fisheries. I looked at the poor old devil standing before me: this was what the warped, neurotic mind of one man could do to a happy and prosperous nation!
'Won't your ship fly?' he asked me.
'I don't know,' I said. 'I want to examine the motor and find out.'
'You'd better let us push it into the caсon for you,' he said. 'It can be better hidden there from any Kapars who may fly over.'
There was something about the poor old fellow that gave me confidence in him, and as the suggestion was a wise one, I accepted it. So he called his companions and they came down out of the caсon—eleven, dirty, scrawny, hopeless-looking creatures of all ages. They tried to smile at me, but I guess the smiling muscles of their ancestors had commenced to atrophy generations before.
They helped me push the ship into the caсon, where, beneath a large tree, it was pretty well hidden from above. I had forgotten the dead men aboard the ship; but one of the Punosans, climbing up on the wing, discovered the two in the after cockpit; and I knew that there must be another one in the belly of the ship. I shuddered as I thought what was passing through the creature's mind.
'There are dead men in the ship,' he said to his fellows; and the old man, who was the leader, climbed up on the wing and looked; then he turned to me.
'Shall we bury your friends for you?' he asked, and a weight of fear and sorrow was lifted from my shoulders.
They helped me remove the cartridge belts and uniforms from the bodies of my friends and then they scooped out shallow graves with their knives and their hands, and laid the three bodies in them and covered them again.
When these sad and simple rites were ended, I started taking my engine down, the twelve Punosans hanging around and watching everything I did. They asked many questions about the progress of the war, but I could not encourage them to think that it would soon be over, or ever.
I found the damage that had been done to my engine, and I knew that I could make the necessary repairs, for we carried tools and spare parts; but it was getting late and I could not complete the repairs until the following day.
The old man realized this and asked me if I would come to their village and spend the night there.
I could have slept in the ship, but purely out of curiosity I decided to accept his invitation.
Before we started for his village he touched me timidly on the arm. 'May we have the guns and ammunition of your dead friends?' he asked. 'If we had them, we might kill some more Kapars.'
'Do you know how to use them?' I asked.
'Yes,' he said, 'we have found them on the bodies of Kapars who crashed here, and those whom we killed, but we have used up all the ammunition.'
I followed them up the caсon and then along a narrow, precipitous trail that led to a tiny mesa on the
