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Exploration Team-Murray Leinster · Captives of the Thieve-Star

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  Speaker 1: Chapter one of Exploration Team by Murray Leinster. This is
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  Speaker 1: a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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  Speaker 1: Read by Ben Tucker. Exploration Team by Murray Leinster, Chapter one.
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  Speaker 1: The Nearer Moon went by overhead. It was jagged and
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  Speaker 1: irregular in shape, and was probably a captured asteroid. Hugins
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  Speaker 1: had seen it often enough, so he did not go
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  Speaker 1: out of his quarters to watch it hurtle across the
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  Speaker 1: sky with seemingly the speed of an atmosphere flier, occulting
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  Speaker 1: the stars as it went. Instead, he sweated over paperwork,
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  Speaker 1: which should have been odd because he was technically a
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  Speaker 1: felon and all his labors on Lauren too felonious. It
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  Speaker 1: was odd, too for a man to do paperwork in
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  Speaker 1: a room with steel shutters and a huge bald eagle
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  Speaker 1: untethered dozing on a three inch perch set in the wall.
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  Speaker 1: But paper work was not Hugins's real task. His only
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  Speaker 1: assistant had tangled with a night walker, and the furtive
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  Speaker 1: Codious Company ships had taken him away to where Codious
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  Speaker 1: Company ships came from. Hugins had to do two men's
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  Speaker 1: work in loneliness. To his knowledge, he was the only
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  Speaker 1: man in this solar system. Below him, there were snufflings.
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  Speaker 1: Sitkpete got up heavily and padded to his water pen.
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  Speaker 1: He lapped the refrigerated water and sneezed violently sourdough. Charlie
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  Speaker 1: waked and complained in a rumbling growl. There were divers,
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  Speaker 1: other rumblings and mutterings below. Hugins called reassuringly easy there
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  Speaker 1: and went on with his work. He finished a climate
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  Speaker 1: report and fed figures to a computer, and while it
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  Speaker 1: hummed over them, he entered the inventory totals in the
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  Speaker 1: station log, showing what supplies remained. Then he began to
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  Speaker 1: write up the log proper sik a Pete, he wrote,
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  Speaker 1: as apparently solved the problem of killing individuals fexes. He
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  Speaker 1: has learned that it doesn't do to hug them, and
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  Speaker 1: that his claws can't penetrate their h not the top hide. Anyhow,
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  Speaker 1: Today Simper notified us that a pack of sexes had
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  Speaker 1: found the scent trail to the station. Sitka hid down
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  Speaker 1: wind until they arrived. Then he charged from the rear
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  Speaker 1: and brought his paws together on both sides of his
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  Speaker 1: spex's head in a terrific pair of slaps. It must
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  Speaker 1: have been like two twelve inch shells arriving from opposite
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  Speaker 1: directions at the same time. It must have scrambled the
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  Speaker 1: Specks's brains as if they were eggs. It dropped dead.
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  Speaker 1: He killed two more with such mighty pairs of wallops.
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  Speaker 1: Sourdough Charlie watched grunting, and when the Spexes turned on Sitka,
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  Speaker 1: he charged in his turn. I, of course, couldn't shoot
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  Speaker 1: too close to him, so he might have fared badly,
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  Speaker 1: But that pharaoh knell came pouring out of the bare
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  Speaker 1: quarters to help. The diversion enabled Sitka Pete to resume
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  Speaker 1: the use of his new technique, towering on his hind
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  Speaker 1: legs and swinging his paws in the new and grizzly fashion.
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  Speaker 1: The fight ended promptly. Simper flew and screamed above the scrap,
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  Speaker 1: but as usual, did not join in. Note Nugget, the
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  Speaker 1: cub tried to mix in, but his mother cuffed him
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  Speaker 1: out of the way. Sourdough and Sitka ignored him as usual.
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  Speaker 1: Codious champions jeanes are sound. The noises of the night
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  Speaker 1: went on. Outside, they were notes like organ notes song lizards.
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  Speaker 1: There were the tittering, giggling cries of night walkers, not
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  Speaker 1: to be tittered back at. There were sounds like tack
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  Speaker 1: hammers and doors closing, and from every direction came noises
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  Speaker 1: like hiccups and various keys. These were made by the
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  Speaker 1: improbable small creatures, which on lur and II took the
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  Speaker 1: place of insects. Hugins wrote out, Sitka seemed ruffled when
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  Speaker 1: the fight was over. He painstakingly used his trick on
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  Speaker 1: every dead or wounded specks, except those he had killed
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  Speaker 1: with it, lifting up their heads for his pile driver
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  Speaker 1: like blows from two directions at once, as if to
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  Speaker 1: show sourdough how it was done. There was much grunting
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  Speaker 1: as they hauled the carcasses to the incinerator. It almost
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  Speaker 1: seemed the arrival bell claimed, and Hugins jerked up his
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  Speaker 1: head to stare at it. Simper. The eagle opened, icy eyes,
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  Speaker 1: blinked noises. There was a long, deep contented snore from below.
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  Speaker 1: Something shrieked out in the jungle. Hiccups, clatterings, and organ notes.
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  Speaker 1: The bell clanged again. It was a notice that a
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  Speaker 1: ship aloft somewhere had picked up the beacon beam, which
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  Speaker 1: only codious company ships should know about, and was communicating
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  Speaker 1: for a landing. But there shouldn't be any ships in
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  Speaker 1: the Cellar system just now. This was the only habitable
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  Speaker 1: planet of the Sun, and it had been officially declared
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  Speaker 1: uninhabitable by reason of inimical animal life, which meant sveexes. Therefore,
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  Speaker 1: no colony was permitted, and a codious company broke the law.
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  Speaker 1: And there were few graver crimes than unauthorized occupation of
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  Speaker 1: a new planet. The bell clanged a third time. Hugins
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  Speaker 1: swore his hand went out to cuff off the beacon,
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  Speaker 1: but that would be useless. Radar would have fixed it
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  Speaker 1: and tied it in with physical features like the nearby
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  Speaker 1: sea and the sier plateau. The ship could find the
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  Speaker 1: place anyhow and descend by daylight. A devil, said Hugins,
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  Speaker 1: But he waited yet again for the bell to ring.
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  Speaker 1: A codious company ship would double ring to reassure him,
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  Speaker 1: But there shouldn't be a codius company ship for months.
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  Speaker 1: The bell clanged singly, The spacephone dial flickered, and a
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  Speaker 1: voice came out of it. Tinney from stratospheric distortion. Colin ground,
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  Speaker 1: colin ground, Great Line ship Odysseus calling ground on Lauren two,
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  Speaker 1: landing one passenger by boat. Put on your field lights.
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  Speaker 1: Hugins mouth dropped open. A Kodiak company ship would be welcome.
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  Speaker 1: A colonial survey ship would be extremely unwelcome, because it
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  Speaker 1: would destroy the colony in sitka and sourdough and farrow,
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  Speaker 1: knell and nugget and simper, and carry Huggins off to
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  Speaker 1: be tried for unauthorized colonization and all that it implied.
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  Speaker 1: But a commercial ship landing one passenger by boat, there
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  Speaker 1: were simply no circumstances under which that would happen, not
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  Speaker 1: to an unknown illegal colony, not to a furtive station.
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  Speaker 1: Hugans flicked on the landing field lights, saw the glare
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  Speaker 1: in the field outside. Then he stood up and prepared
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  Speaker 1: to take the measures required by discovery. He packed the
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  Speaker 1: paperwork he'd been doing into the disposals safe. He gathered
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  Speaker 1: up all personal documents and tossed them in. Every record,
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  Speaker 1: every bit of evidence that the codious company maintained the
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  Speaker 1: station went into the safe. He slammed the door. He
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  Speaker 1: touched his finger to the disposal button. Which would destroy
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  Speaker 1: the contents and melt down even the ashes past their
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  Speaker 1: possible use for evidence in court. Then he hesitated. If
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  Speaker 1: it were a survey's ship, the button had to be
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  Speaker 1: pressed and he must resign himself to a long term
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  Speaker 1: in prison. But a crete line ship, if the space
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  Speaker 1: phone told the truth was not threatening. It was simply unbelievable.
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  Speaker 1: He shook his head. He got into travel garb and
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  Speaker 1: armed himself. He went down into the bare quarters, turning
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  Speaker 1: on lights as he went. There were startled snufflings and
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  Speaker 1: Sitcapete reared himself very absurdly to a sitting position to
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  Speaker 1: blink at him. Oh, Charley lay on his back with
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  Speaker 1: his legs in the air. He had found it cooler
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  Speaker 1: sleeping that way. He rolled over with a thump. He
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  Speaker 1: made snorting sounds, which somehow sounded cordial. Pharaohnell padded to
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  Speaker 1: the door of her separate apartment, assigned her so that
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  Speaker 1: Nugget would not be under foot to irritate the big
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  Speaker 1: males Hugins. As the human population of Lorento faced the
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  Speaker 1: work force fighting force, and with Nugget four fits of
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  Speaker 1: the terrestrial non human population of the planet, they were
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  Speaker 1: mutated Kodiak bears, descendants of that codious champion for whom
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  Speaker 1: the Codious Company was named. Sith Capete was a good
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  Speaker 1: twenty two hundred pounds of lumbering intelligent carnivore. Soured o'
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  Speaker 1: charley would weigh within a hundred pounds of that figure.
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  Speaker 1: Pharaohnell was eighteen hundred pounds of female charm and ferocity.
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  Speaker 1: Then Nugget poked his muzzle around his mother's furry rump
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  Speaker 1: to see what was toward, and he was six hundred
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  Speaker 1: pounds of ersine infancy. The animals looked at Hugins expectantly.
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  Speaker 1: If he had had simper riding on his shoulder, they'd
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  Speaker 1: have known what was expected of them. Let's go, said Hugins.
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  Speaker 1: It's dark outside, but somebody's coming and it may be bad.
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  Speaker 1: He unfastened the outer door of the bear quarters, said Capete,
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  Speaker 1: went charging clumsily through it. A fourth right charge was
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  Speaker 1: the best way to develop any situation. If one was
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  Speaker 1: an oversized male Kodiak bear, Sourdough went lumbering after him.
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  Speaker 1: There was nothing hostile immediately outside. Sitku stood up on
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  Speaker 1: his hind legs. He reared up a solid twelve feet
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  Speaker 1: and sniffed the air sourdough methodically lumbered to one side
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  Speaker 1: and then the other, sniffing in his turn. Nell came
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  Speaker 1: out nine tenths of a ton of daintiness and rumbled
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  Speaker 1: ad monitorily at Nuggett, who trailed her closely. Hugins stood
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  Speaker 1: in the doorway, his night sighted gun ready. He felt
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  Speaker 1: uncomfortable at sending the bears ahead into a lorn io
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  Speaker 1: jungle at night, but they were qualified to scent danger,
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  Speaker 1: and he was not. The illumination of the jungle in
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  Speaker 1: a wide path toward the landingfield, made for weirdness and
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  Speaker 1: the look of things. There were arching giant ferns and
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  Speaker 1: columnar trees which grew above them, and the extraordinary lanceolate
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  Speaker 1: underbrush of the jungle. The flood lamps, set level with
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  Speaker 1: the ground, lighted everything from below. The foliage then was
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  Speaker 1: brightly lit against the black knight sky, brightly lit enough
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  Speaker 1: to dim out the stars. There were astonishing contrasts of
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  Speaker 1: light and shadow everywhere. On ahead, commanded Hugins, waving hup,
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  Speaker 1: He swung the bare quarter's door shut. He moved toward
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  Speaker 1: the landing field through the lane of lighted forest. The
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  Speaker 1: two giant male Kodiaks lumbered ahead. Said Copete, dropped to
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  Speaker 1: all fours and prowled Sowardough Charlie followed closely, swinging from
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  Speaker 1: side to side. Hugins came alertly behind the two of them,
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  Speaker 1: and Pharaoh Nell brought up the rear, with Nugget following
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  Speaker 1: her closely. It was an excellent military formation for progress
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  Speaker 1: through dangerous jungle. Sourdough and Sika were advanced guard point, respectively,
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  Speaker 1: while Pharaoh Nell guarded the rear with Nugget to look after.
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  Speaker 1: She was especially alert against attack from behind. Hugins was,
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  Speaker 1: of course the striking force. His gun fired a explosive
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  Speaker 1: bullets which would discourage even sfexes, and his night sight,
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  Speaker 1: a cone of light which went on when he took
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  Speaker 1: up the trigger slack told exactly where they would strike.
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  Speaker 1: It was not a sportsmanlike weapon, but the creatures of
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  Speaker 1: Lauren too were not sportsmenlike antagonists, the night walkers, for example.
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  Speaker 1: But night walkers feared light. They attacked only in a
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  Speaker 1: species of hysteria if it were too bright. Huggins moved
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  Speaker 1: toward the glare at the landing field. His mental state
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  Speaker 1: was savage. The codious company station at Louren two was
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  Speaker 1: completely illegal. It happened to be necessary from one point
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  Speaker 1: of view, but it was still illegal. The tiny voice
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  Speaker 1: on the space phone was not convincing in ignoring that illegality.
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  Speaker 1: But if a ship landed, Hugens could get back to
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  Speaker 1: the station before men could follow, and he'd have the
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  Speaker 1: disposal safe turned on in time to protect those who'd
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  Speaker 1: sent him here. But he heard the far away and
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  Speaker 1: high harsh roar of a landing boat rocket, not a
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  Speaker 1: ship's bellowing tubes. As he made his way through the
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  Speaker 1: unreal seeming brush. The roar grew louder as he pushed
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  Speaker 1: on the three big kodiaks padding here and there, sniffing thoughtfully,
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  Speaker 1: making a perfect defensive offensive formation for the particular conditions
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  Speaker 1: of this planet. He reached the edge of the landing field,
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  Speaker 1: and it was blindingly bright, with the customary divergent beams
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  Speaker 1: slanting skywards so a ship could check its instrument landing
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  Speaker 1: by sight. Landing fields like this had been standard once
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  Speaker 1: upon a time. Nowadays, all developed planets had landing grids,
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  Speaker 1: monstrous structures which drew upon ionospheres for power and lifted
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  Speaker 1: and drew down starships with remarkable gentleness and unlimited force.
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  Speaker 1: This sort of landing field would be found where a
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  Speaker 1: survey team was at work, or where some strictly temporary
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  Speaker 1: investigation of ecology or bacteriology was under way, or where
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  Speaker 1: a newly authorized colony had not yet been able to
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  Speaker 1: build its landing grid. Of course, it was unthinkable that
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  Speaker 1: anybody would attempt a settlement in defiance of the law. Already,
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  Speaker 1: as Hugins reached the edge of the scorched open space,
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  Speaker 1: the night creatures had rushed to the light like moths
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  Speaker 1: on Earth. The air was misty with crazily gyrating, tiny
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  Speaker 1: flying things. They were innumerable, and of every possible form
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  Speaker 1: in size, from the white midges of the night in
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  Speaker 1: multi winged flying worms to those revoltingly naked looking larger
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  Speaker 1: creatures which might have passed for plucked flying monkeys if
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  Speaker 1: they had not been carnivorous and worse. The flying things
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  Speaker 1: soared and whirred and danced and spun insanely in the glare.
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  Speaker 1: They made peculiarly plaintive humming noises. They almost formed a
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  Speaker 1: lamp lit ceiling over the cleared space. They did hide
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  Speaker 1: the stars staring upwards. Hugens could barely make out the
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  Speaker 1: blue white flame of the spaceboat's rocket through the fog
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  Speaker 1: of wings and bodies. The rocket flame grew steadily in size.
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  Speaker 1: Once apparently it tilted to adjust the boat's descending course,
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  Speaker 1: it went back to normal, a speck of incandescence at first.
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  Speaker 1: It grew until it was like a great star, and
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  Speaker 1: then a more than brilliant moon, and then it was
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  Speaker 1: a pitiless glare. Eye hugins averted his gaze from it.
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  Speaker 1: Sit Compete sat lumpily, more than a ton of him,
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  Speaker 1: and blinked wisely at the dark jungle. Away from the light.
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  Speaker 1: Sourdough ignored the deepening increasing rocket roar. He sniffed the
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  Speaker 1: air delicately. Bar O'Nell held Nugget firmly under one huge
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  Speaker 1: paw and licked his head, as if tidying him up
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  Speaker 1: to be seen by company. Nugget wriggled. The roar became
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  Speaker 1: that of ten thousand thunders. A warm breeze blew outward
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  Speaker 1: from the landing field. The rocket boat hurled downward, and
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  Speaker 1: its flame touched the mist of flying things, and they
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  Speaker 1: shriveled and burned and were hot. Then there were churning
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  Speaker 1: clouds of dust everywhere. In the center of the field
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  Speaker 1: blazed terribly, and something slid down a shaft of fire
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  Speaker 1: and squeezed it flat and sat on it, and the
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  Speaker 1: flame went out. The rocket boat sat there, resting on
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  Speaker 1: its tail fins, pointing toward the stars from which it came.
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  Speaker 1: There was a terrible silence after the tumult. Then very faintly,
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  Speaker 1: the noises of the night came again. There were sounds
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  Speaker 1: like those of organ pipes, and very faint and apologetic
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  Speaker 1: noises like hiccoughs. All these sounds increased, and suddenly Hugens
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  Speaker 1: could hear quite normally. Then a side port opened with
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  Speaker 1: a quaint sort of clattering, and something unfolded from where
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  Speaker 1: it had been in set into the hull of the spaceboat,
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  Speaker 1: and there was a metal passageway across the flame heated
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  Speaker 1: space on which the boat stood. A man came out
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  Speaker 1: of the port. He reached back in and shook hands
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  Speaker 1: very formally. He climbed down the latter rungs to the walkway.
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  Speaker 1: He marched above the steaming baked area, carrying a travel bag.
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  Speaker 1: He reached the end of the walk and stepped gingerly
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  Speaker 1: to the ground. He moved hastily to the edge of
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  Speaker 1: the clearing. He waved to the spaceboat. There were ports,
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  Speaker 1: Perhaps some one returned to the gesture. The walkway folded
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  Speaker 1: briskly back up to the hull and vanished in it.
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  Speaker 1: A flame exploded into being under the tail fins. There
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  Speaker 1: were fresh clouds of monstrous, choking dust, and a brightness
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  Speaker 1: like that of a sun. There was noise past the
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  Speaker 1: possibility of endurance. Then the light rose swiftly through the
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  Speaker 1: dust and sprang higher, and climbed more swiftly. Still, when
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  Speaker 1: Hugin's ears again permitted him to hear anything, there was
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  Speaker 1: only a diminishing mutter in the heavens, and a small
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  Speaker 1: bright speck of light ascending to the sky and swinging
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  Speaker 1: eastward as it rose to intercept the ship which had
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  Speaker 1: let it descend. The night noises of the jungle went on.
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  Speaker 1: Life on Lorento did not need to heed the doings
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  Speaker 1: of men. But there was a spot of incandescence in
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  Speaker 1: the day bright clearing, and a short, brisk man looked
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  Speaker 1: puzzledly about him with a traveling bag in his hand.
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  Speaker 1: Hugins advanced toward him as the incandescence dimmed, Sourdough, and
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  Speaker 1: Sitka preceded him. Farao Nail trailed faithfully, keeping a maternal
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  Speaker 1: eye on her offspring. The man in the clearing stared
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  Speaker 1: at the parade they made. It would be upsetting, even
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  Speaker 1: after preparation, to land at night on a strange planet,
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  Speaker 1: and to have the ship's boat in all links with
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  Speaker 1: the rest of the cosmos depart, and then to find
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  Speaker 1: one's self approached. It might seem stalked by two colossal
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  Speaker 1: male Kodiak bears, with a third bear and cub behind them.
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  Speaker 1: A single human figure in such company might seem irrelevant.
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  Speaker 1: The new arrival gazed blankly. He moved startledly. Then Huggins
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  Speaker 1: called hello there, Uh, don't worry about the bears their friends.
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  Speaker 1: Sitka reached the newcomer. He went warily down wind from
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  Speaker 1: him and sniffed. The smell was satisfactory mans smell. Sitka
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  Speaker 1: sat down with the solid impact of more than a
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  Speaker 1: ton of bear meat landing on packed dirt. He regarded
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  Speaker 1: the man amiably. Sour Dough said whoosh, and went on
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  Speaker 1: to sample the air beyond the clearing. Hugins approached the newcomer,
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  Speaker 1: wore the uniform of colonial survey. That was bad. It
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  Speaker 1: bore the insignia of a senior officer. Worse, huh, said
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  Speaker 1: the just landed man. Where are the robots? What in
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  Speaker 1: all the nineteen hells of these creatures? Why did you
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  Speaker 1: shift your station? I'm roan here to make a progress
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  Speaker 1: report on your colony, Hugens said, what colony? Louren to
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  Speaker 1: robot installation. Then Ron said, indignantly, don't tell me that
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  Speaker 1: idiot's skipper dropped me at the wrong place. This is
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  Speaker 1: Lauren too, isn't it? And this is the landing field.
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  Speaker 1: But where are your robots? You should have the beginning
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  Speaker 1: of a grid up. What the devil's happened here? What
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  Speaker 1: are these beasts? Hugins grimaced. This, he said politely, is
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  Speaker 1: an illegal, unlicensed settlement. I'm a criminal. These beasts are
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  Speaker 1: my confederates. If you don't want to associate with criminals,
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  Speaker 1: you'd needn't, of course, But I doubt if you'll live
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  Speaker 1: till morning unless you accept my hospitality while I think
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  Speaker 1: over what to do about your landing In reason, I
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  Speaker 1: ought to shoot you. Pharaohnell came to a halt behind Hugins,
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  Speaker 1: which was her proper post in an all outdoor movement. Nugget, however,
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  Speaker 1: saw a new human. Nugget was a cub and therefore friendly.
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  Speaker 1: He ambled forward, ingratiatingly. He was four feet high at
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  Speaker 1: the shoulders on all fours. He wriggled bashfully as he
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: approached ron. He sneezed because he was embarrassed. His mother
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: overtook him swiftly and cuffed him to one side. He
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: wailed the wail of a six hundred pound Kodiak bear.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: Cub is a remarkable sound. Rome gave ground a pace.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: I think, he said casually that we'd better talk things over.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: But if this is an illegal colony, of course you're
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: under arrest and anything you say will be used against you.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: Hugens grimaced again. Right, he said, But now, if you'll
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: walk close to me, we'll head back to the station.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: I'd have Sourdough carry your bag. He likes to carry things,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: but he may need his teeth. We've half a mile
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: to travel. He turned to the animals. Let's go, he said, commandingly,
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: back to the station. Huh, grunting, said. Capete arose and
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: took up his duties as advanced point of a combat team.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: Sourardaugh trailed swinging widely to one side and another. Hugins
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: and Rohn moved together Pharaoh, Knell and Nugget brought up
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: the rear, which of course was the only relatively safe
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: way for anybody to travel on Lauren two in the jungle,
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: a good half mile from one's fortress like residence. But
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: there was only one incident on the way back. It
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: was a night walker made hysterical by the lane of light.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: It poured through the underbrush, uttering cries like maniacal laughter.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: Sourdough brought it down a good ten yards from Hugins.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: When it was all over, Nugget bristled up to the
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: dead creature, uttering cub growls. He feigned to attack it.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: His mother whacked him soundly. End of chapter one, Chapter
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: two of Exploration Team by Murray Leinster. This LibriVox recording
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: is in the public domain. Read by Ben Tucker. Chapter two.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: There were comfortable settling down noises below. The bears grunted
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: and rumbled, but ultimately were still. The glare from the
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: landing field was gone. The lighted lane through the jungle
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: was dark again. Hugins ushered the man from the space,
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: bowed up into his living quarters. There was a rustling stir,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: and Simper took his head from under his wing. He
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: stared coldly at the two humans. He spread monstrous seven
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: foot wings and fluttered them. He opened his beak and
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: closed it with a snap. That's Simper, said Huggins. Simper Tyrannus.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: He's the rest of the terrestrial population here, not being
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: a fly by night sort of creature. He didn't come
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: out to welcome you. Roan blinked at the huge bird
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: perched on a three inch thick perch set in the wall.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: An eagle, he demanded, could act bears? Mutated ones, you say,
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: but still bears and now an eagle. You have a
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: very nice fighting unit in the bears. Now they're pack
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: animals too, said Huggins. They can carry some hundreds of
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: pounds without losing too much combat efficiency, and there's no
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: problem of supply. They live off the jungle, not sex
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: as though nothing will eat a Specs, even if it
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: can kill one. He brought out glasses and a bottle.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: He indicated a chair. Rome put down his traveling back.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: He took a glass. I'm curious, he observed. Why, Uh,
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: simper Tyrannus, I can understand Sikapede and soured Oat Charlie.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: His names the home of their ancestors make them fitting.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: But why simper No, he was bred for hawking, said Huggins.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: You sick a dog on something, you sick simper Tyrannus.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: He's too big to ride on a hawking glove, so
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: the shoulders of my coats are padded to let him
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: ride there. He's a flying scout. I've trained him to
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: notify us of sfexes, and in flight he carries a
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: tiny television camera. He's useful, but he hasn't the brains
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: of the bears. Ron sat down and sipped at his glass. Interesting,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: very interesting, But this is an illegal settlement. I'm a
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: colonial survey officer. My job is to report on progress
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: according to plan. But nevertheless I have to arrest you.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: Didn't you say something about shooting me, Hugen said doggedly.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of a way out. Add up
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: all the penalties for legal colonization, and I'd be in
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: a very bad fix if you got away and reported
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: this set up shooting. You would be logical. Now, I
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: see that, said Ron reasonably, But since the point has
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: come up, I have a blaster trained on you from
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: my pocket. Hugen shrugged. It's rather likely that my human
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: confederates will be back here before your friends. You'd be
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: in a very tight fix if my friends came back
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: and found you more or less sitting on my corpse.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: Rone nodded, that's true too. Not so, it's probable that
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: your fellow terrestrials wouldn't co operate with me as they
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: have with you. You seem to have the whip hand
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: even with my blaster trained on you. On the other hand,
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: you could have killed me quite easily after the boat left.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: When I'd first landed, I'd have been quite unsuspicious, So
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: you may not really intend to murder me. Hugen shrugged again,
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: So said Ron, sense the secret of getting along with
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: people is that of postponing quarrels. Suppose be postpone the
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: question of who kills whom. Frankly, I'm going to send
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: you to prison if I can. Unlawful colonizians very bad business.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: But I suppose you feel that you have to do
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: something permanent about me in your place, I probably should too.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: Shall we declare a truce? Huggins indicated indifference, Ron said vexedly.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: Then I do I have to, so he pulled his
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: hand out of his pocket and put a pocket blaster
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: on the table. He leaned back defiantly. Eh, keep it,
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: said Huggins. Lauren to isn't a place where you live.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: Long unarmed, he turned to a cupboard hungry market eat
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: admitted ron. Huggins pulled out two meal packs from the
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: cupboard and inserted them in the ready air below he
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: set out plates. Now what happened to the official licensed
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: authorized colony here, asked Rome Briskly, license issued eighteen months ago.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: There was a landing of colonists with a drone fleet
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: of equipment and supplies. There have been four ship contacts since.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: There should be several thousand robots being industrious under adequate
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: human supervision. There should be a one hundred miles square
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: clearing planted with food plants for later human rivals. There
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: should be a landing grid at least half finished. Obviously,
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: there should be a space beacon to guide ships who
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: are landing. There isn't. There's no clearing visible from space.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: That crete line ship has been in orbit for three
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: days trying to find a place to drop me. A
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: skipper was fuming. Your beacon is the only one in
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: the planet, and we found it by accident. What happened?
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: Hughgen served the food, He said dryly. There could be
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: a hundred colonies on this planet without anyone knowing of
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: any other. I can only guess about your robots, but
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: I suspect they ran into spexes. Ron paused with his
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: fork in his hand. I read up on his planet,
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: since I was to report on its colony. Aspex is
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: part of the enimical animal life here, cold blooded, belligerent carnivore,
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: not a lizard, but a genius all its own, hunts
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: and packs to eight hundred pounds when adult lethally dangerous
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: and simply too numerous to fight there Why no license
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: was ever granted to human colonists. Only robots could work
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: here because they are machines. What animal attacks machines? Hugins said,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: What machine attacks animals? The sexes wouldn't bother robots, of course,
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: but would robots bother the sexes? Roan chewed and swallowed.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: Hold it. I'll agree that you can't make a hunting robot.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: A machine can discriminate, but it can't decide. That's why
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: there's no danger over a robot revolt. They can't decide
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: to do something for which they have no instructions. But
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: this colony was planned with full knowledge of what robots
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: can can't do. As ground was cleared, it was closed
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: in an electric fence which no secs could touch without frying.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: Hugens thoughtfully cut his food after a moment. Landing was
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: in the winter time. He observed it must have been
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: because the colony survived a while and at a guess
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: the last ship leaned was before saw the years are
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: eighteen months long here, you know. Roan admitted it was
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: in the winter that the landing was made, and the
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: last ship landing was before spring. The idea was to
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: get mines in operation for a material. I'd have grounds
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: cleared and enclosed in spex proof fence before the sexes
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: came back from the tropics they winter there. I understand.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: Did you ever see sfex, Huggins asked, then added, no,
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: of course not. But if you took a spitting cobra
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: and crossed it with a wild cat, painted it tan
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: and blue, and then gave it hydrophobia and homicidal mania
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: at once. Why you might have one sex but not
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: the race of sexes. They can climb trees by the way.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: A fence wouldn't stop them. An electrified fence, said ron.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: Nothing could climb that. No one animal, Hugins told him,
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: But sexes are a race. The smell of one dead
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: sex brings others running with blood in their eyes. Leave
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: it dead stecks alone for six hours, and you've got
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: them around by the dozen. Two days, and there are
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: hundreds longer, and you've got thousands of them. They gathered
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: a catterwall over their dead pal and hunt for whoever
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: or whatever killed him. He returned to his meal. A
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: moment later. He said, no need to wonder. What happened
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: near a colony during the winter, the robots burned out
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: a clearing and put up an electrified fence. According to
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: the book Come Springing, the spexes came back. They're curious.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: Among their other madnesses, us FECs would try to climb
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: the fence just to see what was behind it. He'd
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: be electrocuted. His carcass would bring others raging because the
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: sex was dead. Some of them would try to climb
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: the fence and die, and their corpses would bring others. Presently,
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: the fence would break down from the bodies hanging on it,
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: or a bridge of dead beasts. Carcasses would be built
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: across it, and from as far down wind as the
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: scent carried, there'd be loping, raging scent crazed sexes racing
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: to the spot. They'd pour into the clearing, through or
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: over the fence, squalling and screeching for something to kill.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: I think they'd find it. Ron ceased to eat, he
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: looked sick. There were pictures of sexes in the data
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: I read. I suppose that would account for everything. He
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: tried to lift his fork. He put it down again.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: I can't eat, he said abruptly. Huggins made no comment.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: He finished his own mill. Scowling. He rose and put
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: the plates into the top of the cleaner. There was
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: a worrying. He took them out of the bottom and
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: put them away. Let me see those reports, eh, he
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: asked dourly. I'd like to see what sort of a
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: setup they had those robots. Roan hesitated, and then opened
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: his traveling bag. There was a micro viewer in reels
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: of films. One entire reel was labeled Specifications for Construction
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: Colonial Survey, which would contain detailed plans and all requirements
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: of material and workmanship for everything from desk's office, administrative
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: personnel for use of to landing grids, heavy gravity planets
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: lift capacity one hundred thousand earth tons. But Hugins found another.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: He inserted it and spun the control swiftly here and there,
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: pausing only briefly at index frames until he came to
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: the section he wanted. He began to study the information
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: with growing impatience. Robots, Robots, robots, he snapped. Why don't
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: they leave them where they belong, in cities to do
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: the dirty work, and on airless planets where nothing unexpected
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: ever happens. Robots don't belong in new colonies. Your colonists
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: depended on them for defense. Damn it. Let a man
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: work with robots long enough, and he thinks all nature
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: is as limited as they are. This is a plan
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: to set up a controlled environment on lore and two
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: controlled environment, he swore, luridly, complacent, idiotic deaths, bound half wits.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: Robots are all right, said Ron. We couldn't run civilization
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: without them, but you can't tame a wildern with them,
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: snapped Ron. You had a dozen men landed with fifty
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: assembled robots to start with. There were parts for fifteen
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: hundred more, and I'll bet anything I've got that the
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: ship contacts landed more. Still they did, admitted Ron. I
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: despise em, growled Huggins. I feel about em the way
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: the old Greeks and Romans felt about slaves. They're for
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: menial work, the sort of work a man will perform himself,
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: but that he won't do for another man for pay,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: degrading work. Quite aristocratic, said Roan, with a touch of irony.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: I take it that robots clean out the bare quarters downstairs, No,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: snapped Huggins. I do. They're my friends. They fight for me.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: They can't understand the necessity, and no robot would do
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: the job right, he growled again. The noises of the
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: night went on outside, organ tones and hiccuppings, and the
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: sound of tack hammers and slamming doors. Somewhere there was
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: a singularly exact replica of the discordant squeaking of a
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: rusted pump. I'm looking, said Huggins at the micro viewer,
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: for the record of their mining operations. An open pit
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: operation wouldn't mean a thing. But if they had driven
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: a tunnel and somebody was there supervising the robots when
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: the colony was wiped out. There's an off chance he survived.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: Awhile Roan regarded him with sudden intent eyes and damn it,
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: snapped Roan. If so, I'll go see, he'd they'd have
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: no chance at all. Otherwise, not that the chance is
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: good in any case, Roan raised his eyebrows. I'm a
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: colonial survey officer, he said. I've told you I'll send
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: you to prison if I can. You've risked the lives
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: of millions of people maintaining non quarantined communication with an
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: unlicensed planet. If you did rescue somebody from the ruins
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: of the robot colony. Does it occur to you that
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: they'd be witnesses to your unauthorized presence? Here Hugens spun
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: the viewer again. He stopped. He switched back and forth
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: and found what he wanted. He muttered in satisfaction. They
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: did run a tunnel aloud, he said, I'll worry about
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: witnesses when I have to. He pushed aside another cupboard door.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: Inside it where the odds and ends a man makes
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: use of to repair the things about his house that
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: he never notices until they go wrong. There was an
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: assortment of wires, transistors, boats, and similar stray items than
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: a man living alone will need. When, to his knowledge,
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: he's the only inhabitant of a solar system, he especially
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: needs such things. What now, asked Roan mildly. I'm going
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: to try to find out if there's anybody left alive
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: over there. I'd have checked before if i'd known the
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: colony existed. I can't prove they're all dead, but I
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: may prove that somebody's still alive. It's barely two weeks
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: journey away from here. Odd that two colonies picked spots
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: so near. He absorbedly picked over the oddments he'd selected,
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: Ron said, vexedly. Confound it. How can you check whether
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: somebody's alive some hundreds of miles away when you didn't
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: know he existed half an hour ago? Huggins threw a
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: s and took down a wall panel, exposing electronic apparatus
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: and circuits behind. He busied himself with it. Everything about
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: hunting for a castaway, he asked over his shoulder. There's
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: a planet with some tens of millions of square miles
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: on it. You know there's a ship down. You've no
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: idea where you assume the survivors have power. No civilized
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: man will be without power very long, so long as
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: he can smelt metals. But making a space beacon costs
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: for high precision measurements and workmanship. It's not to be improvised.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: So what will your shipwrecked civilized man do to guide
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: to rescue ship to one or two square miles he
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: occupies among some tens of millions on the planet. Roane
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: fretted visibly. What he's had to go primitive to begin with?
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: Ron explained, he coaxes meat over a fire and so on.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: He has to make a strict primitive signal. It's all
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: he can do without gages and micrometers and very special tools.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: But he can fill all the planet's atmosphere with a
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: signal that searches for him. Can't mess you, see, Ron
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: thought irritably. He shook his head. He'll make, said Hugins,
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: a spark transmitter. He'll fix its output at the shortest
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: frequency he can contrive. It'll be somewhere in the five
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: to fifty meter wave band, but it will tune very
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: broad and it will be plainly a human signal. He'll
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: start it broadcasting some of those frequencies will go all
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: around the planet under the ionosphere. Any ship that comes
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: in under the radio roof will pick up his signal,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: get a fix on it, move and get another fix,
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: and then go straight to where the castaway is waiting
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: placidly in a hand braided hammock, sipping whatever sort of
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: drink he's improvised out of the local vegetation, Ron said grudgingly.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: Now that you mention it, of course, my space phone
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: picks up microwaves, said Huggins. I'm shifting a few elements
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: to make it listen for longer. Stuff. It won't be efficient,
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: but it will pick up a distress signal if one's
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: in the air. I don't expect it, though he worked.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: Roane sat still a long time, watching him down below.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: A rhythmic sort of sound arose. It was soured O
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: Charlie snoring. He lay on his back with his legs
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: in the air. He discovered that he slept cooler that way.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: Sitka Pete grunted in his sleep. He was dreaming in
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: the general room of the station. Simper the eagle blinked
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: his eyes rapidly and then tucked his head under a
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: gigantic wing and went to sleep. The noises of the
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: lorn too jungle came through the steel shuttered windows. The
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: nearer moon, which had passed overhead not long before the
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: ringing of the arrival bell, again came soaring over the
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: eastern horizon. It sped across the sky at the apparent
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: speed of an atmosphere flier. Overhead, it could be seen
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: to a jagged, irregular mass of rock or metal plunging
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: blindly about the great planet forever. Inside the station, Rone
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: said angrily, see here, Huggins, I've reason to tell me.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: Apparently you don't intend to. I've excellent reason to leave
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: that robot colony struck youly alone. But you're preparing to
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: help if there's anybody alive to need it. And yet
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: you're a criminal, and I mean a criminal. There've been
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: some ghastly bacteria exported from planets like Lauren two. There've
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: been plenty of lives lost in consequence, and you're risking more.
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: Why do you do it? Why do you do something
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: that could produce monstrous results to other beings? Hugins grunted.
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: You're only assuming there are no sanitary and quarantine precautions
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: taken in my communications. As a matter of fact there are.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: They're taken all right. As for the rest, you wouldn't understand.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: I don't understand snapped roan, But that's no proof I can't.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: Why are you a criminal? Hugins painstakingly used a screwdriver.
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: Inside the wall panel, he delicately lifted out a small
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: electronic assembly. He carefully began to fit in a spaghettied
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: new assembly with larger units. I'm cutting my amplification here
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: to hell and gone, he observed, But I think it'll do.
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: I'm doing what I'm doing, he added, calmly. I'm being
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: a criminal because it seems to me befitting what I
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: think I am. Everybody acts according to his own real
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: notion of himself. You're a conscientious citizen and a loyal
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: official and a well adjusted personality. You consider yourself an intelligent,
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: rational animal, but you don't act that way. You're reminding
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: me of my need to shoot you or something similar,
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: which a merely rational animal would try to make me forget.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: You happen rone to be a man, so am I,
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: but I'm aware of it. Therefore I deliberately do things
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: a merely rational animal wouldn't because they're my notion of
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: what a man who's more than a rational animal should do.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: He very carefully tightened one small screw after another. Ron said, annoyedly, Oh, religion,
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: self respect, corrected Huggins, I don't like robots. They're too
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: much like rational animals. A robot will do whatever it
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: can that its supervisor requires it to do. A merely
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: rational animal will do whatever it can that circum stances
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: require it to do. I wouldn't like a robot unless
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: it had some idea of what was befitting it, and
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: would spit in my eye if I tried to make
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: it do something else. The bears downstairs, now they are
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: no robots. They are loyal and honorable beasts. But they'd
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: turn and tear me to bits if I try to
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: make them do something against their nature. Dara O'Nell would
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: fight me in all creation together. If I tried to
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: harm Nugget, it would be unintelligent and unreasonable and irrational.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: She'd lose out and get killed. But I like her
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: that way, and I'll fight you in all creation when
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: you make me try to do something against my nature,
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: I'll be stupid and unreasonable and irrational about it. Then
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: he grinned over his shoulder, so will you, Only you
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: don't realize it. He turned back to his task. After
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: a moment. He fitted a manual control knob over a
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: shaft in his hay wire assembly. What did somebody try
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: to make you do? Asked Roan shrewdly. What was demanded
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: of you that turned you into criminal? What are you
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: and revolt against? Huggins threw a switch. He began to
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: turn the knob which controlled the knob of his makeshift
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: modified receiver. Why, he said amusedly. When I was young,
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: the people around me tried to make me into a
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: conscientious citizen and a loyal employee and a well adjusted personality.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: They tried to make me into a highly intelligent, rational animal,
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: and nothing more. The difference between us, Ron is that
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: I found it out naturally. He stopped. Short faint, crackling,
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: crisp frying sounds came from the speaker of the space phone,
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: now modified to receive what once were called short waves.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: Huggins listened. He cocked his head in tently. He turned
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: the knob very very slowly. Then Ron made an arrested
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: gesture to call attention to something in the sibilant sound.
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: Hugins nodded. He turned the knob again, with infinitesimal increments.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: Out of the background noise came a patterned mutter. As
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: hughes and shifted the tuning, it grew louder. It reached
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: a volume where it was unmistakable. It was a sequence
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: of sounds like discordant buzzing. There were three half second
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: buzzings with half second pauses between a two second pause,
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: three full second buzzings with half second pauses between another
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: two second pause, and three half second buzzings again, then
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: silence for five seconds, then the pattern repeated. The devil said, Hugins,
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: that's a human signal, mechanically made too. In fact, it
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: used to be a standard distress call. It was termed
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: an S O S. Though I've no idea what that
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: meant anyhow, somebody must have read old fashioned novels sometimes
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: to know about it. And so someone is still alive
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: over at your licensed but now smashed up robot colony,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: and they're asking for help, I'd say they're likely to
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: need it. He looked at Rone. The intelligent thing to
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: do is sit back and wait for a ship, either
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: of my friends or yours. A ship can help survivors
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: or castaways much better than we can. A ship can
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: even find them more easily. But maybe time is important
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: to the poor devils. So I'm going to take the
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: bears and see if I can reach them. You can
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: wait here if you like. Let's say, travel on Lauren
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: two isn't a picnic. I'll be fighting nearly every foot
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: of the way. There's plenty of inimical animal life here.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: Roan snapped angrily, don't be a fool. Of course I'm coming.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: What do you take me for? And two of us
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: should have four times the chance of one. Hugans grinned eh,
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: not quite. You forgets sick of Pete and sourdough, Charlie
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: and Pharaoh Noll. There'll be five of us if you come,
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: instead of four. And of course Nugget has to come,
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: and he'll be no help, but Simper may make up
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: for him. You won't quadruple our chances. Rome, but I'll
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: be glad to have you. If you want to be
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: stupid and unreasonable and not at all rational and come along.
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: End of chapter two, Chapter three of Exploration Team by
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: Murray Leinster. The LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: Read by bin Tucker, Chapter three. There was a jagged
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: spur of stone looming precipitously over a river valley. A
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: thousand feet below. A broad stream ran westward to the sea.
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: Twenty miles to the east. A wall of mountains rose
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: sheer against the sky. Its peaks seemed to blend a
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: remarkable evenness of height. There was rolling tumbled ground between
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: for as far as the eye could see. A speck
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: in the sky came swiftly downward. Great pinions spread and
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: flapped in icy eyes surveyed the rocky space with more
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: great flappings simper, the eagle came to ground. He folded
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: his huge wings and turned his head jerkily, his eyes unblinking.
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: A tiny harness held a miniature camera against his chest.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: He struted over the bare stone to the highest point.
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: He stood there but lonely, an arrogant figure in the vastness.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: There came crashings and rustlings, and then snuffling sounds. Sitka
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: Peek came lumbering out into the clear space. He wore
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: a harness too, and a pack. The harness was complex
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: because it had not only to hold a pack in
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: normal travel, but when he stood on his hind legs.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: It must not hamper the use of his forepaws in combat.
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: He went casially all over the open area. He peered
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: over the edge of the spur's farthest tip. He prowled
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: to the other side and looked down. He scouted carefully.
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: Once he moved close to Simper, and the eagle opened
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: his great curved beak and uttered an indignant noise. Sitka
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: paid no attention. He relaxed. Satisfied, he sat down untidily,
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: his hind legs sprawling. He wore an air approaching benevolence
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: as he surveyed the landscape about and below him. More
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: snufflings and crashings. Sowardough Charley came into view, with Hugens
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: and Roan behind him. Sowardough carried a pack too. Then
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: there was a squealing, and Nuggets scurried up from the rear,
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: impelled by a whack from his mother. Pharaohnell appeared with
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: the carcass of a staglike animal lashed to her harness.
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: I picked this place from a space photo, said Hugins,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: to make a directional fix from I'll get set up.
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: He swung his pack from his shoulders to the ground.
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: He extracted an obviously self constructed device, which he set
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: on the ground. It had a whip aeriel which he extended.
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: Then he plugged in a considerable link to flexible wire
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: and unfolded a tiny improvised directional aerial with an even
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: tinier booster at its base. Ron slipped his pack from
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: his shoulders and watched Hugins slipped headphones over his ears.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: He looked up and said, sharply, watch the bear's roan.
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: The wind's blowing up the way we came. Anything that
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: trails us Sexes, for example, will send it scent on
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: before the bears will tell us. He busied himself with
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: the instruments he had brought. He heard the hissing, frying
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: background noise, which could be anything at all except a
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: human signal. He reached out and swung the small aerial around.
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: Rasping buzzing tones came in faintly and then loudly. This receiver,
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: though had been made for for this particular waveband, it
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: was much more efficient than the modified space phone had been.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: It picked up three short buzzes, three long ones, and
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: three short ones again, three dots, three dashes, and three dots,
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: over and over again. Sos sos sos. Hugens took a
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: reading and moved the directional aerial a carefully measured distance.
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: He took another reading. He shifted it yet again, and again,
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: carefully marking and measuring each spot and taking notes of
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: the instrument readings. When he finished, he had checked the
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: direction of the signal not only by loudness but by phase.
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: He had as accurate a fix as could possibly be
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: had with portable apparatus. Sourdough growled softly. Sick a Pete
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: whipped the air and arose from his sitting position. Bearronell
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: whacked Nugget, sending him whimpering to the farthest corner of
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: the flea place. She stood bristling, facing downhill the way
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: they'd come. Damn, said Huggins. He got up and waved
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: his arm at Simper, who had turned his head at
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: the steerings, squawked in a most uneagle like fashion, and
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: dived off the spur and was immediately fighting the down
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: draft beyond it. As Hugins reached his weapon, the eagle
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: came back overhead. He went magnificently past a hundred feet high,
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: careening and flapping in the tricky currents. He screamed abruptly,
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: and circled and screamed again. Hugens swung a tiny vision
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: plate from its strap to where he could look into it.
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: He saw, of course, what the little camera on Simper's
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: chest could see, reeling swaying terrain. As Simper saw it,
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: though without his breath afield, they were moving objects to
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: be seen through the shifting trees. Their coloring was unmistakable.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: S Fexes, said Hugens dourly. Eight of them. Don't look
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: for them to follow our track. Ron They run parallel
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: to a trail on either side. That way, they attack
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: in breath and all at once. When they catch up
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: and listen, the bears can handle anything they tangle with.
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: Its hour job to pick off the loose ones and
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: aim for the body the bullets explode. He threw off
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: the safety of his weapon. Pharaoh, knell, uttering thunderous growls,
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: went padding to a place between Sitka, Pete and Sourdough.
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: Sitka glanced at her and made a woofing noise, as
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: if derisive of her blood curdling sounds. Sourdough grunted in
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: a somehow solid fashion. He and Sitka moved farther away
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: from Nell to either side, they would cover a wider front.
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: There was no other sign of life than the shrillings
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: of the incredibly tiny creatures, which on this planet were
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: birds and Faro Nail's deep bass raging growls, and then
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: the click of roan safety going off. As he got
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: ready to use the weapon Hugens had given him, Simper
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: screamed again, flapping low above the tree tops. Following PARTI
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: colored monstrous shapes beneath, eight blue and tan fiends came
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: racing out of the underbrush. They had spiny fringes and
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: horns and glaring eyes, and they looked as if they
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: had come straight out of hell. On the instant of
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: their appearance, they leaped, emitting, squalling, spitting squeals that were
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: like the cries of fighting tom cats ten thousand times magnified.
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: Hugin's rifle cracked and its sound was wiped out, and
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: the louder detonation of its bullet in sphexian flesh. A
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: tan and blue monster tumbled over, shrieking Pharaohnell charged the
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: very impersonation of white hot fury. Roan fired and his
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: bullet exploded against a tree sit Capete brought his massive
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: forepaws in a clapping, monstrous ear boxing motion. A sphex died,
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: then Roan fired again. Soward O Charley waffed. He fell
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: forward upon a spitting bicolored fiend, rolled him over and
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: raked him with his hind claws. The belly hide of
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: the specks was tenderer than the rest. The creature rolled away,
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: snapping at its own wounds. Another spex found itself shaken
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: loose from the tumult about Citcopete. It whirled to leap
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: on him from behind, and Hugens fired very coldly, and
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: two plunged upon Pharao Knell, and Roan blasted one, and
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: Pharaohnell disposed of the other in truly awesome fury. Then
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: Citcapete heaved himself erect, seeming to drip spexes, and Sowardo
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: waddled over and pulled one off and killed it, and
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: went back for another, And both rifles cracked together, and
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: there was suddenly nothing left to fight. The bears prowled
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: from one to another. Of the corpses, said Capete rumbled
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: and lifted up a limp head crash, then another. He
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: went over the lot. Whether or not they showed signs
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: of life. When he had finished, they were wholly still.
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: Simper came flapping down out of the sky. He had
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: screamed and fluttered overhead as the fight went on. Now
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: he landed with a rush. Hugins went soothingly from one
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: bear to another, calming them with his voice. It took
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: longest to calm Pharaohnell, licking nugget with impassioned solicitude, and
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: growling horribly as she licked. Come along, now, said Huggins.
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: When Sitka showed signs of intending to sit down again,
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: heave these carcasses over a cliff. Come along, Sitka, sourdough hoop.
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: He guided them as the two big males somewhat fastidiously
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: lifted up the nightmares creatures. They and the guns together
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: it killed and carried them to the edge of the
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: spur of stone. They let the dead beasts go bouncing
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: and sliding down into the valley. That, said Hugins, is
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: so their little pals will gather round them and catterwall
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: their woe where there's no trail of ours to give
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: them ideas. If we'd been a nearer river, I'd have
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: dumped them in to fl downriver and gather mourners wherever
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: they stranded around the station. I incinerate them. If I
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: had to leave them, I'd make tracks away. About fifty
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: miles up wind would be a good idea. He opened
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: the pack sour dough carried and extracted giant sized swabs
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: and some gallons of antiseptic. He tended the three kodiaks
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: in turn, swabbing not only the cuts and scratches they'd received,
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: but deeply soaking their fur where they could be suspicion
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: of spilled spex blood. This antiseptic deodorizes too, he told
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: ron Or, we'd betrailed by any specks who passed to
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: leeward of us. When we start off, I'll swab the
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: bear's pause for the same reason. Roan was very quiet.
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: He'd missed his first shot with a bullet firing weapon.
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: A beam hasn't the stopping power of an explosive bullet,
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: but he'd seemed to grow savagely angry with himself the
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: last few seconds of the fight. He'd fired very deliberately,
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: and every bullet hit. Now, he said bitterly, if you
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: are instructing me so I can carry on should you
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: be killed, I doubt that it's worth while. Hugins felt
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: in his pack and unfold to the enlargements he'd made
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: of the space photos of this part of the planet.
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: He carefully oriented the map with distant landmarks. He drew
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: a painstakingly accurate line across the photo. The SOS signal
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: comes from somewhere close to the Robot colony, he reported,
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: I think a little to the south of it, probably
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: from a mind they'd opened up on the far side,
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: of course, of the sere plateau. See how I've marked
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: this map two fixes, one from the station and one
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: from here. I came away off course to get a
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: fix here, so we'd have two position lines to the transmitter.
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: The signal could have come from the other side of
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: the planet, but it doesn't. The odds would be astronomical
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: against other castaways protested roan O, said Huggins. Ships have
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: been coming here to the Robot colony. One could have crashed,
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: and I have friends too. He repacked his apparatus and
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: gestured to the bears. He led them beyond the scene
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: of combat and very carefully swabbed off their paws so
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: they could not possibly leave a trail of sexed blood.
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: Scent behind them. He waved Tzimper the eagle aloft, Let's go,
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: he told the Kodiaks yonder hup. The party headed downhill
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: and into the jungle again. Now it was sour Dough's
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: turn to take the lead, and sick a Pete prowled
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: more widely behind him. Pharaohnell trailed the man with nugget.
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: She kept an extremely sharp eye upon the cub. He
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: was a baby still, he only weighed six hundred pounds,
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: and of course she watched against danger from the rear overhead.
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: Simper fluttered and flew in giant circles and spirals, never
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: going very far away. Hugens referred constantly to the screen
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: which showed what the airborne camera saw. The image tilted
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: and circled and banked and swayed. It was by no
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: means the best air reconnaissance that could be imagined, but
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: it was the best that would work presently. Hugens said,
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: we swing to the right here. The going's bad straight ahead,
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: and it looks like a pack of sexes as killed
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: and his feeding roan was upset. He was dissatisfied with himself,
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: so he said, it's against reason for carnivores to be
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: as thick as you say, there has to be a
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: certain amount of other animals life for every meat eating beast.
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: Too many of them would eat all the game and starve. Well,
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: they're gone all winter, explained Huggins, which around here isn't
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: as severe as you might think, and a good many
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: animals seem to breathe just after the spexes go south. Also,
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: the spexes aren't around all the warm weather. There's a
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: sort of peak, and then for a matter of weeks
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: you won't see one of them, and suddenly the jungle
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: swarms with them again. Then presently they head south. Apparently
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: they're migratory in some fashion, but nobody knows, he said dryly.
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: There haven't been many naturalists surround on this planet. The
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: animal life is inimical. Roan fretted he was a senior
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: officer in the Colonial Survey, and he was accustomed to
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: arrival at a partly or completely finished colonial set up
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: and to pass upon the completion or non completion of
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: the planned installation as designed. Now, he was an intolerably
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: hostile environment, depending upon an illegal colonist for his life,
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: engaged upon a demoralizingly indefinite enterprise because the mechanical spark
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: signal could be working long after its constructors were dead,
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: and his ideas about a number of matters were shaken.
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: He was alive, for example, because of three giant Kodiak
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: bears and a bald eagle. He and Ron could have
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: been surrounded by ten thousand robots and they'd have been killed.
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: Spexes and robots would have ignored each other in Sfexes
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: would have made straight for the men, who'd have less
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: than four seconds in which to discover for themselves that
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: they were attacked, prepared to defend themselves and kill eight sexes.
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: Rome's convictions as a civilized man were shaken. Robots were
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: marvelous contrivances for doing the expected, accomplishing the planned, coping
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: with the predicted, but they also had defects. Robots could
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: only follow instructions. If this thing happens, do this, If
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: that thing happens, do that, but before something else. Neither
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: this nor that. Robots were helpless, So a robot's civilization
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: worked only in an environment where nothing unanticipated ever turned up,
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: and human supervisors never demanded anything unexpected. Roan was appalled.
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: He had never encountered the truly unpredictable before in all
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: his life and career he found Nugget the cub ambling
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: uneasily in his wake. The cub flattened his ears miserably.
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: When Roane glanced at him, it occurred to the man
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: that Nugget was receiving a lot of disciplinary thumpings from
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: Pharaoh Nell. He was knocked about physically pretty much as
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: Roane was being knocked about psychologically. His lack of information
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: and unfitness for independent survival in this environment was being
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: hammered into him. Hi, Nugget said Ron ruefully. I feel
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: just about the way you do. Nugget brighted visibly, He frisked,
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: He tended to gamble. He looked very hopefully up in
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: Roan's face, and he stood four feet high at the
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: shoulder and would overtop Roan if he stood. Erect Ron
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: reached out and padded Nugget's head. It was the first
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: time in his life that he had ever petted an animal.
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: He heard a snuffling sound behind him. Skin crawled at
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: the back of his neck. He whirled. Pharaoh Nell regarded
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: him eighteen hundred pounds of Sheba only ten feet away,
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: and looking into his eyes. For one panicky instant, Roan
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: went cold all over. Then he realized that Pharaohnell's eyes
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: were not burning. She was not snarling. She did not
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: emit those blood curdling sounds which the bare prospect of
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: danger to Nugget had produced up on the rocky spur.
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: She looked at him blandly. In fact, after a moment,
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: she swung off on some independent investigation of a matter
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: that had aroused her curiosity. The traveling party went on.
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: Nugget frisking beside Roan, intending to bump into him out
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: of pure cub clumsiness. Now and again he looked adoringly
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: at ron in the instant and overwhelming affection of the
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: very young Roan trudged on. Presently he glanced behind again.
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: Pharaoh'nell was now raging more widely. She was well satisfied
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: to have Nugget in the immediate care of a man.
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: From time to time he got on her nerves. A
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: little while later, Roan called ahead, Hugh Guns, look here,
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: I've been appointed nursemaid Nugget. Hugins looked back. Oh, slap
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: him times and he'll go back to his mother. The devil,
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: I will, said, roan querulously I like it. The traveling
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: party went on. When night fell they camped. There could
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: be no fire, of course, because all the minute night
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: things about would come eagerly to dance in the glow.
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: But there could not be darkness equally, because night walkers
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: hunted in the dark. So Hughgen set out the barrier lamps,
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: which made a wall of twilight about their halting place,
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: and the staglike creature Pharaoh Knell had carried became their
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: evening meal. Then they slept, at least the men did,
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: and the bears dozed and snorted and waked and dozed again.
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: But Simpers sat immobile with his head under his wing
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: on a tree limb, and presently there was a glorious
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: cool hush, and all the world glowed in morning light
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: diffused through the jungle by a newly risen sun, and
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: they arose and traveled again. This day they stopped stock
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: still for two hours, whilst Fexes puzzled over the trail
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: the bears had left. Hugen's discoursed calmly on the need
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: for an anti scent to be used on the boots
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: of men, and the paws of bears would would make
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: the following of their trails unpopular with sfexes, and Rone
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: seized upon the idea and absorbedly suggested that a spex
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: repellent odor might be worked out, which would make a
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: human revolting to a spex. If that were done, why
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: humans could go freely about unmolested like stink bugs, said
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: Hugins sardonically, A very intelligent idea, very rational. You can
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: feel proud. And suddenly Roan, very obscurely, was not proud
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: of the idea at all. They camped again. On the
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: third night. They were at the base of that remarkable formation,
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: the Sere Plateau, which from a distance looked like a
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: mountain range, but was actually a desert table land, and
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: it was not reasonable for a desert to be raised
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: high while lowlands had rain. But on the fourth morning
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: they found out why. They saw, far far away a
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: truly monstrous mountain mass at the end of the long
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: way expanse of the plateau. It was like the prow
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: of a ship. It lay, so Hugins observed directly in
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: line with the prevailing winds and divided them as the
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: ship's prow divides the waters. The moisture bearing air currents
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: flowed beside the plateau, not over it, and its interior
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: was purecere desert in the unscreened sunshine of high altitudes.
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: It took them a full day to get half way
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: up the slope, and here twice as they climbed, Simper
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: flew screaming over aggregations of sexes to one side of
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: them or the other. These were much larger groups than
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: Huggins had ever seen before, fifty to a hundred monstrosities together,
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: where a dozen was a large hunting pack. Elsewhere. He
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: looked in the screen, which showed him what Simper saw.
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: Four to five miles away. The Spexes padded up hill
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: towards the sere plateau in a long line, fifty sixty,
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: seventy ten and azure beasts out of hell. I'd hate
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: to have that bunch jump us, he said candidly to Rone.
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: I don't think we'd stand a chance. Here's where a
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: robot tank would be useful. Roane observed anything armored, conceded Hugins.
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: One man in an armored station like mine would be safe,
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: but if he killed his fecks he'd be besieged. He'd
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: have to stay holed up breathing the smell of dead'
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: specs until the odor had gone away, and he mustn't
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: kill any others or he'd be besieged until winter came.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: Ron did not suggest the advantages of robots in other
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: directions at that moment. For example, they were working their
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: way up a slope which averaged fifty degrees. The bears
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: climbed without effort, despite their burdens. For the men, it
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: was infinite toil. Simper, the eagle manifested impatience with bears
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: and men alike who crawled so slowly up an incline
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: over which he soared. He went ahead up the mountain
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: side and teetered in the air currents at the plateau's edge.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: Hugens looked in the vision plate, by which he reported
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: how the devil panted Ron. They had stopped for a breather,
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: and the bears waited patiently for them. Do you train
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: bears like these? I can understand, Simper. I don't train them,
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: said Huggins, staring into the plate. Their mutations in heredity.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: The sex linkage of physical characteristics is standard stuff, but
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: there's been some sound work done on the gene linkage
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: of psychological factors. There was need on my home planet
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: for an animal who could fight like a fiend, live
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: off the land, carry a pack, and get along with men,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: at least as well as dogs do. In the old days,
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: they'd have tried to breathe the desired physical properties into
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: an animal who already had the personality they wanted, something
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: like a giant dog, say, But back home they went
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: at it the other way about. They picked the wanted
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: physical characteristics and bred for the personality the psychology. The
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: job got done. Over a century ago. A Kodiak bear
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: named Codius Champion was the first real success. He had
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: everything that was wanted. These bears are his descendants. They
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: look normal, commented Ron. They are, said hugins warmly, just
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: as normal as an honest dog. They're not trained like Simper.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: They trained themselves. He looked back into the plate in
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: his hands, which showed the ground five and six and
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: seven thousand feet higher. Simper now is trained bird without
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: too much brains. He's educated a glorified hawk. But the
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: bears want to get along with men. They're emotionally dependent
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: on us like dogs. Simper's a servant, but they're companions
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: and friends. He's trained but they're loyal. He's conditioned. They
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: love us. He'd abandoned me if he ever realized he could.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: He thinks he can only eat what men feed him.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: But the bears wouldn't want to. They'd like us. I
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: admit that I like them, maybe because they like me,
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: Ron said, deliberately. Aren't you a trifle loose tongued Huggins.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: I'm a colonial survey officer. I have to arrest you,
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: sooner or later. You've told me something that will locate
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: and convict the people who set you up here. It
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: shouldn't be hard to find where bears were bred for
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: psychological mutations, and where bear named Codius Champion left descendants.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: I can find out where you came from, now, Huggins.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: Huggins looked up from the plate with its tiny swaying
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: television image relaid from where Simper floated impatiently in mid air. Eh,
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: no harm done, he said, amiably. I'm a criminal there too.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: It's officially on record that I kidnapped these bears and
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: escaped with them, which on my home planet is about
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: as heinous a crime as a man can commit. It's
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: worse than horse theft back on Earth. In the old days.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: The can and cousins of my bears are highly thought of.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: I'm quite a criminal back home. Ron stared. Did you
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: steal them? He demanded confidentially, said Huggins, No, but prove it. Then,
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: he said, take a look at this plate See what
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: Simper can see. Up at the plateau's edge. Ron squinted
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: aloft where the eagle flew in great sweeps and dashes. Somehow,
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: by the experience of the past few days, rone knew
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: that Simper was screaming fiercely as he flew. He made
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: a dart toward the plateau's border. Ron looked at the
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: transmitted picture. It was only four inches by six but
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: it was perfectly without grain and an accurate color. It
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: moved and turned as the camera bearing eagle swooped and circled.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: For an instant, the screen showed the steep sloping mountain side,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: and off at one edge, the party of men and
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: bears could be seen as dots. Then it swept away
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: and showed the top of the plateau. There were sexes.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: A pack of two hundred trotted toward the desert interior.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: They moved at leisure in the open. The viewing camera
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: reeled and there were more. As Rone watched, and as
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: the bird flew higher, he could see still other sexes
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: moving up over the edge of the plateau from a
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: small erosion defile here and another one there. The sere
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: plateau was alive with the hellish creatures. It was inconceivable
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: that there should be game enough for them to live on.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: They were visible as herds of cattle would be visible
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: on grazing planets. It was simply impossible migrating, observed Huggins,
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: I said, they did. They're headed somewhere. Do you know,
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: I doubt that it would be healthy for us to
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: try to cross the plateau through such a swarm of sexes.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: Ron swore an abrupt change of mood. But the signel
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: still coming through. Oh, somebody's alive over at the robot colony.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: Must we wait till the migration's over? We don't know,
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: Hugins pointed out that they'll stay alive. They may need
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: help badly. We have to get to them. But at
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: the same time he glanced at Sourd o' charlie and
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: sit Compete, clinging patiently to the mountain side. While the
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: men rested and talked. Sitka had managed to find a
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: place to sit down, though one massive paw anchored him
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: in his place. Hugins waved his arm pointing in a
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: new direction. Let's go, he called, briskly, Let's go Yonder up.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: End of chapter three, chapter four of Exploration Team by
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: Murray Leinster. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: Read by Ben Tucker. Chapter four. They followed the slopes
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: of the Seer Plateau, neither ascending to its level top.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: Whereas fex is congregated, nor does send into the foothills
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: where his fexes assembled. They moved along hillsides and mountain flanks,
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: which sloped anywhere from thirty to sixty degrees, and they
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: did not cover much distance. They practically forgot what it
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: was to walk on level ground. Simper, the eagle, hovered
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: overhead during the daytime, not far away. He descended at
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: nightfall for his food from the pack of one of
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: the bears. The bears aren't doing too well for food,
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: said Hughgins dryly. A ton of bear needs a lot
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: to eat, but they're loyal to us. Simper hasn't any loyalty.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: He's too stupid, but he's been conditioned to think that
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: he can only eat what men feed him. The bears
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: no better, but they stick to us regardless. I rather
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: like these bears. It is the most self evident of understatements.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: This was at an encampment on the top of a
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: massive boulder which projected from a mountainous stony wall. This
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: was six days from the start of their journey. There
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: was barely room on the boulder for all the party,
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: and Pharaohnell fussily insisted that Nugget should be in the
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: safest part, which meant near the mountain flank. She would
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: have crowded the men outward, but Nugget whimpered for Ron. Wherefore,
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: when Roan moved to comfort him, Pharaohnel contentedly drew back
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: and snorted at Sitka and sourdough, and they made room
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: for her near the edge. It was a hungry camp.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: They had come upon tiny rills upon occasion, flowing down
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: the mountain side. Here the bears had drunk deeply, and
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: the men had filled canteens. But this was the third
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: night and there had been no game at all. Hugens
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: made no move to bring out food for Roan or himself.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: Ron made no comment. He was beginning to participate in
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: the relationship between bears and men, which was not the
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: slavery of the bears, but something more. It was to
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: way he felt it. It would seem, he said, fretfully
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: that since the sfexes don't seem to hunt on their
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: way up hill, that there should be some game. They
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: ignore everything as they file up hill. This was true enough.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: The normal fighting formation of sexes was line abreast, which
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: automatically surrounded anything which offered to flee, and outflanked anything
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: which offered fight. But here they ascended the mountain in
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: long lines, one after the other, following apparently long established trails.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: The wind blew along the slopes and carried scent only sidewise,
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: but the spexes were not diverted from their chosen paths.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: The long processions of hideous, blue and tawny creatures, and
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: it was hard to think of them as natural beasts,
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: male and female, laying eggs like reptiles on other planets,
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: simply climbed. There have been other thousands of beasts before them,
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: said Hugins. They must have been crowding this way for
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: days or even weeks. We've seen tens of thousands and
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: simpers camera They must be uncountable altogether. The first comers
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: ate all the game there was, and the last comers
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: have something else on. Whatever they use for mines rome protested.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: But so many carnivoores in one place is impossible. I
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: know they are here, but they can't be they're cold blooded,
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: Hugins pointed out. They don't burn food to sustain body temperature.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: After all, lots of creatures go for long periods without eating,
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: even bears hybridate. But this isn't hibernation or estivation either.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: He was setting up the radiation wave receiver in the darkness.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: There was no point in attempting a fix here. The
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: transmitter was on the other side of the sere plateau,
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: which inexplicably swarmed with the most ferocious and deadly of
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: all the creatures of Laurn too. The men and bears
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: would commit suicide by crossing here. But Huggins turned on
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: the receiver. There came the whispering, scratchy sound of background noise.
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: Then the signal three dots, three dashes, three dots, three dots,
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: three dashes, three dots. It went on and on. Huggins
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: turned it off. Rone said, shouldn't we have answered that
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: signal before we left the station to encourage them. I
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: doubt they have a receiver, said Huggins. They won't expect
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: an answer for months anyhow, they'd hardly listen all the time.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: And if they're living in a mine tunnel and trying
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: to sneak out for food to stretch their supplies, why
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: they'll be too busy to try to make complicated recorders
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: or relays. Ron was silent for a moment or two.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: We've got to get food for the bears, he said. Presently,
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: nuggets weaned and he's hungry. We will, Huggins promised. I
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: may be wrong, but it seems to me that the
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: number of sfexes climbing the mountain is less than yesterday
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: and the day before. We may have just about crossed
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: the path of their migration. They're thinning out. When we're
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: past their trail, we'll have to look out for night
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: walkers and the like again. But I think they wiped
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: out all animal life on the migration route. He was
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: not quite right. He was waked in darkness by the
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: sound of slappings and the grunting of bears. Featherlight puffs
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: of breeze beat upon his face. He struck his belt
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: lamp sharply, and the world was hidden by a whitish
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: film which snatched itself away. Something flapped. Then he saw
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: the stars and the emptiness on the edge of which
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: they camped. Then big white things flapped toward him, said Capete.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: Waffed mightily and swatted phararonell grunted and swung. She caught
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: something in her claws. She crunched. The light went off,
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: as Hugins realized. Then he said, don't shoot Roan. He
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: listened and heard the sounds of feeding in the dark.
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: It ended. Watch this, said Huggins. The belt light came
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: on again. Something strangely shaped and pallid like human skin,
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: reeled and flapped crazily toward him. Something else four five, ten,
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: twenty more, a huge, hairy paw reached up into the
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: light beam and snatched a flying thing out of it,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: another great paw. Hugins shifted the light and the three
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: great Kodiaks were on their hind legs, swatting at creatures
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: which fluttered insanely, unable to resist the fascination of the
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: glaring lamp. Because of their wild gyrations, it was impossible
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: to see them in detail. But they were those unpleasant
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: night creatures, which looked like plucked flying monkeys but were
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: actually something quite different. The bears did not snarl or snap.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: They swatted with a remarkable air of business like competence
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: and purpose. Small mounds of broken things built up about
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: their feet. Suddenly there was no more. Hugins snapped off
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: the light. The bears crunched and fed busily in the darkness.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: Those things are carnivores and bloodsuckers, Roan, said Hugins calmly.
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: They drained their victims of blood like vampire bats. They've
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: some trick of not waking them, and when they're dead,
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: the whole tribe eats. But bears have thick furs and
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: they wake when they're touched, and they're omnivorous. They'll eat
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: anything but sexes and like it. You might say that
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: those night creatures came to lunch, but they stayed. They
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: are it for the bears who are living off the
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: country as usual. Ron uttered a sudden exclamation. He made
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: a tiny light, and blood flowed down his hand. Hugins
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: passed over his pocket kit of antiseptic and bandages. Rone
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: staunched the bleeding and bound up his hand. Then he
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: realized that Nugget chewed on something. When he turned the light,
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: Nuggets swallowed convulsively. It appeared that he had caught and
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: devoured the creature which had drawn blood from Ron, but
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: Roan had lost none to speak of. At that in
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: the morning, they started along the sloping scarp of the
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: plateau once more. During the morning, Ron said painfully, robots
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: wouldn't have handled those vampire things. Huggins. Oh, they could
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: be built to watch for them, said Hugins tolerantly, But
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: you'd have to swat for yourself. I prefer the bears.
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: He led the way on here, their jungle formation could
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: not apply on a steeper slope. The bears ambled comfortably,
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: the tough pads of their feet holding fast on the
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: slanting rock, but the men struggled painfully. Twice Hugens halted
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: to examine the ground about the mountains bases through binoculars.
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: He looked encouraged as they went on. The monstrous peak,
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: which was like the bow of a ship at the
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: end of the sere plateau, was visibly nearer toward midday. Indeed,
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: it looked high above the horizon, no more than fifteen
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: miles away, and at midday Hugens called a final halt.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: No more congregations of sexes down below, he said, cheerfully.
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: And we haven't seen a climbing line of them in miles.
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: The crossing of a spex trail meant simply waiting until
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: one party had passed, and then crossing before another came
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: in view. I've a hunch we've crossed their migration route.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: Let's see what Simper tells us. Heave the eagle aloft,
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: and Simper, like all creatures other than men, normally functioned
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: only for the satisfaction of his appetite, and then tended
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: to low for sleep. He had ridden the last few
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: miles perched on sick co Epede's back. Now he soared upward,
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: and Hugen's watched in the small vision plate Simper went soaring,
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: and the image on the plate swayed and turned and turned,
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: and in minutes was above the plateau's edge. And here
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: there was some vegetation, and the ground rolled somewhat, and
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: there were even patches of brush. But as Simper towered
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: higher still, the inner desert appeared, but near by it
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: was clear of beasts. Only once, when the eagle banked sharply,
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: and the camera looked along the long dimension of the plateau.
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: Did Hugen see any sign of the blue and tan beasts? There?
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: He saw what looked like masses amounting to herds, But
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: of course carnivores do not gather in herds. We go
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: straight up, said Hugins, in satisfaction. We cross the plateau
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: here and we can edge down wind a bit even.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: I think we'll find something interesting on our way to
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: your robot colony. He waved to the bears to go
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: ahead up hill. They reached the top hours later, barely
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: before sunset, and they saw game, not much but game.
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: At the grassy, brushy border of the desert, Hugins brought
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: down a shaggy rumin into which Shirley would not live
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: on a desert. When night fell, there was an abrupt
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: chill in the air. It was much colder than night
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: temperatures on the slopes. The air was thin. Roan thought,
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: confusingly and presently guessed at the cause. In the lee
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: of the Prow Mountain, the air was calm, There were
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: no clouds. The ground radiated its heat to empty space.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: It could be bitterly cold in the night time here,
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: and hot by day. Hugens agreed when he mentioned it.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: The sunshine's terrifically hot where the air is thin, but
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: on most mountains there's wind by day. Here the ground
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: will tend to heat up, like the surface of a
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: planet without atmosphere. It may be a hundred and forty
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: or fifty degrees on the sand at midday, but it
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: should be cold at night. It was before midnight Hugins
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: built a fire. There could be no danger of night walkers.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: Where the temperature dropped a freezing in the morning. The
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: men were stiff with coal, but the bears snorted and
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: moved about briskly. They seemed to revel in the morning chill.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: Sitka and Soured o' charlie in fact, became festive and
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: engaged in a mock fight, whacking each other with blows
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: that were only feigned but would have crushed in the
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: skull of any man. Nuggets sneezed with excitement as he
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: watched them. Pharaohnell regarded them with female disapproval. They went
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: on simper, seemed sluggish. After a single brief flight, he
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: descended and rode on Sika's pack. As on the previous day.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: He perched there surveying the landscape as it changed from
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: semi arid to pure desert in their progress. His air
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: was arrogant, but he would not fly. Soaring birds do
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: not like to fly when there are no winds to
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: make currents of which to take advantage. On the way,
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: Hugen's painstakingly pointed out to Roam exactly where they were
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: on the enlarged photograph taken from space and the exact
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: spot from which the distress signal seemed to come. You
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: are doing it in case something happens to you, Roan,
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: I admit it. Since but what could I do to
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: help those survivors even if I got to them without you?
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: What you've learned about sfexes would help, said Hugins. The
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: bears would help. And we left a note back at
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: my station. Whoever grounds at the landing field back there,
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: and the beacons working again, will find instructions to come
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: to the place where trying to reach Rone plodded alongside him.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: The narrow non desert border of the Sere Plateau was
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: behind them. Now they marched across powdery desert sand. See here,
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: said Roan, I want to know something. You tell me
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: you're listed as a bear thief on your home planet.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: You tell me it's a lie to protect your friends
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: from prosecution by the colonial survey. You're on your own,
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: risking your life every minute of every day. You took
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: a risk in not shooting me, now you're risking more.
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: I'm going to help men who've have to be witnesses
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: that you are a criminal. What are you doing it for?
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: Hugins grinned. Because I don't like robots. I don't like
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: the fact that they're subduing men, making men subordinate to them,
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: go on, insisted Roan. I don't see why disliking robots
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: should make you a criminal, nor men subordinating themselves to robots, either,
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: But they are, said Hugins mildly. I'm a crank, of course,
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: but I live like a man on this planet. I
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: go where I please and do what I please. My helpers,
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: the bears are my friends. If the robot colony had
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: been a success, would the humans in it have lived
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: like men? Hardly. They'd have to live the way the
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: robots let them. They'd have to stay inside a fence
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: the robots built. They'd have to eat foods that robots
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: could raise, and no others. Why a man couldn't move
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: his bed near a window, because if he did, the
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: house tending robots couldn't work. Robots would serve them the
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: way the robots determined, but all they'd get out of
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: it would be jobs servicing the robots. As long as
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: men want robots service, they have to take this service
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: that robots can give. If you don't want those services,
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: I want to decide what I want, said Hugens again mildly,
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: instead of being limited to choose among what I'm offered.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: On my home planet, we half way tamed it with
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: dogs and guns. Then we developed the bears, and we
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: finish the job with them. Now there's population pressure in
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: the room for bears and dogs and men is dwindling.
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: More and more people are being deprived of the power
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: of decision and being allowed only the power of choice
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: among the things robots allow. The more we depend on robots,
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: the more limited those choices become. We don't want our
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: children to limit themselves to wanting what robots can provide.
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: We don't want them shriveling to where they abandon everything
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: robots can't give or won't. We want them to be
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: men and women, not damned automatons. Who live by pushing
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: robot controls, so they can live two push robot controls.
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: If that's not subordination to robots. It's an emotional argument,
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: protested Ronan. Not everybody feels that way, but I feel
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: that way, said Huggins, and so do a lot of others.
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: This is a big galaxy and it's apt to contain
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: some surprises. The one sure thing about a robot and
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: a man who depends on them is that they can't
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: handle the unexpected. There's going to come a time when
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: we need men who can so on my home planet.
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: Some of us asked for Lauren too to colonize. It
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: was refused too dangerous. But men can colonize anywhere if
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: they're men. So I came here to study the planet,
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: especially this fexes. Eventually we expected to ask for a
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: license again, with proof that we could handle even those beasts.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: I'm already doing it in a mild way. But the
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: survey licensed a robot colony. And where is it? Rowan
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: made a sour face. You picked the wrong way to
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: go about it, Huggins. It was illegal, it is. It
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: was the pioneer spirit, which is admirable enough, but wrongly directed.
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: After all, it was pioneers who left Earth for the stars.
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: But Sourdough raised up on his hind legs and sniffed
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: the air. Hugins swung his rifle around to be handy.
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: Ron slipped off the safety catch of his own. Nothing
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: happened in a way, said Ron, vexedly. You're talking about
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: liberty and freedom, which most people think is politics. You
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: say it can be more in principle. I'll concede it.
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: By the way you put it, it sounds like a
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: freak religion. It's self respect, corrected Huggins. You may be Pharaoh,
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: No growled. She bumped Nugget with her nose to drive
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: him closer to Ron. She snorted at him. She trotted
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: swiftly to where Sitka and sour Dough faced toward the broader,
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: svex filled expanse of the sere plateau. She took up
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: her position between them. Hughgens gazed sharply beyond them, and
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: then all about. This could be bad, he said softly,
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: But luckily there's no wind. Here's a sort of hill.
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: Come along, Ron. He ran ahead, Ron, following a Nugget,
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: plumping heavily with him. They reached the raised place. Actually
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: a mere hillock no more than five or six feet
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: above the surrounding sand, with a distorted us like growth
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: protruding from the ground. Hugen stared again. He used his binoculars.
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: One's FECs, he said curtly, just one, and it's out
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: of all reason for his s FECs to be alone.
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: But it's not rational for them to gather in hundreds
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: of thousands either. He wetted his finger and held it up.
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: No wind at all. He used the binoculars again. It
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: doesn't know we're here, he added, it's moving away, not
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: another one in sight. He hesitated, biting his lips. Look here, Ron,
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: I'd like to kill that one Loan's fex and find
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: out something. There's a fifty percent chance I could find
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: out something really important, but I might have to run
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: if I'm right. Then, he said grimly, it'll have to
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: be done quickly. I'm going to ride pharaoh knell for speed.
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: I doubt Sikha or Sourdough would stay behind, but Nugget
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: can't run fast enough. Will you stay here with him?
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: And drew in his breath. Then he said, calmly, you
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: know what cha doing. Of course, keep your eyes open.
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: If you see anything, even at a distance, shoot and
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: we'll be back fast. Don't wait until something's close enough
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: to hit. Shoot the instant you see anything. If you do,
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: Roan nodded. He found it peculiarly difficult to speak again.
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: Hugins went over to the embattled bears. He climbed up
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: on Pharaohnell's back, holding fast by her shaggy fur. Let's go,
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: He snapped that way hook. The three Kodiaks plunged away
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: at a dead run, Hugins lurching and swaying on Pharaohneill's back.
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: The sudden rush dislotched Simper from his perch. He flapped
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: wildly and got aloft. Then he followed, effortfully, flying low.
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: It happened very quickly. A Kodiak bear can travel as
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: fast as a racehorse on occasion. These three plunged arrow
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: straight for a spot perhaps half a mile distant, where
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: blue and Tawny shape whirled to face them. There was
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: the crash of Hugens's weapon from where he rode on
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: pharaohenh Nell's back. The explosion of the weapon and the
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: bullet was one sound. The somehow unnatural spiky monster leaped
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: and died. Huggins jumped down from Pharaoh Nell. He became
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: feverishly busy at something on the ground where the party
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: colored specs had fallen. Simper banked and whirled and came
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: back down to the ground. He watched with his head
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: on one side. Ron stared from a distance Hugins was
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: doing something to the dead specks. The two male bears
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: prowled about. Pharaoh Nell regarded Huggins with intense curiosity. Back
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: at the hillock, Nugget whimpered a little. Roan patted him roughly.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: Nugget whimpered more loudly in the distance. Hugens straightened up
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: and took three steps toward Pharaohnell. He mounted Sika, turned
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: his head back toward Roan. He seemed to see your
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: sniff something dubious. He reared upward. He made a noise,
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: apparently because Sourdough ambled to his side. The two great
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: beasts began to trot back. Simper flapped wildly and, lacking wind,
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: lurched crazily in the air. He landed on Hugen's shoulder,
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: and his talons clung there. Then Nugget howled hysterically and
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: tried to swarm up Rone. As a cub tries to
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: swarm up the nearest tree in time of danger, Rome
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: collapsed in the cub upon him, and there was a
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: flash of stinking scaly hide while the air was filled
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: with the snarling, spitting squeals of his specs in full leap.
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: The beast had over jumped, aiming at Roan in the cub.
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: While both were upright and arriving where they had fallen,
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: it went tumbling. Rone heard nothing but the fiendish squalling,
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: but in the distance, sickened sourdough were coming at rocket
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: ship speed. Pharaoh knell led out a roar and fairly
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: split the air, and then there was a furry cub
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: streaking toward bawling. While Rone rolled to his feet and
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: snatched up his gun. He raged through pure instinct. The
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: specks cropped to pursue the cub, and Roan swung his
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: weapon as a club. He was literally too close to shoot,
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: and perhaps the specs had only seen the fleeing bear cub,
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: but he swung furiously and the specks whirled. Roane was
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: toppled from his feet an eight hundred pound monstrosities straight
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: out of hell, half wild cat, and half spitting cobra
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: with hydrophobia and Homicideia added, such a monstrosity is not
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: to be withstood when, in whirling its body strikes one
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: in the chest. That was when Sitka arrived, bellowing. He
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: stood on his hind legs, emitting roars like thunder, Challenging
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: the Specks to battle. He waddled forward. Hugins arrived, but
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: he could not shoot. With Roan in the sphere of
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: an explosive bullet's destructiveness, Pharaohnell raged in snarl, torn between
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: the urge to be sure that Nugget was unharmed and
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: the frenzied fury of a mother whose offspring had been endangered.
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: Mounted on Pharaounell with simper clinging idiotically to his shoulder.
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: Hughgens watched helplessly as the Specks spat and squalled at Sitka,
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: having only to reach out one claw to let out
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: Rohan's life end of chapter four. Chapter five of Exploration
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: Team by Murray Leinster. The LibriVox recording is in the
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: public domain. Read by Ben Tucker. Chapter five, They got
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: away from there. Rosika seemed to want to lift the
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: limp carcass of his victim and his teeth and dash
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: it repeatedly to the ground. He seemed doubly raging because
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: a man with whom all Codious Champion's descendants had an
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: emotional relationship had been mishandled. But Roan was not grievously hurt.
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: He bounced and swore as the bears raced for the horizon.
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: Hugens had flung him up on sour Dough's pack and
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: snapped for him to hold on. He bumped and chattered furiously.
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: Damn me, Hugins, this isn't right. Sitka's got some deep scratches.
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: The horrors claws may be poisonous. But Hugens snapped hoop
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: hoop to the bears, and they continued their race against time.
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: They went on for a good two miles, when Nugget
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: wailed despairingly of his exhaustion, and Varronell halted firmly to
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: nuzzle him. This may be good enough, said Huggins, considering
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: that there's no wind in the big mass of beasts
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: is down the plateau, and there were only those two
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: around here. Maybe they're too busy to hold awake even anyhow,
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: he said to the ground and extracted the antiseptic and
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: swabs Sidka first, snapped Roan, I'm all right. Hugins swabbed
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: the big bear's wounds. They were trivial because Sitka Pete
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: was an experienced sex fighter. Then Roan grudgingly let the
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: curiously smelling stuff it reeked of ozone be applied to
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: the slashes on his chest. He held his breath as
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: it stung. Then he said, dourly, it was my fault, Huggins.
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: I watched you instead of the landscape. I couldn't imagine
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: what you were doing. I was doing a quick dissection.
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: Huggins told him, by luck that first sex was a female,
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: as I'd hoped, and she was just about to lay
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: her eggs. Ugh, and now I know why the sexes
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: migrate and where and how it is. They don't need
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: game up here. He slapped a quick bandage on Roan.
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: He led the way eastward, still putting distance between the
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: dead sexes and his party. It was a crisp walk only,
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: but Simper flapped indignantly overhead, angry that he was not
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: permitted to ride again. I dissected them before, said Hugins.
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: O enough's been known about them. Some things need to
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: be found out if men were ever to be able
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: to live here with bez, asked Roan ironically. Oh, yes,
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: said Huggins. But the point is that sfexes come to
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: the desert here to breed, to mate, and lay their
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: eggs for the sun to hatch. It's a particular place.
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: Seals return to a special place to mate, and the
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: males at least don't eat for weeks on end. Salmon
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: returned to their native streams to spawn, they don't eat,
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: and they die afterward in eels. I'm using Earth examples.
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: Ron travel some thousands of miles to the Sargasso to
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: mate and die. Unfortunately, spexes don't appear to die, but
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: it's clear that they have an ancestral breeding place and
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: that they come here to the Sere Plateau to deposit
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: their eggs. Rome plodded onward. He was angry, angry with
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: himself because he hadn't taken elementary precautions, because he'd felt
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: too safe as a man in a robot served civilization
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: forms the habit of because he hadn't used his brain
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: when Nugget whimpered, and even a bear cub's awareness that
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: danger was near. And now, Huggins added, I need some
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: equipment that the robot colony had with it. I think
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: we can make a start toward making this a planet
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: that men can live like men on. Rome blinked. What's
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: that equipment, said Huggins, impatiently. It'll be at the robot colony.
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: Robots were useless because they wouldn't pay attention to sexes.
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: They'd still be, but take out the robot controls and
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: the machines will do. They shouldn't be ruined by a
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: few months exposure to weather. Rome marched on and on presently,
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: he said, I never thought you'd want anything that came
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: from that colony, Huggins. Why not, demanded Huggins, impatiently. When
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: men make machines do what they want, that's all right,
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: even robots when they're where they belong. But men will
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: have to handle flame casters and the job I want
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: them for. There have to be some, because there was
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: one hundred mile clearing to be burned off, and Earth's
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: sterilizers intended to kill the seeds of any plants that
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: robots couldn't handle. We'll come back up here, Ron, and
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: at the least we'll destroy the spawn of these infernal beasts.
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: If we can't do more than that. Just doing that
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: every year will wipe out the race in time. There
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: are probably other hordes than this, with other breeding places,
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: but we'll find them too. We'll make this planet into
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: a place where men from my world can come and
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: still be men, Ron said sardonically. It was fexes that
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: beat the robots. Are you sure you ought planning to
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: make this world safe for robots, Huggins laughed shortly. You've
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: only seen one night walker, he said, And how about
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: those things on the mountain slope which would have drained
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: you of blood and then feasted. Would you care to
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: wonder about this planet with only a robot bodyguard, Roane hardly.
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: Men can't live on this planet with only robots to
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: help them and stop them from being fully men. You'll see.
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: They found the colony after only ten days more of travel,
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: and after many sexes and more than a few staglike
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: creatures and shaggy ruminants had fallen to their weapons and
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: the bears. But first they found the survivors of the colony.
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: There were three of them, hard bitten and bearded and
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: deeply embittered. When the electrified fence went down. Two of
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: them were away at a mine tunnel, installing a new
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: control panel for the robots who worked in it. The
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: third was in charge of the mining operation. They were
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: alarmed by the stopping of communication with the colony and
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: went back in a tank truck to find out what
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: had happened, and only the fact that they were unarmed
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: saved them. They found sexes prowling and caterwauling about the
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: fallen colony and numbers they still did not wholly believe,
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: and the sexes smelled men inside the armoured vehicle but
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: couldn't break in. In turn, the men couldn't kill them,
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: or they'd have been trailed to the mine and besieged
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: there for as long as they could kill an occasional monster.
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: The survivors stopped all mining, of course, and tried to
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: use remote controlled robots for revenge and to get supplies
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: for them. Their mining robots were not designed for either task,
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: and they had no weapons. They improvised miniature throwers of
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: burning rocket fuel, and they sent occasional prowling sfexes away,
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: screaming with scorched hides, but this was useful only because
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: it did not kill the beasts and it cost fuel
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: in the end, they barricaded themselves and used the fuel
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: only to keep a spark signal going against the day.
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: When another ship came to seek the colony, they stayed
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: in the mine as in a prison on short rations,
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: waiting without real hope for a diversion. They could only
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: contemplate the mining robots, they could not spare fuel to run,
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: and which could not do anything but mine. When Hugins
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: and Rome reached them, they wept. They hated robots and
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: all the things robotic, only a little less than they
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: hated s fexes. But Hugins explained and armed them with
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: weapons from the packs of the bears, and they marched
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: to the dead colony, with the male Kodiaks as point
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: in advance guard, and with Faraoh Knell bringing up the rear.
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: They killed sixteen Spexes on the way in the now
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: overgrown clearing, there were four more. In the shelters of
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: the colony, they found only foulness and the fragments of
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: what had been men. But there was some food, not much,
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: because the Sexes claweded anything that smelled of men and
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: had ruined the plastic packets of radiation sterilized food. But
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: there were some supplies and metal containers which were not destroyed,
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: and there was fuel which men could dispense. When they
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: got to the control panels of the equipment, there were
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: robots everywhere, bright and shining and ready for operation, but immobile,
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: with plants growing up around and over them. They ignored
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: those robots, but lustfully they fuelled tracked flame casters, adapting
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: them to human rather than robot operation, and the giant
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: soil sterilizer, which had been built to destroy vegetation that
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: robots could not be made to weed out or cultivate.
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: And they headed back for the sere plateau, burning eyed
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: and filled with hate. But Nugget became a badly spoiled
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: bear cub. Because the freedmen approved passionately of anything that
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: would even grow up to kill spexes, they petted him
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: to excess when they camped, and they reached the plateau
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: by a sex trail to the top, and simper scouted
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: for sexes, and the giant kodiaks disturbed them, and the
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: sexes came, squalling and spitting to destroy them. And while
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: Ron and Hugens fired steadily, the great machines swept up
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: with their special weapons, the Earth's sterilizer. It was found
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: was deadly against animal life as well as seeds when
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: its diathermic beam was raised and aimed, but it had
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: to be handled by a man. No robot could decide
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: just when it was to be used and against what target. Presently,
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: the bears were not needed because the scorched corpses of
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: sexes drew live ones from all parts of the plateau,
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: even in the absence of noticeable breezes. The official business
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: of the Sexes was presumably finished, but they came to
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: Catterwall and seek vengeance, which they did not find. Presently,
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: the survivors of the robot colony drove machines as men
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: needed to do here, in great circles round the hugest
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: heap of slaughtered fiends, destroying new arrivals as they came.
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: It was such a killing as men had never before
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: made on any planet. But there would not be many
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: left of the sex Hord which had bred in this
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: particular patch of desert. There might be other hordes elsewhere
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: in other breeding places, but the normal territory of this
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: mass of monsters would see few of them this year
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: or next year, either because the soil sterilizer would go
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: over the dug up's sand, where the sex's spawn lay
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: hidden for the sun to hatch, and the sun would
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: never hatch them. But Hugins and Rome, by that time
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: were camped on the edge of the plateau with the Kodiaks.
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: They were technically upwind from the scene of slaughter, and
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: somehow it seemed more befitting for the men of the
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: Robot colony to conduct it, After all, it was those
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: men whose companions had been killed. There came an evening
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: when Hugins amiably cuffed Nugget away from where he sniffed
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: too urgently at a stag stake cooking on the camp fire.
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: Nugget ambled dolefully behind the protecting form of Roan and sniveled.
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: Higgins said Ron painfully, We've got to come to a
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: settlement of our affairs. I'm a colonial survey officer. You're
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: an illegal colonist. It's my duty to arrest you. Huggins
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: regarded him with interest. Will you offer me lenience if
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: I tell on my confederates, he asked mildly, Or may
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: I plead that I can't be forced to testify against myself,
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: Ron said, vexedly. It's irritating. I've been an honest man,
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: all my life. But I don't believe in robots as
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: I did, except in that place, and that place isn't here,
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: not as the robot colony was planned anyhow. The Svexes
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: are nearly wiped out, but they won't be extinct, and
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: robots can't handle them. Bears and men will have to
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: live here, or the people who do will have to
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: spend their lives behind svex proof fences, accepting only what
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: robots can give them. And there's much too much on
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: this planet for people to miss it. To live in
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: a robot managed controlled environment on a planet like Lauren two,
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: wouldn't it wouldn't be self respecting. You wouldn't be getting religious,
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: would you, asked Huggins dryly. That was your term for
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: self respect? Before simper. The eagle squawked indignantly as Cid
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: Compete almost stepped on him, approaching the fire. Sir Coer
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: Pete sniff and Hugins spoke to him sharply, and he
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: sat down with a thump. He remained sitting in an
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: untidy lump, looking at the stake and drooling. You don't
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: let me finish, protested rome querulously. I'm a colonial survey officer,
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: And it's my job to pass on the work that's
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: done on a planet before any but the first landed
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: colonists may come there to live, in course, to see
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: that specifications are followed. Now, the robot colony I was
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: sent to survey was practically destroyed as designed. It wouldn't work,
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: it couldn't survive. Hugens grunted. Night was falling. He turned
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: the meat over the fire. Now in emergencies, said Rome, carefully.
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: Colonists have the right to call on any passing ship
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: for aid, naturally, So I've always been an honest man
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: before Hugins. My report will be that the colony as
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: designed was impractical, and that it was overwhelmed and destroyed,
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: except for three survivors who hold up in signal for help.
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: They did, you know, go on, grunted Huggins, So said Rome, querulously.
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: It just happened, Just happened, mind you, that a ship
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: with you and Sitka and Sourdough and Pharaoh Knell on board,
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: and Nugget and Simple too of course picked up the
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: distress call. So you landed to help the colonists, and
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: you did. That's the story. Therefore, it isn't illegal for
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: you to be here. It was only illegal for you
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: to be here when you weren't needed. But we'll pretend
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: you weren't. Huggans glanced over his shoulder in the deepening night.
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: He said, calmly, I wouldn't believe that if I told
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: it myself. Do you think the survey will? They're not fools,
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: said Ron tartly. Of course they won't. But when my
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: report says that because of this unlikely series of events,
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: it is practical to colonize the planet, whereas before it wasn't.
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: And when my report proves that a robot colony alone
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: is stark nonsense, but that with bears and men from
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: your world added, so many thousand colonists can be received
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: per year. And when that much is true anyhow, Hugens
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: seemed to shake a little as a dark silhouette against
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: the flames. A little way off, sour Dough sniffed the air,
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: hopefully with a bright light like the fire. Presently, naked
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: looking flying things might appear to be slapped down out
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: of the air. They were succulent to a bear my reports,
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: carry Weight insisted Roan, the deal will be offered anyhow,
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: the robot colony organizers will have to agree. They'll have
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: to fold up. It's true, and Joe people can hold
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: them up for nearly what terms they choose. Hugan's shaking
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: became understandable. It was laughter. You're a lousy liar, Roan,
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: he said, chuckling. Isn't it unintelligent and unreasonable and irrational
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: to throw away a lifetime of honesty just to get
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: me out of a jam. You're not acting like a
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: rational animal, Roan. But I thought you wouldn't. When it
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: came to the point, Roan squirmed. That's the only solution
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: I can think of. But it'll work. I accept it,
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: said Huggins, grinning, But thinks if only because it means
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: another few generations of men living like men on a
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: planet that is going to take a lot of taming.
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: And if you want to know, because it keeps sour
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: Dough and Sitka and Nell and Nugget from being killed
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: because I brought them here illegally. Something pressed hard against
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: ron nugg At the cub pushed urgently against him. In
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: his desire to get closer to the fragrantly cooking meat,
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: he edged forward. Roan toppled from where he squatted on
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: the ground. He sprawled. Nugget sniffed luxuriously. Slap him, said Hugins.
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: He'll move back. I won't, said Ron indignantly from where
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: he lay. I won't do it. He's my friend. End
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: of Chapter five. End of Exploration Team by Murray Leinster