“Watch out for those spurs.”
The creature came toward them sidewise, delicate arms slightly lowered, fists clenched, spurs flashing, its head turned so that it didn’t face them, but looked at them sidewise out of the comers of its eyes.
Richards and Cassetti separated.
It skipped sidewise fast, to dart between them. As it passed the edge of Cassetti’s faceplate, he could see it raise one leg, to bring the nearest spur up like a dagger.
Across the room, another one was starting out of the hatch.
Cassetti dropped to a crouch facing the hatch. There was a screech, and the spoiled-brat face reappeared, going backwards past the edge of his faceplate, flattened up against the grayish chunk that Richards had just slung at it.
Cassetti hit the “Max Lift Burst” switch, there was a roar, he was rammed down in the suit, and smashed into something soft, just coming in through the hatch. A knife flashed past in front of his faceplate, closely spaced red hate-filled eyes briefly glared directly into his, and then he got both of the suit’s gauntlets around the thin feathery neck, and bashed the creature’s head against the wall. One of the suit’s mirrors showed him a view of the hatch, with beaked heads crowded behind it, and he let go of the bony neck with one hand, slammed the hatch closed, and shoved down the locking handle. The handle promptly snapped up again, and he shoved it down. After a slight delay, it went up again, and again he shoved it down. This time, he noticed the flimsy catch near the handle, and locked it in place.
Just then, there was a flash, and a knifelike spur hit the edge of his helmet next to the faceplate. At almost the same moment, he got a view of the vicious gratified look on the face of this man-bird that apparently figured he had got in a solid painful blow with his spur.
Cassetti let go the door latch, seized the bird and swung it, using the thin feathery neck for a handle, and it went up and around, and came down with a gratifying smash on the deck, so Cassetti tried it again, but now it was harder; this time, the creature was limp. The second time it hit the deck, he came down hard on its chest with both heels.
Across the room, Richards was standing over the other one, feathers stuck all over the business end of the bamboo creature’s club. He straightened up slowly.
“I wonder if these things could be the extraterrestrials?”
“Look at their hands.”
“They could use tools, all right. Well—something tells me we aren’t going to get along too well.”
Before they had any chance to think over this proposition, or what it might mean in terms of their longevity, there was a mournful sob from somewhere. This cry was taken up by what sounded like flutes, guitars, washboards, steel ball bearings rolling down drainpipes, and then a regular orchestra joined in in the background to create a mournful wailing that was repeated over and over again.
Richards picked feathers off the end of his club.
“Do you get the impression that we’ve just committed sacrilege? I mean, these things come in here to stick us with their fourteen-inch spurs, and that doesn’t bother anyone. Then we brain a couple of them, and this noise starts up.”
“Look at that airlock.”
Across the room, the big airlock door was rotating and now swung open. On the other side, there was a peculiar effect, as of a sudden magical appearance. One instant, there was nothing there. The next instant, a human-looking figure naked from the waist up seemed to spring into existence just outside the hatch. It stood there, arms at its sides.
“You have killed.”
Richards got the last feather off the club and started for the airlock.
The background music wailed. The figure opened its mouth again. “You have killed a living being!”
The figure slowly raised its arms sidewise. When the arms were about a third of the way up, it intoned, “The blood of life is on your hands!”
Richards had started to raise the club, but now lowered it. His voice growled in Cassetti’s earphones: “This thing looks real. The voice sounds real. But they don’t mesh.”
“That business of raising its arms sidewise doesn’t fit much of anything, either. And there’s something else.”
“What?”
“It didn’t step in front of the hatch. It appeared there. I wonder if this figure could have come from some scene shown by the computer, and recorded by the aliens? And now they play it back at us?”
“If so, no wonder they mangled the communicator.”
While they were trying to work this out, the figure didn’t stay still. Its hands climbed till they were extended straight overhead, and the voice bellowed, “On your knees! Killers! Murderers!” The arms started down again. “Cast down your weapons!”
Richards said, “Maybe the computer tried this after it lost a chunk of its memory?”
“Or possibly the idea of this is to see how nice our disposition is?”
“Not that nice.” Richards stepped forward, and thrust the end of the club at the center of the figure’s chest.
There was a crash like breaking glass. For an instant, Cassetti seemed to see the figure through one eye, and to see empty space through the other eye. Then it was gone. At the same instant, the music ended.
Richards stepped forward to take a look on the far side. The airlock door promptly swung around.
Richards turned. “What’s our score so far?”
Cassetti glanced at the bamboo thing, cowering by its octopus buddy on the toadstool, the apparent piece of the communicator’s memory bank, and the pair of man-birds flat on the deck with their glittering knifelike spurs.
“Just passing, I’d think. We still don’t know what’s going on. On the other hand, we’re still alive.”
“Still ahead of the computer.”
“All considered, that’s not hard. Incidentally, I see your point about guns in the suits. I envy you that club.” Looking at the pair of man-birds, it occurred to Cassetti that there were possibly useful weapons in the form of those spurs. True, they didn’t seem to offer much of anything in the line of a usable grip. But still—
Before there was time to work anything out, there was a loud snap, a slam and a crash of metal on metal, and Richards shouted, “Watch it! The hatch again!”
Cassetti turned, to see a thing resembling a black bear wearing a blue uniform, with a wide skull and partly human face, vault in past the sprung hatch carrying in its right hand a short sword or long knife. Close behind it came another holding a short-barreled gun in both hands. Right behind that came a third and a fourth carrying the same kind of gun. They poured in through the hatchway like water through a floodgate. They and the cohort that came in behind them didn’t aim their guns, but lined up in two files as the leader with the short sword gestured toward the interior of the ship.
Richards and Cassetti saw no gain in trying to fight this crew, and let themselves be hustled out into a long corridor. They were marched fast down the corridor into a huge room occupied by non-humans twelve to forty deep on either side of the door, and facing each other across an aisle that stretched to a raised platform on which was a long table with more nonhumans seated behind it, facing the aisle.
Over the din of this crowd, Cassetti could hear Richards draw a deep breath. But neither had anything to say as the scene hit them.
To either side were massed groups of identical double-headed octopuses, identical bamboo creatures, identical man-birds, and identical man-bears. Behind the table on the platform sat an assortment of alien monstrosities all but impossible to describe, first because of the difficulty of finding something to compare them with, and second because of the short time before their own attention was riveted on the creature in the center seat behind the table.