The voice chuckled at them. "Of course, human thing, of course. As my representative, of course. For I must have representatives, don't you see.
In a material world, I must be fronted for by something that can be seen, that can be perceived. I could not very well go to a meeting of that great importance as a disembodied voice, as a thought stalking the corridors of that empty city. So I sent a goblin and I went along with him.”
"What are you, voice?" Caroline asked. "Tell us what you are.”
"I still don't think," said the voice, "that what you are doing is a good way to fight a duel. I think you're making a great mistake.”
"What makes you think so, Butch?" asked Gary.
"Because," the voice said, "the Hellhounds are building a fire under your ship. It will be just a matter of time until they smoke you out.”
Gary and Caroline glanced swiftly at one another, the same thought in their mind.
"No power," said Caroline, weakly.
"The heat absorption units," Gary cried.
"No power," said Caroline. "The absorption cells won't work.”
Gary glanced toward the forward vision ports. Thin streamers of smoke were curling up outside the glass.
"The mushrooms burn well," the voice told them, "when they get old and dry.
There are lots of old and dry mushrooms around. They'll have no trouble in keeping up the fire.”
"Like smoking out a rabbit," said Gary, bitterly.
"You asked for it," the voice declared.
"Get out of here!" yelled Gary. "Get out of here and leave us alone, can't you.”
They sensed it leave, mumbling to itself.
Like a bad dream, Gary thought. Like a Wonderland adventure, with he and Caroline the poor bewildered Alice stumbling through a world of vast incredibility.
Listening, they could hear the crackling of the fire. Now the smoke was a dense cloud through the forward ports.
How do you fight when you have no weapon? How do you get out of a spaceship-turned-into-an-oven? How do you think up a smart dodge when your time is numbered in hours, if not, indeed, in minutes?
What are weapons?
How did they start?
What is the basic of a weapon?
"Caroline," Gary asked, "what would you say a weapon was?”
"Why," she told him, "that seems simple to me. An extension of your fist.
An extension of your power to hurt, of your ability to kill. Men fought first with tooth and nail and fist and then with stones and clubs. The stones and clubs were extensions of man's fist, an extension of his muscles and his hate or need.”
Stones and clubs, he thought. And then a spear. And, after that, a bow, A bow!
He swung on his heel, walked rapidly back along the ship, jerked open the door to the supply cabinet. Rummaging inside it, he found the things he wanted.
He brought them out, a fistful of wooden flagpoles, each with small flags fastened to one end, the other end steel-tipped for easy sticking in the ground.
"Explorer flags," he explained to Caroline. "You go out on an alien planet and you want to be sure that you can find your way back to the ship. You plant these things at intervals and then follow them back to the ship, picking them up as you go along. No chance of getting lost.”
"But…" said Caroline.
"Evans figured he was going to use this ship to go to Alpha Centauri, He took some of these things along, just in case.”
He placed the steel-shod tip of one of the poles on the floor, threw his weight against the top end. It flexed. Gary grunted in satisfaction.
"A bow?" asked Caroline.
He nodded. "Not too good a one. Not too accurate. Maybe not too strong.
When I was a kid I used to go out into the woods and whack me off a sapling. No curve, no nothing. Bigger at one end than the other. But it worked as a bow, after a fashion. Used reeds for arrows. Killed one of my mother's chickens with one once. She whaled me good and proper.”
"It's getting warm in here," Caroline told him. "We can't waste any time.”
He grinned at her, exuberant now that there was something to do.
"Hunt up some cord," he told her. "Any kind of cord. If it's not strong enough, we'll twist several strands together.”
Whistling under his breath, he got to work, tearing the flag off the end of one of the more supple poles, notching either end to hold the cord.
From another stick he split long wands off the straight-grained wood, fashioning them into arrows. There'd be no time for feathering… in fact, there were no feathers in the ship, but that was a refinement that would not be needed. He would be using the bow at close range.
But he did have arrowheads. With snippers, he clipped off the sharp tips with which the poles had been shod, drove them into the head of each arrow.
Testing them with a finger, he was satisfied. They were sharp enough… if he could get some power behind them.
"Gary," said Caroline, and her voice was almost a whimper.
He swung around.
"There's no cord, Gary. I've looked everywhere.”
No cord!
"Everywhere?" he asked.
She nodded. "There isn't any. I looked everywhere.”
Clothing, he thought, desperately. Strips torn from their clothing. But that would be worse than useless. It would unravel, come apart between his fingers when he needed it the most. Leather? Leather was too stiff to start with, and it would stretch. Wire? Too stiff and no zip to it.
He let the bow-stick fall from his hands, reached up to wipe his face.
"It's getting hot in here," he said.
He twisted around and stared at the forward visors. The smoke was a cloud and there was a ruddy reflection in it, the reflection of the fire that blazed around the ship.
How much longer, he wondered. How much longer before they'd have to open the port and make a dash for it, knowing even as they did that it was a hopeless thing to do, for the Hellhounds would be waiting just outside the port.
The shell of the spaceship crawled with a dull, dead heat, the kind of heat that comes up off a dusty road on a still, hot day in August.
And soon, he knew, it would be a live heat, not a dead heat any longer, but a blasting furnace heat that would pour from every angle of the steel around them, that would shrivel the leather of their shoes and scorch the clothing that they wore. But long before the leather of their shoes shriveled and curled, they would have to make their break, a hopeless dash for freedom that could end in nothing but death at the hands of the things that waited by the port.
Like an oven, like two rabbits roasting in an oven.
We must turn, thought Gary. We must keep turning about so that we will roast evenly on all sides.
"Gary!" cried Caroline.
He swung around.
"Hair?" she asked. "I just thought of it. Would hair make you a bowstring?”
He gasped at the thought. "Hair," he shouted. "Human hair! Why, of course… it's the best material there is.”
Caroline's hands were busy with her braids. "It's long," she said. "I was proud of it and I let it grow.”
"It'll have to be braided," said Gary. "Twisted into a cord.”
"Your knife," she said, and he handed it over.
The knife flashed close to her head and one of the braided strands dangled in her hand.
"We'll have to work fast," said Gary. "We haven't got much time.”
The air was dry and hard to breath. It burned one's lungs and dried out the tissues of the mouth. When he bent over and placed a hand against the steel plates of the ship's deck, the steel was warm, like the pavement on a summer's day.
"You'll have to help," said Gary. "We have to be fast and sure. We can't afford to bungle. We won't have a second chance.”
"Tell me what to do," she said.
Fifteen minutes later, he nodded at her.