He reached into the box and came up with a machine copy of what was obviously a page from some old book. It showed a drawing of something very much like the dart he had in his other hand. " You see, " he said, " I've recreated an artifact from the past. But I had to use my imagination to duplicate almost everything about it. To begin with, our ancestors used metal projectiles. The body of the dart and even the needle itself was metal. We have some metal, but no way to machine it into this sort of shape. " "I understand," said Hal. "But clearly you found an answer to that." "Quite right. I didn't have metal I could work with, but I did have glass that was as strong as metal and as flexible as I wanted to make it, something our ancestors of that time didn't have, and I could work with it more easily than they could work with their earlier version of glass. So this dart you see is made entirely of glass. " "Well done," said Hal. "I'm glad you think so," Tannaheh went on. "But actually the problem of what to make the dart out of was small compared to finding the drugs needed to produce the effect you told me you wanted. Now, when the dart hits..."
He laid the drawing back in the box, fumbled around among the packing and came up with a small square of wood about three times as thick as his hand. "The needle is pushed back into the body of the dart, this cylinder here-" He pushed on the dart and the needle shortened to perhaps four millimeters. "as you see, injecting the drug. I'll be giving you a chart showing what parts of the body you should try to shoot the needle into for best results. Then, once the drug has been injected, the cylinder falls off, again as you see"
He let go of the body of the dart and it fell to the floor, leaving the needle still sticking in the wood with only a length of what looked like string trailing from it. "The needle," he went on, "is coated with a sterilizing agent, which means you can pull it out without worrying about having started an infection. Not only that, but it's thin enough and sharp enough so that the person hit by the dart isn't going to feel much, and the only evidence that'll be left is going to be a small red mark on the skin surface. No blood, probably. Afterwards, the site of the needle entry is going to itch, rather than hurt, once the tranquilizing agent wears off, and this, together with the red dot, will make it seem like the person was bitten by some insect. No one should suspect." "Good," said Hal. "Old Man, you and Luke had better try out the arrows with the weight of the dart on their ends. I assume," he turned to Tannaheh, "you've got some practice darts there without the drug in them, which can be used without our worrying about blunting the needles on something we're going to have to use later?" "Of course," said Tannaheh. "I'll give them to you in just a second. But first let me tell you how I came up with substitutes for the drugs used in the old Earth darts." "Go ahead," said Hal patiently. The hours of night were short, but he could give this man, who had after all done something absolutely necessary for them, the courtesy of listening to him for a little while longer. "The original darts described in my books," said Tannaheh, used several drugs which weren't difficult to obtain back on Earth, even in those days, but impossible for me to get here. There were several mixtures. One of the very good ones was ketanine hydrochloride combined with xylazine hydrochloride and atropine. The atropine was there essentially to keep the subjects under, but breathing, after they'd been knocked down by the other two - which were very quick acting."
He paused, obviously waiting. "I can see where you'd have a problem," Hal said. "A large problem," said Tannaheh. "I had native substances that could duplicate the knock-down effects of the two hydrochlorides, but they wouldn't mix with the closest native equivalent to atropine derived from one of our night-blooming plants. Mixed, they started interacting chemically, immediately."
He paused again. "So what did you do?" Hal asked. "Obviously the only solution was to have you inject the atropinelike drug after the earlier ones were already in the blood streams of your targets!" said Tannaheh. "And so you made two kinds of darts?" "That was the first thing I thought of," Tannaheh said. "Then I had a better idea."
He picked up the shaft which had fallen from the end of the dart head driven into the piece of wood. "You'll notice," he said, passing the detached shaft back to Hal, "how the shaft is marked with a circle some twelve millimeters back from the end where the needle comes out? Break that end off."
Hal broke it off. It came free very easily, revealing another. somewhat shorter, needle projecting from what was now the new, effective end of the shaft. "You see?" said Tannaheh. "You can shoot it from the bow again, or use it by hand to inject the atropinelike drug directly. Be careful of giving anyone a double dose, though. It's in very dilute form, here, but still dangerous. In its natural state, as part of the sap of the plant you get it from, it's a very effective poison. "You've made whatever we can do down there possible," said Hal. "I think you know how grateful everyone is to you-" "Nothing!" said Tannaheh. He waved his hand lightly. "I'd like to tell you, though, what you've actually got by way of chemicals there in these darts-" "is this something we need to know to use them?" interrupted Hal.
"Well, no. But- " Then, if you don't mind, you can tell us all about it later," said Hal. "We've only got so many hours of darkness to work in and a lot to do. I'm sure you understand."
"-well, of course," said Tannaheh. "Believe me," Hal said to him, more softly, "later, when there's time, we'll want to know. But right now there's a lot to be done." "Of course. Of course," said Tannaheh, taking a step back from the desk with its open box of darts. "Forgive me." "There's nothing to forgive." Hal turned to the rest of the room.
While they had been speaking, the door had been opening to let people in, and now there was a small crowd of them in Amid's office. They had lined up against the front wall of the office on either side of the door. "Now," said Hal, "which of you are night foragers who can move quietly down there among the vegetation and rocks? Put your hands up so I can identify you."
Eight men and women to the right of the door as Hal faced it responded. "And who's the best?" "Onete," said several voices at once, with several more following - all, in fact, but Onete herself, who had been one of those standing there and holding up her arm.
"Good," said Hal. "Which of you can use a bow and arrow?"
There was some hesitation. Those who had their hands up lowered them and looked at each other, Finally, two of them raised their hands hesitantly again.
Hal smiled at them, to relax them. "I take it," he said, "this means you two can shoot an arrow from a bow, but you haven't much faith in yourselves as far as being able to hit the mark?"
The two arms went down and the heads above them nodded. "Old Man," said Hal, turning to him, "and you, Luke, do you suppose you could take these two and any other two who want to volunteer-" "Me," said Calas, quickly and stubbornly. '"All right," said Hal, "and one other volunteer, then. Take them to some inside space where there's light to see a target at about six to ten meters, and see if you can teach them something about hitting what they aim at." "The corridors in the dormitories'd give us the distance," said Luke to Old Man.
Old Man nodded. "And there are ways of hitting the point desired, that call for belief in self more than practice," he said. Both men began to move toward the door. "Just a minute," said Hal. "In addition to the six who feel most sure about their ability to move in the dark quietly, we're going to need about six more who'll be needed to help carry. For the benefit of those of you who've just come in, what we're going to do is go down to that camp where Artur and Cee are, try to put the soldiers out of action, and bring Cee and her uncle back up here to the ledge. We'll need a stretcher for Artur, and that stretcher will need at least four people to carry it at any given time."