The original idea was to cover a pathway a meter or so wide across the danger strip, but it quickly became clear that there was not enough dirt for this. The Observer changed the plan to a better and quicker one, that of covering only a few small patches and being careful to step exactly on these while departing. It worked perfectly.
Six human beings were waiting just inside the glass. One of them carried a broom, with which she scattered the dirt from the protected areas. Another person had a bag of the splinters, and renewed the places which Bones and broom had made safe.
Without thinking, the Observer snatched the broom from its wielder, dashed across the clearing, and began to sweep a path to the outside. If the people had had to go around, this might have worked; but their feet were protected, and they could run across the glass without having to clear a way. Once more Bones was carried back, and the swept area restored to deadliness.
So far the contest had been conducted very politely, with neither side using violence. Bones was more than ever convinced that the whole thing was a test, and still felt cooperative if slightly impatient.
This attitude was modified on the second carry when one of the people, accidentally or otherwise, dropped the heavy end of his load onto the glass area. Once again the Observer felt agony much too great to be compatible with sympathy. For a moment the temptation to hurl the nearest human beings off their feet and onto the glass almost won out; but the realization that they were intelligent beings in some ways comparable to Observers, however different in detail, throttled the impulse.
The glass this time was at the upper end of a fin and adjacent body, and could be reached with handling tendrils, so Bones ignored the test for a while and concentrated on removing the stuff.
The injuries already sustained had, as expected, started the budding reaction, and nothing could be done about that; but there was no reason to suffer more pain than necessary.
By the time the glass was gone and the pain reduced to a dull ache, the sun was well down in the west. Bones had decided to make no more attempts by daylight, in spite of the risk that people might take their test subject indoors for the night. This might even be helpful, if the same individuals held the ropes. Even if they didn’t, a chance of using the earlier plan might present itself; if this happened before they reached the air lock, the situation would be perfect. The moon would not rise for some hours after sunset, and the comet of course would be four hours later still.
So Bones let night fall without giving the experimenters the pleasure of another contest. For some time after dark it looked as though the experiment were to run through the night — quite reasonably, the Observer considered — but at last there came a sound of human conversation from the direction of the air lock. Bones got “afoot” — the great body did need rest at times — and waited tensely.
This silhouetted the tall form against the starlit sky, and there was more sound from the opposite direction. It was the quick intake of a human breath, followed by the exclamation, “Bones!” in a voicewhich even the native could recognize.
“Bones!” Kahvi repeated. “Come on, quickly! The Hillers are coming, and they plan to hurt you — to kill you if they can! Come this way!”
Bones, unfortunately, could do nothing of the sort. The glass was in the way. This was bad enough, though it seemed unlikely that the Hillers could actually kill the rather resilient Observer body; but there was something worse. The woman was approaching. With her unshod feet she would be as vulnerable to the glass as Bones — perhaps more so, considering the thin human skin. The Observer gestured frantically for her to keep back, but the detailed signals simply could not be made out in the darkness. She would be into the-splinters in a few seconds; and now it could be seen that little Danna was with her.
XII
Menace, Misunderstood
The wait was short; the approached figures entered the water without a pause. Kahvi had been collecting spare cartridges by touch; now she added some slices of beef and bags of milk from the food plants, and wrapped the former in tissue. Some of the Hillers were swimming, now.
“All right, Dan,” she whispered. “Plug in. Into the water, and hold onto my harness. I’ll swim, you stick!” The child gave her mother’s arm a silent squeeze of assent, and they slipped quietly into the sea together. Kahvi headed north as fast as she dared. The drag on her harness was lighter than it might have been; evidently the little one still wanted to feel useful, and was swimming with her feet. They stayed as close to the bottom as possible, keeping the wavering moon behind and to their left, though it was increasingly hard to see in the growing daylight.
Presently the water became too shallow for swimming. Kahvi pulled Danna around in front of her, touched the child’s breathing mask in a gesture for silence, turned her face down, and then, indicating that they should stay side by side, began to crawl slowly and carefully onward. Their course soon took them out of the water.
They had reached the nearer of the Sayre islets. It was only a couple of hundred meters from the anchorage, but was heavily overgrown with all sorts of vegetation and offered excellent concealment.
Kahvi did not intend to remain here indefinitely; she was hoping that the Hillers, not finding her at the raft, would assume she had gone toward the city. There were no air sources in this direction. She would get back home by darkness; there was enough air in their cartridges to last through the day. After nightfall she would move the raft behind the islets; Earrin would know where to look for it, and it could be hoped that the Hillers would not guess.
Well into the jungle and away from the water, the two fugitives constructed a comfortable nest from the abundant vegetation and settled down.
The mother wanted to sleep, but Danna wanted explanations. Kahvi made the situation as clear as possible, keeping her voice to a whisper which barely got through her mask, but didn’t try to explain what might happen to Danna if the Hillers caught her; considering Bones’ share in her upbringing, it was conceivable that the child’s curiosity would override her caution. She had occasion ally expressed curiosity about what it was like in cities.
By the time the conversation was finished it was full daylight, though the sun was not quite up. The moon was almost invisible in the golden sky, and the comet had faded entirely from view. Kahvi stretched out to sleep, after whispering to her daughter, “You should sleep if you can, because there’ll be a lot to do later. I know it’s pretty bright for sleeping, though. If you can’t, at least stay close to the nest while I do. We’ll have to be rested before the sun goes down — maybe sooner.” With that, the mother closed her eyes and relaxed as completely as possible.
The child soberly examined everything in sight. She looked closely at slime-saturated soil and plant-furred rocks, pulled branches, leaves, and bark from the larger growths surrounding the nest and compared them minutely, and even stood up to see what could be seen at greater distances. She was careful, however, to make sure that she could not be seen from the south; she kept as close as possibleto a densely-growing cordage bush taller than she was, peeping cautiously out from behind it. She even ventured a few meters from the nest, but obeyed the injunction to keep in sight of her mother. Her training had been effective. She found several objects, mostly pseudolife forms, which were new to her; these she collected carefully and brought back to the nest for her mother to explain when she woke up.
One was an Evolution plant, the artificial organism which produced enzymes affecting the stable structures of most of the other pseudo forms. It was this fabrication which made it possible for humanity to continue to manipulate the artificial organisms in a rough trial-and-error fashion long after human technological culture had decayed, just as some of the “countercultures” of an earlier time had been able to use and even maintain and repair motor vehicles while not being able to make them.