Chapter III

Spaced shadows resolved themselves into a double rank of parked terrapins, forming concentric circles about the encampment. Such was the pattern of a terrapin camp from time immemorial; it was safety against attack by other raiders of the wasteland, and on each day one ring could go forth to hunt, the other remain in place to guard the women, the young, and the booty.

Even here the warm night air quivered ever so faintly with sound from the east, the endless motion of the great trailer herd. By morning it would have passed, and the hunters would follow it southward.

Within the great circle the women and older children were busy now, while the men lounged about, talking quietly, boasting perfunctorily of the day's deeds. The first day's hunt had been only a hit-and-run affair at twilight, but in the midst torches flared sputteringly over the remains of dismantled trailers; there were neat piles of steel beam-lengths and undamaged armor plate, and sprawling heaps of metal scrap that would be abandoned when the troop rolled south. To one side a red glow came from the maw of a small furnace, melting aluminum to be made into castings; the terrapins did not smelt steel, leaving that to the giant scavenger machines that followed the herds at a more respectful distance. Fuel, food, and usable ammunition had naturally been transferred first of all from the captured trailers to the tanks and storage compartments of the terrapins.

From the shadows of the inner circle a voice hailed Torcred by name, and its owner came out into the light to meet him--a short man, unusually plump for a terrapin, with heavy black eyebrows that seemed pasted high on his round bald forehead, giving him a look of perpetual astonishment.

He greeted the newcomer effusively. "My dear Torcred! We came very near giving you up! And from the look of your machine, you must have had a narrow squeak."

Torcred frowned imperceptibly. It seemed an evil omen that he should be met by the only one among his fellow-terrapins whom he actively disliked--Helsed, the talker, who was always close to the chief's ear in council, but far from his side in the battle.

"That's right," admitted Torcred curtly, and started to brush past the other and his brimming questions. But he found himself face to face with another terrapin who had risen from the shadow, a taller man whose hair shaded from the usual black into gray, and whose face was permanently lined in a stern expression of command. He was Vazcled, the chief. Torcred fell back a step and inclined his head in salute.

"What happened to you?" inquired Vazcled quietly.

"I was attacked," said the younger man with reluctance.

"By what?"

"An aero."

Even the chief's face showed surprise, and the listening Helsed's eyebrows went up steeply. Vazcled said, "You are lucky to have escaped so easily."

"I didn't escape. I shot it down."

Helsed exclaimed aloud and stared at his brother-terrapin enviously. The chief's withered lips smiled. "Such victories are rare," he said approvingly. "I know of only two or three in the past fifty years. You must tell us the story tonight, and Hiyik can make a song of it.... Did you bring any trophy from the wreck?"

Torcred licked his lips nervously. "No," he said. "It fell a long way off...."

"Well, no matter," the chief shrugged. "We will find the spot on the back trail." Already--Helsed, the eager newsbearer, had dashed off without waiting for details--they were surrounded by a growing audience, afire to know more about Torcred's almost unheard-of exploit.

* * * * *

Torcred, dazed, found himself sitting atop someone else's machine, relating his battle with the aero to an enthusiastic mob of his fellow-warriors. The terrapins lost their customary reserved poise and grew festive; while Torcred almost choked on the lies with which he ended his narrative, they pressed food and drink on him and made him go back over the most stirring parts. Then Hiyik the poet had his turn, and retold the story in improvised verses, his chanting voice mingling with the hiss and clangor of the workshop in the midst of the circle on whose rim the warriors were gathered.

But the hero of it all sat moody, well-nigh oblivious, his brow wrinkling painfully from time to time. The thoughts he was thinking hurt. For what he was planning was treason, what he had already done was treason--more than that, sacrilege, abomination, a trampling of the laws that kept the diverse races of Earth eternally apart.... Lesser breeds might hold such laws lightly--but not the proud terrapins. For them all other peoples were enemies, or prey, or vermin beneath contempt.

The bird-folk were enemies. And the crime of giving aid and comfort to an enemy deserved the ultimate in punishment.

Torcred's mouth tightened grimly at the thought, and the logically following reflection that he, Torcred the Terrapin, must have gone quite insane. But even here, in the midst of his noisy comrades, he could not forget the glimpse of a strange beauty that had fallen out of the sky to destroy him--if not by the swift vengeance of outraged tradition, then by returning and returning to haunt him all his days.

With a chill he realized that the chief was watching him thoughtfully, and he strove to give his features a dignified impassivity appropriate to the modesty of the feted hero.

The face of Helsed, hugging the spotlight as always, was at his elbow, wearing a vapid smile which Torcred's hypersensitized suspicions saw as a knowing smirk. And in reality, he knew, the fat terrapin's air of loud thickheadedness masked a sharp scheming brain--and Helsed hated him. Helsed had talked and toadied his way into the graces of the council of elders and the chief, and he had hopes--the latter's successor must be chosen soon from among the younger men. And in the taciturn Torcred he saw his most dangerous rival, for the young warrior's deeds spoke for him.

Sunk in thought, Torcred hardly realized the passage of time or that the gathering was breaking up. Hiyik had ceased his recitative. One by one the terrapins yawned, stretched, and moved off toward their own vehicles; it was late, and tomorrow, first full day of the great hunt, would be hard. The noisy labor in the camp's center went on unabated.

Torcred forced himself to yawn and stretch as elaborately as the others, to rise unhurriedly to his feet. His plans, such as they were, were complete; during the next day's farflung maneuvers and attacks on the trailer herd, he should be able to slip off unnoticed and, traveling fast, reach the vicinity of the aeros' nearest eyrie. There he would leave the bird-girl. Whatever her fate then, she would be alive among her own kind; and perhaps later she would be grateful to the terrapin who had befriended her. Beyond that his thoughts did not go....

As he started to walk away, the chief's voice rooted him to the spot.

"Wait a moment. I understand your machine was damaged; perhaps it needs immediate repairs."

* * * * *

Torcred turned swiftly toward him. "No!" he exclaimed hastily. "There's not much damage--a few bullet holes, a dent. No use bothering with it now."

"You never can tell." Vazcled rose; despite the hour's lateness the wiry old man seemed untouched by fatigue. The bright eyes that dwelt on Torcred's face held only friendly concern. "You are confident now; but a failure of mechanism can betray the bravest. Let me look your terrapin over and judge for myself."

The chief's wish was a command. Torcred's spirit quailed as, walking like an automaton, he led the way. He derived a little comfort from noting that Helsed had already disappeared; when worst came to worst, he would at least be spared, in the moment of disaster, the sight of his enemy's triumph.... And he could still hope that the chief would content himself with an outside examination.

Vazcled studied without speaking the stove-in nose of the terrapin. His experienced hands felt out the damage that was invisible in the uncertain light; he clicked his tongue.

"That's no dent," he said at last. "You ran head-on into a shell. I'd better look at it from inside; open the door."

With wooden fingers Torcred produced the key. Silently he handed it to the chief; he did not think, in that whirling moment, of the symbolism of the action, but Vazcled stared at him curiously before turning to the door. For a terrapin to surrender the key of his vehicle was a gesture of abject self-humiliation.

The simple lock clicked. Torcred fell back a step, his shoulders hunched tensely and his hand convulsively closing on the haft of his dagger.

The door swung open. The chief fumbled and switched on the inside light; he grunted softly, squinting up at the fore part of the roof. Past him Torcred could see the whole cramped interior of the armored car; it was empty.

Across the chaos of his mind fluttered one clear thought; the girl had escaped. And he was at once limp with relief and taut with a new and formless fear, mixed with an odd empty sense of loss.

Vazcled grunted again, emerging. Pressing the key into Torcred's damp palm, he said pointedly, "Keep that."

Matter-of-factly he added. "You need repairs. Drive into the center, then look up somebody with room for an extra sleeper. You won't be called for guard duty; you've earned a good night's rest." The chief's wrinkled hand rested affectionately on the young man's shoulder, but to Torcred's imagination it burned like fire.

His mumbled response was swallowed by a sudden burst of noise from the outer periphery. A voice and then voices cried out confusedly, and then a light blazed, silhouetting the parked terrapins. And Torcred was already running among them, but even as he ran his world was crashing and crumbling about his ears, and he knew he had been most cruelly mocked by fate.

* * * * *

On the edge of the encampment a space of sand was white in the glare of lights. White too was the face of the girl who swayed, fast in the grip of two men. Others pressed round with flashing knives, and more warriors, half-dressed and sleepy-eyed, appeared to reinforce them. They looked questioningly at one another; somehow the appearance of a lone alien being, with no machine in evidence, was more sinisterly alarming than would have been the onslaught of a horde of armed and armored juggernauts.

Torcred halted and stood rigid, his gaze stabbing into the knot of men. And before him they opened out, pushing the girl to the fore, as if in accusation. The next moment he realized that that was because the chief stood beside him. And he saw that one of the bird-girl's arms was pinioned by a sentry, and that Helsed, puffing himself with menace grasped the other.

"Silence!" roared Vazcled's voice of command. "Bring her nearer. Where did she come from? What is she?"

No one answered at once. Torcred's eyes were on the bird-girl. For a moment her gaze met his, then she looked past him. On her pale face was written the fierce pride he had seen before, and he knew she could never betray him.

"Shall we make her answer?" Helsed grinned ingratiatingly at the chief, and as if in demonstration of the methods he proposed, his grip tightened on the girl's arm, twisting. She winced and closed her eyes, making no sound.

And Torcred, his remnants of caution whirled away like chips on a flood tide of fury, was on the torturer in one catlike spring. He would have used his knife, but he had forgotten it; his fist, with all his weight behind it, crashed squarely into Helsed's hateful grin. Helsed was hurled backward and rolled over limply on the sand.

Torcred stood watching him, poised to renew the attack. The other man who had been holding the girl involuntarily released her and stepped back, leaving her standing alone beside Torcred--but she too shrank away from him; his berserk rage had made him terrible. The surrounding warriors hesitated, and behind them, from among the cars or from vantages atop them, the women and children stared open-mouthed.

In the stunned silence, Torcred could hear the whisper of night wind, and from far away the faint mutter of gunfire as nocturnal machines of prey still took their toll of the trailer herd. He had other random impressions: the feel of the soft sand underfoot, the hard brightness of the stars overhead, the odor of fuel and heated metal that hung about the camp.

Then he turned, straightening: his eyes sought out Vazcled beyond the ring of men who were warily beginning to close on him. And he laughed, having cast away his world.

"See, chief!" he shouted. "See, terrapins! I brought home a trophy, after all!"