I Am Crying All Inside and Other Stories (14 page)

The voice trailed off and stopped. Nicodemus was busy. At the moment, he was the medicine cabinet, fashioning from pure energy those things that a man needed when he had a bruise or two and was scratched up some and might have a headache later.

Mackenzie lay on his back and stared up at the mass of tangled wreckage.

“Wonder how we'll get out of here,” he said.

The wreckage above him stirred. A gadget of some sort fell away from the twisted mass and gashed his cheek. He swore—unenthusiastically.

Someone was calling his name and he answered.

The wreckage was jerked about violently, literally torn apart. Long metal arms reached down, gripped him by the shoulders and yanked him out, none too gently.

“Thanks, Nellie,” he said.

“Shut up,” said Nellie, tartly.

His knees were a bit wabbly and he sat down, staring at the ground car. It didn't look much like a ground car any more. It had smashed full tilt into a boulder and it was a mess.

To his left Smith also was sitting on the ground and he was chuckling.

“What's the matter with you,” snapped Mackenzie.

“Jerked her right up by the roots,” exulted Smith. “So help me, right smack out of the ground. That's one vine that'll never bother anyone again.”

Mackenzie stared in amazement. The vine lay coiled on the ground, stretching back toward the grove, limp and dead. Its smaller tendrils still were entwined in the tangled wreckage of the car.

“It hung on,” gasped Mackenzie. “We didn't break its hold!”

“Nope,” agreed Smith, “we didn't break its hold, but we sure ruined it.”

“Lucky thing it wasn't an electro,” said Mackenzie, “or it would have fried us.”

Smith nodded glumly. “As it is it's loused us up enough. That car will never run again. And us a couple of thousand miles from home.”

Nellie emerged from a hole in the wreckage, with the Encyclopedia under one arm and a mangled radio under the other. She dumped them both on the ground. The Encyclopedia scuttled off a few feet, drilled his taproot into the soil and was at home.

Nellie glowered at Mackenzie. “I'll report you for this,” she declared, vengefully. “The idea of breaking up a nice new car! Do you know what a car costs the company? No, of course, you don't. And you don't care. Just go ahead and break it up. Just like that. Nothing to it. The company's got a lot more money to buy another one. I wonder sometimes if you ever wonder where your pay is coming from. If I was the company, I'd take it out of your salary. Every cent of it, until it was paid for.”

Smith eyed Nellie speculatively. “Some day,” he said, “I'm going to take a sledge and play tin shinny with you.”

“Maybe you got something there,” agreed Mackenzie. “There are times when I'm inclined to think the company went just a bit too far in making those robots cost-conscious.”

“You don't need to talk like that,” shrilled Nellie. “Like I was just a machine you didn't need to pay no attention to. I suppose next thing you will be saying it wasn't your fault, that you couldn't help it.”

“I kept a good quarter mile from all the groves,” growled Mackenzie. “Who ever heard of a vine that could stretch that far?”

“And that ain't all, neither,” yelped Nellie. “Smith hit some of the rifle trees.”

The two men looked toward the grove. What Nellie said was true. Pale wisps of smoke still rose above the grove and what trees were left looked the worse for wear.

Smith clucked his tongue in mock concern.

“The trees were shooting at us,” retorted Mackenzie.

“That don't make any difference,” Nellie yelled. “The rule book says—”

Mackenzie waved her into silence. “Yes, I know. Section 17 of the Chapter on Relations with Extraterrestrial Life:
‘
No employee of this company may employ weapons against or otherwise injure or attempt to injure or threaten with injury any inhabitant of any other planet except in self-defense and then only if every means of escape or settlement has failed.
'
”

“And now we got to go back to the post,” Nellie shrieked. “When we were almost there, we got to turn back. News of what we did will get around. The moss probably has started it already. The idea of ripping a vine up by the roots and shooting trees. If we don't start back right now, we won't get back. Every living thing along the way will be laying for us.”

“It was the vine's fault,” yelled Smith. “It tried to trap us. It tried to steal our car, probably would have killed us, just for the few lousy ounces of radium we have in the motors. That radium was ours. Not the vine's. It belonged to your beloved company.”

“For the love of gosh, don't tell her that,” Mackenzie warned, “or she'll go out on a one-robot expedition, yanking vines up left and right.”

“Good idea,” insisted Smith. “She might tie into an electro. It would peel her paint.”

“How about the radio?” Mackenzie asked Nellie.

“Busted,” said Nellie, crustily.

“And the recording equipment?”

“That tape's all right and I can fix the recorder.”

“Serum jugs busted?”

“One of them ain't,” said Nellie.

“O.K., then,” said Mackenzie, “get back in there and dig out two bags of fertilizer. We're going on. Melody Bowl is only about fifty miles away.”

“We can't do that,” protested Nellie. “Every tree will be waiting for us, every vine—”

“It's safer to go ahead than back,” said Mackenzie. “Even if we have no radio, Harper will send someone out with the flier to look us up when we are overdue.”

He rose slowly and unholstered his pistol.

“Get in there and get that stuff,” he ordered. “If you don't, I'll melt you down into a puddle.”

“All right,” screamed Nellie, in sudden terror. “All right. You needn't get so tough about it.”

“Any more back talk out of you,” Mackenzie warned, “and I'll kick you so full of dents you'll walk stooped over.”

They stayed in the open, well away from the groves, keeping a close watch. Mackenzie went ahead and behind him came the Encyclopedia, humping along to keep pace with them. Back of the Encyclopedia was Nellie, loaded down with the bags of fertilizer and equipment. Smith brought up the rear.

A rifle tree took a shot at them, but the range was too far for accurate shooting. Back a way, an electro vine had come closer with a thunderbolt.

Walking was grueling. The grass was thick and matted and one had to plow through it, as if one were walking in water.

“I'll make you sorry for this,” seethed Nellie. “I'll make—”

“Shut up,” snapped Smith. “For once you're doing a robot's work instead of gumshoeing around to see if you can't catch a nickel out of place.”

They breasted a hill and started to climb the long grassy slope.

Suddenly a sound like the savage ripping of a piece of cloth struck across the silence.

They halted, tensed, listening. The sound came again and then again.

“Guns!” yelped Smith.

Swiftly the two men loped up the slope, Nellie galloping awkwardly behind, the bags of fertilizer bouncing on her shoulders.

From the hilltop, Mackenzie took in the situation at a glance.

On the hillside below a man was huddled behind a boulder, working a gun with fumbling desperation, while farther down the hill a ground car had toppled over. Behind the car were three figures—one man and two insect creatures.

“Groomies!” whooped Smith.

A well-directed shot from the car took the top off the boulder and the man behind it hugged the ground.

Smith was racing quarteringly down the hill, heading toward another boulder that would outflank the trio at the car.

A yell of human rage came from the car and a bolt from one of the three guns snapped at Smith, plowing a smoking furrow no more than ten feet behind him.

Another shot flared toward Mackenzie and he plunged behind a hummock. A second shot whizzed just above his head and he hunkered down trying to push himself into the ground.

From the slope below came the high-pitched, angry chittering of the Groombridgians.

The car, Mackenzie saw, was not the only vehicle on the hillside. Apparently it had been pulling a trailer to which was lashed a tree. Mackenzie squinted against the setting sun, trying to make out what it was all about. The tree, he saw, had been expertly dug, its roots balled in earth and wrapped in sacking that shone wetly. The trailer was canted at an awkward angle, the treetop sweeping the ground, the balled roots high in the air.

Smith was pouring a deadly fire into the hostile camp and the three below were replying with a sheet of blasting bolts, plowing up the soil around the boulder. In a minute or two, Mackenzie knew, they would literally cut the ground out from under Smith. Cursing under his breath, he edged around the hummock, pushing his pistol before him, wishing he had a rifle.

The third man was slinging an occasional, inexpert shot at the three below, but wasn't doing much to help the cause along. The battle, Mackenzie knew, was up to him and Smith.

He wondered abstractedly where Nellie was.

“Probably halfway back to the post by now,” he told himself, drawing a bead on the point from which came the most devastating blaze of firing.

But even as he depressed the firing button, the firing from below broke off in a chorus of sudden screams. The two Groombridgians leaped up and started to run, but before they made their second stride, something came whizzing through the air from the slope below and crumpled one of them.

The other hesitated, like a startled hare, uncertain where to go, and a second thing came whishing up from the bottom of the slope and smacked against his breastplate with a thud that could be heard from where Mackenzie lay.

Then, for the first time Mackenzie saw Nellie. She was striding up the hill, her left arm holding an armful of stones hugged tight against her metal chest, her right arm working like a piston. The ringing clang of stone against metal came as one of the stones missed its mark and struck the ground car.

The human was running wildly, twisting and ducking, while Nellie pegged rock after rock at him. Trying to get set for a shot at her, the barrage of whizzing stones kept him on the dodge. Angling down the hill, he finally lost his rifle when he tripped and fell. With a howl of terror, he bolted up the hillside, his life blanket standing out almost straight behind him. Nellie pegged her last stone at him, then set out, doggedly loping in his wake.

Mackenzie screamed hoarsely at her, but she did not stop. She passed out of sight over the hill, closely behind the fleeing man.

Smith whooped with delight. “Look at our Nellie go for him,” he yelled. “She'll give him a working over when she nails him.”

Mackenzie rubbed his eyes. “Who was he?” he asked.

“Jack Alexander,” said Smith. “Grant said he was around again.”

The third man got up stiffly from behind his boulder and advanced toward them. He wore no life blanket, his clothing was in tatters, his face was bearded to the eyes.

He jerked a thumb toward the hill over which Nellie had disappeared. “A masterly military maneuver,” he declared. “Your robot sneaked around and took them from behind.”

“If she lost that recording stuff and the fertilizer, I'll melt her down,” said Mackenzie, savagely.

The man stared at them. “You are the gentlemen from the trading post?” he asked.

They nodded, returning his gaze.

“I am Wade,” he said. “J. Edgerton Wade—”

“Wait a second,” shouted Smith. “Not
the
J. Edgerton Wade? The lost composer?”

The man bowed, whiskers and all. “The same,” he said. “Although I had not been aware that I was lost. I merely came out here to spend a year, a year of music such as man has never heard before.”

He glared at them. “I am a man of peace,” he declared, almost as if daring them to argue that he wasn't, “but when those three dug up Delbert, I knew what I must do.”

“Delbert?” asked Mackenzie.

“The tree,” said Wade. “One of the music trees.”

“Those lousy planet-runners,” said Smith, “figured they'd take that tree and sell it to someone back on Earth. I can think of a lot of big shots who'd pay plenty to have one of those trees in their back yard.”

“It's a lucky thing we came along,” said Mackenzie, soberly. “If we hadn't, if they'd got away with it, the whole planet would have gone on the warpath. We could have closed up shop. It might have been years before we dared come back again.”

Smith rubbed his hands together, smirking. “We'll take back their precious tree,” he declared, “and that will put us in solid! They'll give us their tunes from now on, free for nothing, just out of pure gratitude.”

“You gentlemen,” said Wade, “are motivated by mercenary factors but you have the right idea.”

A heavy tread sounded behind them and when they turned they saw Nellie striding down the hill. She clutched a life blanket in her hand.

“He got away,” she said, “but I got his blanket. Now I got a blanket, too, just like you fellows.”

“What do you need with a life blanket?” yelled Smith. “You give that blanket to Mr. Wade. Right away. You hear me.”

Nellie pouted. “You won't let me have anything. You never act like I'm human—”

“You aren't,” said Smith.

“If you give that blanket to Mr. Wade,” wheedled Mackenzie, “I'll let you drive the car.”

“You would?” asked Nellie, eagerly.

“Really,” said Wade, shifting from one foot to the other, embarrassed.

“You take that blanket,” said Mackenzie. “You need it. Looks like you haven't eaten for a day or two.”

“I haven't,” Wade confessed.

“Shuck into it then and get yourself a meal,” said Smith.