_[2]_
Wang Kulichenko pulled the collar of his uniform coat up closer aroundhis ears and pulled the helmet and face-mask down a bit. It was onlyearly October, but here in the tundra country the wind had a tendency tobe chill and biting in the morning, even at this time of year. Within aweek or so, he'd have to start using the power pack on his horse toelectrically warm his protective clothing and the horse's wrappings, butthere was no necessity for that yet. He smiled a little, as he alwaysdid when he thought of his grandfather's remarks about such "new-fanglednonsense."
"Your ancestors, son of my son," he would say, "conquered the tundra andlived upon it for thousands of years without the need of such womanishthings. Are there no men any more? Are there none who can face naturealone and unafraid without the aid of artifices that bring softness?"
But Wang Kulichenko noticed--though out of politeness he never pointedit out that the old man never failed to take advantage of the electricwarmth of the house when the short days came and the snow blew acrossthe country like fine white sand. And Grandfather never complained aboutthe lights or the television or the hot water, except to grumbleoccasionally that they were old and out of date and that the mail-ordercatalog showed that much better models were available in Vladivostok.
And Wang would remind the old man, very gently, that a paper-forestranger only made so much money, and that there would have to be moresaving before such things could be bought. He did not--_ever_--remindthe old man that he, Wang, was stretching a point to keep hisgrandfather on the payroll as an assistant.
Wang Kulichenko patted his horse's rump and urged her softly to step upher pace just a bit. He had a certain amount of territory to cover, andalthough he wanted to be careful in his checking he also wanted to gethome early.
Around him, the neatly-planted forest of paper-trees spread knotty,alien branches, trying to catch the rays of the winter-waning sun.Whenever Wang thought of his grandfather's remarks about his ancestors,he always wondered, as a corollary, what those same ancestors would havethought about a forest growing up here, where no forest like this onehad ever grown before.
They were called paper-trees because the bulk of their pulp was used tomake paper--they were of no use whatever as lumber--but they weren'treally trees, and the organic chemicals that were leached from themduring the pulping process were of far more value than the paper pulp.
They were mutations of a smaller plant that had been found in thetemperate regions of Mars and purposely changed genetically to grow inthe Siberian tundra country, where the conditions were similar to, butsuperior to, their natural habitat. They looked as though someone hadmanaged to crossbreed the Joshua tree with the cypress and thenpersuaded the result to grow grass instead of leaves. And thephotosynthesis of those grasslike blades depended on an iron-bearingcompound that was more closely related to hemoglobin than tochlorophyll, giving them a rusty red color instead of the normal greenof Earthly plants.
In the distance, Wang heard the whining of the wind increase, and heautomatically pulled his coat a little tighter, even though he noticedno increase in the wind velocity around him.
Then, as the whine became louder, he realized that it was not the wind.
He turned his head toward the sound and looked up. For a long minute hewatched the sky as the sound increased in volume, but he could seenothing at first. Then he caught a glimpse of motion, a dot that washard to distinguish against the cloud-mottled gray sky.
What was it? An air transport in trouble? There were two transpolarroutes that passed within a few hundred miles of here, but no airtransport he had ever seen made a noise like that. Normally they were sohigh up as to be both invisible and inaudible. Must be trouble of somesort.
He reached down to the saddle pack without taking his eyes from themoving speck and took out the radiophone. He held it to his ear andthumbed the call button insistently.
_Grandfather!_ he thought with growing irritation as the seconds passed._Wake up! Come on, old dozer, rouse yourself from your dreams!_
At the same time, he checked his wrist compass and estimated thedirection of flight of the dot and its direction from him. He'd at leastbe able to give the airline authorities some information if the shipfell. He wished there were some way to triangulate its height, velocity,and so on, but he had no need for that kind of thing, so he hadn't theequipment.
"Yes? Yes?" came a testy, dry voice through the earphone.
Quickly Wang gave his grandfather all the information he had on theflying thing. By now the whine had become a shrill roar and the thing inthe air had become a silver-pink fish shape.
"I think it's coming down very close to here," Wang concluded. "You callthe authorities and let them know that one of the aircraft is introuble. I'll see if I can be of any help here. I'll call you backlater."
"As you say," the old man said hurriedly. He cut off.
Wang was beginning to realize that the thing was a spaceship, not anairship. By this time, he could see the thing more clearly. He had neveractually seen a spacecraft, but he'd seen enough of them on televisionto know what they looked like. This one didn't look like a standard typeat all, and it didn't behave like one, but it looked and behaved evenless like an airship, and Wang knew enough to be aware that he did notnecessarily know every type of spaceship ever built.
In shape, it resembled the old rocket-propelled jobs that had been usedfor the first probings into space more than a century before, ratherthan the fat ovoids he was used to. But there were no signs of rocketexhausts, and yet the ship was very obviously slowing, so it must havean inertia drive.
It was coming in much lower now, on a line north of him, headed almostdue east. He urged the mare forward in order to try to keep up with thecraft, although it was obviously traveling at several hundred miles anhour--hardly a horse's pace.
Still, it was slowing rapidly very rapidly. Maybe ...
He kept the mare moving.
The strange ship skimmed along the treetops in the distance anddisappeared from sight. Then there was a thunderous crash, a tearing ofwood and foliage, and a grinding, plowing sound.
For a few seconds afterward, there was silence. Then there came a softrumble, as of water beginning to boil in some huge but distant samovar.It seemed to go on and on and on.
And there was a bluish, fluctuating glow on the horizon.
_Radioactivity?_ Wang wondered. Surely not an atomic-powered shipwithout safety cutoffs in this day and age. Still, there was always thepossibility that the cutoffs had failed.
He pulled out his radiophone and thumbed the call button again.
This time there was no delay. "Yes?"
"How are the radiation detectors behaving there, Grandfather?"
"One moment. I shall see." There was a silence. Then: "No unusualactivity, young Wang. Why?"
Wang told him. Then he asked: "Did you get hold of the air transportauthorities?"
"Yes. They have no missing aircraft, but they're checking with the spacefields. The way you describe it, the thing must be a spaceship of somekind."
"I think so too. I wish I had a radiation detector here, though. I'dlike to know whether that thing is hot or not. It's only a couple ofmiles away--maybe a little more--and if that blue glow is ionizationcaused by radiation, it's much too close for comfort."
"I think any source that strong would register on our detectors here,young Wang," said the old man in his dry voice. "However, I agree thatit might not be the pinnacle of wisdom to approach the source tooclosely."
"Clear your mind of worry, Grandfather," Wang said. "I accept your wordsof wisdom and will go no nearer. Meanwhile, you had best put in a callto Central Headquarters Fire Control. There's going to be a blaze if I'many judge unless they get here fast with plenty of fire equipment."
"I'll see to it," said his grandfather, cutting off.
The bluish glow in the sky had quite died away by now, and the distantrumbling was fading, too. And, oddly enough, there was not much smoke inthe distance. Th
ere was a small cloud of gray vapor that rose,streamer-like, from where the glow had been, but even that wasdissipated fairly rapidly in the chill breeze. Quite obviously therewould be no fire. After several more minutes of watching, he was sure ofit. There couldn't have been much heat produced in the explosion--if itcould really be called an explosion.
Then Wang saw something moving in the trees between himself and the spotwhere the ship had come down. He couldn't see quite what it was, therein the dimness under the hanging, grasslike red strands from the trees,but it looked like someone crawling.
"Halloo, there!" he called out. "Are you hurt?"
There was no answer. Perhaps whoever it was did not understand Russian.Wang's command of English wasn't too good, but he called out in thatlanguage.
Still there was no answer. Whoever it was had crawled out of sight.
Then he realized it couldn't be anyone crawling. No one could even haverun the distance between himself and the ship in the time since it hadhit, much less crawled.
He frowned. A wolf, then? Possibly. They weren't too common, but therewere still some of them around.
He unholstered the heavy pistol at his side.
And as he slid the barrel free, he became the first human being ever tosee the Nipe.
For an instant, as the Nipe came out from behind a tree fifteen feetaway, Wang Kulichenko froze as he saw those four baleful violet eyesglaring at him from the snouted head. Then he jerked up his pistol tofire.
He was much too late. His reflexes were too slow by far. The Nipelaunched himself across the intervening space in a blur of speed thatwould have made a leopard seem slow. Two of the alien's hands slappedaside the weapon with a violence that broke the man's wrist, whileother hands slammed at the human's skull.
Wang Kulichenko hardly had time to be surprised before he died.