how a parachute worked finally brought him grudginglyaround.
The trip seemed to take forever. I was torn by a thousand doubts,saddened by not being allowed to say goodbye to Lois, not a littleafraid of what I would likely run into in Colorado. And all the while,my companion, out of his normal world and time, surrounded by wondersbeyond his wildest nightmares, slept sound as an infant....
A hand shook me awake. In the faint glow of a flashlight I made outthe face of the co-pilot. "Twenty minutes, Mr. Quinlan."
Wetzel was already on his feet. The co-pilot helped us don the'chutes, and five minutes before arrival opened the heavy side door. Arush of wind tore in, but there was no other sound. The jets hadalready cut off and the plane was gradually losing altitude in ashallow dive. As this was not a plane used for parachute troops therewas no wire to hook the 'chute cord to. It meant we would have to pullour own, but both of us had been thoroughly versed in what to do.
"Get ready," shouted the co-pilot.
I grasped the door frame and waited, my heart pounding in my ears.Wetzel stood directly behind me, the muzzle-loader in his hand, thetail of his coonskin cap bouncing in the wind, his eyes narrowed.
"Five," the co-pilot said suddenly. "And a four, and a three, and atwo, and a one--_target_!"
I dived headfirst into blackness. I spun madly earthward, but in theback of my mind a calm voice counted off the seconds. Then I yanked atthe ring-cord, black folds of nylon rustled above me, I heard a sharpreport like the crack of a giant whip, the straps at my shouldersyanked painfully, and I was floating gently down toward thenight-shrouded surface of Colorado.
I landed in a meadow, if that was what they called it this far west. Icame down hard but in the way they had told me would prevent injury.There was no wind to yank me about before I could unship theparachute, and within seconds I was on my feet and searching for somesign of Enoch Wetzel.
* * * * *
Unexpectedly a hand struck me lightly on the back. I was jumping asideand reaching for my gun when the frontiersman's quiet voice reachedme. "You scare mighty easy for an Injun."
I said, "We should be about a mile, two at the most, south of the roadwhere that Army tank picked you up yesterday afternoon. Let's findit."
"Aye."
The land was by no means as flat as I had expected. Fortunately mostof it was relatively open, with only scattered clumps of trees andbushes. There were too many small unexplained night sounds, but noneof these appeared to alarm Wetzel in the slightest, so I managed toignore them. Once we flushed a long-eared rabbit, and it was fiveminutes before I could get my heart out of my throat.
A barbed-wire fence, the first we had encountered, told me we hadreached a road. It wasn't paved or even graveled--just a ribbon ofdirt pointing east and west as straight as an Apache lance. Nothingmoved along it in either direction as far as I could see. A line oftelephone poles bordered one side.
"Recognize any landmarks?" I asked.
Wetzel shook his head.
"We're probably east of where you were found," I said. "We might aswell start walking."
He grunted in agreement and we started out. It was a lovely starlitnight, no moon at this hour, and a lot warmer than I had expected forOctober in Colorado. Now and then the road dipped and climbed, and aswe reached the crest of the third hill, I saw a good-sized farmhouseset well back from the road among a group of out-buildings.
I pointed to the house. "Maybe they can tell us what's been happeningaround here."
Wetzel nodded and we turned in at a fieldstone path leading across thelarge yard to the front door. There were no lights visible fromwithin, no dog barked, no rustle of livestock in the barns or pens.
I saw him just before I stepped on his head. He was lying across thepath in the shadow cast by a gnarled tree, a stocky man in overallsand a blue work shirt. A double-barrelled twelve-gauge shotgun lay onthe ground near his right hand. One side of his chest was black with asticky substance that could have been only one thing, and the top ofhis head was black in the same way, except that no hair was thereanymore....
"_Scalped!_" I whispered hoarsely.
Enoch Wetzel stooped suddenly and picked up the shotgun and wordlesslyheld it out to me. My jaw fell in astonishment. The twin barrels werebent into a rude V.
I licked my lips and backed away. "Let's get out of here, Wetzel."
He tossed the gun aside and we turned back to the road. Neither of ussaid anything for fully a mile. "No human hands could have done thatto a gun," I said. "I'm beginning to believe what you said aboutrobots. Robots that take scalps!"
* * * * *
Another hill, another valley ... and Wetzel caught hold of my arm. "Icome across them sojers about here," he said.
"Okay. From now on you act as guide."
We went on. Several times Wetzel's long, swinging, tireless strideleft me behind and he was forced to wait until I caught up with himagain. I had the feeling that I was holding him back, and there wassomething faintly contemptuous in his obvious patience. But the lifeof a book-writing newspaper man hadn't prepared me for cross-countrymarathons, and there was nothing to be done about it now.
The fairly level, open ground was giving place to a heavily woodedcountryside. After another mile of winding roadway, Wetzel suddenlyturned aside and plunged into the forest. It was as dark as the insideof an undertaker's hat, and after I had banged into a few dozen treesand tripped over a few dead branches, making enough racket to alerthalf the state, Wetzel slowed his pace to a crawl.
Finally I grabbed one of the fringed sleeves of his buckskin shirt tostop him and sank down on a fallen log. "How much farther?"
He leaned his folded arms on the muzzle of his long gun and I couldfeel his deep-set eyes studying me without approval. "'Nother hour;p'rhaps more. Dependin' on you."
"Sure," I said with understandable bitterness. "I'm not the man mygranddaddy was. Nobody is. When I take a walk it's down to the cornerfor a pack of cigarettes. Anything farther than that I use a horselesscarriage. We don't need steel muscles and superior woodcraft thesedays, brother. Just enough eyesight to read the directions on the can,ears sharp enough to hear the boss bawling you out, enough nose tosmell the whiskey on your neighboring straphanger's breath, reflexesquick enough to avoid being run down by some politician's Cadillac. IfI'd have known I was going to be called on to go batting around ajungle, I'd have been down to the Y five days a we--"
He moved like a striking snake. A hand was clapped over my mouth and aknee forced me to the ground. Before I could make an effort to fightback, he placed his mouth close to my ear. "Danger! 'Tis death for somuch as a broken twig!"
He removed his hand and I could breathe again. We lay there side byside close to a huge tree, deep in the shadows. And then faintly asfrom far off I heard the crackle of disturbed undergrowth and, slowlylouder and louder, an evenly spaced thumping sound that seemed toshake the earth.
Through the trees it came, directly toward the spot where Wetzel and Ihugged the ground. It loomed against the night, a tower of steel onjointed legs, a horrible travesty of the human figure, a head likeKing Arthur's helmet. Starlight picked out two round faceted eyes ofglass.
* * * * *
My suddenly dry mouth puckered with the taste of terror. I did notbreathe; even my heart seemed to beat no more. I wanted to close myeyes, but even the lids seemed paralyzed.
For almost a full minute the giant robot remained standing less thanten feet from where Wetzel and I were lying. It seemed to sense thepresence of something of flesh and blood nearby. Its head turnedslowly from side to side in little uneven jerks that put ice cubes inmy veins. Finally the mammoth feet began their rhythmic thumping and amoment later it disappeared among the trees.
After what seemed a long time Wetzel rose to his feet. I got up slowlyand leaned against the tree. "In a little while," I said softly, "I'llwake up. I'll be in bed with my wife, under the nice clean whitesheets
, and I'll know all this was a nightmare brought on by thatcanned salmon we had for dinner."
This, I told myself sharply, wasn't getting me anywhere except nextdoor to hysteria. I ground my teeth together, shuddered uncontrollablyfor a second or two, then was all right again. Or nearly so.
"Let's go," I said.
An hour or so later, after taking a twisting route through what seemedto be the Belgian Congo, Wetzel halted under the spreading branches ofa towering cottonwood. With his lips close to my ear, he whispered,"It's a-settin' out thar midst open ground." He gestured at the wallof blackness hemming us in--blackness you could have cut into hunkswith an ax. "I'm thinkin' thar's plenty 'o them iron critters roamin''round twixt us an' it.