A Surface Raid

Harl left the third level, catching a tube car going North. The tube car carried him swiftly through one of the big junction bubbles and down to the fifth level. Harl caught an exciting, fugitive glimpse of people and outlets, a complex tangle of mid-period business and milling confusion.

Then the bubble was behind him and he was nearing his destination, the vast industrial fifth level, sprawling below everything else like some gigantic, soot-encrusted octopus of the night's misrule.

The gleaming tube car ejected him and continued on its way, disappearing down the tube. Harl bounded agilely into the receiving strip and slowed to a stop, still on his feet, swaying expertly back and forth.

A few minutes later he reached the entrance to his father's office. Harl raised his hand and the code door slid back. He entered, his heart thumping with excitement. The time had come.

Edward Boynton was in the planning department studying the outline for a new robot bore when he was informed that his son had entered the main office.

"I'll be right back," Boynton said, making his way past his policy staff and up the ramp into the office.

"Hello, Dad," Harl exclaimed, squaring his shoulders. Father and son exchanged handclasps. Then Harl sat down slowly. "How are things?" he asked. "I guess you expected me."

Then Edward Boynton seated himself behind his desk. "What do you want here?" he demanded. "You know I'm busy."

Harl smiled thinly across at his father. In his brown industrial-planner uniform, Edward Boynton towered above his young son, a massive man with broad shoulders and thick blond hair. His blue eyes were cold and hard as he returned the young man's level gaze.

"I happened to come into some information." Harl glanced uneasily around the room. "Your office isn't tapped, is it?"

"Of course not," the elder Boynton assured him.

"No screens or ears?" Harl relaxed a little. "I've learned that you and several others from your department are going up to the surface soon." Harl leaned eagerly toward his father. "Up to the surface -- on a raid for saps."

Ed Boynton's face darkened. "Where did you hear that?" He gazed intently at his son. "Did anyone in this department -- ?"

"No," Harl said quickly. "No one informed. I picked up the information on my own, in connection with my educational activities."

Ed Boynton began to understand. "I see. You were experimenting with channel taps, cutting across the confidential channels. Like they teach you to do in communications."

"That's right. I happened to pick up a conversation between you and Robin Turner concerning the raid."

The atmosphere in the room became easier, more friendly. Ed Boynton relaxed, settling back in his chair. "Go on," he urged.

"It was mere chance. I had cut across ten or twelve channels, holding each one for only a second. I was using the Youth League equipment. All at once I recognized your voice. So I stayed on and caught the whole conversation."

"Then you heard most of it."

Harl nodded. "Exactly when are you going up, Dad? Have you set an exact date?"

Ed Boynton frowned. "No," he said, "I haven't. But it will be sometime this week. Almost everything is arranged."

"How many are going?" Harl asked.

"We're taking up one mother ship and about thirty eggs. All from this department."

"Thirty eggs? Sixty or seventy men."

"That's right." Ed Boynton stared intently at his son. "It won't be a big raid. Nothing compared to some of the Directorate raids of the past few years."

"But big enough for a single department."

Ed Boston's eyes flickered. "Be careful, Harl. If such loose talk should get out --"

"I know. I cut the recorder off as soon as I picked up the drift of your talk. I know what would happen if the Directorate found out a department was raiding without authorization -- for its own factories."

"Do you really know? I wonder."

"One mother ship and thirty eggs," Harl exclaimed, ignoring the remark. "You'll be on the surface for about forty hours?"

"About. It depends on what luck we have."

"How many saps are you after?"

"We need at least two dozen," the elder Boynton replied.

"Males?"

"For the most part. A few females, but males primarily."

"For the basic-industry factory units, I assume." Harl straightened in his chair. "All right, then. Now that I know more about the raid itself I can get down to business."

He stared hard at his father.

"Business?" Boynton glanced up sharply. "Precisely what do you mean?"

"My exact reason for coming down here." Harl leaned across the desk toward his father, his voice clipped and intense. "I'm going along with you on the raid. I want to go along -- to get some saps for myself."

For a moment there was an astonished silence. Then Ed Boynton laughed. "What are you talking about? What do you know about saps?"

The inner door slid back, and Robin Turner came quickly into the office. He joined Boynton behind the desk.

"He can't go," Turner said flatly. "It would increase the risks tenfold."

Harl glanced up. "There was an ear in here, then."

"Of course. Turner always listens in." Ed Boynton nodded, regarding his son thoughtfully. "Why do you want to go along?"

"That's my concern," Harl said, his lips tightening.

Turner rasped: "Emotional immaturity. A sub-rational adolescent craving for adventure and excitement. There's still a few like him who can't throw the old brain completely off. After two hundred years you'd think --"

"Is that it?" Boynton demanded. "You have some non-adult desire to go up and see the surface?"

"Perhaps," Harl admitted, flushing a little.

"You can't come," Ed Boynton stated emphatically. "It's far too dangerous. We're not going up there for romantic adventure. It's a job -- a grim, hard, exacting job. The saps are getting wary. It's becoming more and more difficult to bring back a full load. We can't spare any of our eggs for whatever romantic foolishness --"

"I know it's getting hard," Harl interrupted. "You don't have to convince me that it's almost impossible to round up a whole load." Harl looked up defiantly at Turner and his father. He chose his words carefully. "And I know that's why the Directorate considers private raids a major crime against the State."

Silence.

Finally, Ed Boynton sighed, a reluctant admiration in his stare. He looked his son slowly up and down. "Okay, Harl," he said. "You win."

Turner said nothing. His face was hard.

Harl got quickly to his feet. "Then it's all settled. I'll return to my quarters and get prepared. As soon as you're ready to go, notify me at once. I'll join you at the launching stage on the first level."

The elder Boynton shook his head. "We're not leaving from the first level. It would be too risky." His voice was heavy. "There are too many Directorate guards prowling around. We have the ship down here at fifth level, in one of the warehouses."

"Where shall I meet you, then?"

Ed Boynton stood up slowly. "We'll notify you, Harl. It will be soon, I promise you. In a couple of periods, at the most. Be at our vocational quarters."

"The surface is completely cool, isn't it?" Harl asked. "There aren't any radioactive areas left?"

"It's been cool for fifty years," his father assured him.

"Then I won't have to worry about a radiation shield," Harl said. "One more thing, Dad. What language will we have to use? Can we speak our regular --"

Ed Boynton shook his head. "No. The saps never mastered any of the rational semantic systems. We'll have to revert to the old traditional forms."

Harl's face fell. "I don't know any of the traditional forms. They're not being taught anymore."

Ed Boynton shrugged. "It doesn't matter."

"How about their defenses? What sort of weapons should I bring? Will a screen and blast rifle be sufficient?"

"Only the screen is of vital importance," the elder Boynton said. "When the saps see us they scatter in all directions. One look at us and off they go."

"Fine," Harl said. "I'll have my screen checked over." He moved toward the door. "I'll go back up to the third level. I'll be expecting your signal. I'll have my equipment ready."

"All right," Ed Boynton said.

The two men watched the door slide shut after the youth.

"Quite a boy," Turner muttered.

"Turning out to be something, after all," Ed Boynton murmured. "He'll go a long way." He rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. "But I wonder how he'll act up on the surface during the raid."

Harl met with his group leader on the third level, an hour after he left his father's office.

"Then it's all settled?" Fashold asked, looking up from his report spools.

"All settled. They're going to signal me as soon as the ship is ready."

"By the way." Fashold put down the spools, pushing the scanner back. "I've learned something about the saps. As a YL leader I have access to the Directorate files. I've learned something virtually no one else knows."

"What is it?" asked Harl.

"Harl, the saps are related to us. They're a different species, but they're very closely related to us."

"Go on," Harl urged.

"At one time there was only the one species -- the saps. Their full name is homo sapiens. We grew out of them, developed from them. We're biogenetic mutants. The change occurred during the Third World War, two and a half centuries ago. Up to that time there had never been any technos."

"Technos?"

Fashold smiled. That's what they called us at first. When they thought of us only as a separate class, and not as a distinct race. Technos. That was their name for us. That was how they always referred to us."

"But why? It's a strange name. Why technos, Fashold?"

"Because the first mutants appeared among the technocratic classes and gradually spread throughout all other educated classes. They appeared among scientists, scholars, field workers, trained groups, all the various specialized classes."

"And the saps didn't realize --"

"They thought of us only as a class, as I've just told you. That was during the Third World War and after. It was during the Final War that we fully emerged as recognizably and profoundly different. It became evident that we weren't just another specialized offshoot of homo sapiens. Not just another class of men more educated than the rest, with higher intellectual capacities."

Fashold gazed off into the distance. "During the Final War we emerged and showed ourselves for what we really were -- a superior species supplanting homo sapiens in the same way that homo sapiens had supplanted Neanderthal man."

Harl considered what Fashold had said. "I didn't realize we were so closely related to them. I had no idea we had emerged so lately."

Fashold nodded. "It was only two centuries ago, during the war that ravaged the surface of the planet. Most of us were working down in the big underground laboratories and factories under the different mountain ranges -- the Urals, the Alps, and the Rockies. We were down underground, under miles of rock and dirt and clay. And on the surface homo sapiens slugged it out with the weapons we designed."

"I'm beginning to understand. We designed the weapons for them to fight the war. They used our weapons without realizing --"

"We designed them and the saps used them to destroy themselves," Fashold interjected. "It was Nature's crucible, the elimination of one species and the emergence of another. We gave them the weapons and they destroyed themselves. When the war ended the surface was fused, and nothing but ash and hydroglass and radioactive clouds remained.

"Wesent out scouting parties from our underground labs and found nothing but a silent, barren waste. It had been accomplished. They were gone, wiped out. And we had come to take their place."

"Not all of them could have been wiped out," Harl pointed out. "There are still a lot of them up there on the surface."

"True," Fashold admitted. "Some survived. Scattered remnants here and there. Gradually, as the surface cooled, they began to reform again, getting together and building little villages and huts. Yes, and even clearing some of the land -- planting and growing things. But they're still remnants of a dying race now almost extinct, as the Neanderthal is extinct."

"So nothing exists now but males and females without homes."

"There are a few villages here and there -- wherever they've managed to clear the surface. But they've descended to utter savagery, and live like animals, wearing skins and hunting with rocks and spears. They've become almost bestial remnants who offer no organized resistance when we go up to raid a few of their villages for our factories."

"Then we --" Harl broke off abruptly as a faint bell sounded. He turned in startled apprehension, snapping on the vidphone.

His father's face formed on the screen, hard and stern. "Okay, Harl," he said. "We're ready."

"So soon? But --"

"We set the time ahead. Come down to my office." The image on the screen dimmed and vanished.

Harl did not move.

"They must have got worried," Fashold said, grinning. "They were apparently afraid you'd pass the information along."

"I'm all ready," Harl said. He picked up his blast gun from the table. "How do I look?"

In his silver communications uniform Harl looked splendid and impressive. He had put on heavy military boots and gloves. In one hand he gripped his blast gun. Around his waist was his screen control-belt.

"What's that?" Fashold asked, as Harl lowered black goggles over his eyes.

"These? Oh, they're for the sun."

"Of course -- the sun. I forgot."

Harl cradled his gun, balancing it expertly. "The sun would blind me. The goggles protect my eyes. I'll be safe up there, with my screen and gun, and these goggles."

"I hope so." Still grinning, Fashold thumped him on the back as he moved toward the door. "Bring back a lot of saps. Do a good job -- and don't forget to include a female!"

The mother ship moved slowly from the warehouse, and out onto the lift stage, a rotund black teardrop emerging from storage. Its port locks slid back, and ramps climbed to meet the locks. Immediately supplies and equipment were on their way up, rising into the bowels of the ship.

"Almost ready," Turner said, his face twitching with nervousness as he gazed through the observation windows at the loading ramps outside. "I hope nothing goes wrong. If the Directorate should find out --"

"Quit worrying!" Ed Boynton ordered. "You picked the wrong time to let your thalamic impulses take over control."

"Sorry." Turner tightened his lips and moved away from the windows. The lift stage was ready to rise.

"Let's get started," Boynton urged. "Have you men from the department at each level?"

"Nobody but department members will be near the stage," Turner replied.

"Where is the balance of the crew?" Boynton demanded.

"At the first level. I sent them up during the day."

"Very well." Boynton gave the signal, and the stage under the ship began slowly to rise, lifting them steadily toward the level above.

Harl peered out the observation windows, watching the fifth level drop below and the fourth level, the vast commercial center of the under-surface system, come into view.

"Won't be long," Ed Boynton said, as the fourth level glided past. "So far so good."

"Where will we finally emerge?" Harl asked.

"In the latter stages of the war our various underground structures were connected by tunnels. That original network formed the basis of our present system. We'll emerge at one of the original entrances, located in the mountain range called 'The Alps'."

"The Alps," Harl murmured.

"Yes, in Europe. We have maps of the surface, showing locations of sap villages in that region. A whole cluster of villages lie to the North and North East in what used to be Denmark and Germany. We've never raided there before. The saps have managed to clear the slag away from several thousand acres in that region, and seem gradually to be reclaiming most of Europe."

"But why, Dad?" Harl asked.

Ed Boynton shrugged. "I don't know. They don't seem to have set themselves any organized objective. They show no signs at all, in fact, of emerging from their savage state. All their traditions were lost -- books and records, inventions, and techniques. If you ask me --" He broke off abruptly. "Here comes the third level. We're almost there."

The huge mother ship roared slowly along, gliding above the surface of the planet. Harl peered out, awed by what he saw below.

Across the surface of the earth lay a crust of slag, an endless coating of blackened rock. The mineral deposit was unbroken except for occasional hills sharply jutting up, ash-covered, and with a few sparse bushes growing near their tops. Great sheets of sun-darkening ash drifted across the sky, but nothing living stirred. The surface of the earth was dead and barren, without sign of life.

"Is it all like that?" Harl asked.

Ed Boynton shook his head. "Not all. The saps have reclaimed some of the land." He gripped his son's arm and pointed. "See off that way? They've done quite a bit of clearing up there."

"Just how do they clear the slag?" Harl asked.

"It's hard," his father replied. "Fused, like volcanic glass -- hydroglass -- from the hydrogen bombs. They pick it away bit by bit, year after year. With their hands, with rocks, and with the axes made from the glass itself."

"Why don't they develop better tools?"

Ed Boynton grinned wryly. "You know the answer to that. We made most of their tools for them, their tools and weapons and inventions, for hundreds of years."

"Here we go," Turner said. "We're landing."

The ship settled down, coming to rest on the surface of the slag. For a moment the blackened rock rumbled under them. Then there was silence.

"We're down," Turner said.

Ed Boynton studied the surface map, sending it darting through the scanner. "We'll send out ten eggs as a starter. If we don't have much luck here we'll take the ship farther North. But we should do well. This area has never been raided before."

"How will the eggs cover?" Turner asked.

"The eggs will fan out in a spectrum, giving each egg a separate area. Our egg will move over toward the right. If we have any success, we'll return to the ship at once. Otherwise, we'll stay out until nightfall."

"Nightfall?" Harl asked.

Ed Boynton smiled. "Until dark. Until this side of the planet is turned away from the sun."

"Let's go," Turner said impatiently.

The port locks opened. The first eggs scooted out onto the slag, their treads digging into the slippery surface. One by one they emerged from the black hull of the mother ship, tiny spheres with their backs tapering into jet tubes, and their noses blunted into control turrets. They roared off across the slag and disappeared.

"Ours, next," Ed Boynton said.

Harl nodded and gripped his blast rifle tightly. He lowered his protection goggles over his eyes, and Turner and Boynton did the same. They entered their egg, Boynton seating himself behind the controls.

A moment later they shot out of the ship onto the smooth surface of the planet.

Harl peered out. He could see nothing but slag on all sides. Slag and drifting clouds of ash.

"It's dismal," he murmured. "Even with the goggles the sun burns my eyes."

"Don't look at it then," Ed Boynton cautioned. "Look away from it."

"I can't help it. It's so -- so strange."

Ed Boynton grunted and increased the egg's speed. Far ahead of them something was coming into view. He headed the egg toward it.

"What's that?" Turner asked, alarmed.

"Trees," Boynton said, reassuringly. "Trees growing up in a clump. It marks the end of the slag. Then there's ash for a while, and finally fields the saps have planted."

Boynton drove the egg to the edge of the slag area. He stopped it where the slag ended and the clump of trees began, snapping off the jets and locking the treads. He and Harl and Turner got out cautiously, their guns ready.

Nothing stirred. There was only silence, and the endless surface of slag. Between drifting clouds of ash the sky was a pale robin's-egg blue, and a few moisture clouds drifted with the ash. The air smelled good. It was thin and crisp, and the sun shed a friendly warmth.

"Put your screens on," Ed Boynton warned. As he spoke he snapped the switch at his belt and his own screen hummed, flashing on around him. Swiftly, Boynton's figure dimmed, wavering and fading. It winked out -- and was gone.

Turner quickly followed suit. "Okay," his voice came, from a glimmering oval to Harl's right. "You next."

Harl turned on his screen. For an instant a strange cold fire enveloped him from head to foot, bathing him in sparks. Then his body too dimmed and vanished. The screens were functioning perfectly.

In Harl's ears a faint clicking sounded, warning him of the presence of the two others. "I can hear you," Harl said. "Your screens are in my earphones."

"Don't wander off," Ed Boynton cautioned. "Keep by us and listen for the clicks. It's dangerous to be separated, up here on the surface."

Harl advanced carefully. The other two were on his right, a few yards off. They were crossing a dry yellow field overgrown with some kind of plant. The plants had long stalks that broke and crunched underfoot. Behind Harl was a trail of broken vegetation. He could clearly see the similar trails which Turner and his father were leaving.

But now it became necessary for him to separate from Turner and his father. Ahead of Harl the outline of a sap village rose up, its huts fashioned from some kind of plant fiber piled in heaps on top of wooden frames. He could see the shadowy outlines of animals tied to the huts. Trees and plants encircled the village, and he could distinguish the moving forms of people, and hear their voices.

People -- saps. His heart beat quickly. With luck he might capture and bring back three or four for the Youth League. He felt suddenly confident and unafraid. Surely it would not be difficult. Planted fields, tied-up animals, rickety huts leaning and tilting --

The smell of dung commingling with the heat of the late afternoon became almost intolerable as Harl advanced. Cries, and other sounds of feverish human activity, drifted to him. The ground was flat and dry, weeds and plants grew up everywhere. He left the yellow field and came onto a narrow footpath, littered with human refuse and animal dung.

And just beyond the road was the village.

The clicks had diminished in his earphones. Now they died out completely. Harl grinned to himself. He had moved away from Turner and Boynton, and was no longer in contact with them. They had no idea where he was.

He turned to the left, circling cautiously around the edge of the village. He passed by a hut, then several in a cluster. Around him green trees and plants grew in great clumps, and directly ahead of him gleamed a narrow stream with sloping, moss-covered banks.

A dozen people were washing at the edge of the stream, the children leaping into the water and scrambling up on the bank.

Harl halted, gazing at them in astonishment. Their skins were dark, almost black. A shiny, coppery black it was -- a rich bronze mixed in with the dirt-color. Was it dirt?

He suddenly realized that the bathers had been burned black by the constant sun. The hydrogen explosions had thinned the atmosphere, searing off most of the layer of moisture clouds and for two hundred years the sun had beat mercilessly down on them -- in sharp contrast to his own race. Under-surface, there was no ultraviolet light to burn the skin, or to raise the pigment level. He and the other technos had lost their skin color. There was no need for it in their subterranean world.

But the bathers were incredibly dark, a rich reddish-black color. And they had nothing on at all. They were leaping and jumping eagerly about, splashing through the water and sunning themselves on the bank.

Harl watched them for a time. Children and three or four scrawny, elderly females. Would they do? He shook his head, and warily encircled the stream.

He continued on back among the huts, walking slowly and carefully, gazing alertly around with his gun held ready.

A faint breeze blew against him, rustling through the trees to his right. The sounds of the bathing children mixed with the dung smell, the wind, and the swaying of the trees.

Harl advanced cautiously. He was invisible, but he knew that he might at any moment be discovered and tracked down by his footprints or the sounds he might make. And if someone ran against him --

He stealthily darted past a hut, and emerged into an open place, a flat area of beaten earth. In the shade of the hut a dog lay sleeping with flies crawling over its lean flanks. An old woman was sitting on the porch of the rude dwelling, combing her long gray hair with a bone comb.

Harl passed by her cautiously. In the center of the open place a group of young men were standing. They were gesturing and talking together. Some were cleaning their weapons, long spears and knives of an inconceivable primitiveness. On the ground lay a dead animal, a huge beast with long, gleaming tusks and a thick hide. Blood oozed from its mouth -- thick, dark blood. One of the young men turned suddenly -- and kicked it with his foot.

Harl came up to the young men, and stopped. They were dressed in cloth clothing, long leg garments and shirts. Their feet were bare on top, for they wore loosely-woven vegetable-fiber sandals instead of shoes. They were clean-shaven, but their skin gleamed almost ebony black. Their sleeves were rolled up, exposing bulging, glistening muscles, dripping with sweat in the hot sun.

Harl could not understand what they were saying, but he was sure they were speaking one of the archaic traditional tongues.

He passed on. At the other side of the open place a group of old men was sitting cross-legged in a circle, weaving rough cloth on crude frames. Harl watched them in silence for a time. Their chatter drifted noisily up to him. Each old man was bent intently over his frame, his eyes glued on his work.

Beyond the row of huts some younger men and women were plowing a field, dragging the plow by ropes securely attached to their waists and shoulders.

Harl wandered on, fascinated. Everyone was engaged in some kind of activity -- except the dog asleep under the hut. The young men with their spears, the old woman in front of the hut combing her hair, and weaving.

In one corner a huge woman was teaching a child what appeared to be an adding and subtracting game, using small sticks in lieu of figures. Two men were removing the hide from a small furred animal, stripping the pelt off carefully.

Harl passed a wall of hides, all hung up carefully to dry. The dull stench irritated his nostrils, making him want to sneeze. He passed a group of children pounding grain in a hollowed-out stone, beating the grain into meal. None of them looked up as he passed.

Some animals were tied together in a bunch. Some lay in the shade, big beasts with huge udders. They watched him silently.

Harl came to the edge of the village and stopped. From that point onward deserted fields stretched out. For perhaps a mile beyond the fields were trees and bushes, and beyond that the endless miles of slag.

He turned and walked back. Off to one side, sitting in the shade, a young man was chipping away at a block of hydroslag, cutting it carefully with a few rough tools. He seemed to be fashioning a weapon. Harl watched him, watched the endless, solemn blows descending again and again. The slag was hard. It was a long tedious job.

He walked on. A group of women were mending broken arrows. Their chatter followed him for a time, and he found himself wishing he could understand it. Everyone was busy, working rapidly. Dark, shiny arms rose and fell, and the chattering murmur of voices drifted back and forth.

Activity. Laughter. A child's laughter echoed suddenly through the village, and a few heads turned. Harl bent down, intently studying a man's head at close range.

A strong face he had. His twisted knotted hair was short, and his teeth were even and white. On his arms were copper bracelets, almost matching the rich bronze hue of his skin. His bare chest was marked with tattoos, etched into his flesh with brightly colored pigments.

Harl wandered back the way he had come. He passed the old woman on the porch, and paused again to observe her. She had stopped combing her hair. Now she was fixing a child's hair, braiding it skillfully back into an elaborate pattern. Harl watched her, fascinated. The pattern was intricate, complex, and the task took a long time. The old woman's faded eyes were intent on the child's hair, on the detailed work. Her withered hands flew.

Harl walked on, moving toward the stream. He passed the bathing children again. They had all climbed out on the bank and were drying themselves in the sun. So these were the saps. The race that was dying out -- the dying race, soon to be extinct. Remnants.

But they did not appear to be a dying race. They were working hard, tirelessly chipping at the hydroslag, fixing their arrows, hunting, plowing, pounding grain, weaving, combing --

He stopped suddenly, rigid, his blast gun at his shoulder. Ahead of him, through the trees by the stream, something moved. Then he heard two voices -- a man's voice and a woman's voice, raised in excited conversation.

Harl advanced cautiously. He pushed past a flowering bush, and peered into the gloom between the trees.

A man and woman were sitting at the edge of the water, in the dark shadow of the tree. The man was making bowls, shaping them out of wet clay scooped up from the water. His fingers flew, expertly, rapidly. He spun the bowls, turning them on a revolving platform between his knees.

As the man finished the bowls the woman took them and painted them with deft, vigorous strokes of a crude brush gleaming with red pigment.

The woman was beautiful. Harl gazed down at her in stunned admiration. She sat almost motionless, resting against a tree, holding each bowl securely as she painted it. Her black hair hung down to her waist, falling across her shoulders and back. Her features were finely cut, each line clear and vivid, her dark eyes immense. She studied each bowl intently, her lips moving a little and Harl noticed that her hands were small and delicately fashioned.

He walked over toward her, moving carefully. The woman did not hear him or look up. In growing wonder he realized that her coppery body was small and beautifully formed, her limbs slender and supple. She did not seem to be aware of him.

Suddenly the man spoke again. The woman glanced up, lowering the bowl to the ground. She rested a minute, cleaning her brush with a leaf. She wore rough leg garments, reaching down to her knees, and tied at her waist with a twisted flaxen rope. She wore no other garment. Her feet and shoulders were bare, and in the afternoon sun her bosom rose and fell quickly as she breathed.

The man said something else. After a moment the woman picked up another bowl and began to paint again. The two of them worked rapidly, silently, both intent on their work.

Harl studied the bowls. They were all of similar design. The man made them rapidly, building them up from coils of clay, and then snaking the coils around and around, higher and higher. He slapped water against the clay, rubbing the surface smooth and firm. Finally he laid them out in rows, to dry in the sun.

The woman selected the bowls that were dry and then painted them.

Harl watched her. He studied her a long time -- the way she moved her coppery body, the intense expression on her face, the faint movement of her lips and chin. Her fingers were slender and exquisitely tapered. Her nails were long, coming finally to a point. She held each bowl carefully, turning it with expert care, painting her design with rapid strokes.

He watched her closely. She was painting the same design on each bowl, painting it again and again. A bird, and then a tree. A line that appeared to represent the ground. A cloud suspended directly above it.

What was the precise significance of that recurrent motif? Harl bent closer, peering intently. Was it really the same? He watched the skillful motion of her hands as she took bowl after bowl, starting the design again and again. The design was basically the same -- but each time she made it a little different. No two bowls came out exactly the same.

He was both puzzled, and fascinated. It was the same design, but altered slightly each time. The color of the bird would be altered -- or the length of its plume. Less frequently the position of the tree, or the cloud. Once she painted two tiny clouds hovering above the ground. Sometimes she put grass and the outline of hills in the background.

Suddenly the man got to his feet, wiping his hands on his cloth. He spoke to the girl and then hurried off, threading his way through the bushes until he was lost to view,

Harl glanced around excitedly. The girl went right on painting rapidly, calmly. The man had disappeared and the girl remained alone, painting quietly by herself.

Harl was caught in the grip of conflicting and almost overpowering emotions. He wanted to speak to the girl, to ask her about her painting, her design. He wanted to ask her why she changed it each time.

He wanted to sit down and talk to her. To speak to her and hear her talk to him. It was strange. He didn't understand it himself. His vision swam, twisting and blurring, and sweat dripped from his neck and stooping shoulders. The girl continued to paint. She did not look up, or suspect that he was standing directly in front of her. Harl's hand flew to his belt. He took a deep breath, hesitating. Dared he? Should he? The man would be back --

Harl pressed the stud on his belt. Around him the screen hissed, and sparked.

The girl glanced up, startled. Her eyes widened in swift horror.

She screamed.

Harl stepped quickly back, gripping his gun, appalled by what he had done.

The girl scrambled to her feet, sending bowls and paints flying. She gazed at him, her eyes still wide, her mouth open. Slowly she backed away toward the bushes. Then abruptly she turned and fled, crashing through the shrubbery, screaming and shrieking.

Harl straightened in sudden fear. Quickly, he restored his screen. The village was alive with growing sound. He could hear voices raised in excited panic, and the sound of people running, crashing through the bushes -- the entire village erupting in a torrent of excited activity.

Harl made his way quickly down the stream, past the bushes and out into the open.

Suddenly he stopped, his heart pounding furiously. A crowd of saps was hurrying toward the stream -- men with spears, old women, and shrieking children. At the edge of the bushes they stopped, staring and listening, their faces frozen in a strange, intent expression. Then they were advancing into the bushes, furiously pushing the branches out of the way -- searching for him.

Abruptly his earphones clicked.

"Harl!" Ed Boynton's voice came clear and sharp. "Harl, lad!"

Harl jumped, then cried out in desperate gratefulness. "Dad, I'm here."

Ed Boynton gripped his arm, yanking him off balance. "What's the matter with you? Where did you go? What did you do?"

"You got him?" Turner's voice broke in. "Come on then -- both of you! We have to get out of here, fast. They're scattering white powder everywhere."

Saps were rushing around, throwing the powder into the air in great clouds. It drifted through the air, settling down over everything. It appeared to be a kind of pulverized chalk. Other saps were sprinkling oil from big jars and shouting in high-pitched excitement.

"We better get out," Boynton agreed grimly. "We don't want to tangle with them when they're aroused."

Harl hesitated. "But --"

"Come on!" his father urged, tugging at his arm. "Let's go. We haven't a moment to lose."

Harl gazed back. He could not see the woman, but saps were running everywhere, throwing their sheets of chalk and sprinkling the oil. Saps with iron-tipped spears advanced ominously, kicking at the weeds and bushes as they circled about.

Harl allowed himself to be led by his father. His mind whirled. The woman was gone, and he was sure that he would never see her again. When he had made himself visible she had screamed, and run off.

Why? It didn't make sense. Why had she recoiled from him in blind terror? What had he done?

And what did it matter to him whether he saw her again or not? Why was she important? He did not understand. He did not understand himself. There was no rational explanation for what had happened. It was totally incomprehensible.

Harl followed his father and Turner back to the egg, still bewildered and wretched, still trying to understand, to grasp the meaning of what had happened between him and the woman. It did not make sense. He had gone out of his mind and then she had gone out of her mind. There had to be some meaning to it -- if he could only grasp it.

At the egg Ed Boynton halted, glancing back. "We were lucky to get away," he said to Harl, shaking his head. "When they're aroused they're like beasts. They're animals, Harl. That's what they are. Savage animals."

"Come on," Turner said impatiently. "Let's get out of here -- while we still can walk."

Julie continued to shudder even after she had been carefully bathed and purified in the stream and rubbed down with oil by one of the older women.

She sat in a heap, her arms wrapped around her knees, shaking and trembling uncontrollably. Ken, her brother, stood beside her, grim-faced, his hand on her bare, coppery shoulder.

"What was it?" Julie murmured. "What was it?" She shuddered. "It was -- horrible. It revolted me, made me ill, just to look at it."

"What did it look like?" Ken demanded.

"It was -- it was like a man. But it couldn't have been a man. It was metallic all over, from head to foot, and it had huge hands and feet. Its face was all pasty white like -- like meal. It was -- sickly. Hideously sickly. White and metallic, and sickly. Like some kind of root dug up out of the soil."

Ken turned to the old man sitting behind him, who was listening intently. "What was it?" he demanded. "What was it, Mr Stebbins? You know about such things. What did she see?"

Mr Stebbins got slowly to his feet. "You say it had white skin? Pasty? Like dough? And huge hands and feet?"

Julie nodded. "And -- something else."

"What?"

"It was blind. It had something instead of eyes. Two black spaces. Darkness." She shuddered and stared toward the stream.

Suddenly Mr Stebbins tensed, his jaw hardening. He nodded. "I know," he said. "I know what it was."

"What was it?"

Mr Stebbins muttered to himself, frowning. "It's not possible. But your description --" He stared off in the distance, his brow wrinkled. "They live underground," he said finally, "under the surface. They emerge from the mountains. They live in the earth, in great tunnels and chambers they have hewn out for themselves. They are not men. They look like men, but they are not. They live under the ground and dig the metal from the earth. They dig and horde the metal. They seldom come up to the surface. They cannot look at the sun."

"What are they called?" Julie asked.

Mr Stebbins searched his mind, thinking back through the years. Back to the old books and legends he had heard. Things that lived under the ground... Like men but not men... Things that dug tunnels, that mined metals... Things that were blind and had great hands and feet and pasty white skin.

"Goblins," Mr Stebbins stated. "What you saw was a goblin."

Julie nodded, gazing down wide-eyed at the ground, her arms clasped around her knees. "Yes," she said. "That sounds like what it was. It frightened me. I was so afraid. I turned and ran. It seemed so horrible." She looked up at her brother, smiling a little. "But I'm better now..."

Ken rubbed his big dark hands together, nodding with relief. "Fine," he said. "Now we can get back to work. There's a lot to do. A lot of things to get done."