turned back to the road. Neither of us said anything for fully a mile. "No human hands could have done that to a gun," I said. "I'm beginning to believe what you said about robots. Robots that take scalps!"

Another hill, another valley ... and Wetzel caught hold of my arm. "I come 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 stride left me behind and he was forced to wait until I caught up with him again. I had the feeling that I was holding him back, and there was something faintly contemptuous in his obvious patience. But the life of a book-writing newspaper man hadn't prepared me for cross-country marathons, and there was nothing to be done about it now.

The fairly level, open ground was giving place to a heavily wooded countryside. After another mile of winding roadway, Wetzel suddenly turned aside and plunged into the forest. It was as dark as the inside of an undertaker's hat, and after I had banged into a few dozen trees and tripped over a few dead branches, making enough racket to alert half the state, Wetzel slowed his pace to a crawl.

Finally I grabbed one of the fringed sleeves of his buckskin shirt to stop 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 could feel 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 my granddaddy was. Nobody is. When I take a walk it's down to the corner for a pack of cigarettes. Anything farther than that I use a horseless carriage. We don't need steel muscles and superior woodcraft these days, brother. Just enough eyesight to read the directions on the can, ears sharp enough to hear the boss bawling you out, enough nose to smell the whiskey on your neighboring straphanger's breath, reflexes quick enough to avoid being run down by some politician's Cadillac. If I'd have known I was going to be called on to go batting around a jungle, 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 a knee forced me to the ground. Before I could make an effort to fight back, he placed his mouth close to my ear. "Danger! 'Tis death for so much as a broken twig!"

He removed his hand and I could breathe again. We lay there side by side close to a huge tree, deep in the shadows. And then faintly as from far off I heard the crackle of disturbed undergrowth and, slowly louder and louder, an evenly spaced thumping sound that seemed to shake the earth.

Through the trees it came, directly toward the spot where Wetzel and I hugged the ground. It loomed against the night, a tower of steel on jointed legs, a horrible travesty of the human figure, a head like King Arthur's helmet. Starlight picked out two round faceted eyes of glass.

My suddenly dry mouth puckered with the taste of terror. I did not breathe; even my heart seemed to beat no more. I wanted to close my eyes, but even the lids seemed paralyzed.

For almost a full minute the giant robot remained standing less than ten feet from where Wetzel and I were lying. It seemed to sense the presence of something of flesh and blood nearby. Its head turned slowly from side to side in little uneven jerks that put ice cubes in my veins. Finally the mammoth feet began their rhythmic thumping and a moment later it disappeared among the trees.

After what seemed a long time Wetzel rose to his feet. I got up slowly and leaned against the tree. "In a little while," I said softly, "I'll wake up. I'll be in bed with my wife, under the nice clean white sheets, and I'll know all this was a nightmare brought on by that canned salmon we had for dinner."

This, I told myself sharply, wasn't getting me anywhere except next door to hysteria. I ground my teeth together, shuddered uncontrollably for 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 seemed to be the Belgian Congo, Wetzel halted under the spreading branches of a towering cottonwood. With his lips close to my ear, he whispered, "It's a-settin' out thar midst open ground." He gestured at the wall of blackness hemming us in—blackness you could have cut into hunks with an ax. "I'm thinkin' thar's plenty 'o them iron critters roamin' 'round twixt us an' it. You aimin' to await the dawn?"

"You," I said, "said it!"

The dawn came up nice and quiet. Blackness turned gray and then a pearl pink—and there she was: a hundred yards from us, of some gleaming metal resembling aluminum, twenty feet high and covering about as much ground as a caretaker's cottage. It resembled nothing more than a soup plate turned bottom up to dry.

A tall, semi-circular opening showed black in one side, with a sloping metallic ramp reaching from it to the ground. Two robots guarded the entrance, stiff and towering and without movement, the early light glistening along their jointed bodies.

In sharp contrast to this scene from the distant future was the anachronistic spectacle of six Indians, in war paint, fringed buckskin and stripped to the waist, squatting around a small cooking fire near the ship. Within easy reach of each was a long bow and a quiver of arrows.

Nothing about them gave me a certain clue as to which Indian family they belonged to. The single feather in each scalp lock was pure white with a vivid red tip. Two of them wore the black paint of untried warriors, and all were gnawing on strips of meat grilled over the fire.

Wetzel, placid and silent, leaned on his rifle and calmly stuffed a cheek with a twist of black tobacco. "Reckon they be a little hard to talk to?" he asked in a soft voice.

I shrugged. "Only one way I know of to find out."

"Thet fancy pistol you got could kill 'em all afore they get them bows unlimbered."

"Are you suggesting I shoot them down without warning?"

It was his turn to shrug. "They be Indians."

The complete lack of feeling in his tone infuriated me. "You cold-blooded bastard! I happen to be a good part Indian myself."

He eyed me without expression but with a chill glitter to his eyes. "Aye. I ain't forgettin' thet," he said, and spat.

I took a slow breath and waited until I could trust my voice. "I'm going out there," I said quietly. "Cover me with your gun. But don't use it unless it's the only thing left to do. I don't want that trigger pulled until the last possible second. They may grab me, they may even knock me around a little. That I can take. But don't try to interfere until there's no other way out. Is that clear?"

"Aye."

I turned away from him. All I had to do now was step out from behind that tree and walk across the open ground. Each of my feet suddenly weighed a ton. Two steps into that clearing and the funeral could be Monday. Instinctively my hand crawled toward the .38 automatic hidden in my coveralls. It never got that far. Suicide was so final.

Wetzel's firm young mouth held an almost invisible sneer. Deliberately I took out a cigarette, lighted it with an airy gesture and a match, dragged deeply on it twice and threw it away. I said, "Lay off that gun like I told you," and walked slowly out into the clearing.

It got a rise out of them, all right. They were on their feet, arrows notched, before I had traveled three feet. I never even hesitated. Once I had gone this far, the bluff had to be carried all the way out. I kept my spine stiff, my head erect, my hands conspicuously empty at my sides. If my nerves were jumping I was the only one who knew about it.

It caught them just a shade off-balance, which was all I had hoped for. The one-sidedness of six drawn bows against one unimpressive and unarmed man eventually registered and the flint tips wavered, then turned