It was fiery death if the thing thought it was being attacked. Would the machine recognize normal human clumsiness and make allowances?

Nothing happened. The robot didn’t fear his touch.

“Hey, watch it,” he complained. “Tell your pal here to take it easy, will you?”

“What? It’s not any o’ my doin’.” She kicked the machine. “Leave him be, you stupid thing!”

Dwer nodded. “All right, let’s try again.”

Both hands went up. His legs were like coiled springs — and Dwer’s life seemed to float above him like a sound, ready to flee on the wind.

He leaped.

The robot’s brief hesitation ended in a sudden yowl, joined instantly by a series of sharp detonations, coming from the nearby forest. Heat flared between Dwer’s legs as he yanked two of the sensor-heads, using them as hand-holds to swarm desperately up the machine’s flank, away from the deadly ball. Pain erupted along one thigh the split instant before he hauled his torso atop the gyrating machine. He clutched the bucking thing with his left hand while his right brought forth the slender tube.

The world was a blur of trees and clouds and whirling sky. More explosions pealed, accompanied by horrible sizzling sounds. Desperately, Dwer shoved the tube at the robot’s central spindle and squeezed.

Traeki enzymes combined and emerged in an acrid, fizzing stream, vanishing down openings at the spindle’s base. Dwer kept squirting despite the robot’s wild pirouettes, until his aim was spoiled by Rety, shoving his arm away. Only then did Dwer note her screams amid the general tumult. When her teeth clamped on his wrist, Dwer’s own howl joined in. The half-empty tube escaped his convulsing hand, tumbling away.

Purple steam rose from the robot’s center. The spindle began to slump. Dwer shook Rety off and with a reckless cry threw himself on the drooping antenna, taking it in both hands, heaving with all his might. He shouted an ululation of triumph when the whole thing tore free at the base, though it left him rolling across the flat surface, clutching futilely for a hold.

Flailing, he tumbled off the edge, falling toward the meadow floor.

Dwer never worried, during that brief interval, about striking some rock or jagged tree stump. The machine would likely dice him to bits before he ever hit the ground.

But he was not sliced. Nor did he strike the rough meadow. Blinking in surprise, he found that a pair of arms had caught him!

Relief was tempered when he saw the arms belonged to the robot.

Oh, great. Out of the frying pan and into the—

There came another series of detonations, and the hovering machine rocked as if slammed along one side. Hanging below the octagonal body, Dwer saw part of the globe underneath explode in a spray of steel and glass. The weapons-ball was already a smoking ruin. Not a single lens or tube appeared intact.

Great work, Lena, Dwer thought, proud of how well she used the terrible devices that only she and a few others on the Slope were trained to use. Firearms that did not use a bit of metal. He turned his head in time to see more brief flares as Lena or Danel fired again from the forest edge. The machine rocked as another exploding shell impacted. This time one of the dangling tentacles holding Dwer shuddered and went limp.

That was definitely Lena’s work. What a clever girl, he thought, half-dazed from pain. The sages chose well. I would’ve been a lucky boy, if things had gone according to—

He got no chance to finish the thought, as the robot whirled around to flee, zigzagging across the meadow, using his body as a shield between it and danger. Dwer saw Lena rise and take aim with her launcher, then lower it, shaking her head.

“No! Shoot, dammit!” he screamed. “Don’t worry about me!”

But the rushing wind of flight carried off his words. Lena dropped her weapon and hurried to a figure lying on the ground nearby, slumped beside a second missile tube. She turned Danel Ozawa over, revealing a red river pouring from his chest.

The robot’s next zigging turn spun that poignant scene away. Now Dwer spied terrified villagers cowering beyond a low hill of garbage near the prisoners’ pen. So dismayed were they by the battle that they seemed unaware of the group now circling around behind them — Jenin Worley and a dozen newly released urs. The former captives held ropes and arbalests. Dwer prayed this part of Danel’s plan would turn out all right.

“All or nothing,” Ozawa had said. “Either we live together as civilized beings, or let’s end it. End it now — bringing as much harm to our enemy as we can.”

Dwer had time for one benedictory thought, as Rety’s cousins grew aware of the reversal taking place behind their backs.

Learn to be wise…

Then the village vanished as the fleeing machine streaked around a bend, whipped through a forest aisle, and plunged almost straight downhill, accelerating.

Rety was still shrieking from her perch, wailing for it to stop. From Dwer’s point of view, dangling underneath, the ground seemed to sweep by in a blur. Fighting the buffeting wind, he brought up both arms to grab the base of the tendril wrapped around his torso, holding him horizontal to the rushing terrain. If he tore it loose, the fall might kill him, but anything would be better than this torment.

He tugged with all his might, but the tentacle would not budge. It flexed occasionally, yanking him up in time to miss being smashed against some boulder or shrub. Soon they were swooping beside the canyon’s central stream, an obstacle course of sudden turns and bitter, stinging spray. Disorientation forced Dwer to close his eyes, moaning.

Faintness took hold, threatening to haul him the rest of the way to unconsciousness.

Come on, he chided. Now’s not the time to give up. If you can’t escape, at least check and see if you’re bleeding to death!

Pain helped him concentrate, ignoring the looming vertigo. It came in a nagging medley, from a searing ache in his left thigh, to Rety’s teeth-marks that still oozed blood from his right hand, to the chafing rub of the robot’s arm, all the way to a series of awful, biting scratches that clawed into his hip, then his abdomen, and finally his chest — as if someone were stabbing him with clusters of sharp needles, working their way up along his battered body.

He opened his eyes — and shrieked at the sight of a gaping mouth, filled with horrible, glistening fangs!

“Oh, Ifni…” he moaned. “Oh, God oh God oh God…”

Even when he knew the truth about the specter that loomed inches from his face, it didn’t help much. At this point, and for a while longer, all Dwer could manage was a frail, thready whimper.

Mudfoot, the noor, yawned a second time, then settled into the narrow space between Dwer’s chest and the robot’s hard shell. The beast watched the boy — jibbering from one shock over his limit. With a sigh of affectionate scorn, it started chuttering, less to comfort Dwer than for its own simple pleasure, making a sound somewhat like that of a hoon sailor, umbling a song about the joys of travel.