Science fiction -- Periodicals; Science fiction, American -- Periodicals
How long an interval went by I cannot judge. The scene was very
silent, the blackened forest lying sullen in the noonday sunlight.
Against the tree, five hundred feet or so from us, the dark towering
metal figure of the Robot stood motionless.
Would the other cage come? I tried to guess in what part of this open
glade it would appear.
At a movement behind me I turned slightly. At once the voice of Tugh
hissed:
"Do not do that! I warn you!"
His shrouded figure was still hunched behind the table. He was peering
toward the open door. I saw in his hand a small, barrel-like weapon,
with a wire dangling from it. The wire lay like a snake across the
floor and terminated in a small metal cylinder in the room corner.
"Turn front," he ordered vehemently. "One more backward look
and--Careful! Here he comes!"
* * * * *
Strange tableau in this burned forest! We were on the space of New
York City in 762 A. D. There was no life in the scene. Birds, animals
and insects shunned this fire-denuded area. And the humans of the
forest--were there none of them here?
Abruptly I saw a group of men at the edge of the glade. They had come
silently creeping forward, hiding behind the blackened tree-trunks.
They were all behind Migul. I saw them like dark shadows darting from
the shelter of one tree-trunk to the next, a group of perhaps twenty
savages.
Migul did not see them, nor, in the heavy silence, did he seem to hear
them. They came, gazing at our shining cage like animals fascinated,
wondering what manner of thing it was.
They were the ancestors of our American Indians. One fellow stopped in
a patch of sunlight and I saw him clearly. His half-naked body had an
animal skin draped over it, and, incongruously, around his forehead
was a band of cloth holding a feather. He carried a stone ax. I saw
his face; the flat, heavy features showed his Asiatic origin.
Someone behind this leader impulsively shot an arrow across the glade.
It went over Migul's head and fell short of our cage. Migul turned,
and a rain of arrows thudded harmlessly against its metal body. I
heard the Robot's contemptuous laugh. It made no answering attack, but
stood motionless. And suddenly, thinking it a god whom now they must
placate, the savages fell prostrate before him.
Strange tableau! I saw a ball of white mist across the glade near
Migul. Something was materializing; an imponderable ghost of something
was taking form. In an instant it was the wraith of a cage; then,
where nothing had been, stood a cage. It was solid and substantial--a
metal cage-room, gleaming white in the sunlight.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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