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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d! 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 aside.

The tallest of the braves--a lean number the color of an old penny--tossed his bow aside and deliberately stepped squarely in my path. There was an insolent arrogance in every line of his body--a body that topped my six feet a full three inches.

I said, "Hi-yo, Silver," and put my hip into his naked belly and grabbed his arm and threw him over my shoulder. He hit face first two yards away and plowed up a furrow of gra.s.s, flopped around a little, then lay still.

n.o.body else moved, except me. I started for the s.p.a.ceship again, not hurrying and not crawling, head still up, spine still stiff, eyes straight ahead. Feet slithered in the gra.s.s behind me and the sound made the skin between my shoulder blades twitch like an aching tooth.

Every instinct that had anything to do with self-preservation was fighting to make me turn around.

That was when the robots moved. They seemed to come alive at the same instant, metal clanged on metal as they strode stiffly down the ramp to meet me. Violence hung over them as it hangs over a Patton tank.

Every step toward them was like pulling my foot out of quicksand. Only twelve kinds of a cretin would have gone on when faced with anything like this. I went on. I couldn't do anything else. Once you show an Indian a molecule of cowardice, you're twelve lines on the obituary page.

The s.p.a.ce between us was down to a narrow ribbon of gra.s.s by this time. Four--three more steps and I would _have_ to stop. n.o.body could push aside a couple of tons of animated steel. Metal arms were lifting slowly, preparing to close on me. Inside me a silent voice screamed a prayer for Wetzel to pull that trigger and pump a bullet into one of those round, staring, faceted eyes....

The robots seemed to go dead. They hung there motionless, arms lifted, each with a ma.s.sive foot caught in midstride.

What had stopped them at the last possible second I had no way of telling. All I did know was a sudden release of tension that left me with just enough strength to keep my feet moving.

I went on.

The edge of the ramp was getting uncomfortably close. I was here to see the head man, but I would prefer to see him out in the open. The thought of walking into that black hole left me as cold as a barefoot Eskimo.

The ramp. It was a good six feet wide, made of what seemed to be some form of an aluminum alloy, and was waiting to be walked on. I started up its shallow slope, the rubber soles of my basketball shoes soundless on the smooth surface.

He appeared suddenly, without warning, in the doorway. He was quite tall, slim in the hips, and his naked shoulders seemed almost as wide as the opening. Elaborate beadwork designs had been worked into the buckskin breeches, and his headdress resembled a Sioux warbonnet, its twin rows of red-tipped feathers hanging almost to his moccasins. A hunting knife hung in a snake-skin sheath at his right hip. He was as gauntly handsome as a Blackfoot--and they don't come any better-looking than that.

He stood there, arms folded across his chest, looking as immovable as Pike's Peak. This time I stopped. My back was as stiff as his, my head as erect, my shoulders as square if not as wide. For a long time we stood that way staring straight into each other's eyes, our expressions blank, our tongues locked.

When enough time had pa.s.sed for me to open the conversation without being accused of impetuousness, I said, "I am Long Rock, of the Potawatomi. I have come in peace, to hold counsel with you."

My words, in the language of the Delaware because of Wetzel's earlier remark, had no immediate effect, which was par for the course with any Indian. Not even his eyelids moved. The silence went on, building into tension. Anyone unfamiliar with the ways of the Indian would have taken another stab at it. I knew better. I had made my pitch; now it was strictly up to him.

Finally his strong lips came unstuck. "I am Lo-as-ro, War Chief of the Kornesh." It was the Delaware tongue, all right, but with inflexions and nuances strange to me. "How is it that your skin is white but you speak in the way of the Orbiwah?"

That last word, I judged, was what the Indian in general was called wherever this specimen had come from. I said, "In my blood is the blood of the Orbiwah. That is why I am here, sent by the Great Chief of all white men."

We squatted down facing each other on the ramp. At once a young brave brought out a long, elaborately carved peace-pipe. Lo-as-ro put the bit to his mouth and puffed smoke toward the four cardinal points of the compa.s.s, then pa.s.sed the pipe to me. The tobacco was far more aromatic than any I had come across before.

With the amenities out of the way, the Chief said, "Why has the White Chief sent you to me?"

"To welcome you to the land of the white man."

"I come not to the land of the white man in peace."

My eyes were as cold as his own. "This we do not understand. The white man has no quarrel with the tribe of Kornesh."

"The white man," Lo-as-ro said sonorously, "has taken from the Orbiwah his land and his home. He has driven the Orbiwah into small areas. He has killed buffalo and the bison and the deer, leaving the Orbiwah to eat the meat of the horse or to starve. The Orbiwah has been made foul with the diseases of the white man."

"All this," I said, "was long, long ago. Perhaps it was not right, but it is the way of life that the strong prevail and the weak perish."

His expression darkened. "You say this--you with the blood of the Orbiwah in your veins?"

"I speak only true words, n.o.ble Lo-as-ro. The white men are in number as the leaves of the forest, the Orbiwah few and helpless."

One of his hands made a graceful motion. "I have come to return the land to the Orbiwah, to restore him to the greatness of his fathers.

Once more the land shall be alive with game, the rivers filled with fish. Once more shall the Orbiwah hunt with the weapons of his fathers. I have spoken."

"From whence do you come?" I asked.

He pointed dramatically toward the sky. "From a great distance. Up there are many worlds."