Of Man and Manta.

Ox.

Piers Anthony.

Chapter 1.

TRIO.

It had a shiny black finish, solid caterpillar treads, a whirling blade -- and it was fast. It was seemingly a machine -- but hardly the servant of man.

Veg fired his blaster at it. The project charge should have heated the metal explosively and blown a chunk out of it. But the polished hide only gave off sparks and glowed momentarily. The thing spun about with dismaying mobility and came at him again, the vicious blade leading.

Veg bounded backward, grabbed the long crowbar, and jammed it end first into the whirring blade. "Try a mouthful of that!" he said, shielding his eyes from the antic.i.p.ated fragmentation.

The iron pole bucked in his hands as the blade connected. More sparks flew. The blade lopped off sections, two inches at a time: CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP! Six feet became five, then four, as the machine consumed the metal.

At that point Veg realized he was in a fight for his life. He had come across the machine chewing up the stacked supplies as he emerged from transfer and thought it was an armored animal or a remote-controlled device. It was more than either; it had an alarming aura of sentience.

He tried the rifle. The flash pan heated as he activated it; steam filled the firing chamber. Bullets whistled out in a rapid stream, for the steam rifle was smoother and more efficient than the explosive-powder variety. They bounced off the machine and ricocheted off the boulders on either side. He put at least one bullet directly in its eye-lens, but even this did no apparent harm.

Still, the contraption had halted its advance. Something must be hurting it!

The rifle ran out of bullets. Veg grabbed an explosive sh.e.l.l and slammed it into firing position as the machine moved forward again. He aimed at the treads and let fly.

Sand billowed out, for an instant obscuring the target. The machine wallowed -- but a moment later it climbed out of the cavity formed by the explosion and emerged undamaged.

"You're a tough one!" Veg said admiringly. He was a man of barely dominant peace; he loved a good fight when he could justify it. He hurled the rifle at the enemy.

The weapon flew apart as the whirling blade swung to intercept it. One large section bounced away to the side. The machine turned to chase after it, chopping the piece up where it had fallen and scooping it into a nether-hopper. It did not, he saw now, have parallel treads, but a single broad line of cleats, individually retractable like the claws of a cat. The hopper opened just before this wheel/foot -- and closed tightly when finished, like a mouth. Sophisticated...

Veg grinned for a moment. Wonderful technology, but the stupid thing didn't know the rifle was no longer dangerous! It had fought the weapon instead of the man.

Then he sobered. The machine wasn't fighting the rifle, it was consuming it! It ate metal.

He hadn't been battling this thing. He had been feeding it. No wonder it had halted; as long as he was willing to serve good metal by hand, why should the machine exert itself further?

This revelation didn't help much, however. It suggested that the machine was distressingly smart, not dumb. The human party would need that metal to survive. He couldn't let a ravenous machine gobble it all down.

Still, that gave him an idea. If metal fed it, would food hurt it?

Veg tore open a pack of food staples. Here were breadstuff and vegetables and -- he paused with distaste as his hand rummaged -- meat.

Then he brightened. What better use for it? He hauled out a plastic-wrapped steak and hurled it at the machine, which had just finished the rifle, burped, and turned back toward the man. The blade rose to catch the package; bits of flesh, bone, and plastic splayed into the air.

This time he observed the scoop-like orifice, the hopper, in action behind the blade. The different processes of the machine were well coordinated. The bulk of the freshly sliced meat and bone funneled directly into this mouth, just as the metal had. Veg held his breath, another steak in hand. Would the machine get sudden indigestion?

No such luck. A spout opened, and clear liquid dribbled out onto the ground: the surplus juices of the meat, apparently unneeded by the thing's metabolism. The machine a.s.similated the organic material as readily as it had the inorganic. And came on for more.

Would liquid short it out? External liquid, not digestive fluid. Veg found a bottle of water and heaved a full gallon at the fan. The machine was drenched.

First it shook; then it glowed all over. Death agonies for this nonliving creature? No -- it was merely drying itself off efficiently by a combination of vibration and heat. It had not been incapacitated.

"Takes more brains than I got to handle this metal baby," Veg muttered as he danced nimbly aside. It was hardly the occasion for introspection, but Veg had high respect for the intelligence of his friend Cal and wished he were here at this moment. Cal could have looked at the oncoming machine and made one obvious suggestion, and the thing would be finished.

The two men had met years before, in s.p.a.ce, introduced as a prank by idle crewmen. Veg was a vegetarian and, after too much ribbing, somewhat militant about it. Since he was also an extremely powerful man, the sn.i.g.g.e.rs had soon abated. Rabbit food did not necessarily make rabbits.

Until word circulated of a man who was a pure carnivore, eating nothing but meat -- man flesh, at that! -- and who thought vegetarians were stupid. Veg had not reacted overtly, but his muscles had bulged under his shirt tensely.

Tiny, weak Calvin Potter -- about as inoffensive as it was possible to be. Yet it was technically true: Owing to a savage episode in his past, he had been rendered unable to consume any food except human blood. And he was a genius, compared to whom all other people, including vegetarians, were stupid.

If Veg had suffered ridicule, it was minor compared to what Cal endured. Veg did not like being made a patsy for the torment of another man. He took the unhappy little Cal under his bone-crushing wing, and very shortly no one thought anything about him was even faintly humorous.

Yet as it turned out, Cal was the stronger man, able because of his intellect to tackle even a predator dinosaur alone and barehanded -- and to survive. He had actually done it.

There was no way to summon Cal. Veg had beamed through to this alternate world first, to set things up for his companions and scout for any dangers. Aquilon was to follow in an hour, Cal in another hour, along with the mantas. All nice and neat.

Only about two hundred and fifty pounds could be transferred at one time, and the equipment had to cool off after each use. That was why things had to be s.p.a.ced out. Or so the agents claimed. Veg didn't believe the male-agent, Taler; the female, Tamme, was obviously no more trustworthy, but on a woman it didn't really matter.

He retreated again. Well, he had found danger, all right! Rather, it had found him. An animate buzz saw with an omnivorous appet.i.te. If he didn't figure out something pretty soon, it would eat him and the supplies and lie in wait for Aquilon...

That goaded him to fury. The thought of the lovely woman being consumed by the machine...

Veg had always been able to take or leave women, and because he was large, muscular, and handsome, he had taken a number. Until Aquilon, the girl who never smiled, came into his life. She was an artist, whose paintings were almost as beautiful as she. Though she was competent and independent, she was also deep-down nice. Veg had not known what real love was, but to know Aquilon was indeed to love her, though she had never solicited it. Part of that love now was to give her up without resentment; that was the essence she had taught him simply by being what she was. She might have split the Veg-Cal friendship apart -- but she needed them both as much as they needed her. So they had become three friends, closer than before, with no compet.i.tion or jealousy between them. Finally she was able to smile...

"I'm going to get you out of here if it kills me!" Veg cried. He hoisted the bag of food to his shoulder and began running. "Come, doggie!" he called, flipping back a package of raisins. "Soup's on -- if you can catch it!"

The machine had been sampling the fabric of the tent-a.s.sembly. It angled its blade to catch the raisins. Evidently it liked them better -- more iron? -- because it followed after Veg.

He led it across the desert, away from the supplies. His tactic was working -- but what would happen when he ran out of food?

Aquilon stood chagrined at the carnage. The supplies had been ravaged, bits of meat and metal were scattered across the sand, and Veg was nowhere in sight. What had happened?

She cradled the egg in her arms, keeping it warm. It was a large egg, like a small football, nine inches long. It was all that remained of two fine birds she had known and loved. They had died, protecting her and it. There was no way to repay them except to vindicate their trust and preserve the egg until it hatched.

She felt a sudden urge to paint. She always painted when upset; it calmed her marvelously. She had painted the phenomenal fungus landscape of Planet Nacre, where she and the two men had had their first great adventure together. She had painted the savage omnivore of that world -- and seen in it the mere reflection of the worst omnivore of all, man himself. She had painted dinosaurs -- but how could she paint the ravening monsters that were the souls of human beings, herself included?

She could try; it might work this time. To make visible the ego of the human omnivore... but to do that she would have to put down the egg...

Then she saw the tracks. Veg's footprints led away from the camp, partly obscured by something he must have been dragging. Had he gone exploring? He should have stayed nearby, securing the camp against possible dangers, not gallivanting about the countryside. Not that there was much countryside to see; this was about as gaunt a locale as she cared to endure. Sand and boulders...

But what would account for the destruction of supplies? Someone or something had vandalized them, and she knew Veg would not have done that. The cuts were peculiar, almost like the marks of a rampant power-saw. Strange, strange.

She was worried now. If something had attacked, Veg would have fought. That was the omnivore in him despite his vegetarianism. That could account for the mess. If he had won, why wasn't he here? If he had lost, why were his footprints leading away? Veg was stubborn; he would have died fighting. He would never have run.

She had thought she loved Veg at one time. Physically, s.e.xually. She had tried to be a vegetarian like him. But somehow it hadn't worked out. She still cared for him deeply, however, and his unexplained absence troubled her.

She contemplated the prints. Could he have lost -- and been taken captive? If someone held a gun on him, even Veg would not have been so foolish as to resist. Yet where were the prints of his captor? There were only the treadlike marks of whatever he had been hauling... No, she still didn't have it. First, there would be no one here to hold a gun or any other weapon on Veg. This was an uninhabited wilderness desert on an unexplored alternate world. They were the first human beings to set foot on it. Second, the prints diverged in places, sometimes being separated by several yards. If Veg had been dragging or hauling anything, the marks would have been near his own prints, always.

She stooped to examine the other marks more carefully, cradling the big egg in one arm. She touched the flattened sand with one finger. Substantial weight had been here -- a ton or more, considering the breadth of the track and the depression of the sand. Like tire marks but wider, and there was only one line instead of parallel lines. What sort of vehicle had made that? Not a human artifact...