The Wolf Worlds Read Online Free Page B

her little computer on, measured the rock. She laughed and snapped it off again.
    "You're safe," she said. "Those footprints are at least a million years old."
    Sighs of relief all around.
    "I wonder who they were?" Bet asked.
    "The People of the Lake, obviously," Doc answered.
    Alex gave him a suspicious look. "An" how w'ye be knowit thae, y' horrible beastie?"
    Doc shrugged his furry shoulders. "What else would a being call itself if it lived on the shores of a lake this size?"
    "Doc," Ida said, "if I were a gambling woman—which I am—I'd say you just outfoxed yourself. You couldn't possibly know something like that."
    Everybody chortled in agreement.
    Doc trudged on without comment.
    The spectacle from the top of the low rise was interesting enough, Sten admitted as he frantically scrabbled the willygun off his shoulder.
    First was the slow descending of the crater walls as the crater opened out to flatlands and brush.
    Second were the tiny thatched knots of huts scattered around the crater's opening—possibly two or three hundred of them, clustered in knots and hidden on tree cover.
    But far more significant was the solid wall of warriors. Lined up, almost shoulder to shoulder, were hundreds of beings, each nearly three meters tall. Evidently Ida was wrong and the beings that'd left the mooseprints in the rock were still alive and quite healthy.
    Also hostile.
    They were huge, slender creatures, with straw-colored skin like the savannah around them. They wore bright-colored robes, caught at one shoulder with elaborately carved pins.
    And each was armed with a spear that towered even higher than himself.
    "What was that you said about being safe, Ida?"
    "I haven't been calling them very well lately, have I?"
    "What do we do?" Bet asked.
    "I think somebody's coming to tell us." Sten nodded in the dierction of one warrior who was advancing up the hill.
    Guns came up, level.
    "Put 'em down," Sten hissed. "We don't want to look threatening."
    "Threatenit? Ah dinna ken who threatenit who, Ah must mention."
    The being stopped about ten meters away. Closer up, he was even more formidable. His height was accented by an impossibly long, narrow face, with flowing, feathery eyebrows and hair greased high into a tan helmet shape. He was carrying a bundle of what appeared to be weapons.
    The group jumped involuntarily as he hurled the bundle toward them. It dropped in front of Sten.
    "/Ari!cia! /Ari!cia!" the being shouted, pointing at a low grove of trees lining one side of the hill.
    "What's he want. Doc?" Sten asked.
    Doc shook his head.
    "Except for the fact that he is speaking a heavy glottal-stop language, I haven't the faintest idea."
    "/Ari!cia!" the being shouted again.
    Then he turned and strode back down the hill and disappeared into the trees.
    "Projection." Doc theorized. "Given a primitive culture…
    warrior-herdsmen. No longer nomadic, their wars have most likely become raids and meetings of champions."
    "Oh." Sten got it and walked forward. He knelt and took the weapons from their hide wrap. There was quite an assortment: one short spear: one atlatl. throwing-stick; one medium-size club: one long war spear; and one hand-shaped and polished curved chunk of hardwood. A throwing-club, Sten theorized, wondering about the open vee at one side.
    "We have been challenged," Doc continued. "One of us is supposed to face him in that grove. If our champion loses, our lives shall all be forfeit.
    "If we win, they will call us brothers and try to fill us with whatever mind-altering potion these primitives have been able to create." Doc preened at his own instant synthesis.
    "The question is," he continued, "which one of us heroes will enter that grove? I might suggest Guard—and Mantis officers—are trained to lead from the front. By the time Doc had begun his suggestion. Sten had already shed his combat harness, picked up the weapons, and begun sprinting down the hill toward the grove.
    His sprint became a dead hurtle as Sten