CHAPTER EIGHTEEN – GUNS AND GUNNERS

There's nothing good about guns, especially when they're in the hands of callow youths on any planet anywhere...

There was confusion and chaos when Umbaga mentioned the stick that went bang.

As far as Aurora was concerned, the only people like her within a dozen lightyears were Melvin and herself, and hadn’t this caveman just announced that Melvin was dead? And hadn’t he described one of the defensive weapons carried by the males aboard he little ships like their own as sticks that went bang, an appropriate description by a primitive mind? And wasn’t it most unlikely that any other from their home world of Terra had found this planet? And if they had, why were they shooting at one of their own, for Melvin was still wearing his overalls, but with the addition of a considerable amount of hairy deerskin bandage over his wound? Might that have made him look outlandish?

“Like me?” she asked Umbaga, and he nodded.

“Two. Man and woman. Like you.” he confirmed.

Aurora was standing near the cave entrance when he said that, and she looked around but there was no sight of anyone else. What had Umbaga seen, she wondered, and would he be likely to imagine strangers with guns (for she was sure he had described a gun even though he had no idea what a gun was or what it did).

“You there! Show yourself, scum!” bellowed a voice from nowhere and in Aurora’s own language, and she detected a rustle in the middle distance where someone was apparently forcing his way between the jungle forest that lay around them. And then she saw that the figure was moving towards them.

A shot rang out.

It had to be a shot, a sharp crack followed by a hiss and the scent of electric arcing which lingered for seconds before it was carried away on the gentle breeze of a sunny day.

“What the … stop shooting or you’ll start a war!” she bellowed, her voice authoritative despite the situation. She was uncomfortably aware that, almost invisibly, a group of Neanderthal hunters was noiselessly and ghost-like making its way towards the gunman.

“You’re all under arrest!” replied the new voice, and Aurora could make out the shape of a man in the familiar overalls of the young men who were part of the small crews of the searching vessels.

“Who do you think you’re talking to?” she snapped back. “You’ve got a lot to answer for, shooting the Captain of my ship and by all accounts killing him!” she added with as much authority as she could muster.

“I had to shoot the wretch! There were two of them, both armed, and I’m only one!” came the other voice, resonant with the bullish confidence of the young male, yet, she noticed, suddenly tinged with uncertainty.

“Melvin was not armed!” snapped Aurora, “He had been injured by a wild beast and if he bore anything it was a staff to aid him as he walked a hard path!” she added.

“What happening?” asked Juju just behind Aurora.

“There mad men about,” muttered Umbaga.

“I’ll sort,” said Aurora quietly. But the two word assurance contained more confidence than she felt. The other, now clearly in sight and a few years younger than Melvin (why in the name of goodness have they given guns to youths as young as that, wondered Aurora) was carefully making his way towards them, cautiously looking around him for fear of an unseen and unknown foe launching itself at him out of the blue.

“Stop where you are!” called Aurora when she judged she needed to know more about his motives before facing the youth any closer. “There are men all around you,” she added, and by now it was no lie.

Several of the natives from the caves had slowly secreted themselves close enough to the gunman to be able to neutralise him if he made a move against any one of them. And they were used to Old Man Tiger and that creature’s wiles. They could quite easily reduce the man with the gun to nothing if they thought there was any risk to themselves or their families. Their trouble was they knew nothing of guns or had any idea of their range and the destruction they could cause. They had yet, even, to develop the bow and arrow although one or two of them understood the principals of the slingshot. But their chief weapon was a flint-tipped spear and they were rarely without one of those when away from home.

“Who are you and what do you want?” demanded Aurora, still in her own language.

“Who are you, more like!” almost sneered the young man, and he sent an electric arc from his gun close to where Aurora stood.

“Why are you firing on me?” she demanded, ducking back into the cave. This was most unexpected, a stand-off against one who was obviously on a similar expedition to herself and Melvin, who she hoped was not really dead as Umbaga had said. Much as she trusted the Neanderthal she had reservations about his ability to judge the results of a shot from a modern weapon. The electric bolts they fired could be deadly, but if they were they also had to be fired with a great deal of accuracy and she had seen the wild shot that had missed her by quite a margin.

“My partner and I claim this planet in the name of the authorities on Terra and all its native peoples are to be subject to Terran law..” began the other grandly, but Aurora cut him short.

“You have no rights to make such a declaration!” she snapped, “We of Terra are not on an empire-building crusade! It is not up to us to place any peoples in a lower order under us or command them without their permission!”

The young man lowered his weapon slightly and tried to peer into the cave to see who he was talking to.

“You say ‘we of Terra’,” he replied, more quietly and thoughtfully, “Are you also of our superior race? And if so, why are you here?”

“You stupid numpkin!” replied Aurora. “If I didn’t share your background how on Terra do you think I would use your language and even share your accent? My partner and I are here on the Big Search and have formed friendships with the natives who are even now straining at the leash in order to restrain you should I command it!” That last bit wasn’t strictly true, but she thought a little exaggeration might warn one she saw as an impetuous youth to be a little less cavalier in his attitude when on a world he knew next to nothing about.

“And the creature I shot … he was with you?” mumbled the stranger.

“He most certainly is!” snapped Aurora, “and I see from the stripes on your overall that you are several promotions lower than him! If you have murdered a superior officer you know the penalty, don’t you?”

“Senior officer, ma’am?” his reply quivered.

“Most certainly!” she said, wondering if she dared risk showing herself to him. He had lowered his weapon, but it was a microsecond’s work to lift it again, and fire. “I order you to put your weapon on the ground, and stand back,” she added, hopefully.

“And … and if I don’t?” He was showing minimal signs of defiance, which didn’t really surprise her.

Before Aurora could reply there was a crashing through the undergrowth behind the stranger and Melvin, apparently not dead at all, but very much alive and very, very angry, leapt onto him and snatched the weapon from his grasp. Then he slung it into the undergrowth (where, incidentally, it would lie lost to time and the eyes of mortals and wouldn’t be found for many, many millennia when it would be eventually discovered by a child and used as a play thing until it finally fell to bits and was recycled into bottle-tops, around the time of the mass exodus).

“What do you think you’re doing, firing at me?” he demanded. “As if things weren’t tough enough here without fancy weapons in the hands of callow youths entering the equation!”

The young man tried to struggle free and then swung round to face Melvin.

“Crikey … uncle Melvin...” he stammered, his face suddenly deathly white, and he fell to the forest floor in a dead faint.

© Peter Rogerson 02.11.16