Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward Page B

bins and stockades on the other side of the camp, spreading the clan guard warriors thin. There seemed to be too few guards, and Blue-Flow could not see Smoky-Sky anywhere. There were no enemy warriors on their side of the field, so the plan of attack was obvious. Blue-Flow dropped his eye and whispered the situation to his group.
    “The petal plant fields are under attack by a large war party that has control over the eastern half. We will go east from here, staying below the horizon, cross over in the hard direction until we are in back of them, then come down at them from the east and trap them in between.” As he spoke, pods and digging tools dropped out of pouches into a disorganized pile on the crust. Rugged fighting manipulators sprang from their bodies and pulled sharp shards of dragon crystal from their weapons pouches. Although Great-Crack tried to hide them, Blue-Flow saw with disgust the small pile of funny pod seeds. He resolved to give her a drubbing once the battle was over.
    With their killing spears of shattered dragon crystal at the ready, the hunting party moved east, going many times faster than their previous rate of movement in the hard direction. Once they had moved far enough east to be over the horizon in that direction, Blue-Flow led them across in the hard direction until they were in back of the attacking party.
    Putting his warriors in a line, each with one or moresharp spikes sticking out from strong manipulators firmly imbedded in their thickened front ends, he whispered to them all. “They do not know we are attacking, so move as quietly as you can. If we can surprise them, we will catch them with their brain-knots in our direction.”
    They moved ahead smoothly, keeping a low profile as they came over the horizon. They flowed around a pile of pods that had been stacked for pickup.
    Blue-Flow whispered, “We’re in luck. The pickers have gone down to fight and push the guards further back.”
    They each chose a row and with their quarry busily engaged in a battle midway down the row, they were able to attack almost without warning.
    It was hard to kill a cheela. If hit with something hard, the fluid body just retreated from the blow with the flexible skin absorbing the impact. If the something hard was very sharp, like the shattered end of a dragon crystal, it could poke a hole through the skin, and if that was big enough a hole, some of the glowing fluid inside would leak out before the automatic protection systems could close the wound. If an eye that was so rash as to be out on a stub could be caught, a sharp-edged shard might slice off the eye-stub with an accompanying shock of pain but only a partial loss of sight. After all, if one or two of the normal complement of twelve eyes were lost, the cheela could easily adjust the position of the remainder to have nearly complete vision.
    The only really vulnerable part of a cheela was the brain-knot. It could be anywhere inside the skin, but it was a good bet that, if the cheela was fighting someone on one side, the brain-knot would be well over on the other side, far away from any sharp spears of dragon crystal. Blue-Flow was counting on this instinctive behavioras he rushed his enemy target from behind and flowed up onto her topside. He felt the telltale knot under his tread and shocked it into unconsciousness with a focused ripple from his underside, then neatly speared it three times as his momentum carried him up and over his now-dead foe.
    “Blue-Flow!” shouted Weary-Tread, lowering the point of her spear. “Where did you come from?”
    Blue-Flow surveyed the oozing hide of his old friend and replied, “We just got back and we have found a new home for the clan. But come, follow me, we have fighting to do.”
    Blue-Flow moved down the row of plants until he could see a sparring trio of warriors between the plants. Warm-Wind and Great-Crack had an enemy warrior between them. The warrior had parried Great-Crack’s initial rush and