The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford and Other Classic Stories by Philip K. Dick

everything was hostile, the enemy, coming to take their possessions away from them. Well, they can keep them.”
    Nasha was deep in thought, her mind far away. Suddenly she gasped. “Doric,” she said. “What’s the matter with us? We have no problem. The gun is no menace at all.”
    The two men stared at her.
    “No menace?” Doric said. “It’s already shot us down once. And as soon as we take off again—”
    “Don’t you see?” Nasha began to laugh. “The poor foolish gun, it’s completely harmless. Even I could deal with it.”
    “You?”
    Her eyes were flashing. “With a crowbar. With a hammer or a stick of wood. Let’s go back to the ship and load up. Of course we’re at its mercy in the air: that’s the way it was made. It can fire into the sky, shoot down anything that flies. But that’s all. Against something on the ground it has no defenses. Isn’t that right?”
    Doric nodded slowly. “The soft underbelly of the dragon. In the legend, the dragon’s armor doesn’t cover its stomach.” He began to laugh. “That’s right. That’s perfectly right.”
    “Let’s go, then,” Nasha said. “Let’s get back to the ship. We have work to do here.”
     
    It was early the next morning when they reached the ship. During the night the Captain had died, and the crew had ignited his body, according to custom. They had stood solemnly around it until the last ember died. As they were going back to their work the woman and the two men appeared, dirty and tired, still excited.
    And presently, from the ship, a line of people came, each carrying something in his hands. The line marched across the gray slag, the eternal expanse of fused metal. When they reached the weapon they all fell on the gun at once, with crowbars, hammers, anything that was heavy and hard.
    The telescopic sights shattered into bits. The wiring was pulled out, torn to shreds. The delicate gears were smashed, dented.
    Finally the warheads themselves were carried off and the firing pins removed.
    The gun was smashed, the great weapon destroyed. The people went down into the vault and examined the treasure. With its metal-armored guardian dead there was no danger any longer. They studied the pictures, the films, the crates of books, the jeweled crowns, the cups, the statues.
    At last, as the sun was dipping into the gray mists that drifted across the planet they came back up the stairs again. For a moment they stood around the wrecked gun looking at the unmoving outline of it.
    Then they started back to the ship. There was still much work to be done. The ship had been badly hurt, much had been damaged and lost. The important thing was to repair it as quickly as possible, to get it into the air.
    With all of them working together it took just five more days to make it spaceworthy.
     
    Nasha stood in the control room, watching the planet fall away behind them. She folded her arms, sitting down on the edge of the table.
    “What are you thinking?” Doric said.
    “I? Nothing.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “I was thinking that there must have been a time when this planet was quite different, when there was life on it.”
    “I suppose there was. It’s unfortunate that no ships from our system came this far, but then we had no reason to suspect intelligent life until we saw the fission glow in the sky.”
    “And then it was too late.”
    “Not quite too late. After all, their possessions, their music, books, their pictures, all of that will survive. We’ll take them home and study them, and they’ll change us. We won’t be the same afterwards. Their sculpturing, especially. Did you see the one of the great winged creature, without a head or arms? Broken off, I suppose. But those wings—It looked very old. It will change us a great deal.”
    “When we come back we won’t find the gun waiting for us,” Nasha said. “Next time it won’t be there to shoot us down. We can land and take the treasure, as you call it.” She smiled up at