Chapter 6

"Oh, Adam, thank God you're back in one piece. While you were gone, I did some more research on the habits of octopuses. I found a reference that we had missed in our original survey of the literature on the subject, and it scared me to death. It said that octopuses only make contact with other octopuses for two reasons: either for sex, or for eating the other octopus. Except for sex, two octopuses will fight to the death, no matter whether or not they are the same gender.

"It seems to me, from that, that we have no real fears from the octopuses. They will not cooperate with each other, so they will never be able to form even a small army to attack us. I've been figuratively holding my breath waiting for you to get home so that I could tell you this. It's my conclusion that we can stop worrying about the octopuses and get on with the more pleasant parts of our lives, like making more babies."

Well, that explains why the only times we have seen octopuses, they have been very aggressive toward each other and other animals. It looks like all we really need to do is to carry adequate self protection and to treat the octopuses like we do the land sharks, namely, stay out of their way, but fight if we have to.

I was very tired and emotionally drained, but I was very happy to be home. That night, Eve and I started our campaign to create another baby as soon as possible.

Belinda's training was coming along well. She was nearly as strong as her mother, and was as smart, though that's not saying much when it comes to most horses. Linda was already trained for riding, so I wanted Belinda trained that way as well. Horse training was Eve's specialty, so she took to the job in a hurry in hope of finishing before her belly got too big for her to mount. We did have two sets of tack, so that was not a problem. Eve and I took some rides around the plateau after she had Belinda trained well enough to allow Eve aboard.

Both horses were skittish around rockets and explosions, so I usually did not carry my RPG when Eve and I went riding. Instead, I carried my crossbow with some of both kinds of bolts: those with points and those with explosive warheads. I also carried hand grenades. I was willing to go along with the horses' tender sensibilities only up to a point. The hand grenades were a requirement for safety, since the exploding bolts could not hope to stop a shark or an octopus. Dogs went with us, too, of course; the dogs went everywhere with us, since we needed the protection offered by their warnings as well as by their fighting abilities.

On one occasion, we did have an encounter with octopuses up on our plateau. It was late in the afternoon, and we were riding near a deep pond at the extreme far end of our plateau, nearly a mile from the cave. Only two dogs, Jim and Helen, were with us on this particular day. Eve was carrying Mary in a kind of bag slung across her chest, so her movements were a bit awkward. The dogs and I were providing most of the security, and I was depending on a warning from the dogs if any danger neared.

I had a pouch of six hand grenades slung from my saddle horn, and there was a cord running from my crossbow to the saddle horn so that I could recover it without dismounting if I dropped it. Of course, both of us were carrying our pistols.

The dogs were ranging ahead of us, poking their noses into every nook and cranny the way dogs are prone to do. Suddenly, there was a yelp of pain from Helen as she jerked her nose back from a bush she was checking out. We could see blood streaming from a gash running from her eye nearly to the tip of her nose along the left side of her shout.

As we rushed to investigate and to offer support, two octopuses not much larger than my hand appeared from behind the bush. They both were carrying tiny knives. The size of the knife nor the size of the octopus did not seem to slow down their charge after Helen; they were intent on finishing their attack on her. Moments later, three more of the small octopuses appeared, and they were followed by an adult, easily as large as two of the dogs put together. The adult was carrying two clubs and two knives, and there was nothing small about these weapons.

Helen had recovered from her surprise at the unexpected attack and was ready to fight. Jim was there with her, ready to do whatever was needed to defend his sibling. I asked Eve to hold back to try to cover us with her crossbow while I rode Linda as close to the advancing octopuses as I thought was prudent.

While moving in that direction, I took a hand grenade from the pouch and armed it by striking the striker extension against the saddle. The fuse was only good for five to ten seconds, so I threw the hand grenade directly at the advancing adult octopus. The animal paused a moment when this new thing dropped in front of her, but resumed her advance just in time to be right over the hand grenade when it blew.

We all were spattered with bits and pieces of adult octopus, but it was a small price to pay for getting rid of such a dangerous adversary so easily. However, this did nothing to slow the advance of the five young octopuses. They were scattered too much for another hand grenade to do much good, besides they had gotten too close to the dogs.

The dogs attacked the octopuses with all of the ferocity an excited dog is capable of, and two of the young octopuses were killed in a few moments. However, that left three that were not slowed down in the least. Those three octopuses attacked like berserkers. The two dogs were fully involved with two of the attackers, so it was up to me to deal with the third one, and it was now advancing in my direction.

Dammit, based on the weapons I had at hand, I had nothing really appropriate to fight with. Well, I planned to do something about that as soon as I returned home. Nevertheless, I had a fight on my hands right then, and I had no time for an R&D (Research and Development) program into appropriate fighting gear. All I had was the crossbow or the pistol, so I drew my automatic and started blasting away at the charging octopus. Shit! The bullets passed right through the octopus without slowing it down. I now was fighting an octopus masquerading as a swiss cheese. My bullets were hitting the damned thing, but not doing any mortal damage.

I had no trouble getting Linda to back away from the charging octopus. She managed to stay out of the reach of the damned fool thing, but I didn't know how long that would last. Fortunately for the both of us, the two dogs had finally defeated their opponents and charged to our rescue. The dogs made short work of that pesky octopus, and both Linda and I were grateful.

Eve and I were very happy to get home safely. We were both disturbed by the ferocity of the attack by the octopuses. There sure was a difference between knowing intellectually about what might happen and actually experiencing it.

I started thinking what kind of weapon I could add to my arsenal to fight things like the small octopus. The only thing that I could come up with was a light lance. A lance was not going to be a surefire weapon, but I couldn't think of anything better. I read through the data we had on lances, everything from the heavy monstrosities used by knights in armor to the light weight things used by the Indians on the American Western plains. All of the evidence pointed to the Comanche lance, so that was what I tried to copy. At the moment, I didn't have any metal to use for a point, but I figured that a fire-hardened point would be good enough to test the feasibility of the weapon.

Anyway, I cut a straight limb 1.8 m long and sharpened one end. That wood was so hard that it took a good point and held it once it was fire hardened. Linda was not very happy with me sitting on her back and waving around a long stick near to her ears, but she finally settled down and I got pretty good at stabbing stationary targets. Eve helped me practice by tying some string onto a melon and dragging it passed me while I tried to stab it. Shit! A moving target was orders of magnitude tougher to hit. However, I eventually got so that I could stab that melon around half the time, so I figured that was good enough and declared victory. I was tired of ruining points by stabbing them into the ground.