"No!" Baba interrupted.
"But why? I'd be protected by my armor and...."
"No!" Baba clicked more firmly. There was a stern but puzzled expression on the little bear's face. "The arrow-birds are my friend-pets, I must not hurt them." He used a word in the clicking language which meant both friend and pet. It was something like the word "kikac," which he called Johnny—"friend-pet-brother."
"All right," Johnny said, "but I don't understand."
"You mustn't harm them, either," Baba said. "Remember, I brought you here. Otherwise you wouldn't know where the nests were. Even if you just tell the grownups and they kill them—well, it would be wrong. I would have—"
Baba was interrupted by a high whistling, shrieking noise, and the whir of wings. So quick you couldn't have followed his motions, Johnny squatted down, curled his feet under him, thrust his hands and forearms into special armor pockets. Six strangely shaped creatures were diving straight at him.
Arrow-birds! A dirty greenish yellow, they were long and slender, over a foot long. One could not tell where their heads left off and their necks began. They were shaped like long arrow points. Their gossamer-thin wings were a blur of motion.
Johnny braced himself so that if they hit him he would not be knocked over. In a fraction of a second they dived within fifty feet of him.
"Go away friend-pets," Baba clicked, as loudly and as fast as he could. "Go away! Bother us not!" He repeated his cry in a kind of chant, so rapidly it was almost a trill.
The shrieking whistle changed to a low hum. The arrow-birds pulled out of their dive. They floated in mid-air, their wings awhir. One had almost reached Johnny and was hovering in the air only a couple of yards away. It bent its neck out of arrow position and looked straight at him. Its little purple eyes glittered against the yellow green skin of its head.