"Miracles?" Sears' shoulders shot up amiably. "We can hope it is, with
boiling. Gotta have it. Canteens won't last the day, in this heat."
Paul helped Ed unpack tools from the lifeboat. "One sickle," Spearman
noted. "No scythe. Garden gadgets. Pruning shears. One ax, one damned
hatchet. No scythe, no scythe----. There were two or three on the
ship."
"Maybe the lake's not so deep."
"Maybe we'll play hell trying to find out too. Those things weren't
much scared by the shooting...."
Hot, tedious work created a circle of clear shaded ground which must
be called home. A fire was boiling lake water in the few aluminum
vessels. It had a fishy, mud-bottom taste and could not be cooled, but
it eased thirst. Paul had glimpsed Ann in the lifeboat, opening her
violin case, closing it, sick-faced. He had marveled again at the
mystery of a Federation governing two-thirds of a world, which had
genially allowed a fourteen-year-old musician to carry her violin on
man's greatest venture--with enough strings to last two or three years
and no means of restringing the bow. Later Ann threw herself into the
labor of clearing brush but tired quickly from her own violence.
Sears' microscope occupied a camp table; Paul and Dorothy joined him
in a pause for rest. "Got anything for the local news-paper?"
"Unboiled lake water-assorted wrigglers." Sears mopped his cheeks.
"'Twas never meant my name should be Linnaeus. Have a look." The world
on the slide seemed not unlike what Sears had once shown him in water
from the hydroponics room of _Argo_: protoplasmic abundance no mind
could grasp. "So far, nothing basically different from what you'd find
in lake water on Earth--except for the trifle that every species is
unknown, hey? I suppose that's why they heaved a taxonomist into
space, to see what the poor cluck would do, hey? Now, those red dots
are something like algae. Notice a big ciliated schlemihl blundering
around? He could almost be old man paramecium, oh my, yes. Gi'me your
sickle, muscle man."
"Hot work, Jocko. Take it slow and easy."
"Believe me, Mistuh Mason, I will. What----"
In undergrowth beyond the clearing there was deep-throated fury, a
crashing of branches. A gray and white man shape staggered out of
concealment, wrenching at what looked like swollen black rope. But the
rope had a head, gripping the giant's forearm; a black loop circled
the giant's loins and his free arm, tearing and pounding, could not
loosen it. A saurian hind leg groped, hooking for purchase into gray
fur.
Paul's hunting knife was out; there was time only for recognition. The
gray and white being was everything human caught in a coil. Paul
forced himself through a barrier of fear, hearing Wright yell, "Don't
shoot, Ed! Put that away." There was no shot. Paul knew he was between
Spearman and the confusion of combat; someone was blundering behind
him. A black reptilian tail stretched into bushes, grasping something
for anchorage. Paul slashed at that. The mass of heaving life rolled
on the ground as the giant lost his footing, serpent teeth still
buried in his forearm. Green eyes were pleading in a universal
language.
Wright was clutching a black neck, with no strength to move it, and
Paul stabbed at scaled hide behind a triangular head, but the skin was
like metal. The forelimbs were degenerate vestiges, the hind legs
cruelly functional. At last the steel penetrated; Paul twisted it,
probing for a brain. The giant had ceased struggling; the furred face
was close. Paul could feel the difficult breath, sense a rigid
waiting.... The teeth let go. The giant leaped free, returning at once
with a stone the size of Paul's chest, to fling it down on the
slow-dying body, repeating the action till his enemy was a smear of
black and red.
Now in returning quiet a furred man eight feet tall watched them
openly. Wright said, "Ed, put away that gun. This man is a friend."
"Man!" Spearman holstered his automatic, ready for a draw. "Your
daydreams will kill us all yet."
"Smile, all of you--maybe his mouth does the same thing." Wright
stepped to the trembling monster, hands open. Ann was sobbing in
reaction, smothering the sound. Wright pointed at himself. "Man." He
touched the gray fur. "Man...."
The giant drew back, not with violence. Paul felt Dorothy's small
fingers shivering on his arm. The giant sucked his wound and spat,
turning his head away from Wright to do it. "Man--man...." Wright's
hand, small and pale as an oyster shell, spread beside the huge palm,
six fingers, long four-jointed thumb. "Paul--your first-aid kit. I
want just the gauze."