II

Duncan got his first shot late in the afternoon of that first day.

In the middle of the morning, two hours after they had left the farm,

they had flushed the Cytha out of its bed in a thick ravine. But there

had been no chance for a shot. Duncan saw no more than a huge black

blur fade into the bush.

Through the bake-oven afternoon, they had followed its trail, Sipar

tracking and Duncan bringing up the rear, scanning every piece of

cover, with the sun-hot rifle always held at ready.

Once they had been held up for fifteen minutes while a massive donovan

tramped back and forth, screaming, trying to work up its courage for

attack. But after a quarter hour of showing off, it decided to behave

itself and went off at a shuffling gallop.

Duncan watched it go with a lot of thankfulness. It could soak up a

lot of lead, and for all its awkwardness, it was handy with its feet

once it set itself in motion. Donovans had killed a lot of men in the

twenty years since Earthmen had come to Layard.

With the beast gone, Duncan looked around for Sipar. He found it fast

asleep beneath a hula-shrub. He kicked the native awake with something

less than gentleness and they went on again.

The bush swarmed with other animals, but they had no trouble with

them.

Sipar, despite its initial reluctance, had worked well at the

trailing. A misplaced bunch of grass, a twig bent to one side, a

displaced stone, the faintest pug mark were Sipar's stock in trade. It

worked like a lithe, well-trained hound. This bush country was its

special province; here it was at home.

With the sun dropping toward the west, they had climbed a long, steep

hill and as they neared the top of it, Duncan hissed at Sipar. The

native looked back over its shoulder in surprise. Duncan made motions

for it to stop tracking.

The native crouched and as Duncan went past it, he saw that a look of

agony was twisting its face. And in the look of agony he thought he

saw as well a touch of pleading and a trace of hatred. It's scared,

just like the rest of them, Duncan told himself. But what the native

thought or felt had no significance; what counted was the beast ahead.

Duncan went the last few yards on his belly, pushing the gun ahead of

him, the binoculars bumping on his back. Swift, vicious insects ran

out of the grass and swarmed across his hands and arms and one got on

his face and bit him.

* * * * *

He made it to the hilltop and lay there, looking at the sweep of land

beyond. It was more of the same, more of the blistering, dusty

slogging, more of thorn and tangled ravine and awful emptiness.

He lay motionless, watching for a hint of motion, for the fitful

shadow, for any wrongness in the terrain that might be the Cytha.

But there was nothing. The land lay quiet under the declining sun. Far

on the horizon, a herd of some sort of animals was grazing, but there

was nothing else.

Then he saw the motion, just a flicker, on the knoll ahead--about

halfway up.

He laid the rifle carefully on the ground and hitched the binoculars

around. He raised them to his eyes and moved them slowly back and

forth. The animal was there where he had seen the motion.

It was resting, looking back along the way that it had come, watching

for the first sign of its trailers. Duncan tried to make out the size

and shape, but it blended with the grass and the dun soil and he could

not be sure exactly what it looked like.

He let the glasses down and now that he had located it, he could

distinguish its outline with the naked eye.

His hand reached out and slid the rifle to him. He fitted it to his

shoulder and wriggled his body for closer contact with the ground. The

cross-hairs centered on the faint outline on the knoll and then the

beast stood up.

It was not as large as he had thought it might be--perhaps a little

larger than Earth lion-size, but it certainly was no lion. It was a

square-set thing and black and inclined to lumpiness and it had an

awkward look about it, but there were strength and ferociousness as

well.

Duncan tilted the muzzle of the rifle so that the cross-hairs centered

on the massive neck. He drew in a breath and held it and began the

trigger squeeze.

The rifle bucked hard against his shoulder and the report hammered in

his head and the beast went down. It did not lurch or fall; it simply

melted down and disappeared, hidden in the grass.

"Dead center," Duncan assured himself.

He worked the mechanism and the spent cartridge case flew out. The

feeding mechanism snicked and the fresh shell clicked as it slid into

the breech.

He lay for a moment, watching. And on the knoll where the thing had

fallen, the grass was twitching as if the wind were blowing, only

there was no wind. But despite the twitching of the grass, there was

no sign of the Cytha. It did not struggle up again. It stayed where it

had fallen.

Duncan got to his feet, dug out the bandanna and mopped at his face.

He heard the soft thud of the step behind him and turned his head. It

was the tracker.

"It's all right, Sipar," he said. "You can quit worrying. I got it. We

can go home now."

* * * * *

It had been a long, hard chase, longer than he had thought it might

be. But it had been successful and that was the thing that counted.

For the moment, the _vua_ crop was safe.

He tucked the bandanna back into his pocket, went down the slope and

started up the knoll. He reached the place where the Cytha had fallen.

There were three small gouts of torn, mangled fur and flesh lying on

the ground and there was nothing else.

He spun around and jerked his rifle up. Every nerve was screamingly

alert. He swung his head, searching for the slightest movement, for

some shape or color that was not the shape or color of the bush or

grass or ground. But there was nothing. The heat droned in the hush of

afternoon. There was not a breath of moving air. But there was

danger--a saw-toothed sense of danger close behind his neck.

"Sipar!" he called in a tense whisper, "Watch out!"

The native stood motionless, unheeding, its eyeballs rolling up until

there was only white, while the muscles stood out along its throat

like straining ropes of steel.

Duncan slowly swiveled, rifle held almost at arm's length, elbows

crooked a little, ready to bring the weapon into play in a fraction of

a second.

Nothing stirred. There was no more than emptiness--the emptiness of

sun and molten sky, of grass and scraggy bush, of a brown-and-yellow

land stretching into foreverness.

Step by step, Duncan covered the hillside and finally came back to the

place where the native squatted on its heels and moaned, rocking back

and forth, arms locked tightly across its chest, as if it tried to

cradle itself in a sort of illusory comfort.

The Earthman walked to the place where the Cytha had fallen and picked

up, one by one, the bits of bleeding flesh. They had been mangled by

his bullet. They were limp and had no shape. And it was queer, he

thought. In all his years of hunting, over many planets, he had never

known a bullet to rip out hunks of flesh.

He dropped the bloody pieces back into the grass and wiped his hand

upon his thighs. He got up a little stiffly.

He'd found no trail of blood leading through the grass, and surely an

animal with a hole of that size would leave a trail.

And as he stood there upon the hillside, with the bloody fingerprints

still wet and glistening upon the fabric of his trousers, he felt the

first cold touch of fear, as if the fingertips of fear might

momentarily, almost casually, have trailed across his heart.

* * * * *

He turned around and walked back to the native, reached down and shook

it.

"Snap out of it," he ordered.

He expected pleading, cowering, terror, but there was none.

Sipar got swiftly to its feet and stood looking at him and there was,

he thought, an odd glitter in its eyes.

"Get going," Duncan said. "We still have a little time. Start circling

and pick up the trail. I will cover you."

He glanced at the sun. An hour and a half still left--maybe as much as

two. There might still be time to get this buttoned up before the fall

of night.

A half mile beyond the knoll, Sipar picked up the trail again and they

went ahead, but now they traveled more cautiously, for any bush, any

rock, any clump of grass might conceal the wounded beast.

Duncan found himself on edge and cursed himself savagely for it. He'd

been in tight spots before. This was nothing new to him. There was no

reason to get himself tensed up. It was a deadly business, sure, but

he had faced others calmly and walked away from them. It was those

frontier tales he'd heard about the Cytha--the kind of superstitious

chatter that one always heard on the edge of unknown land.

He gripped the rifle tighter and went on.

No animal, he told himself, was unkillable.

Half an hour before sunset, he called a halt when they reached a

brackish waterhole. The light soon would be getting bad for shooting.

In the morning, they'd take up the trail again, and by that time the

Cytha would be at an even greater disadvantage. It would be stiff and

slow and weak. It might be even dead.

Duncan gathered wood and built a fire in the lee of a thorn-bush

thicket. Sipar waded out with the canteens and thrust them at arm's

length beneath the surface to fill them. The water still was warm and

evil-tasting, but it was fairly free of scum and a thirsty man could

drink it.

The sun went down and darkness fell quickly. They dragged more wood

out of the thicket and piled it carefully close at hand.

Duncan reached into his pocket and brought out the little bag of

rockahominy.

"Here," he said to Sipar. "Supper."

The native held one hand cupped and Duncan poured a little mound into

its palm.

"Thank you, mister," Sipar said. "Food-giver."

"Huh?" asked Duncan, then caught what the native meant. "Dive into

it," he said, almost kindly. "It isn't much, but it gives you

strength. We'll need strength tomorrow."

* * * * *

Food-giver, eh? Trying to butter him up, perhaps. In a little while,

Sipar would start whining for him to knock off the hunt and head back

for the farm.

Although, come to think of it, he really was the food-giver to this

bunch of sexless wonders. Corn, thank God, grew well on the red and

stubborn soil of Layard--good old corn from North America. Fed to

hogs, made into corn-pone for breakfast back on Earth, and here, on

Layard, the staple food crop for a gang of shiftless varmints who

still regarded, with some good solid skepticism and round-eyed wonder,

this unorthodox idea that one should take the trouble to grow plants

to eat rather than go out and scrounge for them.

Corn from North America, he thought, growing side by side with the

_vua_ of Layard. And that was the way it went. Something from one

planet and something from another and still something further from a

third and so was built up through the wide social confederacy of space

a truly cosmic culture which in the end, in another ten thousand years

or so, might spell out some way of life with more sanity and

understanding than was evident today.

He poured a mound of rockahominy into his own hand and put the bag

back into his pocket.

"Sipar."

"Yes, mister?"

"You were not scared today when the donovan threatened to attack us."

"No, mister. The donovan would not hurt me."

"I see. You said the donovan was taboo to you. Could it be that you,

likewise, are taboo to the donovan?"

"Yes, mister. The donovan and I grew up together."

"Oh, so that's it," said Duncan.

He put a pinch of the parched and powdered corn into his mouth and

took a sip of brackish water. He chewed reflectively on the resultant

mash.

He might go ahead, he knew, and ask why and how and where Sipar and

the donovan had grown up together, but there was no point to it. This

was exactly the kind of tangle that Shotwell was forever getting

into.

Half the time, he told himself, I'm convinced the little stinkers are

doing no more than pulling our legs.

What a fantastic bunch of jerks! Not men, not women, just things. And

while there were never babies, there were children, although never

less than eight or nine years old. And if there were no babies, where

did the eight- and nine-year-olds come from?

* * * * *

"I suppose," he said, "that these other things that are your taboos,

the stilt-birds and the screamers and the like, also grew up with

you."

"That is right, mister."

"Some playground that must have been," said Duncan.

He went on chewing, staring out into the darkness beyond the ring of

firelight.

"There's something in the thorn bush, mister."

"I didn't hear a thing."

"Little pattering. Something is running there."

Duncan listened closely. What Sipar said was true. A lot of little

things were running in the thicket.

"More than likely mice," he said.

He finished his rockahominy and took an extra swig of water, gagging

on it slightly.

"Get your rest," he told Sipar. "I'll wake you later so I can catch a

wink or two."

"Mister," Sipar said, "I will stay with you to the end."

"Well," said Duncan, somewhat startled, "that is decent of you."

"I will stay to the death," Sipar promised earnestly.

"Don't strain yourself," said Duncan.

He picked up the rifle and walked down to the waterhole.

The night was quiet and the land continued to have that empty feeling.

Empty except for the fire and the waterhole and the little micelike

animals running in the thicket.

And Sipar--Sipar lying by the fire, curled up and sound asleep

already. Naked, with not a weapon to its hand--just the naked animal,

the basic humanoid, and yet with underlying purpose that at times was

baffling. Scared and shivering this morning at mere mention of the

Cytha, yet never faltering on the trail; in pure funk back there on

the knoll where they had lost the Cytha, but now ready to go on to the

death.

Duncan went back to the fire and prodded Sipar with his toe. The

native came straight up out of sleep.

"Whose death?" asked Duncan. "Whose death were you talking of?"

"Why, ours, of course," said Sipar, and went back to sleep.