* * * * *
Stumbling over roots and pushing through low tunnels, I tried to reach
the clearing in which the Hog had first been sighted. At a sound behind
me, I whirled and almost hung myself in a looping tendril. Betty Toal,
carrying a slender firearm, moved gracefully in my wake.
"What's wrong with that old man?" I snarled at her. "Is he jealous
because he's the great hunter, and I'm after the Hog? I'd have killed
the Hog if he hadn't ruined my first try."
Toal said, "He's proud. He's vain about his hunting. I think he hates
the Hog too much to let him escape. Of course, he protested to the Jury
about calling an outside hunter. Probably resents you."
"Yes," I said. "You'd best go to the tractor with him. I don't like
hunting on foot in a forest. I never do it if I can use another method."
"No, you need a guide, although Ordinances 37, 38, and 42 forbid a
Maggiese female to enter a forest with a male alien."
We smiled at each other. "I'm sorry about this morning," I said. "I
didn't intend any insult to the memories of your family and friends. I
didn't realize what the Hog had done to you."
"It's all right, Kinlock."
"We'd best go on. You'll be about as safe with me as anywhere, if the
Hog circles."
"No, this way."
Toal dodged in front of me and undulated rapidly through the vines.
I kept tripping and catching my head or the hisser barrel in the
tendrils. We, at length, stepped through an arch into a clearing.
A horde of striped toothies swarmed around a clay bank that had been
excavated until cross sections of tunnels were exposed. A hundred
little eyes stared. One or two toothies even stood erect on hind feet
for a better view. One rodent squeaked. Others answered. Some went into
holes in the bank, and others vanished among the matted red flowers
that filled the clearing.
I examined the great cloven depressions left in the damp ground by the
Hog's feet. "He was rooting for toothies," I said. "The Jury claimed he
has no part in this planet's bionomics, but he's checking the toothie
population." I glanced at Toal and said, "Don't start glaring like
that again. I'll finish the Hog for you. He's probably the only one
surviving, since the Jury says he isn't--and one old boar can't carry
on the species."
I followed the footsteps of the Hog across the clearing and into
the silent green corridors. Infrequent glimpses of the sky revealed
darkening clouds sweeping up from the horizon. Something rumbled in the
distance. "Thunder," Toal said.
Soaked with perspiration generated by the humid heat and by
anticipation of meeting the Hog, I tiptoed around a vine trunk and
almost stepped in the mess made by the robotic pellet that should have
blasted the Hog. Toal said, "A jumpalong."
The animal, a brown thing with four horns, had been blown nearly in
half. The flesh around the wound had turned purple. "Stay away from
it," I warned. "Nitrobenzene is potent stuff."
The Hog had departed through a tunnel of his own manufacture,
penetrating the vines in a straight line for fifty meters. As I moved
into the hole, lightning bathed the forest floor in green light, and
thunder crackled. "Do you have rain every day all summer?" I complained.
"Yes," Toal said, "but this is only spring."
Big raindrops splattered against the canopy of leaves. I said, "Do you
want to go back? A thunderstorm's not an ideal time to hunt."
"You'd have a cold trail by tomorrow. The Hog may be badly wounded."
I breathed deeply and peered down the dim tunnel. "You watch the rear,"
I said, whispering for some reason.
Lightning flickered through the vegetation in nerve-racking patterns.
The leaves no longer turned the rain. I told myself I was unhinged to
hunt the Hog, when hearing him would be impossible, but I walked slowly
forward.
The Hog's tunnel broke into a path marked by his hoofs. The path
curved back and forth, for about a kilometer, and led to rocky ground
above a tumbling stream. I removed a folded robe from my pack, shook it
out, and gave it to Toal. "Put that on," I said. "You'll be soaked if
we go out there."
"But what about you?"
"I'm already wet, and very little of it's rain."
The lightning had subsided before the increasing downpour, but, as
I walked from the woods, I cringed in a reflex I had acquired after
seeing a man struck on a bare plain. Water ran off my sunhat and
saturated my oversuit. My non-skid boots slipped on the wet rocks.
A grumbling noise reached me through the rain. I was hoping to dismiss
it as thunder, but Toal said, "The Hog."
"Where is he?" I whispered. Toal shook her head. I studied the woods,
then turned back to the creek. Old, decayed stumps, piles of rotting
brush and limbs, and clumps of young trees spotted the ground across
the stream. Gaudy flowering plants grew in broad patches of yellow,
red, and orange. Beneath the pelting rain, the warm ground extruded a
low, slowly swirling mist.
* * * * *
A shrill screech echoed distantly. The hisser jumped to my shoulder,
but I saw no target. Toal said, "The tractor whistle. Rasmussen wants
to go."
"He said two hours," I objected. "It hasn't been two hours."
"May think hunting is useless in the rain."
"I suppose so," I sighed. "No traces on these rocks. That mist is
covering the stream. I have a sniffer, but it won't pick up much from
wet ground. You lead, but, if you see the Hog, drop flat to give me a
shot."
We sloshed back into the wiggling path. Again the tractor whistle
shrieked. We walked faster, slipping in the mud. Somewhere, the Hog
grunted. We trotted.
As we reached the tunnel in the vinetrees, Toal stopped. "Listen!" she
said. "Starting the tractor! Cannot leave us!"
She ran. I splashed and slid on her track, but she had a fifty meter
lead before I reached the dead jumpalong. My running slowed to a
tottering shuffle. I breathed in painful wheezes, and lost my sunhat,
and did not bother to retrieve it.
I panted into the clearing where we had first seen the Hog. Toal waited
near the clay bank. The entrenched toothies peeped from their holes.
I thought we were in the wrong place, since the red flowers were now
orange, but then I saw that the rain had somehow soaked the color from
them, forming red pools over the clearing.
"I lost your cape," Toal said. Her breathing was only slightly rapid,
but I gasped as if I had been strangled.
The Hog grunted. He grunted five times while Toal and I stood immobile.
The grunting ascended to a squealing sound like, "Kyieel uhoo! Keel
uhoo! Keel oo Keenlogh!"
For the first time on Planet Maggie, I shivered with cold. "Did you,
did you hear th-that?" I stuttered. "What goes on? Can the Hog actually
talk?"
"Talk?"
"He said, 'Kill you, Kinlock.'"
"How could he?" Toal said. "How could he know your name?"
"He's been listening," I said. Then I snickered hysterically. "That's
ridiculous. Rasmussen thinks the Hog may be a marsupial, and marsupials
don't talk. He hasn't any tool-grasping organs either."
Toal slogged into the vine woods. "No use running any farther," she
said. "The tractor sounds as if it's half way to Joetropolis."