"Toal!" I yelled.
"Over here," she said from a distance. "Where are you?"
* * * * *
The Hog crashed and grunted along the tunnel. I found myself running
through the darkness toward a dim, green patch. "Hide, Toal!" I
called. I did not pass her. I reached a part of the tunnel in which I
could see. I heard the Hog behind me, but did not look back.
Sprinting as if I were a good runner in splendid condition, I reached
the open grove. I stopped and turned. The Hog emerged from the wall of
vines. Coagulated blood caked his neck and head. His single usable eye
blinked in the light. He charged, but he took evasive action, swerving
to either side.
In my excitement and unfamiliarity with the weapon, I pulled both
triggers of the firearm. The twin barrels discharged with a deafening
blast. The recoil knocked me down. A vine burst where the projectiles
passed through it.
The Hog galloped over me. One sharp hoof brushed my face. As the Hog
turned, I practically ran up a vinetree.
Ten meters above the ground, I sat in the springy branches and breathed
hoarsely. The Hog sniffed, twisted his short neck, and fixed his eye on
me. "Eet oo, Keenlogh!" he grunted.
The Hog struck at the vine trunk with his forefeet. Rearing slightly
and raising his front legs, he worked his way up the vines until his
body, which must have weighed nearly fourteen metric tons, stood at a
sixty degree angle. The vines bent and cracked. The Hog's three whole
tusks gnashed close to my feet.
I crawled higher and found a vine rope hanging over open ground and
leading to another trunk. Dangling first from one hand and then the
other, I started across. My arms were ready to pull loose, before
I reached the other vinetree and clamped myself to it. The Hog had
difficulty in once more putting all feet on the dirt.
Through an opening, I glimpsed the deforested area where we had left
the pentacycle. I could see Toal nowhere, nor could I now see the
tunnel.
The Hog approached my new refuge, but, instead of rearing, began
tearing at the thick stems with his tusks. I became aware that my face
bled where his hoof had brushed it.
The Hog worked energetically, ripping and rooting. His armored sides
heaved with his panting. He sweated profusely, and the end of his ugly
snout dripped with moisture.
The trunks supporting me sagged. I tried to devise some plan, some sure
method of escape, but my mind was a panicky jumble. Then I recalled
that boring booklet, _Initial Experiments in Earthian Swine_ (Sus
scrofa) _Production on Freesphere_. The Hog was not of _Sus scrofa_,
but he had similar traits. And I had no other plan.
"Yaaa!" I yelled. "You stinking pig! Climb up! I'll kick your snout
off!"
The Hog rumbled, backed off, and then ran forward. He lifted his
forequarters into the air and smashed into the tangle, temporarily
trapping himself. I almost fell from the swaying vines. I climbed down
past one of the Hog's protruding feet and dropped to the ground.
I looked for the firearm I had lost, but the Hog was breaking loose.
I turned and ran the other way, out of the grove, past the toothie
colony, and away from the river toward the open field.
I trotted into the wilderness of rocks, stumps, brush, and creepers.
Joe's Sun seared my head, which no longer wore a cap. Heat waves
quivered across the blighted land. Heat simmered from exposed rocks. I
looked back to see the Hog emerging from the trees.
Faster, I ran, jumping gullies and struggling through patches of thorny
creepers. Already I regretted trusting my stiffened muscles and poor
running ability to this race. The Hog pursued with incredible speed for
an animal his size.
I tried to hurdle a rock, struck the top with one foot, and rolled down
a slope. When I again ran, one knee did not function well. My lungs
burned, and I made sounds like the tractor.
The Hog had closed the distance between us to twenty meters. He panted
loudly, and his whole body glinted wetly.
For agonizing minutes, I moved at the fastest gait I could muster, but
it seemed slower than walking. At the top of a low hill, I saw the
pentacycle not more than one hundred meters away.
When I started down the slope, the Hog's wheezing warned me. Abruptly,
I changed direction. The great boar brushed past me. He staggered
down the gentle hill. Spasms jerked his huge body. By the time he had
turned, I had flanked him, and, burning unsuspected energy, I ran for
the parked pentacycle.
* * * * *
The hog charged, almost blindly, forcing me toward the rocks beside the
river. The rocks were incinerators in the heat of Joe's Sun. The hot
ground burned through my boots. I flopped into a narrow gap. The Hog
sniffed at the opening, then moved away. I crawled into the warm shade
of an overhanging boulder and lay groaning and gasping.
Swaying in the blazing sunlight, the Hog vomited. He collapsed
ponderously on his side. His legs twitched. He struggled to raise his
massive head, but his snout fell in the dirt.
I crawled out of the rocks and reeled toward the pentacycle. A toothie
scooted from beside the front wheel, and two others watched from the
concealment of a creeper.
Several times, I had heard that the Hog seldom stayed in the sunlight,
and the booklet, _Initial Experiments in Earthian Swine_ (Sus scrofa)
_Production on Freesphere_, had said that swine were susceptible to
heatstroke. I trembled at the risk I had taken, but I felt a sense of
peace I had not known on Planet Maggie.
One thousand x-tops, fifty coupons, the Jury would pay me for killing
the Hog, the last animal I would kill for money. My hunting career had
reached a successful end. An unhectic life on Mother Earth awaited me.
I suspected that I was becoming delirious in the heat. When I reached
the pentacycle, I opened the dynamite box and took one tube in each
hand. The tubes were fitted with time fuses.
The Hog breathed spasmodically. I warily neared the heaving mountain
of flesh, uncertain of the dynamite's power, but calculating that two
detonations near the creature's head would be enough.
Opening his one good eye, the Hog looked at me. His tusks grated
together. Weak noises came from his mouth. "Uhdoo nuut keel!"
Sixday evening, I had been momentarily convinced that the Hog could
speak, but had found it hard to accept that faculty in a swinish animal
without grasping organs. However, appearance did not always indicate
intellectual ability, and the Hog's skull contained ample space for a
large brain. Today, now that I recalled his noises, I knew he had again
threatened to eat me.
"Uhdoo nut keel, Keenlogh," the Hog grunted. He seemed to be asking for
his life.
Perhaps I did not feel so strange as would a man who had never
conversed with a nonhuman intelligence. Two of my close friends were
Triangularians. I said, "What can I do but kill you? You helped kill
238 people."
The Hog made sounds. With great difficulty, I translated his answer
as a question. "Is wrong to kill and eat? Men kill and eat. No way to
leave this land. Eat toothies. Are hard to catch. Little other food but
Maggiese."
The Hog closed his eye and wheezed through his open mouth. I argued
with myself.
Galactic Government specified the correct procedure when an intelligent
species was discovered. All possible efforts toward peaceful contact
and negotiation should be made, however strange or dangerous the
species might be. The discoverer could not molest the creatures on
his own responsibility. Technically, the Hog was a murderer, but GG
renounced the ancient belief that he who kills must be killed, and
considered that murderers suffered from a curable illness.
Betty Toal--if she lived--and all other Maggiese would rejoice if I
dynamited the Hog. I would receive my fee. No one would realize the Hog
had been anything but a man-eating brute. Centuries might pass before
GG zoologists examined the giant swine of Planet Maggie, if, indeed,
others existed beyond the peninsula. The Hog would probably die of
heatstroke, whatever I did.
With some surprise, I found that my pack remained on my shoulders,
although it dangled by a single strap. I pulled the water pump from its
pocket, walked to the river, and threw in the intake hose. Uncoiling
the line, I moved back toward the Hog. The hose was too short, but I
set the nozzle for maximum force and, remembering instructions in the
booklet, sprayed water over the Hog's head.
The liquid revived him until he could push himself to a grotesque
sitting position with his front feet. I shot water into his mouth and
said, "Did you catch the woman in the tunnel?"
"Nooo," the Hog answered.
"You killed Toal," I said, dropping the hose and once more filling my
hands with dynamite.
"Nooo," the Hog repeated. With a mouth unsuited for speech, he
laboriously made a proposal. If I would spare him, he would attempt to
leave the peninsula, going around the swamp to the coast and risking
the currents and sea life in an effort to swim to the main continent.
With my finger on a dynamite fuse, I considered the plan. The Hog
swayed to his feet.
Something fiendish screeched overhead. An explosion thundered in the
rocks beside the river. Fragments whined through the hot air. The Hog
squealed. I dropped prone and wriggled into a depression.
A second explosion rent the ground in front of me, showering me with
dirt and brush. The Hog tried to run. His weakened legs quivered under
him.
The third blast occurred between his front hoofs.
I crawled into a gully and, idiotically clutching the dynamite tubes,
put my arms over my head. Tensed for more destruction, I lay there for
several minutes. When I looked up, five or six toothies ran past my
face.
Wearily, I stood erect. The Hog's remains lay in a pond of blood.
Toothies scuttled out of the brush and the rocks and moved around the
carcass. Having seen enough nonhuman intelligence for the present, I
refused to believe the rodents were dancing in gleeful victory.
I stumbled off toward the vinetrees to learn the fate of Betty Toal,
but she peeped over a rock. "You killed the Hog," she said. "What was
that screeching?"
I stopped and breathed deeply. Toal said, "Was lost in the side
tunnels."
"No," I murmured, "I didn't kill the Hog."