Vast flat fields of sun-bronzed stone stretched in all direction to
the horizon, pockmarked with rimless craters, seething with red liquid
which flickered with dusty blue fingers of fire here and there on its
surface. Every so often a pale plume of steamy white rose toward the
coppery overturned bowl that was the sky.
Cautiously Jerry sniffed the air. Sulphur. That was the red liquid
burning in those many pits: Yellow sulphur melted into gluey scarlet
pools amid the nearly invisible shimmer of its consuming fires.
"Sulphur doesn't steam," Jerry thought idly, still sniffing at the
fumes. "So the white plumes mean there is water, or some volatile
liquid, mingled with the deposits in these pits."
After a moment, he realized that he was no longer taking random sniffs
of the fumes, but was actually indulging himself in a regular orgy of
breathing. The smell of the sulphur was as strong and piercing as he'd
ever known it, but absent was the almost simultaneous effect of raw
throat, streaming eyes, and hacking cough.
"The desert air must be nearly _all_ sulphur gases," he realized.
That would explain the hue of the sky, and the not-unpleasant silvery
haziness of the atmosphere.
"And I, if I don't keel over in a few more moments, must be a
sulphur-breathing creature."
Sunlight, from nearly directly overhead, was warm and comfortable upon
his head, back and hindquarters. An unusually flexible feeling in the
caudal region of his spine told him that he had a tail, even before
he swung his huge head about for a glance at it. The body, as bronzed
as the rock on which it stood, was something like a lion's, although
the taloned feet, from heel to the first leg-joint, were horny and
rough in appearance. They were not unlike those of a barnyard fowl, if
considerably thicker and decidedly more lethal.
That, save for a hard-to-see fringe of darker fur that ran up his neck
toward where he felt his ears to be, was all of his body that he could
view.
"I wonder," he mused, "what my head looks like?"
A brief turning of the problem in his mind gave him the solution to
it. It wasn't the best possible way of getting an idea of his latest
cranial conformations, but--unless there was a looking-glass lying
about--it was the only way at hand.
Jerry tilted his head until his eyes fell upon his shadow on the brown
rock beneath him. By tilting it from one side to the other, and joining
the various silhouettes in his mind by a simple application of basic
_gestalt_, he knew what his head looked like.
Very like a lion's, except that it seemed to have no external ear.
A single slender silhouette that fell from the forehead region,
stiletto-pointed, must be a sort of horn, unless it deciduated
periodically, like a deer's antlers.
* * * * *
Further speculation on his appearance was interrupted by the appearance
of another creature, trotting like a terrier between the fuming
sulphur-pits, coming his way.
It could be a twin to what he now knew he looked like, but it seemed
just a bit smaller, somehow. And it was carrying something carefully in
its teeth.
"Should I run, fight or just ignore it?" Jerry wondered. "It doesn't
seem menacing. But neither does a pekinese till you try to pet it."
He allowed his mind to retreat a fractional bit from control of his
host, and watched its reactions to the newcomer. Jerry felt a surge
of emotion, a sort of fond, proud, doting feeling, and knew that
this approaching creature was his cub. "That's a help," he thought,
relieved, and resumed control of the animal.
The cub halted a short distance away, and gently set its burden upon
the rock, placing a fore-footful of talons upon the thing before
letting go with its jaws. Under the talons, the thing moved. Jerry
saw that it was a sort of squirrel, except that it had well-developed
forepaws, the pads of which hinted that it undoubtedly ran
quadripedally instead of climbing trees. Then the memory of the sort of
terrain he was in re-crossed his mind, and Jerry felt foolish.
Naturally it didn't climb trees in a region that was devoid of any
vegetation whatsoever.
Jerry noticed that the cub seemed to be waiting for something. He
wished he could speak. He had the goofy feeling that he was supposed to
say, like a man confronted by a bottle of Chateau Neuf in the hopeful
hands of a wine steward, "That'll do nicely, thank you."
A nod was almost universally a sign of acquiescence, so he tried that
instead. The cub seemed pleased, and immediately, by lowering that
forehead-horn between a pair of the talons enfolding the struggling
land-squirrel, snuffed out its life with a thrust through its neck.
Then it removed the talons from its prey, and took a backward step.
Apparently, as the sire, Jerry was to get first bite.
"Now don't go all picayune," he cautioned his digestive tract. "Come
on, Jerry boy. You eat oysters while they're alive. You should be able
to eat a squirrel when it's dead. Besides, if you like the smell of
this lion-creature's atmosphere, you'll probably like the taste of its
food. Eat hearty."
With that, Jerry lowered his head and let his sharp teeth snap off
a haunch of the squirrel-thing. He went to chew it, then realized
that--unlike his prior Contact's over-equipage--he had no tongue. This
was strictly a bolt-your-food host. So he tossed his head back, and
managed, with a spasmodic effort of his thick muscular throat, to get
the morsel into his stomach.
The cub stepped forward then, bit off a chunk for itself and got it
down with less apparent effort.
"Well, he's had more practice at tongueless eating," Jerry consoled
himself. Then, noting that the cub was standing patiently awaiting
something, he swayed his head from side to side, trying to convey, "No
thanks, it's all yours, kid."
But the cub, its head tipped perplexedly to one side, was still
watching him, waiting for something, a sort of puzzled anxiety in its
gaze. Jerry reasoned that if he simply backed off, the cub would take
that as a gesture of refusal to eat any more, so he took a few steps
away from the squirrel-thing.
* * * * *
And the cub, an almost human look of bafflement on its face, gurgled
a whine from its throat. It began to bounce about on its legs like a
housebroken dog that very urgently wants out.
Jerry thought hard. The frantic desire of the cub for him to do
something was more than mere pettishness on its part. There was real
panic in its eyes, now. Jerry felt the first thrill of danger. What was
he doing wrong? Or what wasn't he doing _right_?
Mere after-you-Pop protocol could not explain the glint of fright in
his cub's eyes. Or could it?
Jerry tried to remain calm and think reasonably. The sire-and-cub
relationship was throwing him. Most animals--in the narrow group that
remained linked by relationship and affection even after the cubs
matured--ran along opposite lines. The parent went out and got food for
the kids, and not vice-versa. On this planet, apparently, having a cub
was the nearest thing to Social Security.
"Remember, you idiot," Jerry snapped at himself, "this is a species.
It is no beast rational mind you are dealing with, but an animal mind.
That means that the cub's apparent protocol is instinctive, and not a
matter of etiquette. And an instinct has a reason behind it, doesn't
it? Only man can skip over protocol. You have to do something before
the cub feels that it can do it--and whatever it is you're not doing,
it's driving the cub to distraction. You'd better go for a second
helping of squirrel, and fast, or you're going to have your kid in a
mental institution!"
Not exactly relishing completing the meal, Jerry stepped back to the
furry little corpse on the rock, and only as he came near enough to
bite into it was he suddenly aware of another odor mingling with that
of the sulphur fumes. Unbelieving, he stared at the spreading pool
of putrescence that ringed the remains of his cub's prey. He stared,
silent and amazed, as flesh and bone crumbled and dissolved there on
the ground, until there was nothing there but the noisome liquid and a
few tiny teeth.
"Incredible!" thought Jerry. "To decompose so damned fast! But it
certainly explains why Junior brought me that thing still alive and
kicking. It didn't last more than a few minutes after it died--_Ugh!_"
The sickly retch boiled out from his stomach with a painful expansion,
and he scented the same foul odor on his breath as arose from the
liquid that now lay drying in the burning sunlight.
"The damn thing's going rotten _inside_ me!" he said to himself,
feeling the first wave of illness shake him from horn to tail-tip.
His flesh, beneath its bronze-colored fur, felt suddenly cold and
greasy. Jerry knew that feeling well, from one summer when he'd
eaten a sandwich with mayonnaise that had lain too long outside the
refrigerator. It was the onset of ptomaine. He and the cub could be
dead, in a very ugly manner, within less time than he had to await his
next Contact. Or was it less time? It was subjective, wasn't it? Maybe
this period would be over more quickly than the last one. Or maybe more
slowly....
* * * * *
Jerry turned to look at the cub. Its eyes were glazing. It was
breathing in gasps through its open mouth, staggering as it tried to
remain on its feet.
"We're poisoned," Jerry groaned. "And it's not on purpose. That cub
didn't trot here with that squirrel just to knock off its old man!
There's something else has to be done, something I've overlooked. And
my stupidity is killing us."
Weakly, almost automatically, Jerry's conscious mind did the only thing
possible under the circumstances. Cliche of old Peters or not, "When in
doubt, black out" was the only solution. Jerry swiftly relinquished his
grip on the controls, and let the lion-thing take over its own destiny.
The first thing it did was rush toward the scarlet surface of the
boiling sulphur pit near the cub. The muscles relaxed and showed no
sign of relaxing in that flame-bound gallop, and Jerry grabbed at its
mind and got back in control just as its forefeet stood on the brink of
that blue-flaming red pool.
"Oh, damn!" he groaned, agonized by both his fear of fire and the
growing discomfort within his stomach. "Of all the creatures in the
universe, I have to hit one with the lemming-instinct. This damn
thing's bent on boiling itself alive if I let go. And if I stay in
control, I die of ptomaine!"
Jerry Norcriss wasted nearly thirty seconds feeling sorry for himself.
And then he remembered something about lemmings. And also something
about cubs.
Lemmings, those strange little rodents that take it periodically
in their heads to all go rushing into the ocean and drown, are not
suicide-bent. Their ancestry is older than the continent on which they
live. At one time the spot wherein they plunge into the ocean was
linked with the next continent over. The migration--for that's what it
is with lemmings--had at one time been perfectly safe. So safe that the
migration of the lemmings became instinctive. And, after the continents
separated, or the band of land joining them sank beneath the sea, the
lemmings blithely continued their trek, and perished. Lemmings might
die, but the ages-old instinct of the specie wouldn't.
No animal, Jerry realized, is deliberately self-destructive. No animal
but man--who is more than animal, and can decide upon his own destiny
despite what his instincts buck for.
And cubs, Jerry recalled with chagrin, are not always born knowing
survival-tactics. Some cubs have to be taught how to survive. And this
one is still in the process of learning, and only senses that--since it
is becoming deathly ill--something is horribly wrong. It wants its sire
to show it survival, and its sire is in the hands of a nincompoop like
me....
* * * * *
Fortunately for Jerry and the cub, his thoughts on cubs and lemmings
lasted only a fractional second, so all-inclusive is the mind's
apprehension of a situation.
And then Jerry, feeling greatly relieved, let go of the controls
once more and let the lion-thing bend and drink from the blazing
sulphur-pool at its feet.
Of what the host was constructed, Jerry had no idea. Its cell-structure
might be high in silicates, or possibly be akin to asbestos. Whatever
it was, the blazing red sulphur went down its gullet like sweet warm
wine, and the decaying squirrel-thing was transformed into chemicals
that were comfortably digestible.
Jerry was glad to see that the cub, standing on shaky legs, was
drinking, too. It seemed likely to survive its brush with death.
Not a bad life, he thought. Catch a meal, take a swig of wine and then
just loaf around in the sun. Nice planet ... if you like sulphur,
and have a bright-eyed young kid who won't make a move without your
approval and example--
Jerry's ruminations were cut short by a sound of leathery wings, high
in the coppery sky. Abruptly alert, he lifted his shaggy head and saw
an ominous formation of Vs in the sky. They grew in size, and became
the forms of gigantic airborne things, a cross between the ancient
Terran pterodactyl and a sort of saber-toothed ape.
Something told him these approaching things were not friendly.
He turned his head to the cub, but this, apparently, was a lesson
already learned, because all he saw of his scion was a disappearing
blur of buttocks and tail as the cub scurried in a clumsy gallop across
the plains of sunburnt rock. In another instant, Jerry was scurrying
right after him, for reasons above and beyond Togetherness.
The paws wouldn't manage right, so he finally dropped back a bit and
let the lion-thing's brain take over the job of escape, his own mind
merely going along for the ride.
"But where can we _hide_?" he wondered, fascinated despite his
fear. "Can we pull the hollow reed routine under the surface of a
sulphur-pit? Or are there caves someplace in the vicinity? Or do we
just run until either our legs or those simianipters' wings give out?"
Then his mind got entangled with the purely empirical cogitation about
the validity of coining a word like _simianipters_ (which seemed to
mean "ape-winged" when the coinage he desired was "winged-apes") and
his mind was bouncing so busily between this knotty problem and the
chances of escape from those creatures and the puzzle of just what
constituted safety from the flying things that he barely noticed the
white flash of silent lightning that heralded cessation of Contact.
V
"Contact completed," said the technician to Peters, in the purple
twilight slowly deepening to black starry night. "Slight dimming of
Norcriss's life-pulse this time, not so bad as last time."
Peters nodded as he ripped open a fresh packet of cigarettes. "Machine
functioning properly?"
"Yes, sir," the technician nodded. "Norcriss could go on at least three
more Contacts with the power we have left. Shall I activate him again,
sir?"
"Go ahead," murmured Peters, his eyes fastened on the pallid face of
the young man on the couch....