Far off in the dazzling distance, he caught sight of the tremendously
long gray body he had heard about since childhood, higher than a
hundred men standing on each other's shoulders, the thick gray legs
each wider than two hefty men standing chest to chest. He caught just
one wide-eyed, fear-soluble glimpse of the thing before he went into
complete panic.
His panic was redeemed by a single inhibition: he didn't spring forward
and run away from the wall. But that was only because it would have
meant running directly toward the Monster. For one thoroughly insane
moment, however, he thought of trying to claw his way through the wall
against which his shoulders were pressed.
Then--because it was the direction he had been running in--he
remembered the doorway. He must be about thirty, thirty-five paces from
it. There lay safety: his uncle, the band, Mankind and the burrows--the
blessed, closed-in, narrow burrows!
Eric leaped along the wall for the doorway. He ran as he'd never in his
life run before, as he'd never imagined he could run.
But even as he fled madly, almost weeping at the effort he was
making, a few sane thoughts--the result of long, tiresome drills
as an initiate--organized themselves in his screaming mind. He had
been closer to the structure in which the Strangers were hiding the
structure which Arthur the Organizer explained was a piece of Monster
furniture. He should have turned the other way, towards the structure,
gotten between it and the wall. There, unless he'd been seen as the
Monster entered the larder, he could have rested safely until it was
possible to make his escape.
He had gone too far to turn back now. But run silently, he reminded
himself: run swiftly but make no noise, make no noise at all. According
to the lessons that the warriors taught, at this distance Monster
hearing was more to be feared than Monster vision. Run silently. Run
for your life.
He reached the door. It had been set back in place!
In disbelief and utter horror he stared at the curved line in the wall
that showed where the door had been replaced in its socket. But this
was never done! This had never been heard of!
Eric beat frantically on the door with his fists. Would his knuckles
make enough noise to penetrate the heavy slab? Or just enough to
attract the Monster's attention?
He twisted his head quickly--a look, a deliberately wasted moment,
to estimate the closeness of his danger. The Monster's legs moved so
slowly: its speed would have been laughable if the very size of those
legs didn't serve to push it forward an incredible distance with each
step. And there was nothing laughable in that long, narrow neck,
almost as long as the rest of the body, and the malevolent, relatively
tiny head on the end of the neck. And those horrible pink things, all
around the neck, just behind the head--
It was much nearer than it had been just seconds ago, but whether it
had noticed him and was coming at him he had no idea. Beat at the door
with the shaft of a spear? That should attract attention, that might be
heard.
Yes, by the Monster too.
* * * * *
There was only one thing to do. He stepped a few paces back from the
wall. Then he leaped forward, smashing his shoulder into the door. He
felt it give a little. Another try.
The floor-shaking thumps of the Monster's steps were now so close as to
be almost deafening. At any moment, a great gray foot might come down
and grind out his life. Eric stepped back again, forcing himself not to
look up.
Another leap, another bruising collision with the door. It had
definitely moved. An indentation showed all around it.
Was he about to be stepped on--to be squashed?
Eric put his hands on the door. He pushed. Slowly, suckingly, it left
the place out of which it had been carved long ago.
_Where was the Monster? How close? How Close?_
Suddenly, the door fell over into the burrow, and Eric spilled
painfully on top of it. He scrambled to his feet and darted down the
corridor.
He had no time to feel relief. His mind was repeating its lessons,
reminding him what he had to do next in such a situation.
_Run a short distance down the burrow. Then stop and wait on the
balls of your feet, ready to bolt. Get as much air into your lungs as
possible. You may need it. If you hear a hissing, whistling sound,
stop breathing and start running. Hold your breath for as long as you
can--as long as you possibly can--then suck another chestful of air and
keep running. Keep this up until you are far away. Far, far away._
Eric waited, poised to run, his back to the doorway.
_Don't look around--just face the direction you'll have to run. There's
only one thing you have to worry about, only one thing you have to
listen for. A hissing, whistling sound. When you hear it, hold your
breath and run._
He waited, his muscles contracted for instant action.
Time went by. He remembered to count. If you counted up to five
hundred, slowly, and nothing happened, you were likely to be all right.
You could assume the Monster probably hadn't noticed you.
So the experienced warriors said, the men who had lived through such an
experience.
Five hundred. He reached five hundred and, just to be on the safe side,
still tense, still ready to run, counted another five hundred, up to
the ultimate number conceived by man, a full thousand.
No hissing, no whistling sounds. No suggestion of danger.
He relaxed, and his muscles--suddenly set free--gave way. He fell to
the floor of the burrow, whimpering with the release of tension.
It was over. His Theft was over. He was a man.
* * * * *
He had been in the same place as a Monster, and lived through it. He
had met Strangers and dealt with them as a representative of Mankind.
Such things as he would have to tell his uncle!
His uncle. Where was his uncle? Where was the band?
Suddenly fully aware of how much was wrong, Eric scrambled to his feet
and walked cautiously back to the open doorway. The burrow was empty.
They hadn't waited for him.
But that was another incredible thing! A band never gave an initiate
up for lost until at least two full days had gone by. In the chief's
absence, of course, this was measured by the sleep periods of the band
captain. Any band would wait two days before giving up and turning
homeward. And, Eric was positive, his uncle would have waited a bit
longer than that for _him_. He'd been away for such a short time! Then
what had happened?
He crept to the doorway and peeped outside. There was almost no
dizziness this time. His eyes adjusted quickly to the different scale
of distance. The Monster was busy on the other side of the larder. It
had merely been crossing the room, then, not pursuing and attacking.
Apparently it hadn't noticed him at all.
Fantastic. And with all the noise he had made! All that rushing back
and forth, that battering-down of the door!
The Monster turned abruptly, walked a few gigantic steps and hurled
itself at the structure in which Eric had met the Strangers. The walls,
the floor, everything, shook mightily in sympathy to the impact of the
great organism as it wriggled a bit and became still.
Eric was startled until he realized that the creature had done no more
than lie down in the structure. It _was_ a piece of Monster furniture,
after all.
How had that felt to Arthur the Organizer and Walter the Weapon-Seeker
and the others hidden in the base? Eric grinned. Those Strangers must
be a little less haughty, a little more sober at this moment.
Meanwhile, he had work to do, things to find out.
He got his fingers under the slab of door and tugged it upright. It was
heavy! He pushed against it, slowly, carefully, first one side and then
the other, walking it back to the hole in the wall. A final push, and
it slid into place tightly, only the thin, curved line suggesting its
existence.
Now he could look around.
There had been a fight here--that much was certain. A brief, bitter
battle. Examining the area closely, Eric saw unmistakable signs of
conflict.
A broken spear shaft. Some blood on the wall. Part of a torn knapsack.
No bodies, of course. You were not likely to find bodies after a
battle. Any people of the burrows knew that the one unavoidable
imperative of victory was to drag the bodies away and dispose of them.
No one might ever leave dead enemies to rot where they would foul the
corridors.
* * * * *
So there had been a battle. He had been right--his uncle and his
uncle's band had not just gone off and left him. There must have been
an attack by a superior force. The band had stood its ground for a
while, sustained some losses, and then been forced to retreat.
But there were a few things which didn't make sense. First, it was very
unusual for a war party of Strangers to come this close to Monster
territory. The burrows which were inhabited by Mankind, the natural
goal of a war party, were much further back. At this point, you would
not expect to find any group larger than a foraging expedition--a
Stranger band at most.
His uncle's men, fully armed, operating under battle alert, could
easily cope with a single band of weavers, weaponsmiths or traders from
the decadent back-burrows. They would have driven them off, possibly
taking a few prisoners, and continued to wait for him.
That left only two possibilities. The unlikely war party--a two or
three-band attack--and, even more unlikely, a band from another fierce,
front-burrow people. But front-burrowers rarely went prowling at random
near Monster territory. They would have their own door cut into it and
would tend to feel hugely uncertain about one belonging to another
people. They too would head for the inhabited burrows if they were
on any business other than the important one of stealing for their
tribe's needs.
And another thing. Unless his uncle's band had been wiped out to the
very last man--a thought Eric rejected as highly improbable--the
survivors were honor-bound, by their oath of manhood, after doing
whatever the immediate military situation required, from pursuit to
retreat, to return as soon as possible to the spot where an initiate
was expected back from his Theft. No warrior would dare face the women
if he failed to do this.
Possibly the attack had just come. Possibly his uncle's band was a
short distance away, still fighting their way from burrow's end to
burrow's end; and, once they had gotten clear of the enemy, would make
their way back to him.
No. In that case, he should be able to hear the battle still going on.
And the burrows were dreadfully still.
Eric shivered. A warrior was not meant to be abroad without companions.
He'd heard of tribeless Strangers--once, as a child, he remembered
enjoying the intricate execution of a man who'd been expelled from
his own people for some major crime and who had wandered pathetically
into the neighborhood of Mankind--but these people were hardly to be
considered human: tribes, bands, societies, were the surroundings of
human creatures.
It was awful to be alone. It was unthinkable.
* * * * *
Without bothering to eat, though he was quite hungry after his Theft,
he began walking rapidly down the corridor. After a while, he broke
into a trot. He wanted to get home as soon as possible--to be among his
own kind again.
He reached into his back-sling and got a spear for each hand.
A nervous business going through the corridors all by yourself. They
were so empty and so quiet. They hadn't seemed this quiet when he'd
been on expedition with the band. And so fearfully, frighteningly dim.
Eric had never before realized how much difference there was between
the light you got from one forehead glow-lamp and the usual band
complement of a half-dozen. He found himself getting more and more wary
of the unexpected shadows where the wall curved sharply: he picked up
speed as he ran past the black hole of a branching burrow.
At any one of those places, an enemy could be waiting for him, warned
by the sound of his approaching footsteps. It could be the same enemy
which had attacked his uncle's band, a handful of cruel and murderous
Strangers, or a horde of them. It could be something worse. Abruptly he
remembered legends of unmentionable creatures who lurked in the empty
burrows, creatures who fled before the approach of a band of warriors,
but who would come noiselessly upon a single man. Big creatures who
engulfed you. Tiny creatures who came in their hundreds and nibbled you
to pieces. Eric kept jerking his head around to look behind him: at
least he could keep his doom from taking him by surprise.
It was _awful_ to be alone.
And yet, in the midst of his fears, his mind returned again and again
to the problem of his uncle's disappearance. Eric could not believe
anything serious had happened to him. Thomas the Trap-Smasher was a
veteran of too many bloody adventures, too many battles against unequal
odds. Then where had he gone? And where had he taken the band?
And why was there no sound of him anywhere, no sign in all this
infinity of gloomy, stretching, menace-filled tunnels?
Fortunately, he was an Eye. He knew the way back and sped desperately
along it without the slightest feeling of doubt. The Record Machine
was right: he would never be lost. Let him just get safely back to the
companionship of Mankind and he would be Eric the Eye.
And there it was again: who had been right, the Record Machine or his
uncle? The vision that named him had come from the Record Machine, but
his uncle claimed that this was religious claptrap. The vision had been
selected and his name proposed to the women well in advance of the
ceremony. And his uncle was an Alien-sciencer, in touch with Strangers
who were also Alien-sciencers....
So many things had happened in the last two days, Eric felt. So much of
his world had shifted. It was as if the walls of the burrows had moved
outward and upward until they resembled Monster territory more than
human areas.
* * * * *
He was getting close now. These corridors looked friendlier, more
familiar. He made himself run faster, although he was almost at the
point of exhaustion. He wanted to be home, to be officially Eric the
Eye, to inform Mankind of what had happened so that a rescue and
searching party could be sent out for his uncle.
That doorway to Monster territory: who had replaced it? If a battle had
been fought, and his uncle's band had retreated, still fighting, would
the attacker have stopped to put the door neatly back in its socket?
No.
Could it be explained by a sudden onslaught and the complete
extermination of his uncle's band? Then, before dragging the bodies
away, the enemy would have had time to put the door back. A doorway
into Monster territory was a valuable human resource, after all,
valuable to Mankind and Strangers alike--why jeopardize it by leaving
it visible and open?
But who--or what--could have been capable of such a sudden onslaught,
such a complete extermination of the best-led band in all Mankind? He'd
have to get the answer from one of the other band captains or possibly
a wise old crone in the Female Society.
Definitely within the boundaries of Mankind now, Eric forced himself to
slow to a walk. He would be coming upon a sentry at any moment, and he
had no desire at all to have a spear flung through him. A sentry would
react violently to a man dashing out of the darkness.
"Eric the Only," he called out, identifying himself with each step.
"This is Eric the Only." Then he remembered his Theft proudly and
changed the identification. "Eric the Eye. This is Eric the Eye, the
Espier, the further-seeing, less-paying Eye. Eric the Eye is coming
back to Mankind!"
Oddly, there was no returning call of recognition. Eric didn't
understand that. Had Mankind itself been attacked and driven away from
its burrow? A sentry should respond to a familiar name. Something was
very, inexplicably wrong.
Then he came around the last curve and saw the sentry at the other end.
Rather, he saw what at first looked like three sentries. They were
staring at him, and he recognized them. Stephen the Strong-Armed and
two members of Stephen's band. Evidently he had arrived just at the
moment when the sentry on duty was about to be relieved. That would
account for Stephen and the other man. But why hadn't they replied to
his shouts of identification?
They stood there silently as he came up, their spears still at the
ready, not going down in welcome. "Eric the Eye," he repeated, puzzled.
"I've made my Theft, but something happened to the rest--"
His voice trailed off, as Stephen came up to him, his face grim, his
powerful muscles taut. The band captain shoved a spear point hard
against Eric's chest. "Don't move," he warned. "Barney. John. Tie him
up. We've caught the little rat!"