"Get back to the ship. Get back and get out of here!"
I jumped. It was Melak's voice, sounding hard and ugly. Light spilling
out of a sagging door made a faint silhouette of him in the rain. He
held a blaster in his hand.
Shannon snarled, "Take off with half my gang stranded here? You go to
hell!"
Rockets blasted suddenly out on the landing field. Somebody had made it
to Beamish's yacht and gone. The runabout followed it. The circus ship
was still there, and the only one in Nahru.
I said, "We can't go. Not with a couple hundred credits' worth of
animals running loose in the town."
"Get on to the ship," said Melak. "Cripes, if I knew how to fly I'd
leave you here! Now move!"
Shannon was almost crying. He started to rush Melak. I caught him and
said, "Sure. Sure we'll move. All of us. Look behind you!"
"I was weaned on that one. Move!"
Well, it was his funeral.
* * * * *
It was almost ours, too. Ganymedian puffballs move fast. They had come
out from between two shacks, skimming over the mud on their long white
cilia. There were three of them, rolled up in balls about the size of
my head. They didn't make any noise.
They came up behind Melak. Two of them unrolled suddenly, whipping
out into lean, fuzzy ropes about five feet long. They went around the
Martian 'breed. The third one came straight at me.
Melak made a noise that wasn't human and went down. The puffballs
tightened around him, pulsing a little with the pleasure of digestion.
Gow was on the other side of Melak, too far away, and unarmed.
I jumped, and the mud tripped me. Shannon fell the other way. The
puffball, strung out now like a fuzzy snake, paused a moment, not three
inches from my face. I lay still on my belly, choking on my heart.
Shannon moved, and it whipped down across his legs.
He screamed. I could feel the poison from the thing eating into him. I
got to my knees and he cursed me and raised something out of the mud.
It was Melak's blaster. He fired, between his feet.
The puffball shrivelled to a little stinking wire and dropped away.
Bucky said evenly,
"That pays me off. Now it's all your party, Jig."
He fainted. His legs were already swelling. Gow bent over him.
"He's gotta have the croaker, quick."
"You take him to the ship, Gow. If you can get there."
"Me? I'm the zoo-man. I oughta...."
"Do I look like Superman, to carry that big lug?" I didn't know why it
was so hard to talk. "Get him there. Then round up everybody left at
the ship. Get guns and ropes and torches and come back, quick!"
He nodded and got Bucky across his shoulders. I gave him the blaster.
Then I turned back. I knew where most of the circus gang would
be--spread out among the bars.
It was a lot darker, because now all the doors were closed, except two
or three where the people hadn't lived to close them. It was quieter,
too, because there's a limit to the noise a human throat can make.
There was just the hot rain, and the soft jungle undertone of things
padding and slithering in the mud, hunting.
Up the street somewhere the _cansins_ screamed, and another shack
split open. Instantly the brute clamor went up from the dark alleys,
answering. Animal legions from five different planets, led by a tiny
creature in a cloak of green fire. And man was the common enemy.
A pair of Martian sand-tigers shot out into the street ahead of me.
They were frolicking like kittens, playing with something dark and
tattered. Then they saw me and dropped it, and came sliding on their
bellies, their six powerful legs sucking in the mud.
There was no place to go. I don't remember being particularly scared,
but that wasn't because I was brave. It was sheer exhaustion. A guy can
only take so much. Now I was just walking around, seeing and hearing,
but not feeling anything inside. Like a guy that's coked to the ears,
or punchy from a beating.
I picked up a double handful of mud and slung it in their snarling
pusses, and threw my head back and yelled.
"Ha-a-y _Rube_!"
A door at my left opened three inches, daggering the rain with yellow
light. A voice said,
"For gossakes get in here!"
I picked up another handful of mud. The Martian cats were pawing the
last load out of their eyes. I gave them more to play with. I guess
they weren't very hungry, just then. I said,
"I'm going to get the _cansins_."
Just like that. I told you I was out on my feet. Clean nuts. The guy in
the doorway thought so too.
"Will you come in before you're too dead?"
"And wait around for those big apes to crack the house open over my
head? The hell with that." More mud sploshed in the cats' faces.
They were beginning to get sore. "The rest of the critters are just
following the _cansins_. Sort of a mopping-up brigade. Stop the
_cansins_, and we can round up the others easy."
"Oh, sure," said the man. "Any time before breakfast. Are you coming,
pal, or do I shut this door again?"
I don't know how it would have turned out. Probably I'd have wound up
inside the cats. But one of 'em let out a shrill, nasty wail, the kind
they give the trainer when they're challenging him to a finish fight,
and somebody came shouldering out past the man in the doorway.
The door swung wide, so that there was plenty of light. The six-inch
fangs on the Martian kitties were a beautiful, shining white. The
newcomer said something to the cats in a level undertone and came to me.
It was Jarin, the Titan who works the cats. He's about half my height,
metallic green in color, and faster on his feet than a rummy grabbing
the first drink. He looks like a walking barrel when he's folded up,
and like nothing on earth when he isn't.
He was unfolded then. He went up to the cats, light and dainty in the
mud. They were crouching uneasily, coughing and snarling, wanting to
rush him and not quite daring to.
The male sprang.