TEN

The first sensation that penetrated, agonizingly, to Taranto's

consciousness was that of heat. Heat, and then the damp itch of soaking

sweat.

The next feeling, as he groggily sought to take up the slack in his

hanging jaw, was thirst. It was a raging demand that brought him

entirely awake. Before he could control himself, he had emitted a groan.

Immediately, he was dropped from whatever had been supporting him in a

swaying, dipping fashion. He landed with a thud on the hard ground.

A chatter of Syssokan broke out above him. It was answered by other

Syssokan voices farther away. Taranto kept his eyes closed and lay

limply where he had sprawled, while he tried to figure out what had

gone wrong.

Shortly before dawn, he and Meyers had each swallowed his capsule as

directed. He remembered a period of vague drowsiness after that, then

nothing more until he had been awakened just now. From his still dizzy

mind, he sought to drag the outline of events expected.

They had hoped to be taken out to the desert, possibly to a Syssokan

burial ground according to the local custom, and left to be dried by

the dessicating blaze of the sun. It had been planned that a spaceship

would land in the late afternoon to pick them up. Undoubtedly, it would

take the Syssokans several hours to report the "deaths" and to secure

official permission for disposal of the bodies, even though they were

less given to red tape than Terrans. Still, they should have abandoned

the "bodies" long before Taranto had expected to awake.

He risked opening one eye a slit. Syssokan legs crowding around blocked

his view, but he could tell that it was dusk. The heat he felt must be

that of sand and rocks that had baked all day.

It must have taken the Syssokans a long time to get this far. He

wondered whether they had brought him an unusual distance into the

desert, perhaps to avoid contaminating their own burial grounds, or

whether they had simply indulged in some long-winded debate as to the

proper course to pursue in regard to deceased aliens.

_My God!_ he thought. _What if they'd decided to dissect us? I never

thought of that! I wonder if the joker that sent those pills did?_

Whatever had gone wrong, he was well behind schedule. He could imagine

the chagrin of the D.I.R. man watching the proceedings through his

little flying spy-eye. Taranto hoped that the spacers hired for the

pick-up were still standing by--at the worst, they would have water.

Cautiously, he tried to move his tongue inside his mouth. It stuck

against his teeth. He suspected that the taste would be terrible, if he

could taste at all.

_The heat!_ he thought. _I've been soaking up heat all day and not

sweating. Now it's jetting out of every pore._

Whatever the drug had done or failed to do, it must have nearly

suspended most of the normal functions of the body. No wonder he was

perspiring so heavily as he began to recover! Even so, he felt as if

he had a fever. He began to hope that he had not been carried for

very long. Unless he had been lying in the cell--or, better, in some

examination room at ground level--for most of the elapsed time while

disputes held up disposal of his body, some instinct told him, he was

very likely to die.

Someone rubbed a hand roughly over his face, slipping through the film

of sweat. At this demonstration, renewed exclamations broke out above

him. One of the Syssokans shouted some gabble, as if to another some

way off.

A moment later, Taranto heard a hoarse yelp that could have come only

from a Terran throat. Then words began to form, and he realized that it

must be Meyers.

_That blew the pipes!_ he thought, and opened his eyes.

A Syssokan looking down at him hissed in astonishment. Others, who had

been watching another group about twenty feet away, turned to stare

down at Taranto. He was hauled to his feet by the first pair that

thought of it. One, a minor officer by his red uniform, sputtered a

question at the Terran, forgetting in his evident excitement that he

was speaking Syssokan. Taranto wiped his face with his shirtsleeve. He

was beginning to feel a trifle cooler as his perspiration evaporated in

the dry air, but his surroundings seemed feverishly unreal.

He could not quite understand what Meyers was shouting now, but even in

the hoarse voice could be detected a note of pleading. Taranto thought

it must be something about water. The Syssokan before him gathered his

wits and repeated his question in Terran.

"What doess thiss mean?" he demanded, glaring angrily at Taranto with

his huge, black eyes.

The Terran tried to answer, but could not get the words out. He

gestured weakly at a waterskin secured to the harness of one of

the soldiers. After a brief moment of hesitation, the officer

waved permission. The soldier detached the container and handed it

suspiciously to Taranto. Fearing the effect of too much liquid in one

jolt, the latter forced himself to take only a few small swallows. He

wished he could afford to stick his whole head inside the skin and soak

up the water like a blotter.

"You are dead!" declared the officer impatiently.

The tiny greenish-gray scales of his facial skin actually seemed

ruffled. Taranto dizzily sought for some likely apology to excuse his

being alive. He decided that there might be a slim chance of getting

away with a whopper.

"If it is officially declared, then of course I am dead!" he croaked.

"What d'ya expect. Look how weak I am!"

The Syssokan swiveled their narrow, pointed skulls about at each other.

"I'm in the last minutes," said Taranto sadly.

"What lasst minutess?" asked the officer.

"It's the way Terrans pass on," asserted the spacer. "Didn't you ever

see a Terran die?"

The officer silently avoided admitting so much, running a hand

reflectively over his thick waist, but his hesitation provided an

opening.

"That's the way it goes," said Taranto. "First a blackout ... we sleep,

that is. Then the last minutes, the sweat of death, and ... blooey!"

He raised the waterskin and sneaked a long swallow, risking it because

he feared he might not be allowed another.

He was right. The officer snatched away the skin and thrust it into the

long fingers of its indignant owner.

"If you are sso dead," he demanded, not illogically, "why do you drink

up our water?"

"Sorry," apologized Taranto. "Where are we?"

"What difference iss it to you?"

"I ... uh ... don't want to make hard feelings or bad luck by dying in

one of your burial grounds."

"It will not happen," said the officer grimly. "We have been ssent in

another place to guard against that. Look back--you can see the city

over that way."

Taranto turned. The outline of the city walls, with lights showing here

and there on the watch towers, loomed up about five miles away. A small

rise in the rolling ground of the desert hid the base of the walls

and the greater part of the rough trail they had evidently followed.

It would have been a fine spot for a spaceship to drop briefly to the

surface.

"Do you wish to lie down here?" asked the officer politely. "We will

wait until it iss over."

Don't be so damn' helpful! thought Taranto.

He looked desperately about, striving to give the impression of seeking

a comfortable spot. He felt the situation turning more and more sour

by the minute. It would be very difficult to feign death successfully

again now that the Syssokan suspicions were so aroused. They might well

make sure of him in their own way.

Near him stood half a dozen brown-clad soldiers. Four of them, spears

slung on their shoulders by braided straps, had apparently been

carrying him while two others acted as relief bearers. Besides the

officer, there was a sub-officer, also in brown but wearing a red

harness. In the background, a similar group clustered about Meyers.

Taranto saw that he had been tumbled from a sort of flat stretcher

of wickerwork. It was of careless craftsmanship, as if meant to be

abandoned with the body it served on the last journey. He wondered if

it could be assumed to be his property.

"Don't put yourselves out," he said. "I can't hardly take a step even

to sit down. It'll be just a coupla minutes now. Good-bye!"

The Syssokan officer made no move to depart. Taranto had not really

dared to hope that he would. He was trying to think of some further

excuse when Meyers saved him the trouble.

"_Help!_ Taranto!" shrieked the other spacer, bursting suddenly from

the group about him. "I told them we're alive, and they want to kill

us!"

He ran staggeringly toward Taranto, kicking up spurts of sand. His

shirt front was dark with sweat and dribbled water. He looked wild with

fright.

"Ah, they do live!" exclaimed the officer. "Seize them!"

He seemed to realize only after about ten seconds that he had, this

time, spoken in Terran. Evidently feeling that not all his men might

have learned that particular language, he began to repeat the order in

Syssokan. Taranto interfered by swinging his fist at the center of the

greenish-gray features. The Syssokan, arms flung wide, sailed backward

and landed on the nape of his neck in a patch of gravel. Meyers

screamed hoarsely as his own bearers caught up to him and dragged him

down.

Taranto sprang forward to snatch up the wicker stretcher from the

ground. A long-fingered hand clutched at his shoulder, but let go when

he kicked backward without looking around. He raised the stretcher and

swung it around in a wide arc at the three Syssokans reaching for him.

Two, having left their heads unprotected, went down; but the stretcher

frame crumpled. Taranto tripped the other Syssokan, glancing hopefully

at the sky. There was no sign of the fire-trail of a descending

spaceship in the deepening twilight. Then he had to duck as the other

three bearers were upon him.

"Get up, Meyers!" he yelled.

He met the rush with a hard left that dumped the leading Syssokan on

his back. The next hesitated, and was brushed aside by the sixth, who

had had the wits to unsling his spear.

Taranto sidestepped the crude but large point that thrust straight at

his belly. The shaft of the spear slid along his left ribs, and he

punched over the outstretched arms of the soldier at the Syssokan's

head. He clamped the spear between his elbow and body, retaining it as

his attacker staggered back.

Two or three were now advancing from where a knot of figures seemed to

be sitting upon Meyers in the gloom. They did not especially hurry.

Taranto had begun to reverse the spear to jab at the Syssokan left

facing him when he heard a scrabbling behind him.

He whirled away to his right, ducking instinctively as a body hurtled

past him. When he faced about, he found that most of those whom he had

knocked down were again on their feet and advancing. The officer, the

lower part of his face smeared with purplish blood, ran at Taranto full

tilt. He screamed an order in his own language.

The spacer cracked the butt of the spear smartly against the Syssokan's

head, sending him down on his face. One of the others, however, managed

to get a grip on the weapon. Instinct told Taranto that any attempt at

a tug of war on his part would lead to a fatal entanglement. He dodged

away and sprinted toward the group pinning Meyers.

A Syssokan voice yelled mushily behind him as he concentrated upon

driving with the greatest possible force into the writhing group before

him. He struck with a crunch that tumbled bodies in all directions.

Taranto himself felt sand scrape raspingly against the side of his face

as he half-rolled, half-skidded along the ground.

His pursuers now caught up to the new location of hostilities. The

first thing Taranto saw as he managed to drag one knee under him was

the butt end of a spear plunging at his midsection. The Syssokan behind

it had his center of gravity well ahead of his churning feet, obviously

intent upon doing great bodily harm. The spacer wondered for a split

second why the native did not use his point.

Then he twisted hips and torso to his right, drawing back his left

shoulder. As the spear passed him, he slapped down hard on the shaft

with his left hand. The butt dug into the sand, and the Syssokan hissed

in consternation as he vaulted head over heels before he could release

the weapon. The one immediately behind was caught in the center of his

harness by a flying foot, whereupon he collapsed with a groan across

the prone figure of his comrade. Two more, who had dropped their

spears, reached out toward Taranto, urged on by the officer on their

heels.

Taranto saw Meyers stagger to his feet. Then the two Syssokans were all

over him. He skipped away to his left over a pair of limp legs, parried

a groping hand, and brought around the long, low left hook that had

made him respected in past years.

In the ring, he had floored men with that punch. At the least, he

expected a fine, loud _whoosh_ from the Syssokan, but the latter

disappointed him. He folded in limp silence.

For a second or two, everything stopped. Taranto stared down at the

soldier, slumped on the ground like a loose sack of potatoes. Even the

Syssokans who were not at the moment engaged in pulling themselves to

their feet also gaped.

Light dawned for the spacer. Those among whom he had gone head-hunting

kept getting to their feet as fast as he knocked them down.

"Hit 'em in the gut!" he yelled to Meyers. "That's where their brains

are!"

He charged at the nearest Syssokan, lips drawn back in an unconscious

snarl. The soldier made a reflexive motion to cross his arms before his

thick abdomen. Taranto, unopposed, hit him alongside the head with a

light right, then whipped the left hook in again as the arms began to

lift. The Syssokan went out like a light.

"Come on!" Taranto shouted at Meyers when he saw that the other had not

moved. "Two of us could do it. Those heads are too little to hold a

brain. Kick 'em, if you can't do anything else!"

"Are you crazy?" retorted Meyers, his voice hoarse as much with fear as

with thirst. "They'll kill us! Give up, and they'll only take us back!"

Taranto sensed someone behind him. He started to run, but two or three

recovered Syssokans headed him off. He tried to cut back to his right.

He slipped in a patch of sand and saved himself from going flat only by

catching his weight on both outstretched hands. One of the Syssokans

landed across his back, feeling blindly for a hold.

Taranto surged up, trying to butt with the back of his head. He was

promptly wrapped in the long arms of another soldier facing him, as

the grip from the rear slid down to his waist. The fellow behind him

seemed to think he could hurt him by kneading both knobby fists into

the spacer's belly, but there was too much hard muscle there.

The Terran again butted, forward this time, and brought up his knee.

This was less effective than it should have been, but it helped him

free one arm so that he could drive an elbow backward.

The officer ran up with a reversed spear. From the look in his big

black eyes, Taranto realized that the Syssokan had also learned

something during the melee. That explained, no doubt, why he was an

officer. He swung the spear in a neat arc--at Taranto's head!

It cracked against the Terran's skull. Even though he did his best to

ride with it, he felt his knees buckle. He struck out with his right

fist, but the punch was smothered by the soldier whom he had kneed.

The spear came down again. The world of Taranto's existence was reduced

to a narrow view of a straining, greenish-gray calf showing through a

torn leg of a Syssokan uniform. Vaguely, he realized that he was on his

hands and knees. A great number of hands seemed to be grabbing at him,

and his own were very heavy as he groped out for the leg.

He got some sort of fumbling grip, and started to haul himself up.

The slowness of his motions alarmed him, in a foggy way. He tried to

tuck his chin behind his left shoulder because he knew that there was

something ... something ... coming....

It came. The Syssokan officer's big foot took him behind the ear with a

brutal thump.

Taranto, however, sinking into gray nothingness, did not really feel

it....