Dylan moved to quiet him. "Look, is there any animal at all that ever
comes near here that's as large as a dog?"
After a pause, Rush answered. "Yep, there's one. The viggle. It's like
a reg'lar monkey but with four legs. Biology cleared 'em before we
landed. We shoot one now and then when they get pesky." He rose slowly,
the rifle held under his arm. "I b'lieve we might just as well go post
them sentries."
Dylan wanted to go on with this but there was nothing much else to
say. Rossel went with them as far as the radio shack, with a strained
expression on his face, to put through that call to Three.
When he was gone Rush asked Dylan, "Where you want them sentries? I got
Walt Halloran and Web Eggers and six others lined up."
Dylan stopped and looked around grimly at the circling wall of snow.
"You know the site better than I do. Post 'em in a ring, on rises,
within calling distance. Have 'em check with each other every five
minutes. I'll go help your people at the ship."
The gloomy man nodded and fluffed up his collar. "Nice day for
huntin'," he said, and then he was gone with the snow quickly covering
his footprints.
* * * * *
The Alien lay wrapped in a thick electric cocoon, buried in a wide
warm room beneath the base of a tree. The tree served him as antennae;
curiously he gazed into a small view-screen and watched the humans
come. He saw them fan out, eight of them, and sink down in the snow. He
saw that they were armed.
He pulsed thoughtfully, extending a part of himself to absorb a spiced
lizard. Since the morning, when the new ship had come, he had been
watching steadily, and now it was apparent that the humans were aware
of their danger. Undoubtedly they were preparing to leave.
That was unfortunate. The attack was not scheduled until late that
night and he could not, of course, press the assault by day. But
_flexibility_, he reminded himself sternly, _is the first principle of
absorption_, and therefore he moved to alter his plans. A projection
reached out to dial several knobs on a large box before him, and the
hour of assault was moved forward to dusk. A glance at the chronometer
told him that it was already well into the night on Planet Three, and
that the attack there had probably begun.
The Alien felt the first tenuous pulsing of anticipation. He lay
quietly, watching the small square lights of windows against the snow,
thanking the Unexplainable that matters had been so devised that he
would not have to venture out into that miserable cold.
Presently an alarming thought struck him. These humans moved with
uncommon speed for intelligent creatures. Even without devices, it was
distinctly possible that they could be gone before nightfall. He could
take no chance, of course. He spun more dials and pressed a single
button, and lay back again comfortably, warmly, to watch the disabling
of the colonists' ship.
* * * * *
When Three did not answer, Rossel was nervously gazing at the snow,
thinking of other things, and he called again. Several moments later
the realization of what was happening struck him like a blow. Three
had never once failed to answer. All they had to do when they heard
the signal buzz was go into the radio shack and say hello. That was
all they had to do. He called again and again, but nobody answered.
There was no static and no interference and he didn't hear a thing. He
checked frenziedly through his own apparatus and tried again, but the
air was as dead as deep space. He raced out to tell Dylan.
Dylan accepted it. He had known none of the people on Three and what
he felt now was a much greater urgency to be out of here. He said
hopeful things to Rossel, and then went out to the ship and joined the
men in lightening her. About the ship at least, he knew something and
he was able to tell them what partitions and frames could go and what
would have to stay or the ship would never get off the planet. But
even stripped down, it couldn't take them all. When he knew that, he
realized that he himself would have to stay here, for it was only then
that he thought of Bossio.
Three was dead. Bossio had gone down there some time ago and, if Three
was dead and Bossio had not called, then the fact was that Bossio was
gone too. For a long, long moment Dylan stood rooted in the snow.
More than the fact that he would have to stay here was the unspoken,
unalterable, heart-numbing knowledge that Bossio was dead--the one
thing that Dylan could not accept. Bossio was the only friend he had.
In all this dog-eared, aimless, ape-run Universe Bossio was all his
friendship and his trust.
He left the ship blindly and went back to the settlement. Now the
people were quiet and really frightened, and some of the women were
beginning to cry. He noticed now that they had begun to look at him
with hope as he passed, and in his own grief, humanly, he swore.
Bossio--a big-grinning kid with no parents, no enemies, no
grudges--Bossio was already dead because he had come out here and tried
to help these people. People who had kicked or ignored him all the days
of his life. And, in a short while, Dylan would also stay behind and
die to save the life of somebody he never knew and who, twenty-four
hours earlier, would have been ashamed to be found in his company. Now,
when it was far, far too late, they were coming to the army for help.
* * * * *
But in the end, damn it, he could not hate these people. All they had
ever wanted was peace, and even though they had never understood that
the Universe is unknowable and that you must always have big shoulders,
still they had always sought only for peace. If peace leads to no
conflict at all and then decay, well, that was something that had to be
learned. So he could not hate these people.
But he could not help them either. He turned from their eyes and went
into the radio shack. It had begun to dawn on the women that they might
be leaving without their husbands or sons, and he did not want to see
the fierce struggle that he was sure would take place. He sat alone and
tried, for the last time, to call Bossio.
After a while, an old woman found him and offered him coffee. It was
a very decent thing to do, to think of him at a time like this, and
he was so suddenly grateful he could only nod. The woman said that he
must be cold in that thin army thing and that she had brought along a
mackinaw for him. She poured the coffee and left him alone.
They were thinking of him now, he knew, because they were thinking of
everyone who had to stay. Throw the dog a bone. Dammit, don't be like
that, he told himself. He had not had anything to eat all day and the
coffee was warm and strong. He decided he might be of some help at the
ship.
It was stripped down now and they were loading. He was startled to see
a great group of them standing in the snow, removing their clothes.
Then he understood. The clothes of forty people would change the
weight by enough to get a few more aboard. There was no fighting. Some
of the women were almost hysterical and a few had refused to go and
were still in their cabins, but the process was orderly. Children went
automatically, as did the youngest husbands and all the women. The
elders were shuffling around in the snow, waving their arms to keep
themselves warm. Some of them were laughing to keep their spirits up.
In the end, the ship took forty-six people.
Rossel was one of the ones that would not be going. Dylan saw him
standing by the airlock holding his wife in his arms, his face buried
in her soft brown hair. A sense of great sympathy, totally unexpected,
rose up in Dylan, and a little of the lostness of thirty years went
slipping away. These were his people. It was a thing he had never
understood before, because he had never once been among men in great
trouble. He waited and watched, learning, trying to digest this while
there was still time. Then the semi-naked colonists were inside and
the airlock closed. But when the ship tried to lift, there was a sharp
burning smell--she couldn't get off the ground.
* * * * *
Rush was sitting hunched over in the snow, his rifle across his knees.
He was coated a thick white and if he hadn't spoken Dylan would have
stumbled over him. Dylan took out his pistol and sat down.
"What happened?" Rush asked.
"Lining burned out. She's being repaired."
"Coincidence?"
Dylan shook his head.
"How long'll it take to fix?"
"Four--five hours."
"It'll be night by then." Rush paused. "I wonder."
"Seems like they want to wait 'til dark."
"That's what I was figurin'. Could be they ain't got much of a force."
Dylan shrugged. "Also could mean they see better at night. Also could
mean they move slow. Also could mean they want the least number of
casualties."
Rush was quiet and the snow fell softly on his face, on his eyebrows,
where it had begun to gather. At length he said, "You got any idea how
they got to the ship?"
Dylan shook his head again. "Nobody saw anything--but they were all
pretty busy. Your theory about it maybe being one of us is beginning to
look pretty good."
The colonist took off his gloves, lit a cigarette. The flame was
strong and piercing and Dylan moved to check him, but stopped. It
didn't make much difference. The aliens knew where they were.
And this is right where we're gonna be, he thought.
"You know," he said suddenly, speaking mostly to himself, "I been in
the army thirty years, and this is the first time I was ever in a
fight. Once in a while we used to chase smugglers--never caught any,
their ships were new--used to cut out after unlicensed ships, used to
do all kinds of piddling things like that. But I never shot at anybody."