Complete Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by James H. Schmitz

  Then there were long seconds filled with nothing but the wild beating of her heart.

  The period ended in a brief, not-very-loud thudding sound behind them, which was nevertheless the complete and final shattering of the gravity rider!

  The Nachief of Frome had grounded them.

  MORE THAN a mile off Frazer was flattened on the rocky ground beside her, pulling her backward. “He’s got me outgunned, all right! Now, just keep crawling hack till you reach the gully that’s twenty feet behind us. When you get there, keep low and let yourself slide down into it.”

  Lane tried to answer and shook her head instead.

  “Is he using one of those ultrasonic gadgets you were telling me about? Sally feels something she doesn’t like!”

  “I—I don’t know! He never used one on me before!”

  “Well, how do you feel?”

  “It’s crazy!” she bleated. “I want to run hack there! I want to run back to him!” Her legs were beginning to jerk uncontrollably.

  “Close your eyes a moment, Lane!”

  She didn’t question him . . . he was going to do something to help her. She dosed her eyes.

  VERY GRADUALLY, Lane Rawlings became aware of the fact that she and Frazer and Sally were in a different sort of place now. It began to shape itself in her consciousness as a deeply shaded place with tail trees all around. To the right, a wall of gray rock rose steeply to a point where it vanished above the tops of the trees. The nearby area was dotted with boulders and grown with straggling gray grass; it was enclosed by solid ranks of gray-green thickets which rose up to a height of twenty feet or more between the trees.

  Lane had a vague feeling next that a considerable amount of time had passed. Only then did she realize that her eyes were open—and that she was suspended somehow in mid-air, her feet free of the ground. The next thing she noticed was that her hands were fastened together before her. jolted fully awake by that, she discovered finally the harness of straps around her by which she swung from a thick tree-branch overhead.

  Frazer was standing beside her. He looked both apologetic and grimly amused.

  “Sorry I had to tie you up! You were being very active!” His voice was low and careful.

  “What happened?” Becoming aware of assorted aches and discomforts in her body, she squirmed, fatilely. “Can’t you let me down?”

  “Not so loud!” He made a gesture of silence. “Afraid not! Your friend, isn’t so far off, though I don’t think he’s actually located us as yet.”

  She swallowed and was still.

  “He keeps trying to get a reaction out of you,” Frazer went on, in the same careful tone. “It’s some kind of signal. Sally can sense It, and it makes her furious; though I don’t feel anything myself. You must be conditioned to it—and the effect is to make you want to ran toward the source of the vibrations!”

  “I didn’t know he’d brought any instruments with him,” Lane said dully.

  “He may not have intended to use them, unless the game took a turn he didn’t like. Which I expect it has now! I gave you a hypo shot back at the gully that knocked you out, an hour ago,” he added mildly. “The reason you’re tied up is that, conscious or not, you keep trying to run back to the Nachief. It’s rather fantastic to watch, but running in the air won’t get you any closer to him . . .”

  He turned suddenly. Sally, upright on her haunches twenty feet away, had made a soft, snarling sound. Her head was pointing at the thickets to their left, and the black eyes glittered with excitement.

  “Better not talk any more!” Frazer cautioned. “He’s fairly close, though he’s taking his time. He’s a good hunter!” he added with a curious air of approval. “Now I’m giving you another shot to keep you quiet while he closes in, or he might be able to force you to do something that would spoil the play.” He was reaching for her arm as he spoke.

  Lane started to protest but didn’t quite make it. Something jolted through her body like an electric shock; her legs jerked violently—and Frazer’s face, and the trees and rocks behind him, started vanishing in a swirling blackness. In the blackness, she felt herself running; and at its other end, the Nachief’s smiling face looked at her, waiting. She thought she was screaming and became briefly aware of the hard, sweaty pads of Frazer’s palm clasped about her mouth.

  FRAZER stood beside Lane’s slowly twisting and jerking body a few seconds longer, watching her, anxiously, because he couldn’t very well load her down with any more drug than she was carrying right now! Satisfied then that she was incapable of making any disturbance for the time, he moved quietly back to Sally, gun ready in his hands.

  “Getting close, eh?” he murmured. Sally twitched both ears impatiently and thereafter ignored him.

  Frazer, almost immediately, became as oblivious of his companion. In a less clearly defined way, he was also quite conscious of the gradual approach of the Nachief of Frome, though the fierce little animal beside him was using more direct channels of awareness. He knew that the approach was following the winding path through the thickets he had taken thirty minutes earlier with Lane slung across his shoulder. And he didn’t need the bristling of the hair at the back of his neck or the steady thumping of his heart to tell him that an entirely new sort of death was walking on his trail!

  If the Nachief of Frome followed that path to the end, he told himself calculatingly, it was going to be a very close thing—probably not even the fifty-fifty chance he’d previously considered to be the worst he need expect! He had selected the spot where they and their guns would settle it, if it came to that; but it would be the Nachief then who could select the exact instant in time for the meeting. And Frazer knew by now, with a sure, impersonal judgment of himself and of the creature gliding up the path, that he was outmatched. The Nachief simply had turned out to be a little more than he’d counted on!

  For a long minute or two, it seemed the stalker had stopped and was waiting. Lane hung quietly in her harness; so Frazer decided the Nachief had given up trying to prod her into action. So he knew, too, now that it was between himself and the Nachief! Frazer grinned whitely in the shadow.

  But what happened next took him completely by surprise. A sense of something almost tangible but invisible, a shadow that wasn’t a shadow, coming toward him! Sally, Frazer realized, wasn’t aware of it; and he reassured himself by thinking that whatever Sally couldn’t detect could not be very damaging, physically. Nevertheless, he discovered in himself, in the next few seconds, an unexpected capacity for horror! The mind of the Nachief of Frome was speaking to him, demandingly, a momentary indecision overlying its dark, icy purpose of destruction. Frazer, refusing the answer, felt his own mind shudder away from that contact.

  Almost immediately, the contact was broken; the shadow had vanished. He had no time to wonder about it; because now the final meeting, if it came, would be only seconds away . . .

  Then, as if she had received a signal, Sally made a soft, breathing sound and settled slowly back to the ground on all fours, relaxing. She glanced up at Frazer for a moment, before shifting her gaze to a point in the bushes before her.

  Frazer, a little less certain of his senses, did not relax just yet. But he, too, turned his eyes cautiously from the point where the path came into the glade to study the thickets ahead of them.

  Those twenty-foot bushes were an unusual sort of growth. Not a native of Nalakia-but one of the Bureau of Agriculture’s imported experiments that couldn’t have been tolerated on any less isolated world. The tops of a group of the shrubs dead ahead, near one of the turns of the hidden path, were shivering slightly. The Nachief, having decided to make his final approach through the thickets, was a sufficiently expert stalker not to disturb the growth to that extent.

  The growth was disturbing itself . . .

  Aware of the warm-blooded life moving through below it, it was gently shaking out the fluffy pods at its tips to send near-microscopic enzyme crystals floating down on the intruding life-form. Coating it
with a fine, dissolving dust—

  Dissolving through the pores of the skin; entering more swiftly through breathing nostrils into the lungs! Seeping through mouth, and ears, and eyes—

  A thrashing commotion began suddenly in the thickets. It shook a new cloud of dust out of the pods, which made a visible haze in the air, even from where Frazer stood. He watched it a trifle worriedly, though the crystals did not travel far, even on a good breeze. The growth preferred to contact and keep other life-forms where they would do it the most good, immediately above its roots.

  The thrashing became frenzied. There was a sudden gurgling screech.

  “That’s fine!” Frazer said softly between his teeth. “A few good breaths of the stuff now! It’ll be over quicker!”

  More screeches, which merged within seconds into a wet, rapid yapping. The thrashing motions had weakened but they went on for another half minute or so, before they and the yapping stopped together, abruptly. The Nachief of Frome was giving up life very reluctantly; but he gave it up.

  And now, gradually, Frazer relaxed. Oddly enough, watching the tops of the monstrous growth that had done his killing for him continue to quiver in a gentle, satisfied agitation, he was aware of a feeling of sharp physical letdown. Almost of disappointment—

  But that, he realized, was scarcely a rational feeling! Frazer was, by and large, a very practical man.

  SOME TIME later, he removed from his knapsack one of the tools an employee of the Bureau’s lonely outworld stations was likely to require at any time. Carefully, without moving from his tracks, he burned his vegetable ally out of existence. With another tool, he presently smothered the spreading flames again.

  After a little rummaging, he discovered what must be the ultrasonic transmitter; a beautifully compact little gadget, which the fire had not damaged beyond the point of repair. Frazer cleaned it off carefully and pocketed it.

  It was near nightfall when he put Lane Rawlings down on his bed in the station’s living area. She had not regained consciousness on the long hike back to the station; and he was a little worried, since he had never been obliged to use that type of drug in so massive a dose on a human being before. However, he decided on investigation that Lane was sleeping naturally now—and that the sleep might be due as much to emotional exhaustion as to the effects of the drug. She should wake up presently, very hungry and with very sore muscles, but otherwise none the worse.

  Straightening up, he found Sally beside him with her forepaws on the bed, peering at the girl’s face. Sally looked up at him briefly, with an obvious question. The same hungry question she had asked when they first met Lane.

  He shook his head, a gesture Sally understood very well. “Unh-uh!” he said softly, “This one’s our friend—if you can get that kind of idea into your ugly little head! Outside, Sally!”

  He shut the door to the room behind him, because one couldn’t be quite sure of Sally, though the chances were she would simply ignore the girl’s existence from now on. A decision involving Lane Rawlings had been shaping itself in his mind throughout the day; but he had kept pushing it back out of sight. There was no point in getting excited about it before he found out whether or not it was practicable.

  Sally padded silently after him as he made his customary nightfall round of the station’s control areas. A little later, checking one of the Bureau’s star-maps, he found the world of Frome indicated there; which was exceptionally good luck, since he wouldn’t have to rely now on the spotty kind of information regarding its location he could expect to get from Lane. And, considering his plans, the location couldn’t have been improved on—almost but not quite beyond the range of the little stellar flier waiting to serve in emergencies in its bombproof hangar beneath the station! He intended to leave the Bureau’s investigators no reason to suspect anything but a destructive space-raid had occurred here; but even if he slipped up, they wouldn’t think of looking for Frazer as tar away as Frome!

  What had been no more than a notion in his mind not many hours before suddenly looked not only practicable, but foolproof! Or very nearly—

  Whistling gently, he settled down in the central room of his living area, to think out the details. Now he could afford to let the excitement grow up in him!

  “Know what, Sally?” he addressed his silent companion genially. “That might, just possibly, have been my old man we bumped off today!”

  It was a point Sally wasn’t interested in. She had jumped up on a table and was thumping its surface gently with her tapered, muscular tail, watching him—waiting to be fed. Frazer brought a container that held a day’s rations for Sally out of a wall cabinet, and emptied its liquid contents into a bowl for her. Sally began to lap. Frazer hesitated a moment, took out a second container and partly filled another bowl for himself. Looking from it to the animal with an expression of sardonic amusement, he raised the second bowl to his lips. Presently he set it down empty. Sally was still lapping.

  IT WASN’T too likely, he knew, that the late Nachief of Frome actually had been his father. But it was far from being an impossibility! Frazer had known since he was twelve years old that lie had been fathered by a Nalakian living in the Hub Systems. His mother had told him, when an incident involving one of the humanoids of the mainland had revealed Frazer’s developing Nalakian inclinations. She had made a fumbling, hysterical attempt to kill him immediately afterward, but had died herself instead. Even at that age, Frazer had been very quick. It had taught him, however, that to be quick wasn’t enough—even living on the fringes of the unaware herds of civilization as he usually was, there remained always for one of the Nalakian breed the disagreeable necessity of being very cautious!

  Until today—

  At this point in his existence, he could afford to drop caution. Pure, ruthless boldness should make him sole lord and owner of the colony and the world of Frome within a week; and Frazer was comfortably certain that he had enough and to spare of that quality to take over his heritage in style.

  He studied the Nachief’s ultrasonic transmitter a while.

  “Have to learn how to use this gadget!” he informed Sally idly. “But it’s not very complicated. And if he has a system already set up—”

  Otherwise, he decided, he was quite capable now of setting one up himself! An attempt to assume hypnotic control of his two latest station assistants had turned out unsatisfactorily half a year before, so that he’d been obliged to dispose of them; but the possibility of reinforcing controls by mechanical means hadn’t occurred to him at the time. His admiration for the Nachief of Frome’s ingenuity was high. But it was mingled with a sort of impersonal contempt.

  “Sally, if he hadn’t overplayed it like a fool, he would have had all he could want for life! But a pure carnivore’s bound to have a one-track mind, I suppose—”

  He completed the thought to himself: That he had a very desirable advantage over the Nachief there! Biologically, he could get by comfortably on a humanly acceptable diet; and aside from the necessity of indoctrinating Lane Rawlings with a suitable set of memories, he might even decide to refrain from the use of hypnotics, until an emergency might call for them. His Nalakian qualities, sensibly restrained, would make him a natural leader in any frontier colony; and there was something intriguing now about the notion of giving up the lonely delights of the predator to assume that role on Frome! In another generation, the mutant biological pattern should be diluted beyond the danger point in his strain; and no one need ever know—

  Frazer chuckled, somewhat surprised by the sudden emergence of the social-human side of him—and also aware of the fact that he probably wouldn’t take the notion too seriously in the end! But that was something he could decide on later . . .

  He sat there a while, thinking pleasurably of Lane’s strong young body. To play the human role completely should have undeniable compensations! Finally he became aware of Sally again, watching him with quiet black eyes. She had finished her bowl.

  “Have some more?” he
invited good-humoredly. “It’s a celebration!”

  Sally licked her lips.

  He poured the balance of his container into her bowl and stood beside her, scratching her gently back of the ears, while she lapped swiftly at the thick, red liquid, shivering in the ecstasy of gorging. Frazer waited until she had finished the last drop before shooting her carefully through the back of the skull; and Sally sank forward without a quiver and lay still.

  “Hated to do it, Sally!” he apologized gravely. “But I just couldn’t take you along. We carnivores can’t ever really be trusted!”

  Which was, he decided somewhat wryly, the simple truth! He might accept the human role, at that; but, depending on the circumstances, never quite without qualification—

  It was almost his last coherent thought. The very brief one that followed was a shocked realization that the sudden, terrible, thudding sensation in his spine and skull meant that a Deen gun was being used on him!

  On that note of surprise, he blacked out.

  LANE RAWLINGS remained motionless in the door-frame behind Frazer, leaning against it as if for support, for a good three minutes after he had dropped to the floor and stopped kicking. It wasn’t that she was afraid of fainting; she only wanted to make very sure, at this distance, that Frazer was going to stay dead. She agreed thoroughly with his last remark.

  The thought passed through her mind in that time that she could be grateful to the Nachief of Frome for one thing, at any rate—it had amused him to train his secretary to be a very precise shot!

  After a while, she triggered the Deen gun once more, experimentally. Frazer produced no reactions now; he was as dead as Sally. Lane gave both of them a brief inspection before she pocketed the little gun and turned her attention to the food containers in the wall cabinet. With some reluctance, she opened one and found exactly what she expected to find. Now, the mainland humanoids Frazer had talked about might have a less harried existence in the future!