I didn’t have time to get away. I dropped down flat on my belly and let the cat fall on top of me. I only wanted to live a couple of seconds longer. After that, the hell with it!
The cat was doing a lot of screaming and thrashing. I was between two sets of legs. The paws came close enough to touch me, clawing up the dirt. I huddled up small, hoping it wouldn’t notice me there under its belly. Everything seemed to be happening very slowly, with a cold precision. I steadied my right hand on my left wrist.
I shot Laura three times, carefully, between the shoulders.
The cat stopped thrashing. Its weight crushed me. I knew it was dead. I knew I’d done something that even experienced hunters don’t do in nine cases out of ten. My first bullet had found the way into the cat’s little brain and killed it.
It wasn’t going to kill me. I pulled myself out from under it. The pitch was almost quiet now, the mob gone, the animals mostly under control. I kicked the dead cat. It had died too soon.
My gun was empty. I remember I clicked the hammer twice. I got more bullets out of my pocket, but my fingers wouldn’t hold them and I couldn’t see to load. I threw the gun away.
I walked away in the thin, cold fog, down toward the distant beat of the sea.
THE DANCING GIRL OF GANYMEDE
CHAPTER I The Wanderer
Tony Harrah came into the bazaar of Komar, heading for the Street of the Gamblers. The sour wine was heavy in him and his pockets were light and he was in no hurry. Win or lose, there was nothing to be in a hurry about. He was on the beach and Komar is a far lost beach for an Earthman.
The wind blew slowly through the narrow streets, stirring the torch flames that burned eternally under the dim red sky. It smelled of heat and sulphur, of the volcanic heart of Ganymede. Even here on the plateau, a thousand feet above the jungle, there was no escape from it. The sliding roofs of the houses were open wide to receive it for there was no other breath of air.
Above the tumult of the bazaar the great yellow star that was the Sun blazed splendidly in the far darkness of space. Jupiter filled half the sky, misty, banded with crimson and purple and grey. Between Sun and Jupiter raced the thronging moons, catching light now from one, now from the other, burning, flashing, glorious.
Harrah took no joy in that magnificence. He had looked at it too long.
He shouldered his way toward the square where the Street of the Gamblers joins the Street of Maidens and the Street of Thieves and at his heels like a furry shadow came Tok the aboriginal, the lemur-eyed child of the forests, who was Harrah’s and who loved him utterly.
It was on the edge of the square that Harrah caught the first wild rhythms of the music. And it was there that Tok reached out one sudden handlike paw and caught his master’s shirt and said, “Lord—wait!”
Harrah turned, startled by the urgency in Tok’s voice. He opened his mouth to speak but he did not speak. The look in Tok’s eyes stopped him. A queer blank look, luminous with some great fear.
The aboriginal moved forward, past Harrah, and then became a motionless shape of darkness between the torches and the moons. His head was lifted slightly into the wind. His nostrils quivered and gradually the quivering spread over his whole slim body as though he breathed in terror with every breath. Imperceptibly his flesh seemed to shrink in upon itself until all the look of humankind was gone from him and he was an animal poised for flight.
“Lord,” he whispered. “Evil, Lord—evil and death. It is in the wind.”
Harrah repressed a shiver. He could see nothing but the crowded square—the polyglot life of Komar, the landless, the lawless, the unwanted and forgotten, the mingled off-scourings of the Inner Worlds, mixed with the dark native-human folk of Ganymede. The only unusual thing was the music and there was nothing fearsome in that. Pipe and drum and a doublebanked harp, raw and barbaric but stirring to the blood.
Yet Tok half turned and looked at him with the eyes of one who has seen forbidden things and cried out, “Go! Go back, Lord. The wind is full of death!”
And as he spoke others of his kind came running from the square, furry man-things far from their native jungles, and one of them whimpered as he ran, “Demons. Demons with the eyes of darkness!”
“Go, Lord,” whispered Tok.
The power of suggestion was so strong that Harrah almost obeyed. Then he caught himself and laughed. “What is it, Tok?” he demanded, in the simple aboriginal speech. “I see no demons.”
“They are there. Please, Lord!”
“Nonsense.” He jingled the coins in his pocket. “Either I win some money or you steal to feed us. Go back yourself.”
He patted Tok’s quivering shoulder and went on into the square, forging his way through the crowd. He was curious now. He wanted to see what had frightened Tok and set the aboriginals to flight.
He saw the dancing girl, whirling crimson and white across the dirty stones, to the music of pipe and drum and harp, played by three men who might have been her brothers.
She was a Wanderer, from her ornaments and her ragged dress—a sort of interplanetary gypsy, one of the vast worldless tribe of space who travel from planet to planet but are citizens of none. Their blood is a mixture of every race in the System capable of cross-breeding and they are outcaste below the lowest.
There had been a few of them in Komar but this girl was new. If Harrah had seen her before he would not have forgotten. He thought that no man could ever forget her. There was something about her eyes.
Half-naked in her bright rags she went on swift white feet through the tossing glare of the torches. Her hair was tawny gold and her face was the face of a smiling angel and her eyes were black.
They did not smile, those dark, deep eyes. They had no kinship with the lithe gaiety of her body. They were sorrowful and smoldering and full of anger—the most bitter raging eyes that Harrah had ever seen.
He pushed forward, farther still, until he stood in the open space where she danced, so close that her loose mane of hair almost brushed him as she passed. And as he watched he became aware of an odd thing.
The music was sensuous and the very steps of the dance were an invitation as old as humankind. Yet in some peculiar way the girl took the primitive animal rhythms and transmuted them into something cool and lovely. An old, old memory came back to Harrah, of silver birches dancing in the wind.
Then, abruptly, she came to a halt before him, her arms high above her head, poised on a quivering note of longing from the reed pipe. She looked at him, the dark, sinewy Earth-man with a handful of coins, and her look was a curse.
He could feel the hatred in her as a personal thing, alive and thirsting. The violence of it shook him. He was about to speak, and then she was gone again, blown like a leaf on the surging music.
He stood where he was, waiting, in the grip of a sudden fascination that he had no wish to break. And between his feet as he watched a small brown cur slunk snarling.
The dogs of Komar are like many another pack on worlds far from their parent Earth. Lost, strayed or abandoned from the ships that land there out of space, they have thriven in the gutters and the steaming alleys. And now, quite suddenly, Harrah became aware of a new sound in the bazaar.
The narrow streets were as full of noise as ever and the wild oblique rhythms of the music filled the square. But the little brown cur lifted his muzzle to the sky and howled, a long savage wail, and somewhere close by another dog-throat picked it up, and another, and still another, until the square rang with it. Harrah heard the cry spreading out and away, running through the twisting alleys and the dark ways of Komar, howl answering howl, desolate and full of fear, and a coldness crept along the Earthman’s spine.
There was something terrible about that primitive warning out of Earth’s far past, unchanged even on this alien moon.
The music faltered and died. The girl stopped her dancing, her body half bent, poised and still. A silence fell across the square and gradually the sound of human voices ceased entirely a
s the city listened to the howling of its dogs.
Harrah shivered. The crowd began to stir uneasily and a little muttering began to creep under the wailing of the dogs. The dancing girl relaxed very slowly from her pose, gathering herself.
A rough body brushed Harrah’s knee. He looked down to see a great lurcher moving half-crouched into the open space. He realized then that the square was full of dogs, furtive shadows gliding between the legs of the men. They had stopped howling, these dogs. They growled and whimpered and their white fangs gleamed.
The small brown cur moaned once. Then he went with a rush and a scrabble out across the stones and leaped straight for the dancing girl’s throat.
CHAPTER II The Brothers
She did not scream. She moved, as swiftly as the dog, and caught the wiry brown body in mid-leap, between her two hands. Harrah saw her stand so for a split second, holding the frenzied beast that was shrieking now to get at her, and her eyes had narrowed to two slits of cold fire, utterly black and without fear.
Then she threw the dog into the jaws of the lurcher, that had started a rush of his own, and the two went down in a snarling tangle.
After that there was bedlam. The one act of violence was all that was needed. The crowd turned and rolled in upon itself in a panic desire to be quit of the square. Dogs and humans were mixed in a trampling screaming turmoil. Something had set the beasts mad and in their madness they snapped and tore at whatever got in their way. There began to be blood on the stones and weapons flashed in the torchlight and the voice of fury bayed in the hot wind.
Dogs and men only fought there. The aboriginals were gone.
Harrah managed to stand his ground for a moment. He saw the girl run past him and brought the barrel of his gun down across the head of a long-jawed brute that came at her from behind. When he looked again she had disappeared.
The press of the crowd bore him on then, the way she had gone. After a few paces he stumbled and looked down to see scarlet cloth and white flesh between his feet. She was trying to get up. He fought a clear space for her, battering with fists
and elbows. In a second she was up, tearing like a wildcat with her long nails at the bodies that threatened to crush her down again.
She was still not afraid.
Harrah grinned. He caught her up and tossed her over his shoulder. She was small, and surprisingly light. He let the tide carry them, concentrating only on keeping his feet, clubbing dog and man alike.
The girl had drawn a little knife from somewhere in her rags. Hanging head down over his shoulder, she plied it and laughed. Harrah thought that it was fine to be brave but he thought she needn’t have enjoyed it so much. Her body was like spring steel, clinging around him.
An alley mouth opened before him. He went down it with a rush of escaping humanity and raging dogs, making for the wall. The houses were irregularly built and presently he found a crevice between two of them that had once housed a stall. He dodged into it, set the girl on her feet behind him and stood getting his breath back, watchful of the crowd still streaming by not a foot away from him.
He knew that the girl was looking at him. She was very close in that cramped space. She was not trembling nor even breathing hard.
“Why did you glare at me like that, in the square?” he asked her. “Was it personal or do you just hate all men?”
“Did you pick me up just to get the answer to that question?” She spoke English perfectly, without a trace of an accent, and her voice was as beautiful as her body, very clear and soft.
“Perhaps.”
“Very well then. I hate all men. And women too—especially women.”
She was matter-of-fact about it. It came to Harrah with a small qualm that she meant it. Every word of it. He was suddenly uneasy about having her little knife where she could use it on his back.
He turned around, catching her wrist. She let him take the knife, smiling a little.
“Fear,” she said. “Always fear, no matter where you go.”
“But you’re not afraid.”
“No.” She glanced past him, into the alley. “The crowd is thinning now. I will go and find my brothers.”
A big rusty-red mongrel thrust his head into the crevice and snarled. Harrah kicked him and he slunk back reluctantly, his lips winkled, his red-rimmed eyes fixed on the girl.
“I wouldn’t,” said Harrah. “The dogs don’t seem to like you.”
She laughed. “I haven’t a scratch on me. Look at yourself.” He looked. He was bleeding in a number of places, and his clothes were in shreds.
He shook his head.
“What the devil got into them?” he demanded.
“Fear,” said the girl. “Always fear. I will go now.”
She moved to pass him, and he stopped her. “Oh, no. I saved your life, lady. You can’t walk away quite so easily.”
He put his hands on her shoulders. Her flesh was cool and firm, and the strands of her tawny mane curled over it between his fingers. What mingling of alien strains had bred her he could not guess but she was like no one he had ever seen before, inexpressibly lovely in the light of the flashing moons. She was like moonlight herself, the soft gleam of it in her hair, her skin, her great haunted eyes.
Outcaste, dancer in the public streets, pariah in crimson rags, there was a magic about her. It stirred Harrah deeply. Some intuition warned him to take his hands from her and let her go, because she was a stranger beyond his knowing. But he did not. He could not.
He bent and kissed her lightly between the brows. “What’s your name, little Wanderer?”
“Mari th.”
Harrah knew that word, in the lingua franca of the thieves’ markets. He smiled.
“And why should you be called ‘Forbidden’?”
Her dark gaze dwelt upon him somberly. “I am not for any man to love.”
“Will you come home with me, Marith?”
She whispered, “I warn you, Earthman—I am death!”
He laughed and gathered her into his arms. “You’re a child and children should not be full of hate. Come home with me, Marith. I’ll only kiss you now and then and buy you pretty things and teach you how to laugh.”
She did not answer at once. Her face was distant and dreaming as though she listened to some far-off voice. Presently she shrugged and said, “Very well. I will come.”
They started off together. The alley was deserted now. There were lingering sounds of turmoil in the bazaar but they were far away. Harrah led the girl toward his house and the streets were empty and still under the thronging moons.
He kept his arm around her. He was full of a strange excitement and his bored ill-temper had left him completely. Yet as he walked he became aware again of a gulf between him and Mari th, something he could not understand. A pang of doubt that was almost fear crossed his heart. He did not know what he held, child, woman or some alien, wicked creature, close in the hollow of his arm.
He remembered the aboriginals, who had cried of death and demons. He remembered the howling of the dogs. And he wondered because of what he felt within himself.
But she was very lovely and her little white feet stepped so lightly in the dust beside his and he would not let her go.
They had left the bazaar behind them. They came to a quiet place, surrounded by the blank walls of houses, and suddenly, without sound, as though they had taken form ghostlike from the shadows, two men stepped out and barred their way.
One was an Earthman, a large man, heavy-shouldered, heavy-faced, with a look of ponderous immovability about him. The other was a Venusian, slim and handsome, with bright pale hair. Both men were armed. There was something infinitely ominous about the way they stood there, neither moving nor speaking, with the moonlight touching a hard blue glitter from their guns.
Harrah stopped, his hands half raised, and Marith moved forward, one step, away from him. Then she too stopped, like a crouching cat.
Harrah said, “What is this? What do you want?”
Marith turned. She would have fled past Harrah, back the way they had come, but again she came to a dead halt.
“There is someone behind you,” she said. Her eyes looked at Harrah and he was startled to see that they were full of terror. She was afraid now—deathly afraid.
“Don’t let them take me,” she whispered. “Please don’t let them take me!” And then, as though to herself, “Hurry. Oh, hurry!”
Her head moved tensely from side to side, the head of an animal seeking escape, but there was no escape.
Harrah glanced over his shoulder. A third man had come from somewhere to stand behind them with a gun, a yellow-eyed Martian with a smiling, wolfish face. Deep within Harrah a small chill pulse of warning began to beat. This was no spur-of-the-moment holdup. This was ambush, carefully planned. He and Mari th had been deliberately followed, headed and trapped.
“Marith,” he said. “Do you know these men?”
She nodded. “I know them. Not their names—but I know them.” It was terrible to see her so afraid.
It seemed to Harrah that he knew the men also, an intuitive knowledge based on long experience.
“You smell of law,” he said to them. He laughed. “You’ve forgotten where you are. This is Komar.”
The large man shook his head. “We’re not law. This is— personal.”
“Let us have no trouble, Earthman,” said the Martian. “We have no quarrel with you. It is only the girl-thing we want.” He began to move closer to Harrah, slowly, like a man approaching a dangerous animal. At the same time the others moved in also.
“Unfasten your belt,” said the large man to Harrah. “Let it drop.”
“Don’t let them take me,” whispered Marith.
Harrah lowered his hands to his belt.
He moved then, very swiftly. But they were swift too and there were three of them. Harrah had not quite cleared his gun from the holster when the Martian’s weapon took him club-fashion across the side of the head. He fell. He heard his gun clatter sharply against stone, far away where someone had kicked it. He heard Marith cry out.
The Halfling and Other Stories Page 4