Her brain slowed; she grew calm. He watched with her then, clinging to her mind with his mind as tightly as his body clung to her body. He saw the thick steel bars of the cage; and, half hidden by their four-inch width, the figure of a man. He saw the thoughts of the man!
"You damned monsters! You'll never have a chance to murder another human being!" The man's hand moved. There was a metallic glint as he thrust a weapon between the bars. It spouted white fire. For a moment the mental contact with his mother blackened. It was his own ears that heard the gasping roar, his own flat nostrils that smelled the odor of burning flesh. And there was no mistaking the physical reality of her wild charge straight at the merciless flame gun projecting between the bars.
The fire clicked off. The blackness vanished from his mother's mind. The young ezwal saw that the weapon and the man had retreated from the reaching threat of those mighty claws. "Damn you!" the man flared. "Well, take it from here then!" There must have been blinding pain, but none of it came through into his brain. His mother's thoughts remained at a mind-shaking pitch of malignance, and not for an instant did she remain still. She ducked this way and that. She ran with twisting, darting, rolling, sliding movements as she fought for life, in the narrow confines of the cage. But always, in spite of her desperation, a part of her mind remained untouched, unhurried. The tearing fire followed her, missing her, then hitting her squarely, hitting her so often that finally she could no longer hold back the knowledge that her end was near. And with that thought came another, his first awareness that she had a purpose in keeping the weapon beyond the bars, and forcing it to follow the swift, darting frenzy of her movements. In the very act of pursuing her, the beam of the flame gun had seared with fusing effect across the thick steel bars.
Now, in between the hissing bursts from the flame gun, a new strange sound could be heard, like an all-pervading, continuous sigh. It seemed to come from outside the hold, and it grew gradually louder, rising in pitch.
"God!" came the man's thoughts. "Won't this stinking beast ever die? I've got to get out of here—we've hit the air! And where is that damned young one? It must be—" The thought broke in startlement as sixty-five hundred pounds of steel-thewed body smashed with pile-driver momentum at the weakened bars of the cage. The cub strained with his own taut muscles against the contraction of that rocklike wall of muscle surrounding him—and lived. He heard and felt the metal bars bend and break, where the flame had lessened their tensile strength.
There was a gasping scream, and an image of the man standing there, with no bars intervening, his face going slack with mindless fright. The gun dropped from his limp hand, and as it clattered on the floor, he turned and ran, loose-kneed, toward the nearest companionway. He half fell against the ladder and started up with difficulty, his limbs shaking almost uncontrollable.
Then the young ezwal felt the surge of his mother's body as it pressed free of its last restraint In two great bounds, she covered the distance to the companionway ladder, so that the image of the man on it seemed to come at them with a rush. There was another scream, this one cut short by the single stroke of a slashing paw; then silence. And the scene faded into darkness.
Darkness! As the huge, enveloping form slumped and settled over him, the meaning of that darkness came to him, and a sense of loss that was almost unbearable. To the young ezwal, the death of his mother was doubly overwhelming; not only the physical assurance of that immensely capable body but the secure vantage point of that proud and forceful mind would be no more. These things he had taken for granted, and now, for the first time, he began to realize how great had been his dependence on them, especially during captivity. He was utterly, terrifyingly alone, and life had become intolerable. He wanted to die.
And yet, as he huddled in apathy, half suffocated by his mother's inert bulk, he became dully aware of two things. The first was a slightly dizzying sensation of lightness and a lessening of the oppressive weight upon him. The second was the sighing sound he had heard earlier, now increased to the proportions of a vast, low whistle. The ship was falling—and falling more freely with each passing moment!
Deep-seated instinct, touched by that sudden realization, prompted him to struggle free of the ponderous mass above him. The whistling sound was very loud now and more piercing. And the sensation of falling was becoming excruciating, as if the deck under him were about to be snatched away altogether at any moment. That deck was metal-hard and cold; he longed for the sanctuary of his mother's belly.
Instead, he leaped for her broad back, feeling the need for contact as much as for cushioning. But he jumped too high, having failed to allow for his reduced weight, and rolled off awkwardly on the far side. The outside air was shrieking against the hull now. He was clambering giddily from his dead mother's great flank out onto the expanse of her back, when sight and sound and all other sensation ended in the world-shattering crash.
9
His first returning awareness was of pain. Every bone in his body obtruded its soreness into his reluctant brain; every muscle told of unmerciful strain and bruising. He yearned to retreat into unconsciousness, but there was something else that would not let him. Thoughts! A confusion of strange thoughts from the minds of many men. Danger!
Arousing, he found himself lying on the cold metal deck. Apparently he had slid or rolled from his mother's back, after her resilient flesh had absorbed enough of the fearful shock to save his life. Above him, the ship had split asunder, showing a dusky sky through the fissure, and along the visible side were half a dozen other gaping holes. Through them, a cold wind was blowing, and beyond them, the ground showed strangely white. Against that whiteness, dark figures moved about. As he looked, a beam of light lanced out from one of the openings and swung across the deck, passing close to him and fixing on his mother's great body. In a spasm of movement, avoiding the splash of light, he scuttled under her, pressed upward into the folds of her belly and clung there, quiveringly still.
Shouted words rang hollowly in the chamber, bounced at crazy angles from the twisted bulkheads and became hopelessly garbled. Not that they could mean anything to the ezwal. But the thought behind them was clear, and the man's mind which formed it held vast relief. "Everything's all right, Commander! It's dead!" There was an odd, shuffling sound, then the stamping of several pairs of feet on metal.
"What do you mean, it's dead?" a different, very assertive mind gave answer. "You mean the big one's dead, don't you? Here, give me that light." "You don't suppose the little one could have—" "Can't take anything for granted. And it isn't so little. Five hundred pounds, likely, and I'd sooner meet a full-grown Bengal tiger." Several beams of light now moved methodically about the chamber. "I only hope it hasn't got out of here already. There are a dozen places . . . Carling! Get twenty men around to the other side on the double and set up your floodlight in that biggest break. Don't forget to check the snow for tracks before you mess it up! What's the matter, Daniels?" A wave of horror and revulsion was emanating from the man's mind. "It's—it's Brenson, sir—or what's left of him. By the ladder there."
Immediately the man's emotion was shared by the others in varying degree. It was followed by a mental stiffening and a dawning, bitter fury among them that caused the young ezwal to cringe in his hiding place.
"Damn shame!" came an explosive thought. "Fool thing to do, of course, but . . . Say! From the looks of that beast, it wasn't just the crash that did her in. The hide's half scorched off her. And look at the bars of that cage." There followed a fairly accurate conjecture as to what had happened, then: "Of course, if the young one was trapped under her," Commander McLennan finished, "it would have been crushed to a pulp. On the other hand... Parker!"
"Yes, sir!" Curiously, that answering thought did not come direct but was perceptible to the ezwal only as it registered in the Commander's mind. Its sender, therefore, must be at some distance and communicating mechanically. The ezwal was aware that such things were possible.
"Bring your
lifeboat right over the main crack in this hull. Drop a loop of cable over the middle leg of that beast and roll her over. Carling, did you see any tracks around the ship?"
"No, sir."
"Then there's a good chance it's still under its mother, dead or alive. Place your men to cover every opening on that side. Turn your floodlight over there where ours makes a shadow. Everybody on the alert now! If it comes out, shoot fast and shoot to kill"
The ezwal let himself sink slowly in his cave of flesh. His nose caught a draft of air and twitched at the scent of cooked flesh from his mother's body. The memory it brought of fire and agony sent a sick thrill along his nerves.
He forced the fear aside and considered his chances. In their minds there had been pictures of brush and trees. That meant hiding places. But there was also a sense of white brightness, and somehow it connected with a cold, clinging wetness that obstructed the feet and would slow him down if by some miracle he got that far. But it was almost dark out there; that would help.
Then as he cautiously pressed aside a fold of flesh just far enough to reveal some of the scene beyond, his hopes faded, and the terrain outside the ship seemed very remote indeed. Glaring white light bathed the interior of the hold and tensely waiting men stood at the openings with drawn guns. The place was a deadly trap, as inescapable as fifty armed and determined men could make it. The young ezwal shrank back slowly lest his three-in-line eyes betray him by their reflected glitter. His mother had taught him that precaution as a part of stalking prey in the vast forests of his home world, now unthinkably far away.
Suddenly the walls of flesh encasing him moved and began to lift away! There was an electrifying moment as he imagined that his mother was stirring back to life; then panic gripped him as he realized the truth. They were turning her over! He froze, nearly blinded by the mounting flood of light. But the next instant it diminished, and simultaneously the wind was forced out of him by the descending mass. Something had slipped, apparently, and as the ezwal lay gasping for breath, the impatient directions of McLennan reached his mind.
"Parker! Move your lifeboat farther forward and bring the loop up closer to the body. . . . That's better. All right, try it again."
Once more the haven of his mother's body began to lift from him—and kept on lifting. The young ezwal cowered, drawing air painfully into his labored lungs. At any moment now the men would distinguish his body from the larger one. Then would come hideous pain—the same fire that had burned away his mother's life but multiplied many times over.
He stiffened at the thought of his mother's death, and he recalled what she had told him about fighting fear. She, too, had known certain doom, but she had burst through steel bars to get at her executioner and kill him with her last strength. These men were many—hopelessly many—but there were no bars in the way. If he moved fast enough...
All fear was now gone, dispersed by the intensity of his terrible purpose. In another instant, the lifting mass above him would leave the way clear. He drew a deep breath and set his rear feet carefully against the most solid flesh he could feel behind him.
Now! Like a releasing spring, the ezwal launched himself straight at the nearest group of men, thirty yards away. As he did so, a wave of startlement and alarm from the minds of many human beings burst in upon him with an almost physical force. It was instantly followed by a unanimous and deadly intent: Kill it! Kill it! The weapons held by the three men directly before him were only a few of dozens being aimed at him in that moment, with fingers tightening on their triggers.
Still half blinded by the glare, he did not see an open seam between two warped deck plates until one of his feet slipped into it and wedged itself. By a fantastically quick reflexive action he was able to fling his entire body to one side in time to jerk his foot free without snapping the bones. But as a result he rolled completely over and slid helplessly into a ten-foot hole where a large section of the deck had collapsed.
The unplanned maneuver saved his life—for the moment. As he hit bottom, the air above him crackled with the convergent fires of a dozen blasters.
There was a dark, jagged opening in one side of the hole, large enough for him to squeeze through. It probably led to a lower level which might or might not give access to the outside. He decided against it. That level must have been crushed worse than this one and could easily be a fatal trap.
The nearest men would reach the edge of the hole any second. Gauging as nearly as he could the direction from which they would be approaching, he set himself and leaped. He cleared the torn, sharp rim of the hole with a little to spare and landed within reach of the first oncoming man. He reached. Blood spattered as the man went down like a tenpin, his gun discharging harmlessly into the air.
Without hesitation, the ezwal plunged at the two men beyond him. They had held their fire briefly because of the first man, and now it was too late. The ezwal smashed into one with bone-breaking force and slashed the other's chest and stomach to tatters in passing. Resisting an impulse to pause and crunch the bodies with his teeth, the ezwal made for the nearest opening in the hull, only twenty feet away. The next moment he was through it with a bound and veering sharply to one side. Almost as he did so, a roaring mass of flame rolled through the opening and lighted up the snow-covered scene starkly.
Snow! His feeling of fierce triumph diminished sharply as the strange white stuff, cold and soft, slowed his limbs to half their potential fleetness.
And now a bright beam of light stabbed out of the ship behind him, swung dazzlingly across the snow and threw his own elongated shadow out before him. It also illumined a great boulder just ahead. The ezwal dodged into the blackness beyond it. Behind him the boulder was struck by savage flame. There was an ear-splitting hiss, and the boulder fell apart into rubble. The flame surged on, reaching with incandescent violence above him as he dived into a shallow arroyo. But here the snow had drifted, soft and deep, and he floundered with exasperating slowness. After a little way, he risked taking to the rocky ridge which bounded the arroyo, running along just below the top on the side farthest from the ship.
Twice he dipped lower as searching beams of light raked the
ridge but failed to find him. Then, glancing back, he caught sight of something that caused his rising hopes to sink to a new low. The lifeboat was sweeping straight toward him along the ridge at a rate he could not equal. From its underside, half a dozen search beams fanned out to the ground, making a swath of light much too wide to evade. The only shelter which could hide him was a clump of trees too far ahead to reach in time. The ship would be over him in seconds.
There was a group of boulders close by, half buried in snow, the nearest of them twenty feet away. Gathering himself, he leaped for it, so as to leave no tracks in the softer snow intervening. Landing on top of it, he instantly poised and leaped again in a high arc, coming straight down in the middle of the group of rocks with his legs tucked under him. He thrust his head into the snow, arched his supple back into an unnatural hump and held himself rigid.
He could not see the lights as the ship passed over him, but the thoughts of the watchers in it gave no sign of detection. The pilot was evidently in communication with the commander back at the wreck, and an earlier situation was being reversed. This time it was the pilot's thoughts which came to the ezwal directly.
"I don't see how it could have got much farther than this, sir, but there's no sign of it."
"Are you sure it didn't turn off the ridge anywhere?" "Yes, sir. The snow is deep on both sides. It couldn't have got off without making tracks. And there's no place to hide. Wait a minute. There's a clump of trees and brush just ahead—the only one around here. I'm not sure our lights can penetrate it sufficiently to—"
"Better land and search it. For God's sake be careful! We've had enough casualties already."
The ezwal relaxed his uncomfortable position but did not leave his hollow in the snow. It was melting with his body heat and enlarging to overly revealing proportions
around him. And all six extremities, immersed in as many pools of freezing water, were growing numb. On the tropical world of his origin, there was water in abundance, but in temperature it ranged from tepid to hot. The young animal longed for that world with his whole being.
Abruptly he alerted himself. The men were returning to their lifeboat.
"It's not there, sir. We've had a look at every square foot of it."
There was a pause; then: "All right, Parker. Circle the area
a couple of more times, higher up, and see if there is any place it could be hiding. In the meantime, call the other lifeboat. It should be well on its way to the base by now. Tell them as soon as they get the wounded men to the hospital to pick up those hunting dogs and bring them back here. The superintendent says he can get ten. With them, we can follow that young monster's trail, tracks or no tracks. And I'll guarantee they can wear all six legs off it in the long haul!"
The ezwal watched tensely as the lifeboat lifted from the ground, but it moved off to the left, gaining altitude. As soon as it had withdrawn a safe distance, he leaped back to the ridge, raced along it to within jumping distance of the clump of trees, and took cover under its drooping boughs. Here he should be safe until the circling lifeboat left the vicinity.
Five minutes later he halted on the rock lip of a wide valley that curved away dimly into the distance. Here were many more trees and wilder, more broken terrain, snow-covered and softly gleaming in the starry, moonless night. Off to his left, the sky was faintly aglow with an oddly pulsating light. It might mean anything, in this strange world, but it could be evidence of human habitation. That direction was to be avoided.
He leaped from the ledge and started down into the valley at a steady, swift gait. Here the snow was packed harder, and he found he could proceed without making deep tracks, especially if he skirted the drifts. That would make it impossible for the human beings to follow him by air, or at least they would be limited to the speed of the dogs. The picture of the latter had not been clear, but he had gathered that dogs were smaller than human beings and less intelligent, but with as keen a sense of smell as his own.
War Against the Rull Page 8