Cytha didn't answer.
Something queer was happening to the Cytha. It was coming all apart.
Duncan watched with fascinated horror as the Cytha broke down into athousand lumps of motion that scurried in the pit and tried toscramble up its sides, only to fall back in tiny showers of sand.
Amid the scurrying lumps, one thing remained intact, a fragile objectthat resembled nothing quite so much as the stripped skeleton of aThanksgiving turkey. But it was a most extraordinary Thanksgivingskeleton, for it throbbed with pulsing life and glowed with a steadyviolet light.
Chitterings and squeakings came out of the pit and the soft patter oftiny running feet, and as Duncan's eyes became accustomed to thedarkness of the pit, he began to make out the forms of some of thescurrying shapes. There were tiny screamers and some donovans andsawmill birds and a bevy of kill-devils and something else as well.
Duncan raised a hand and pressed it against his eyes, then took itquickly away. The little faces still were there, looking up as ifbeseeching him, with the white shine of their teeth and the whiterolling of their eyes.
He felt horror wrenching at his stomach and the sour, bitter taste ofrevulsion welled into his throat, but he fought it down, harking backto that day at the farm before they had started on the hunt.
"I can track down anything but screamers, stilt-birds, longhorns anddonovans," Sipar had told him solemnly. "These are my taboos."
And Sipar was also their taboo, for he had not feared the donovan.Sipar had been, however, somewhat fearful of the screamers in the deadof night because, the native had told him reasonably, screamers wereforgetful.
Forgetful of what!
Forgetful of the Cytha-mother? Forgetful of the motley brood in whichthey had spent their childhood?
For that was the only answer to what was running in the pit and thewhole, unsuspected answer to the enigma against which men likeShotwell had frustratedly banged their heads for years.
* * * * *
Strange, he told himself. All right, it might be strange, but if itworked, what difference did it make? So the planet's denizens weresexless because there was no need of sex--what was wrong with that? Itmight, in fact, Duncan admitted to himself, head off a lot of trouble.No family spats, no triangle trouble, no fighting over mates. While itmight be unexciting, it did seem downright peaceful.
And since there was no sex, the Cytha species was the planetarymother--but more than just a mother. The Cytha, more than likely, wasmother-father, incubator, nursery, teacher and perhaps many otherthings besides, all rolled into one.
In many ways, he thought, it might make a lot of sense. Here naturalselection would be ruled out and ecology could be controlled inconsiderable degree and mutation might even be a matter of deliberatechoice rather than random happenstance.
And it would make for a potential planetary unity such as no otherworld had ever known. Everything here was kin to everything else. Herewas a planet where Man, or any other alien, must learn to tread mostsoftly. For it was not inconceivable that, in a crisis or a clash ofinterests, one might find himself faced suddenly with a unified andcooperating planet, with every form of life making common causeagainst the interloper.
The little scurrying things had given up; they'd gone back to theirplaces, clustered around the pulsing violet of the Thanksgivingskeleton, each one fitting into place until the Cytha had taken shapeagain. As if, Duncan told himself, blood and nerve and muscle had comeback from a brief vacation to form the beast anew.
"Mister," asked the Cytha, "what do we do now?"
"You should know," Duncan told it. "You were the one who dug the pit."
"I split myself," the Cytha said. "A part of me dug the pit and theother part that stayed on the surface got me out when the job wasdone."
"Convenient," grunted Duncan.
And it _was_ convenient. That was what had happened to the Cytha whenhe had shot at it--it had split into all its component parts and hadgot away. And that night beside the waterhole, it had spied on him,again in the form of all its separate parts, from the safety of thethicket.
"You are caught and so am I," the Cytha said. "Both of us will diehere. It seems a fitting end to our association. Do you not agree withme?"
"I'll get you out," said Duncan wearily. "I have no quarrel withchildren."
* * * * *
He dragged the rifle toward him and unhooked the sling from the stock.Carefully he lowered the gun by the sling, still attached to thebarrel, down into the pit.
The Cytha reared up and grasped it with its forepaws.
"Easy now," Duncan cautioned. "You're heavy. I don't know if I canhold you."
But he needn't have worried. The little ones were detaching themselvesand scrambling up the rifle and the sling. They reached his extendedarms and ran up them with scrabbling claws. Little sneering screamersand the comic stilt-birds and the mouse-size kill-devils that snarledat him as they climbed. And the little grinning natives--not babies,scarcely children, but small editions of full-grown humanoids. And theweird donovans scampering happily.
They came climbing up his arms and across his shoulders and milledabout on the ground beside him, waiting for the others.
And finally the Cytha, not skinned down to the bare bones of itsThanksgiving-turkey-size, but far smaller than it had been, climbedawkwardly up the rifle and the sling to safety.
Duncan hauled the rifle up and twisted himself into a sittingposition.
The Cytha, he saw, was reassembling.
He watched in fascination as the restless miniatures of the planet'slife swarmed and seethed like a hive of bees, each one clicking intoplace to form the entire beast.
And now the Cytha was complete. Yet small--still small--no more thanlion-size.
"But it is such a little one," Zikkara had argued with him thatmorning at the farm. "It is such a young one."
Just a young brood, no more than suckling infants--if suckling was theword, or even some kind of wild approximation. And through the monthsand years, the Cytha would grow, with the growing of its diversechildren, until it became a monstrous thing.
It stood there looking at Duncan and the tree.
"Now," said Duncan, "if you'll push on the tree, I think that betweenthe two of us--"
"It is too bad," the Cytha said, and wheeled itself about.
He watched it go loping off.
"Hey!" he yelled.
But it didn't stop.
He grabbed up the rifle and had it halfway to his shoulder before heremembered how absolutely futile it was to shoot at the Cytha.
He let the rifle down.
"The dirty, ungrateful, double-crossing--"
He stopped himself. There was no profit in rage. When you were in ajam, you did the best you could. You figured out the problem and youpicked the course that seemed best and you didn't panic at the odds.
He laid the rifle in his lap and started to hook up the sling and itwas not till then that he saw the barrel was packed with sand anddirt.
He sat numbly for a moment, thinking back to how close he had been tofiring at the Cytha, and if that barrel was packed hard enough or deepenough, he might have had an exploding weapon in his hands.
He had used the rifle as a crowbar, which was no way to use a gun.That was one way, he told himself, that was guaranteed to ruin it.
* * * * *
Duncan hunted around and found a twig and dug at the clogged muzzle,but the dirt was jammed too firmly in it and he made little progress.
He dropped the twig and was hunting for another stronger one when hecaught the motion in a nearby clump of brush.
He watched closely for a moment and there was nothing, so he resumedthe hunt for a stronger twig. He found one and started poking at themuzzle and there was another flash of motion.
He twisted around. Not more than twenty feet away, a screamer sateasily on its haunches. Its tongue was lolling out and it had whatlooked like
a grin upon its face.
And there was another, just at the edge of the clump of brush where hehad caught the motion first.
There were others as well, he knew. He could hear them sliding throughthe tangle of fallen trees, could sense the soft padding of theirfeet.
The executioners, he thought.
The Cytha certainly had not wasted any time.
He raised the rifle and rapped the barrel smartly on the fallen tree,trying to dislodge the obstruction in the bore. But it didn't budge;the barrel still was packed with sand.
But no matter--he'd have to fire anyhow and take whatever chance therewas.
He shoved the control to automatic, and tilted up the muzzle.
There were six of them now, sitting in a ragged row, grinning at him,not in any hurry. They were sure of him and there was no hurry. He'dstill be there when they decided to move in.
And there were others--on all sides of him.
Once it
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