“Flesh wound. The hind foot got you—”
“I saw it.” Ann Bryan choked. “Saw it happen. Filthy claws—”
Wright had a bottle of antiseptic. “Son, you ain’t going to like this. Hang on to the lady.” But the pain was a welcome flare. Paul’s eyes cleared as Wright made him a bandage of gauze, with Dorothy’s help. He could look from the shelter of overhanging branches at a confusion of wings. The creatures had not followed as far as the lifeboat; perhaps its shining mass disturbed them.
Spearman groaned: “You would go out.”
Wright snapped at him. “Camp in the open—some disadvantages—”
“Granted. But you sure learned it the hard way.” “Eating”—Ann pointed, nauseated—”their own wounded—”
Wright stepped between her and the loud orgy in the meadow. “Wing spread, fifteen feet. Well—sky’s bad, woods maybe. What do you suggest?”
“Clear underbrush,” Spearman said, “so we can see into the woods. Pile it just beyond this overhang of branches for a barrier, leave a space so we can reach the lifeboat. We can get to the lake for water without going much in the open.”
“Good,” said Wright. A peace offering. Spearman smiled neutrally.
“If the water’s safe,” said Sears Oliphant.
Wright grinned at the fat man. “Pal, it better be.”
“Miracles?” Sears’ shoulders shot up amiably. “We can hope it is, with boiling. Gotta have it. Canteens won’t last the day, in this heat.”
Paul helped Ed unpack tools from the lifeboat. “One sickle,” Spearman noted. “No scythe. Garden gadgets. Pruning shears. One ax, one damned hatchet. No scythe, no scythe—. There were two or three on the ship.”
“Maybe the lake’s not so deep.”
“Maybe we’ll play hell trying to find out too. Those things weren’t much scared by the shooting.…”
Hot, tedious work created a circle of clear shaded ground which must be called home. A fire was boiling lake water in the few aluminum vessels. It had a fishy, mud-bottom taste and could not be cooled, but it eased thirst. Paul had glimpsed Ann in the lifeboat, opening her violin case, closing it, sick-faced. He had marveled again at the mystery of a Federation governing two-thirds of a world, which had genially allowed a fourteen-year-old musician to carry her violin on man’s greatest venture—with enough strings to last two or three years and no means of restringing the bow. Later Ann threw herself into the labor of clearing brush but tired quickly from her own violence. Sears’ microscope occupied a camp table; Paul and Dorothy joined him in a pause for rest. “Got anything for the local news-paper?”
“Unboiled lake water-assorted wrigglers.” Sears mopped his cheeks. “’Twas never meant my name should be Linnaeus. Have a look.” The world on the slide seemed not unlike what Sears had once shown him in water from the hydroponics room of Argo: protoplasmic abundance no mind could grasp. “So far, nothing basically different from what you’d find in lake water on Earth—except for the trifle that every species is unknown, hey? I suppose that’s why they heaved a taxonomist into space, to see what the poor cluck would do, hey? Now, those red dots are something like algae. Notice a big ciliated schlemihl blundering around? He could almost be old man paramecium, oh my, yes. Gi’me your sickle, muscle man.”
“Hot work, Jocko. Take it slow and easy.”
“Believe me, Mistuh Mason, I will. What—”
In undergrowth beyond the clearing there was deep-throated fury, a crashing of branches. A gray and white man shape staggered out of concealment, wrenching at what looked like swollen black rope. But the rope had a head, gripping the giant’s forearm; a black loop circled the giant’s loins and his free arm, tearing and pounding, could not loosen it. A saurian hind leg groped, hooking for purchase into gray fur.
Paul’s hunting knife was out; there was time only for recognition. The gray and white being was everything human caught in a coil. Paul forced himself through a barrier of fear, hearing Wright yell, “Don’t shoot, Ed! Put that away.” There was no shot. Paul knew he was between Spearman and the confusion of combat; someone was blundering behind him. A black reptilian tail stretched into bushes, grasping something for anchorage. Paul slashed at that. The mass of heaving life rolled on the ground as the giant lost his footing, serpent teeth still buried in his forearm. Green eyes were pleading in a universal language.
Wright was clutching a black neck, with no strength to move it, and Paul stabbed at scaled hide behind a triangular head, but the skin was like metal. The forelimbs were degenerate vestiges, the hind legs cruelly functional. At last the steel penetrated; Paul twisted it, probing for a brain. The giant had ceased struggling; the furred face was close. Paul could feel the difficult breath, sense a rigid waiting.… The teeth let go. The giant leaped free, returning at once with a stone the size of Paul’s chest, to fling it down on the slow-dying body, repeating the action till his enemy was a smear of black and red.
Now in returning quiet a furred man eight feet tall watched them openly. Wright said, “Ed, put away that gun. This man is a friend.”
“Man!” Spearman holstered his automatic, ready for a draw. “Your daydreams will kill us all yet.”
“Smile, all of you—maybe his mouth does the same thing.” Wright stepped to the trembling monster, hands open. Ann was sobbing in reaction, smothering the sound. Wright pointed at himself. “Man.” He touched the gray fur. “Man.…”
The giant drew back, not with violence. Paul felt Dorothy’s small fingers shivering on his arm. The giant sucked his wound and spat, turning his head away from Wright to do it. “Man—man.…” Wright’s hand, small and pale as an oyster shell, spread beside the huge palm, six fingers, long four-jointed thumb. “Paul—your first-aid kit. I want just the gauze.”
Spearman said, “Are you crazy?”
“It’s a chance,” Sears Oliphant said in a level, careful voice. “Doc knows what he’s doing. Ed, you should know you can’t stop him.”
Wright was pointing to Paul’s bandaged shoulder and to the giant’s wound. The high furred forehead puckered in obvious effort. Dorothy was choking on a word or two: “Doc—must you—”
“He knows we’re friends. He’s been watching a long time. He saw Paul get hurt and then bandaged.” The giant’s trembling was only a spasmodic shuddering. “Man—man.…” Wright snipped off gauze. “And he knows that thing is a weapon, Ed. Will you put it away?”
“He could break you in two. You know that, don’t you?”
“But he won’t. Give protoplasm a chance.” Now Wright was winding gauze lightly, firmly, hiding the already clotting blood, and the giant made no move of rejection. “Man—man.”
“Man.” The giant murmured it cautiously, prolonging the vowel; he touched his chest. “Essa kana.” A finger ran exploringly over the gauze.
“Essa kana—man,” said Wright, and swayed on his feet.
The giant pointed at the bloody mess on the ground and rumbled: “Kawan.” He shuddered, and his arm swept in a loose gesture that appeared to indicate the curving quarter mile where lake and jungle met each other in a black-water marsh. Then he was staring out, muttering, at the wings in the meadow, and presently he touched Paul’s bandage with fantastic lightness. “Omasha,” he said, pointing at the flying beasts. He indicated the rifle wobbling in Sears’ arm and held up two fingers. “Omasha.”
“Yes, we killed two omasha. Sears-man. Paul-man. Wright-man.”
The giant rumpled his chest fur.