 Cat and Mouse by Ralph Williams. The Warden needed to have a certain very obnoxious pest eliminated, and he knew just the pest eradicator he needed. The Harn first came to the Warden's attention through its effect on the game population of an area in World Seven of the Warden sector. A natural ecology was being maintained on World Seven as a control for experimental seedlings of intelligent life forms in other similar worlds. How the Harn got there the Warden never knew. In its free-moving larval state the Harn was a tick-like creature which might have sifted through a natural interdimensional rift, or it might have come through on a hitchhiker on some legitimate traveler, possibly even the Warden himself. In any event, it was there now, free of natural enemies and competition. It had expanded enormously. So far the effect in the control world was localized, but this would not be the case when the Harn ceded. Prompt action was indicated. The Warden's inclination and training was in the direction of avoiding direct intervention in the ecology of the worlds under his jurisdiction, even in the field of predator control. He considered introduction of natural enemies of the Harn from its own world and decided against it. That cure was as bad, if not worse, than the disease itself. There was, however, in one adjacent world a life form not normally associated with the Harn, but which analysis indicated would be inimical to it and reasonably amenable to control. It was worth trying, anyway. October 3. Ed Brown got up to the base cabin of his trapline with his winter's outfit. He hung an NC Company calendar on the wall and started marking off the days. October 8. The hole into the other world opened. In the meantime, of course, Ed had not been idle. All summer the cabin had stood empty. He got his bedding, stove, and other cabin geared down from the cache and made the place livable. The mice were thick, a good fur sign, but a nuisance otherwise. Down in the cellar-hole, when he went to clear it out for the new spud-crop, he found burrowings everywhere. Well, old Tom would take care of that in short order. Tom was a big black, bob-tailed cat, eleven years old, who had lived with Ed since he was a kitten. Not having any feline companionship to distract him, his only interest was hunting mice. Generally, he killed a lot more than he could eat, racking the surplus in neat piles beside the trail, on the doorstep, or on a slab in the cellar. He was the best mouser in interior Alaska. Ed propped the cellar hatch with a stick so old Tom could come and go as he pleased, and went on about his chores, working with a methodical efficiency that matched Tom's, and went with his thinning gray hair in forty years in the woods. He dug the spuds he had planted that spring. He made a swing around his beaver-lakes, tallying the blankets in each house. He took the canoe and moved supplies to his upper cabin. He harvested some fat mallards that had moved down on the river with the coming of skim ice on the lakes. He bucked up firewood and stacked it to move into the camp with the first snow. On the fifth morning, as he was going down to the boat landing with a pail for water, he found the hole into the other world. Ed had never seen a hole into another world, of course, nor even heard of such a thing. He was as surprised as any one would naturally be to find one not fifty feet from their front door. Still, his experience had been all in the direction of believing what his eyes told him. He had seen a lot of strange things in his life, and one more didn't strain him too much. He stood stock still where he had first noticed the hole and studied it warily. It was two steps off the trail to the left, right beside the old leaning birch, a rectangular piece of scenery that did not fit. It looked to be as nearly as he could judge about man's size, six by three. At the bottom it was easy enough to see where this world left off and that one began. On the left side the two worlds matched pretty well, but on the right side there was a niggerhead in this world, the moss-covered relic of a century's old stump, while that world continued level so that the niggerhead was neatly sliced in two. Also the vegetation was different, mossy on this side, grassy on that. On up around the hole, though, it was harder to tell. There was no clear cut line, just the difference in what you could see through it. In the other world the ground seemed to fall away with a low scrubby brush in the foreground. In a mile or so away there were rising hills with hardwood forests of some kind, still green with summer covering them. Ed stepped cautiously to one side. The view through the hole narrowed as if it faced the trails squarely. He edged around the old birch to get behind it, and from that side there was no hole, just the same old Alaskan scenery, birch and rosebushes and spruce. From the front, though, it was still there. He cut an alder chute about eight feet long, trimmed it, and poked it through the hole. It went through easily enough. He prodded at the side in the other world, digging up small tufts. When he pulled the stick back some of the other world dirt was on the sharp end. It looked and smelled just like any dirt. Ed Tom came stretching out into the morning sun and stalked over to investigate. After a careful inspection of the hole he settled down with his paws tucked under him to watch. Ed took a flat round can from his pocket, lined his lip frugally with snuff, and sat down on the upended bucket to watch, too. At the moment that seemed the likeliest thing to do. It was nearly swarming time. The horn had many things to preoccupy it, but it spared one unit to watch the hole into the other world. So far nothing much had happened. A large biped had found the opening from the other side. It had been joined by a smaller quadruped, but neither showed any indication yet of coming through. The sun was shining through the hole, a large, young, yellow sun, and the air was crisp with sharp, interesting odors. The biped ejected a thin squirt of brown liquid through the hole, venom of some sort, apparently. The horn hastily drew back out of range. The hole into the other world stayed there as unobtrusively fixed as if it had been there since the beginning of time. Nothing came through, and nothing moved in the other world but leaves stirred now and then with the breeze, clouds drifting across the sky. Ed began to realize it was getting late in the morning, and he had not yet had breakfast. He left old Tom to watch the hole, got stiffly to his feet, and went on down the trail to get the pail of water he had started for. From the cabin door he could still see the hole into the other world. He kept one eye on it while he cooked breakfast. As he was finishing his second cup of coffee he noticed the view into the other world becoming duller, dimming in a peculiar fashion. He left the dirty dishes and went over to look more closely. What was happening, he found, was just that it was getting dark in the other world. The effect was strange, much like looking out the door of a brightly lighted room at dusk. The edges of the hole cast a very clearly marked shadow now, and outside this shaft of sunlight the view faded until a few yards away it was impossible to make out any detail. Presently the stars came out. Ed was not an astronomer, but he had a woodsman's knowledge of the sky. He could find nothing familiar in any of the stars he saw. In some way that was more unsettling than the hole itself had been. After he had finished the dishes he cut two G-pole spruce, trimmed them, and stuck one on each side of the hole. He got some thin thread he used to tie beaver snares and wove it back and forth between the poles, rigging a tin can alarm. It seemed likely someone or something had put the hole there. It had not just happened. If anything came through Ed wanted to know about it. Just to make sure he got some number three traps and made a few blind sets in front of the hole. Then he went back to his chores. Whatever was going to happen with the hole what happened when it happened and winter was still coming. He set some babbage to soak for mending his snowshoes. He ran the net he had set at the edge of the eddy for late silvers and took out two fish. Old Tom had pretty well cleaned up the mice in the cellar hole, but they were still burrowing around the sills of the lean-to. Ed took a shovel and opened up a hole so Tom could get under the lean-to floor. He got out his needles, palm, thread, and wax and mended his winter moccasins. Off and on he checked the hole into the other world. There was nothing but the slow progression of alien stars across the sky. Finally Old Tom grew bored and left to investigate the hole under the lean-to. Finally there were scutterings and squeakings as evidence that he too had got back to business. Toward evening Ed got to wondering how a living creature would take transition into the other world. He had no intention of trying it himself until he knew a lot more about it, but he thought he might be able to scare up a surrogate. Out by the woodpile some live traps were piled under a spruce from the time when Ed had been catching martin for the fish and wildlife to transplant. One was still in pretty fair shape. He patched it up and set it among the cotton-woods at the head of the bar where there were some rabbit trails. When he went to bed it was still dark in the other world. He left the cabin door ajar so he could see it from his bed and set his shotgun loaded with double-ought buck handy. Nearing sixty Ed was not a sound sleeper, even when he had nothing on his mind. About ten it started to get light in the other world and that woke him up. He patted out to look, but there was no change. It looked about the same as yesterday. He went back to bed. The next morning there was a rabbit in the live trap. With a pole Ed pushed the trap with the rabbit in it, threw into the other world and watched. Nothing happened. After a while the rabbit began nibbling at some spears of grass that pushed through the wire of the cage. Ed pulled it back and examined the rabbit carefully. It seemed healthy and about as happy as a rabbit could expect to be in a cage. It did not get dark in the other world till about noon that day, and about seven when it was dark in both worlds Ed heard the jangle of the tin can alarm followed by the snap of one of the steel traps. He took a flashlight and found a small hoofed animal, hardly bigger than old Tom, rearing and bucking with a broken leg in the trap. It had sharp little spike horns only a few inches long, but mean. Ed got several painful jabs before he could get the animal tied up and out of the trap. He restrung the alarm, then took his catch into the cabin to examine. It was herbivorous and adult, from the looks of its teeth and hooves, though it only weighed about fifteen pounds. As an approximation Ed decided it was female. When he killed it and opened it up, at first glance it looked reasonably familiar, on closer study less so. The blood anyway was red, not blue or yellow or green, and the bones were bones, just odd shaped. Ed cut off a slice of heart and tossed it to old Tom. The cat sniffed it dubiously, then decided he liked it. He came me out for more. Ed gave it to him and fried a small sliver of ham. It smelled and tasted fine, but Ed contented himself with a single delicate nibble, pending further developments. Anyway, it was beginning to look like a little exploration would be feasible. The harm also was well satisfied with the way things were going. It had been a strain to pass up the juicy little quadruped in the cage, but the inhabitants of the other world seemed shy, and the harm did not wish to frighten them. At least it knew now that life could come through the whole, and the small herbivore it had heard it through confirmed that passage in the opposite direction was equally possible, plus a grotesque demonstration of the other world's pitiful defences. At swarming time the whole new world would be open to embryo harm as well as this world it presently occupied. It looked like a really notable swarming. The harm butted three more planters on the forcing stem to be ready to take full advantage of it. It got light in the other world at one in the morning that night. Ed had the days there pretty well pegged now. They were roughly twenty-seven hours, of which about thirteen hours were dark. Not too high a latitude, apparently, and probably late summer by the looks of the vegetation. He got up a little before daylight, and looked at the rabbit in old Tom. Both seemed to be doing nicely. Old Tom was hungry for more other world meat. Ed gave it to him and made up a light pack. After some thought he took the four-fifty bare gun he used for back-up when guiding. However he ran into over there, the four-fifty, a Model 71 throwing a four-hundred grain slog at twenty-one hundred FPS, should handle it. The first step through into the other world was a queasy one, but it turned out to be much the same as any other step. The only difference was that now he was in the other world looking back. From this side the nigger head at the threshold was sliced sharply, but it had been kicked down a little when he came through, in what width shoving the cage through and pulling it back so that some clods of moss and dirt were scattered in the other world. For some reason that made Ed feel better. It seemed to make the joining of the two worlds a little more permanent. Still, it had come sudden and it might go sudden. Ed went back into his own world and got an axe, a saw, more ammunition, salt, a heavy sleeping-robe, a few other possibles. He brought them through and piled them in the other world, covering them with a scrap of old tarp. He cut a couple of poles, peeled them, and stuck them in the ground to mark the hole from this side. Then he looked around. He stood on the shoulder of a hill in a game trail that ran down toward a stream below in what seemed to be a fairly recent burn. There were charred stumps and the growth was small stuff, with some saplings pushing up through. There was timber in the valley below, though, and on the hills beyond deciduous somewhat like oak. South was where East had been in his own world, and the sun seemed smaller but brighter. The sky was a very dark blue. He seemed lighter in this world. There was a spring in his step he had not known for twenty years. He looked at his compass. It checked with the direction of the sun. He studied the trail. It had seen a lot of use, but less in recent weeks. There were sharp hoof prints of the animal he had caught, larger hoof prints, vague pad marks of various sizes, but nothing that looked human. The trail went under a charred tree trunk at a height that was not comfortable for a man, and the spacing of the steps around the gnarled roots of an old slump did not fit a man's stride. He did not notice the harmed creature at all, which was understandable, it was well camouflaged. He worked circumspectly down the trail, staying a little off it, studying tracks and droppings, noticing evidences of browsing on the shrubs, mostly old, pausing to examine tufts of hair and an occasional feather. Halfway down the slope he flushed a bird about ptarmigan size, grayish-brown in color. The trail was more marked where it went into the timber. It wound through the trees for a few hundred yards, and came out on a canoe-sized stream. Here it forked. One trail crossed the stream and went up the hill on the other side. The other followed the stream up the valley. The horn followed Ed's movements, observing carefully. It needed a specimen from the other world, and this biped would serve nicely, but it might as well learn as much as possible about him first. It could always pick him up some time before he returned to his own world, just to make sure it sent a stinging unit to guard the entrance. All his life except for a short period in France, Ed had been a hunter, never hunted. Still, you don't grow old in the woods by jumping without looking. Coming into a new situation he was wary as an old wolf. There was a little shoulder right above the fork in the trail. He stood there for a few minutes, looking things over. And then went down and crossed the stream at the next riffle above the ford. By doing so, although he did not know it, he missed the trap the horn maintained at the ford for chance passersby. On the other side of the creek, the trail ran, angling off downstream, skirted a small lake hidden in the trees, climbed over another low shoulder, and dropped into a second valley. As Ed followed along it, he began to notice a few more signs of life, birds, small scurriers on the ground and in treetops, and this set him to thinking. The country had a picked-over feel to it, a hunted and trapped out feel, worse where he had first come through, but still noticeable here. The horn did not like to cross water. It could, but it did not like to. Ed looked at the sun. It was getting down in the sky. If there was any activity at all around here, the ford at dusk would be as likely a place as any to find it. He worked back along the ridge to a point above where he judged the ford to be. The breeze was drawing up the valley, but favoring the other side a little. He dropped down and crossed the stream a quarter mile above the ford, climbed well above the trail, and worked along the hillside until he was in a position where he could watch both the ford and the ford in the trail. He squatted down against a tree in a comfortable position, laid his gun across his knees, and rummaged in his pack for the cold flapjacks, wrapped around slices of duck breast which he had packed for lunch. After he had finished eating he drank from his canteen. The water in this world might be good. It might not. There was no point in taking chances till he could try it on the cat. And took an economical chew of snuff. He settled back to wait. The horn had lost Ed after he crossed the creek. It used a fallen tree quite a way further up for his own crossing, and did not pick him up again until just before he crossed back. Now, however, he had been immobile for several minutes. This looked like about as good a time as any to make the pickup. The horn had a stinging unit just about positioned, and it had dispatched a carrier to stand by. After a while, sitting there, Ed began to feel uneasy. The timber was big here, and open underneath, almost park-like. The nearest cover was fifty or sixty yards off to his left, a little tangle of brush where a tree had fallen and let a shaft of sunlight through. It looked possible, but it didn't feel quite right. Still, it was about the only place anything big enough to bother him could hide. The feeling was getting stronger. The back hairs on Ed's neck were starting to stand up now. Without visible movement, or even noticing himself that he was doing it, he let awareness run over his body, checking the position and stiffness of his legs. He had been sitting there quite a while, the balance of the gun across his knees, the nearness of his thumb to the hammer. Thoughtfully, still studying the patch of brush, he spat a thin stream over his left shoulder at a pile of leaves a few feet away. Thinking about it later, Ed could almost have sworn the tobacco juice sizzled as it hit. Actually, this was probably imaginary. The stinging unit was not that sensitive to tobacco, though it was sensitive enough. As the drops splattered it, the pile of leaves erupted with a snuffling hiss like an overloaded tea kettle into a tornado of bucking, twisting activity. Ed's reflexes were not quite as fast as they had been when he was young, but they were better educated. Also he was already keyed up. Almost as it started, the flurry in the leaves stopped with the roar of his rifle. Fired like that, the heavy gun just about took his hand off, but he did not notice it at the moment. He came erect in a quick scramble, jacking in a fresh round as he did so. The scene took on that strange, timeless aspect it often does in moments of emergency, with a man's whole being focused on the fleeting now. You know, in an academic sort of way, that things are moving fast, you are moving fast yourself, but there seems plenty of time to make decisions, to look things over and decide what has to be done, to move precisely with minimum effort and maximum effect. Whatever the thing at his feet was, it was out of the picture now. It had not even twitched after the heavy bullet tore through it. There was a stomping rush in the little thicket he had been watching. Ed took two long quick steps to one side to clear a couple of trees, threw up the gun and fired as something flashed across a thin spot in the brush. He heard the whack of the bullet in flesh and fired again. Ordinarily he did not like to shoot at things he could not see clearly, but this did not seem the time to be overly finicky. There was no further movement in the brush. He stood there several long moments, listening, and there was no further movement anywhere. He eased the hammer down, fed in three rounds to replace those he had used, and walked slowly back to the first thing he had shot. At that range the bullet had not opened up, but it had not needed to. It had practically exploded the creature anyway. The four-fifty was two tons of striking energy at the muzzle. From what was left, Ed deduced a smallish, rabbit-sized thing, smooth skinned, muscular, many-legged, flatish, modeled to camouflage perfectly in the leaves. There was a head at one end, mostly undamaged since it had been at the end of a long muscular neck, with a pair of glazing beady eyes and a surprisingly small mouth. When Ed pressed on the muscles at the base of the skull, the mouth gaped roundly, and a two-inch-long spine slid smoothly out of an inconspicuous slot just below it. At middling distances or better, Ed could still see as well as ever, but close up he needed help. He got out his pocket magnifier and studied the spine. It looked hollow, grooved back for a distance from the point, a drop of milky-looking substance trembled on its tip. Ed nodded thoughtfully to himself. This was what had made him uneasy, he was pretty sure. What was the thing in the brush, then, innocent bystander? He got stiffly to his feet, conscious now of the ache in his wrist that had taken most of the recoil of the first shot. The torn web between the right thumb and forefinger, where the hammer spur had bitten in, and walked over to the thicket. The thing in the brush was larger, quite a bit larger, and the bullets had not torn it up so badly. It lay sprawled with three of its eight legs doubled under it, a bear-sized animal with a gaping, cavernous, toothless mouth out of all proportion to the slender body, which seemed designed mainly as a frame for the muscular legs. It was not quite dead. As Ed came up, it struggled feebly to get up. And one of the heavy slugs had evidently hit the spine, or whatever carried communications to the hindquarters. It fell back, shuddering convulsively, and suddenly regurgitated a small furry animal. Ed stepped back quickly to bring his rifle to bear, but the newest arrival was obviously already dead. He turned his attention back to the larger animal. It, too, was dead now. There was an obvious family resemblance to the smaller one he had shot in the leaves. Both were smooth skinned, many-legged, and now that he looked closely, he could see that one had two mouths, a small one just under the nostrils, purse-lipped, and tiny in its huge face, but quite like that of the other creature. Neither looked even remotely like anything he had ever seen before. He laid down his rifle and took out his knife. Ten minutes later he knew quite a bit about the thing, but what he knew did not make much sense. In the first place, its blood was green, a yellowish, pussy green. In the second place, the larger mouth, complete with jaws and impressive musculature, opened not into a digestive system, but into a large, closed pouch, which comprised most of the animal's torso. There was no proper digestive system at all, only a rudimentary gut, heavily laced with blood vessels, terminating at one end in the small second mouth, at the other in an even smaller anus. Otherwise, the thing had no insides except a good pair of lungs and a stout heart. None at all. Bone, muscle, lung, heart. Plus the ridiculously inadequate gut. That was it. What about the small furry animal, then? The one the other had been carrying in its pouch. There was nothing much out of the way about it, a feline sort of carnivore, something like a Martin. The fur looked interesting, and he skinned it, casing the hide. On the left ham, the skin was punctured in there was a swollen bluish area, about the sort of wound that would be made by the fang of the first thing he had shot. Ed squatted back on his heels, studying it, and putting two and two together. What two and two made was pretty hard to believe, but it fitted the evidence. He wiped his knife carefully on the grass, put it back in its sheath, and got to his feet. Suddenly, the feeling that he was not alone recurred. He looked quickly round. Back where he had shot the first thing, a man in forest green whip-cord trousers and jacket was leaning over, hands on knees, looking at the remains. The man looked up and met Ed's eyes. He nodded casually and walked over to the second thing, prodded it with his toe. After a long moment he nodded again to Ed, smiled briefly and winked out. Ed stared at the empty air where the other man had been, mouth open. It was just a little too much. A lot of things had happened to him in the last few days. He had been able to take most of them more or less as they came along. But after all, he wasn't a chicken any more. He was pushing sixty, and there is a limit to what a man should have to put up with at that age. The thought of his snug cabin with a good fire going, mousse-meat bubbling in the pot, the gas lantern hissing, and the bottle of Hudson's Bay rum he had tucked under the eaves against just such an occasion as this was suddenly very appealing. Besides, it was getting late, and he didn't think he cared to be stumbling around this world in the dark. He elbowed his pack up, hooked the left shoulder strap, and headed for home, staying off the trail in ordinary caution and watching his footing, but moving pretty fast just the same. Actually he need not have been so careful. The harn had been surprised and shocked by the explosive violence of the man's reaction to a routine harvesting maneuver. It was a relatively young harn, but it retained memories of its own world, where there were also nasty violent things which killed harn. It was not pleasant to think that it might have evoked some such monster in this hitherto peaceful place. Then, to top that, there had been the sudden appearance of the warden. The harn, of course, saw the warden not as a man, but in its true aspect, which was not at all friendly. All in all, this did not seem the moment to start any new adventures. The harn pulled in all its mobile units, including the stinger it had left at the hole into the other world. It huddled protectively together in its nest, considering these new developments. By ten that evening, Ed, in conference with old Tom and the bottle of Hudson's Bay, had done considerable hard thinking, pro and con. Of course he didn't have to go into the other world, just because the hole was there. He could block it off, seal it up with timbers, and forget it. He sat there and thought about this, absently smoothing the strange fur on his knee. For an old-timer like himself, things weren't too hot in this world. Fur didn't bring much of a price any more, and he couldn't get it in as he had when he was younger. His wants were simple, but there was a certain rock-bottom minimum he had to have. Two, the winters were starting to bother him a little. The arthritis in his hands was getting worse every year. Times he hardly had the strength in his left hand, which was the worst, to hold an axe. Another five, ten years, and it would be the pioneers' home for him. If he did not get stove up, or sick sooner, and die right here in the cabin, too helpless to cut wood for the fire. He had helped bury enough others, bed and all, when they didn't come down the river at break-up, and somebody had to go up and look for them, to know it was possible. The other world was milder. It had game and fur—good fur, too, from the looks of it. Something new that could lick any mutation or synthetic on the market, and the income tax had still left a few fellows who could pay through the nose to see their women look nice. And the country was new. He'd never thought he'd have a crack at a new country again—a new good country. Often he'd thought how lucky people had been, who were born a hundred and fifty years ago, moving into an easy, rich country like the Ohio or Kentucky, when it was new, instead of the Bitter North. The Harn would be a nuisance. It did not think of it as the Harn, of course, but just as they. But he's supposed he could find a way to clean them out—a man generally could, if varmints got troublesome enough—and the man in forest-green whip-cord. Well, he could have been just an hallucination. Ed did not really believe in hallucinations, but he had heard about them, and there was always a first time. Ed sighed, looked at the clock, measured the bottle with his eye—still better than three-quarters full. All in all, he guessed, he'd leave the door into the other world open. He put old Tom out and went to bed. The first order of business seemed to be to get better acquainted with the Harn—the first thing in the morning he said about it. He took the rabbit out of the live box and tethered it in a spot in the other world close to the hole, where raw earth had been exposed by a big blowdown, sweeping the ground afterwards to clear it of tracks. Being better acquainted with the Harn, though, did not mean he had to have it come in and crawl in bed with him. Before going to bed the night before, he had set half a can of snuff to steep in some water. He loaded a bug-gun with this and sprayed the ground around the hole into the other world. From the reaction yesterday he judged the stinging units did not like tobacco juice, and this should discourage them from coming through. He checked his bear snares and found three in good enough shape to satisfy him. The large Harn-beast, he suspected, would be about like a grizzly to hold. Three would hardly be enough for a serious trapping program. Ed made his own snares from old aircraft control cable, using a lock of his own devising which slid smoothly and cinched down tight and permanently. He got out his roll of wire in box of locks and started making up some more, sitting where he could watch the rabbit he had staked out. By the middle of the afternoon the snares were done, but there had been no action with the rabbit, nor was there for the rest of the day. In the morning, though, it was gone. There were three new sets of tracks in the bear spot, two smaller ones, either of which would have fitted the stinging unit and what looks like a carrier's. The action was clear enough. The small things had prowled around the rabbit for some time, stopping frequently as if uncertain and suspicious. Finally one had moved in with a little flurry of action when it met the rabbit. Then it had moved back and squatted again. The big tracks came directly to the rabbit and went right out again. They were heavy enough to be clear in the grass beyond the bear spot. Ed went back to the cabin and rummaged till he found a pair of snake-proof pants a stateside sport had once given him. Heavy duck with an interlining of woven wire. They were heavy and uncomfortable to wear, and about as useless as wings on a pig in Alaska where there were no snakes. But they had been brand new and expensive when given to him, and he had put them away, thinking vaguely he might find a use for them some day. It looked like that day might be now. He slipped them on, took his rifle and hunting-pack, and set out to follow the animal that had taken the rabbit. The trail showed well in the morning dew, going straight away along the hillside as if the thing were headed some place definite. Ed followed along for a quarter mile or so, then found himself on a fairly well-beaten path which presently joined another and then another till it was a definitely well-used trail. It began to look to him like the thing might have a den of some sort, and he might be getting pretty close to it. He left the trail and climbed up into a lone tall tree, fire-scorched, but still struggling for life. From there he could follow the trail pretty well with his glasses for a couple of hundred yards before he lost it. Finally he settled on a spot under an old burnt stump as a likely spot for the den. He focused the glasses carefully and after a few minutes saw a flash of movement there as if something had slipped in or out. Nothing else happened for about an hour. Then the grass along one of the trails began to wave in a large beast similar to the one he had shot trotted into sight. It slipped in under the stump and disappeared. For the rest of the morning nothing went in or out. There was a very good reason for this, and Ed was it. All night and day after he shot the stinging unit and the carrier unit, the harn had stayed in its nest. By the second evening it was getting hungry. It ventured out and found a few morsels, but the organized hunting-network it ordinarily maintained had been disrupted. It had lost track of things, and the pickings were poor. Then it stumbled on the rabbit Ed had staked out. Its first impulse was to leave the rabbit strictly alone. In spite of its early promise the other world had so far given nothing but trouble. On the other hand the rabbit was meat and very good meat by the smell and looks of it. The harn kept its observation unit prowling irresolutely around the target for half the night before it finally gave in to appetite and sent in a stinger to finish the rabbit off, a carrier to pick it up. It was still uneasy about this when it noticed Ed near the nest the next morning, confirming its fears. It promptly broke up the net had it been re-establishing and pulled all units back in. Maybe if it left him strictly alone he might still go on about his business, whatever that was, and let the harn go back to its harvesting. By noon Ed was getting pretty stiff sitting in the tree. He climbed down and eased over toward the stump, watching where he set his feet. He was pretty sure the snake-proof pants would stop the stingers, but he saw no point in putting them to the test until he had to. About fifty yards away he got a good view, and it did look like there might be a sizable hole under the stump. He studied it carefully with the glasses. There was a smooth-beaten mound in front, and exposed roots were worn slick. As he got closer he noticed an unpleasant smell, and near the mouth of the den he got a sudden whiff that almost gagged him. A sour acid carrion stink like a buzzard's nest. He moved back a little. The hole was wide and fairly high, two or three feet, but too dark to see back into. Still he had a sense of something stirring there not too far back. Ed had considerable respect for caves and dens with unseen occupants. He had once helped carry in the bodies of two men who had poked a stick into a spring grizzly's den. At the same time he wanted pretty badly to know what was in there. He suspected there was a good deal more than what he had already seen. The bug gun loaded with tobacco juice was in his pack, and a flashlight, a small light one designed for a lady's purse which he always carried when away from camp. He got them out and leaned his rifle against a root sticking out just at the left of the den. Taking the bug gun in his left hand and the flashlight in his right, he stooped over to shine the light in, keeping as well clear of the entrance as possible. All in all he must have got about a five-second look, which is a lot longer than it sounds when things are happening. His first impression was a jumble, eyes scurrying movement, and bulk. Then things started to shape up. About ten feet back from the entrance was a huge, flatish, naked, scabrous bulk, pimpled with finger-sized teats. Clustered around and behind this were a tangle of slinging units, carrier units, observation units. Some had their mouths fixed to teats. For a long second or two the scene stayed frozen. Then the front edge of the bulk split and began to gape. Edd found himself looking down a manhole-sized gullet into a shallow puddle of slime with bits of bone sticking up here and there. Toward the near end a soggy mass of fur that might have been the rabbit seemed to be visibly melting down. At the same moment the tangle of lesser monsters sorted themselves out and a wave of stingers came boiling out at him. Edd dropped the flashlight, gave two mighty pumps of the bug gun, and jumped clear of the entrance. For a moment the denmouth boiled with stingers, hissing and bucking in agony. Edd sprayed them heavily again, snatched up his rifle, and ran, looking back over his shoulder. The stingers showed no inclination to follow, though. The tobacco-juice seemed to be keeping them well occupied for the moment. Halfway home Edd had to stop and rest for a moment while he took a spell of the shuttering and gagging as a sudden picture of the slimy gullet came into his mind, with Edd brown laying where the rabbit had been, melting down into a stinking soup of bones and gobbets of flesh. When he got to the hole his arrangement of tin cans, traps and tobacco-juice no longer looked nearly as secure as it had. He got his axe and cut two stout posts, framing the hole, built a stout slab door and hung it from them. Then he drove stakes close together at the threshold to foil any attempts to dig under, and trimmed a sill tight to the door. His feeling in this matter, as it happened, was sound. The harn was beginning to develop a strong dislike for Edd brown. Three of its stinging units were dead, and most of the rest were in poor shape, thanks to the tobacco-spray. It had got a little whiff of the stuff itself, not enough to do any serious damage ordinarily, but right now, so close to swarming time, Edd was going to have to go. So far in this world the harn had needed only the three basic types of mobile units. There were other standard types, however, for dealing with more complicated situations. As it happened, a couple of carrier embryos were at just about the right stage. With a little forcing they could be brought on in not too long a time. Meanwhile, the harn would do what it could with the material available. When Edd came through the next day to set his snares, the harn was prepared to test his snake-proof pants. They held, which was disconcerting to the harn, but it was a hard creature to convince, once thoroughly aroused. Edd was not too sure of how well the pants would stand up to persist in assaults himself. After the third ambush he took to spraying suspicious-looking spots with tobacco juice. He shot two more stingers in this way, but it slowed him up quite a bit. It took him all day to make four sets. In the next three days he made a dozen sets and caught two carriers. Then the fourth day as he adjusted a snare, a seeming root suddenly came to life and slashed at his hand. He was wearing gloves to keep his scent from the snares, and the fang caught the glove and just grazed the ball of his left thumb. The hatchet he had been using to cut a toggle was lying by his knee. He snatched it up and chopped the stinger before it could strike again. Then yanked off the glove and looked at his hand. A thin scratch, beaded with drops of blood, showed on the flesh. Unhesitatingly he drew the razor edge of the hatchet across it, sucked and spat, sucked and spat again and again. Then he started for home. He barely made it. By the time he got to the hole he was a very sick man. He latched the door, stumbled into the cabin and fell on the bed. It was several days before he was able to be about again, his hand still partly paralyzed. During that time the situation changed. The harm took the offensive. Ed's first notice of this was a rhythmic crashing against the cabin. He managed to crawl to where he could see the gate he had built to block the hole into the other world. It was shaking from repeated batterings from the other side. Dragging his rifle with his good hand he scrabbled down to where he could see through the chinks in the slab door. Two of the carrier units were there, taking turns slamming their full weight against it. He had built that gate scoocom, but not to take something like that. He noted carefully where they were hitting it, then backed up twenty feet and laid the four fifty across a log. He let them hit the door twice more to get the timing before he loosed off a shot at the moment of impact. The battering stopped abruptly and through the chinks he could see a bulk piled against the gate. For a while there was no more action. Then after a few tentative butts at the door the battering started again. This time Ed wasn't so lucky. The battering stopped when he fired. But he got an impression that the carrier ran off. He thought he might have hit it, but not mortally. In an hour or so the harm was back and it kept coming back. Ed began to worry about his ammunition which was not unlimited. Ordinarily two or three boxes lasted him through the winter. He got his thirty-odd six for which he had a sugar sack full of military ammunition. The light full-patch stuff did not have the discouraging effect of the four fifty, though, and he had to shoot a lot oftener. Another thing he wasn't getting any rest, which was bad in his already weakened condition. Every time he dozed off the battering would start again, and he would have to wake up and snap a few shots through the door. He held pretty much on one spot, not wanting to shoot the door to pieces, but the harm noticed this and started hitting the door in other places. The second day of the attack the door came down. It had been pretty shaky for some time, and Ed had got the cabin ready for a siege, filling butter kegs with water and nailing up the windows. As the harm poured through he shot several and then broke for the cabin. A carrier ran at him full tilt, bent on bowling him over. Once off his feet he would have been easy meat for one of the stingers. He sidestepped, swung his shotgun up in one hand, he had kept it handy for the close fighting, and blew the carrier's spine in half. He had to kick it aside to slam the cabin door. For a few minutes then things were pretty hectic. Ed went from one to another of the loopholes he had cut, blasting first with a shotgun as the harm crowded around, then using the thirty as they grew more cautious. After the first rush it was obvious to the harm that the cabin was going to be a tough nut to crack. On the other hand there was no rush about it either. Necessarily it had let its hunting go the last several days while it concentrated on Ed. It was pretty hungry, and it was in rich pickings now. Ed had always kept from disturbing game close to the cabin, partly because he liked to see it around, and partly because he had an idea that some day he might be in a fix where he couldn't travel very well, and would want close meat to hand. The harm felt no such compunctions. The stinging units spread through the woods, and shortly a steady procession of loaded carriers began to stream back through the hole. Ed picked off the first few, but then the harm found it could route them up the river trail in such a way that he got only a glimpse as they flashed through the hole. After that he did not hit very many. Ed stopped shooting. He was getting short on ammunition for the thirty now, too. He counted up. There were eighteen rounds for the four fifty, half a box of two twenty grain soft point for the thirty, plus about the same amount of military stuff, and a handful of shotgun shells. Of course there was still the thirty luger with a couple of boxes and the twenty-two, but they were not much account for this kind of work. He looked at the cabin door. It was stout, built of huge three-inch slabs, but it wouldn't last forever against the kind of beating the gate had got. Even if it did, he was going to run out of water eventually. Ed thought about that for a while, sitting at the table staring at the little pile of cartridges. He was going to be run out of here sooner or later. He might as well pick his own time, and now seemed about as good as any, while the harn was busy exploring and hunting. He sighed and got up to rummage around the cabin. The sneak-proof pants had done real good, but he did not trust them entirely. There was some sheet-iron laid over the ceiling joists, which he had brought up to make new stoves for his line camps. He got this down and cut it into small pieces. Around the edges he drilled a number of small holes. Then he got out his mending gear and began sewing the plates in an overlapping pattern to the legs of the snake-proof pants and to an old pair of moccasins. When he finished, he was pretty well armored as far as his crotch. It was an awkward outfit to move around in, but as long as he was able to stay on his feet he figured he could be reasonably secure from the stingers. As for the bigger ones, he would just have to depend on seeing them first and the 450. Next he needed some gasoline. The fuel-cash was under a big spruce about twenty yards from the door. He made the round of his loopholes. There were no harn in sight. They were apparently ignoring him for now. He slipped out the door, closing it securely behind him, and started for the cash. As he stepped out, a stinger came from under the sill-log and lashed at his foot. He killed it with the axe beside the door, saving a cartridge and went on, walking fairly fast but planting his feet carefully, a little awkward in his armor. He picked up a five-gallon can of gas, a quart of motor oil, and the twenty feet of garden hose he used for siphoning gas down the bank to the boat. On the way back another stinger hit him. He kicked it aside, not wanting to set down his load, and it came at him again and again. Just outside the door he finally caught it under a heel and methodically trampled it to death. Then he snatched open the door, tossed the stuff inside, and pulled it quickly shut behind him. So far so good. He lashed the gas can solidly to his pack-board, slipped the end of the hose into the flexible spout and wired it tight. Then he cut up an old wool undershirt and wrapped the pieces around miscellaneous junk, old nuts and bolts, chunks of lead line, anything to make up half a dozen packages of good throwing heft. He soaked these in oil and stowed them in a muset bag which he snapped to the D-rings of the pack. One of the metal plates on his moccasin was hanging by a thread. Probably he had torn it loose in the scuffle of the door. They weren't going to take too much kicking and banging around, he could see, and once he was on his way it wouldn't be a very good idea to be caught bending over with his bare hands at ground level to fix them. On the other hand he couldn't be using all his cartridges on the stingers, either. He had to save them for the carriers. He thought about this some while mending the moccasins, and decided to take the bug-gun. It might not kill the stingers, but it ought to discourage them enough so they wouldn't keep pestering him. With his bad left arm he had trouble getting the pack on his back. He finally managed by swinging it up on the table first. It was not too much of a load, forty or fifty pounds, he guessed. Still shaky as he was, it was about as much as he could manage. He had intended to just try it on for size, but after he got it up he thought, well, why not now? He picked up the four fifty, stowed the extra cartridges in his pocket, checked to make sure he had matches, hung the bug gun on his belt, and opened the door. It was just getting dusk, but the other world was in broad daylight. The days and nights were almost completely reversed again. As he stepped through the hole the first stingers struck. He gave it a good squirt of tobacco-juice. It went bucking and twisting off, and he went on, stepping carefully and solidly. Luckily most of the harm was foraging in the new world. Two more stingers ambushed him, but the tobacco-juice got rid of them, and he had no serious trouble till he got close to the den. Two carriers came out and rushed him there. He shot them both, and then killed the stinger that was pecking at his shins. He moved quickly now. He had an idea that in about a minute all hell would break loose. He swung the pack down on the uphill side of the den, wet the muset-bag with a quick spray of gas, tossed it over his shoulder, jammed the free end of the hose into the den-mouth, and stabbed the can with his knife to vent it. As the gas poured into the den he lit one of his oil and gas-soaked bombs and ran around in front, lighting one after another from the one in his hand and tossing them into the den. The muset-bag caught fire, and he snatched it from his shoulder and tossed it after the bombs. A woof and a sheet of flame blew out. About fifty yards away there was a slender popl-like tree. Ed thought if he could make that he would be reasonably secure while the harn burned. He ran for it as hard as he could, beating at the flames that had spattered on him from the burning gas. But he never made it. Harn were erupting everywhere. A carrier suddenly came charging out of the brush to his left. While Ed dealt with that one the harn played its ace in the hole. The two special units it had been developing to deal with Ed were not quite done yet, but they were done enough to work for the few minutes the harn needed them. Ed heard a coughing grunt behind him and spun around to see something new crawling out of the flame and smoke at the den entrance. This one was a roughly carrier-shaped creature, but half again as large, built for killing. It had powerful, fanged jaws, and its eight feet were armed with knife-like disemboweling claws, and it came at Ed in a lumbering rush. Another came crawling out after it. Ed shot four times as fast as he could work the action. The heavy slugs did the job, but not quite well enough. With its dying lunge the thing got to him and tossed him ten feet like a ragdoll. He lit on his bad hand and felt the wrist bones go. As he struggled to get up, digging his elbow in and using one hand, he saw a stinger darting in at him. He had lost both the bug-gun and his rifle when the fighting unit swiped him. He swiveled on his hips and kicked the stinger away. Then he saw the second fighting unit coming. He forgot about the stinger. It still might get to him, but if it did it would be too late to matter. He drew his knife, managed to get to one knee, and crouched there like an old gray rat, stubbly lips drawn back from worn teeth in a grin of pain and rage. This was one he wasn't going to win, he guessed. Ten feet away the fighting unit suddenly ran down like a clockwork toy. It toppled over, skidded past him under its own momentum, and lay there, kicking spasmatically. Ed glared at it uncomprehendingly. It arched its neck back to almost touch its haunches, stiffened, and was still. Ed looked around. The stinger was dead, too, three feet from his shoulder and half a dozen more which had been making for him. A cloud of greasy, stinking smoke was rolling out of the den. The harn was dead. Ed put his knife away and lay back. He did not quite pass out, but things got pretty dim. After a while he got hold of himself and sat up. He was not too surprised to see the man in forest green prodding at the bodies of the fighting units. The stranger looked at the smoke still oozing from the den and nodded approvingly. Then he came over and looked at Ed. He clacked his tongue in concern and bent over, touching Ed's wrist. Ed noticed there was now a cast on it, and it didn't hurt so much. There was also a plastic binding around his ribs and shoulders where the claws of the first fighter had raked as it tossed him. That was a mighty neat trick because the rags of his shirt were still buttoned around him, and he was pretty sure it had not been off at any time. The stranger smiled at Ed, patted him on the shoulder, and disappeared. He seemed to be a busy sort of fellow, Ed thought, with not much time for visiting. Ed felt quite a bit better now, enough better to gather up what was left of his gear and start home. He was glad to find old Tom waiting for him there. The cat had taken to the woods when the attack on the gate first started. He didn't like shooting, and Ed had worried that the harm might have got him. Ed slept till noon the next day, got up, and cooked a dozen flap jacks and a pound of bacon. After breakfast he sat around for an hour or so drinking coffee. Then he spent the rest of the afternoon puttering around a cabin. He packed away the snake-proof pants, disassembled the flame thrower, picked up the traps by the hole. Old Tom seemed to have pretty well cleaned up the mice under the lean to. Ed took his shovel and filled in the hole he had dug for the cat to get at them. He went to bed early. Before he would take a long hike around the new world, scout out the fur and game, plan his trap-line, and pick cabin-sights. The next morning, though, the hole into the other world was gone. The posts which had marked it were sheared neatly in half. The remains of the door still hung there, battered and sagging, but it swung open on nothing but Alaska. When Ed stepped through he found himself standing beside the old leaning birch. He tried it several times before he convinced himself. He walked slowly back toward the cabin, feeling old and uncertain, not quite knowing what to do with himself. Old Tom was over by the lean to, sniffing and pawing tentatively at the fresh earth where Ed had filled in the hole. As Ed came up he came over to rub against Ed's leg. They went into the cabin and Ed started fixing breakfast. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recorded by Bryden Jones, Waikaloa, Hawaii, September 14, 2008. Cry from a Far Planet by Tom Godwin. The problem of separating the friends from the enemies was a major one in the conquest of space, as many a dead spacer could have testified. A tough job when you could see an alien in judge appearances, far tougher when they were only whispers on the wind. A smile of friendship is a bearing of the teeth. So is a snarl of menace. It can be fatal to mistake the latter for the former. Harmon alien being only under the circumstances of self-defense. Trust no alien being under any circumstances. From Exploration Ship's Handbook. He listened in the silence of the Exploration Ship's control room. He heard nothing, but that was what bothered him. An ominous quiet where there should have been a multitude of sounds from the nearby village for the viewscreen's audio pickups to transmit. And it was more than six hours past the time when the native, Throon, should have come to sit with him outside the ship as they resumed the laborious attempt to learn each other's languages. The viewscreen was black in the light of the control room, even though it was high noon outside. The dull red sun was always invisible through the world's thick atmosphere, and to humanize, full day was no more than a red-tinged darkness. He switched on the ship's outside floodlights, and the viewscreen came to a bright white life, showing the empty glades reaching away between the groves of purple alien trees. He noticed, absently, that the trees seemed to have changed a little in color since his arrival. The village was hidden from view by the outer trees, but there should have been some activity in the broad area visible to him. There was none, not even along the distant segment of what should have been a busy road. The natives were up to something, and he knew, from hard experience on other alien worlds, that it would be nothing good. It would be another misunderstanding of some kind, and he didn't know enough of their incomprehensible language to ask them what it was. Suddenly, as it always came, he felt someone or something standing close behind him and peering over his shoulder. He dropped his hand to the blaster that he had been wearing at all times in the world. Nothing was behind him. There never was. The control room was empty, with no hiding place for anything, and the door was closed, locked by the remote control button beside him. There was nothing. The sensation of being watched faded, as though the watcher had withdrawn to a greater distance. It was perhaps the hundredth time within six days that he had felt the sensation. And when he slept at night, something came to nuzzle at his mind, faceless, formless, utterly alien. For the past three nights, he had not let the blaster get beyond quick reach of his hand, even when in bed. But whatever it was, it could not be on the ship. He had searched the ship twice, a methodical compartment by compartment search that had found nothing. It had to be the work of the natives from outside the ship, except... Why, if the natives were telepathic, did one called Throon go through the very weary pretense of trying to learn a mutually understandable form of communication? There was one other explanation, which he could not accept, that he was following in the footsteps of Will Garrett, of ship nine, who had deliberately gone into a white sun once after the death of his twin brother. He looked at the chair beside his own, Johnny's chair, which would forever be empty, and his thoughts went back down the old, bitter paths. The exploration board had been wrong when they thought the close bond between identical twins would make them the ideal two-man cruise for the lonely, lifetime journeys of the exploration ships. Identical twins were too close. When one of them died, the other died in part with him. They had crossed a thousand light-years of space together, he and Johnny, when they came to the bleak planet that he would name Johnny's world. He should never have let Johnny go up on the slope of the Honeycomb Mountain, but Johnny had wanted to take the routine record photographs of the black tiger-like beasts, which they had called cave-cats. And the things had seemed harmless and shy, despite their ferocious appearance. I'm taking them a sack of food that I think they might like, Johnny had said. I want to try to get some good close-up shots of them. Ten minutes later, he heard the distant snarl of Johnny's blaster. He ran up the mountainside, knowing that he was already too late. He found two of the cave-cats lying where Johnny had killed them. Then he found Johnny. At the foot of a high cliff, he was dead. His neck broken by the fall. Scattered all around him from the torn sack was the food that he had wanted to give to the cats. He buried Johnny the next day, while a cold wind moaned under a lead-gray sky. He built a monument for him, a little mound of frosty stones that only the wild animals would ever see. A chime rang, high and clear, and the memories were shattered. The orange light above the hyperspace communicator was flashing, the signal that meant the exploration board was calling him from Earth. He flipped the switch and said, Paul Jameson, Exploration Ship 1, the familiar voice of Brenda spoke. It's been a long time since your preliminary report. Is everything all right? In a way, he answered, I was going to give you the detailed report tomorrow. Give me a brief sketch of it now. Except for their short brown fur, their natives are humanoid in appearance, but there are basic differences. Their body temperature is cool, like their climate. Their vision range is just from within the visible red onto the infrared. They'll shade their eyes from the light of anything as hot and boiling water, but they'll look square into the ship's floodlights and never see them. And their knowledge of science, Brenda asked. They have a good understanding of it, but along lines entirely different from what our own were at the stage of development. For example, they power their machines with chemicals, but there is no steam, heat, or exhaust. That's what we want to find. Worlds where branches of research unknown to our science are being explored. How about their language? No progress with it yet, he told Brenda of the silence in the village and added, even a throon should show up. I could not ask him what was wrong. I've learned a few words, but they have so many different definitions that I can't use them. I know, Brenda said, variable and unrelated definitions, undetectable shades of inflection and sometimes a language that has no discernibly separate words. The Singer Brothers of Ship 8 ran into the latter. We've given them up as lost. The Singer's dead? he exclaimed. Good God, it's been only a month since the Ramon brothers were killed. The circumstances were similar, Brenda said. They always are. There is no way the exploration men can tell the natives that they mean them no harm and the suspicion of the natives grows into dangerous hostility. The Singer's reported, it was on the world to be both suspicious and possessing powerful weapons. The Singer's were proceeding warily. The ron weapons always at hand, but somehow the natives caught them off guard and their last report was four months ago. There was a silence. Then Brenda added, their ship was the ninth and we had only fifteen. He did not reply to the implications of Brenda's statement. It was obvious to them all what the end of the plan would be, what it had to be. It had only been three years since the fifteen heavily armed exploration ships set out to lead the way for Terran expansion across the galaxy, to answer a cry from far planets and to find all the worlds that held intelligent life. That was the ultimate goal of the plan, to accumulate and correlate all the diverse knowledge of all the intelligent life forms in the galaxy. Among the achievements resulting from that tremendous mass of data would be a ship's drive faster even than hyperspace. The third level drive, which would bring all the galaxies of the universe within reach. And now nine ships were gone out of fifteen and nineteen men out of thirty. The communication barrier, Brenda said, the communication barrier has been the cause behind the loss of every ship and there is nothing we can do about it. We're stymied by it. The conversation was terminated shortly afterward and he moved about the room restlessly, wishing that it was time to lift the ship again. With Johnny not there the dark world was like a smothering tomb. He would like to leave it behind and drive again into the star clouds of the galaxy. Drive on and on into them. A ghostly echo touched his mind restlessly, poignantly, yearning. He swung to face the locked door knowing there could be nothing behind it. The first real fear came to him as he did so. The thing was lonely. The thing that watched him was as lonely as he was. What else could any of it be a product of a mind in the first stage of insanity? The natives came ten minutes later. The view screen showed their chemically powered vehicles emerge from the trees and roll swiftly across the glades. Four natives were in it while a fifth one lay on the floor apparently badly injured. The vehicle stopped a short distance in front of the airlock and he recognized the native on the floor. The one with whom he had been exchanging language lessons. They were waiting for him when he emerged from the ship pistol-like weapons in their belt and grim accusations in their manner. Throon was muttering unintelligibly, unconscious. His skin, where not covered by the brown fur, was abnormal in appearance. He was dying. The leader of the four indicated Throon and said in the quick brittle voice Ko regafin no dran. Only the one word was familiar ko, which meant you and yesterday and a great many other things. The question was utterly meaningless to him. He dropped his hands a little near his blaster and the leader spoke again a quick succession of unknown words that ended with a harshly demanded krison. Krison meant now or very quickly. All the other words were unfamiliar to him. They waited, the grim menace about them increasing when he did not answer. He tried in vain to find some way of explaining to them he was not responsible for Throon's sickness and could not cure it. Then he saw the spray of leaves that had caught on the corner of the vehicle when it came through the farther trees. They were of a deep purple color. The trees around the ship were almost gray by contrast, which meant that he was responsible for Throon's condition. The cold white light of the ship's floodlights under which he and Throon had sat for day after day contained radiations that went through the violet and far into the ultraviolet. To the animal and vegetable life of the dark world such radiations were invisibly and deadly. Throon was dying of hard radiation sickness. It was something he should have foreseen and avoided and that would not have happened had he accepted old Throon's pantomime and invitation in the beginning to go with him into the village to work at the language study. There he would have used a harmless battery lamp for illumination but there was no certainty in the village and he had refused to go. It did not matter. There was a complex radiation neutralizer and a cell reconstructor in the ship which would return Throon to full normal health in a few hours after he was placed in its chamber. He turned to the leader of the four natives and motioned from Throon to the airlock. Go! There! he said in the native language. Bron! The leader answered. The word meant no and there was a determination in the way he said it that showed he would not move from it. At the end of five minutes his attempts to persuade them to take Throon into the ship had increased their suspicion of his motives to the point of critical danger. If only he could tell them why he wanted Throon taken into the ship but he could not and would have to take Throon by first disposing of the four and this he could do by procuring one of the paralyzing needle guns from the ship. He took a step towards the ship and spoke the words that to the best of his knowledge meant I come back. Festuin lit kla. Their reply was to snatch at their weapons in desperate haste even as the leader uttered a horse word of command. He brought up the blaster with the quick motion that long training had perfected and their weapons were only half drawn as his warning came, Bronn. They froze but did not release their weapons. He walked backward to the airlock his blaster covering them. The tensely waiting manner in which they watched his progress telling him that the slightest relaxation of his vigilance would mean his death. He did not let the muzzle of the blaster waver until he was inside the airlock and the outer door had slid shut. He was sure that the natives would be gone when he returned and he was sure of another thing that whatever he said to them it was not what he had thought he was saying. He saw that the glade was empty when he opened the airlock again. At the same time a bomb like missile struck the ship just above the airlock and exploded with the savage crash. He jabbed the close button and the door clicked shut barely in advance of three more missiles which hammered at the impervious armor. So that he thought warily is that. He laid the useless needle gun aside. The stage was passed when he could hope to use it. He could save Thrun only by killing some of the others or he could lift the ship and leave Thrun to die. Either action would make the natives hate and fear Terrans fear that would be there to greet all future Terrans ships. That was not the way a race gave birth to the peaceful Galactic Empire was not the purpose behind the plan but always wherever the exploration men went they encountered the deadly barrier the intangible unassailable communication barrier with the weapons and exploration men carried in his ship he had the power to destroy a world but not the power to ask the simple questions that would prevent fatal misunderstandings and before another three years had passed the last exploration man would die the last exploration ship would be lost he felt the full force of hopelessness for the first time when Johnny had been alive it had been different. Johnny who had left whenever the outlook was the darkest and said end away Paul the thought broke as suddenly unexpectedly he felt that Johnny was very near with the feeling came the soft enclosure of a dream like peace in which Johnny's death was vague and far away only something that had happened in another dream he knew without wondering why that Johnny was in the control room a potter of his mind tried to reject the thought as an illusion he did not listen he did not want to listen he ran to the ship's elevator stumbling like one not fully awake Johnny was waiting for him in the control room alive he spoke as he stepped into the control room Johnny something moved at the control board black and alien standing tall as a man on short hind legs yellow eyes blazed in a feline face it was a cave cat like the ones that had killed Johnny realization was a wrenching shock and a terrible disillusionment Johnny was not waiting for him not alive he brought up the blaster the dream like state gone the paw of the cave cat flashed out and struck the ship's master light switch with the movement faster than his own the room was instantly totally dark he fired and a pale blue fire lands across the room to reveal that the cave cat was gone he fired again quickly and immediately in front of him the pale beam revealed only the ripped metal floor I am not where you think the word spoke clearly in his mind but there was no directional source he held his breath listening for the whisper of padded feet as the cave cat flashed in for the kill and made a swift analysis of the situation the cave cat was telepathic and highly intelligent and had been on the ship all the time it and the others had wanted the ship and had killed Johnny to reduce opposition to the minimum he himself had been permitted to live until the cave cat learned from his mind how to operate the almost automatic controls now he had served his purpose you are wrong again there was no way he could determine the direction from which the thought came he listened again and wondered why it had not waylaid him at the door it's thought came I had to let you see me or you would not have believed I existed it was only here that I could extinguish all the lights and have time to speak before you killed me I let you think your brother was here there was a little pause I am sorry I am sorry I should have used some other method of luring you here he swung his blaster toward what seemed to be a faint sound near the astrogator unit across the room we did not intend to kill your brother he did not believe it and did not reply when we first made telepathic contact with him he jerked up his blaster and fired in his mind was the conviction that we had pretended to be harmless animals so that we could catch him off guard and kill him one of us leaped at him as he fired the second time to knock the blaster from his hand we needed only a few minutes in which to explain but he would not trust us that long there was a misjudgment of distance and he was knocked off the cliff again he did not reply we did not intend to kill your brother the thought came but you do not believe me he spoke for the first time no, I don't believe you you are physically like cats and cats don't misjudge distances now you want something from me before you try to kill me too what is it? I will have to tell you of my race for you to understand we call ourselves the varn and so far as it can be translated into a spoken word and we are a very old race in the beginning we did not live in caves but there came a long period of time for thousands of years when the climate on our world was so violent that we were forced to live in the caves it was completely dark there but our sense of smell became very acute together with sufficient sensitivity to temperature changes that we could detect objects in our immediate vicinity there were subterranean plants in the caves and food was no problem we had always been slightly telepathic and it was during our long stay in the caves that our intelligence and telepathic powers became fully developed we had only our minds physical science is not created in dark caves with clumsy paws the time finally came when we could leave the caves but it was of little help to us there was no resources on our world but earth and stone and the thin grass of the plains we wondered about the universe and we knew the stars were distant suns because one of our own suns became a star each winter we studied as best as we could but we could see the stars only as the little wild animals saw them there was so much we wanted to learn and by then we were past our zenith and already dying out but our environment was a prison from which we could never escape when your ship arrived we thought we might soon be free we wanted to ask you to take some of us with you in a range for others of your race to stop by on our world but you dismissed us as animals useful only for making warm fur coats because we lived in caves and had no science no artifacts nothing you had the power to destroy us and we did not know what your reaction would be when you learned we were intelligent and telepathic a telepathic race must have a high code of ethics and never intrude unwanted but would you have believed that? he did not answer the death of your brother changed everything you were going to leave so soon that there would be no time to learn more about you I hid on the ship so I could study you and wait until I could prove to you that you needed me now I can Throne is dying and I can give you the proper words of explanation that will cause the others to bring him into the ship your real purpose what is it? he asked to show you that men need the barn you want to explore the galaxy and learn so do the barn you have the ships and we have the telepathic ability that will end the communication problem your race and mine can succeed only if we go together he searched for the true and hidden purpose behind the barn proposal and saw what it would have to be the long range goal you failed to mention that your ultimate aim I know what you are thinking how can I prove you wrong now there was no way for the barn to prove him wrong nor for him to prove the treachery behind the barn proposal the proof would only come in time when the Terran barn cooperation has transformed Terrans into a slave race the barn spoke again you refuse to believe I am sincere I would be a naive fool to believe you it will be too late to save Throon unless we act very quickly I have told you why I am here there is nothing more I can do to convince you but be the first to show trust when I switch on the lights it would be within your power to kill me the barn was gambling its life in a game in which he could be gambling the plan and his race it was a game he would end at the first sound of movement from the astrogator unit across the room I have been here beside you all the time a furry paw brushed his face claws flicked gently but grimly reminding along his throat he whirled and fired he was too late the barn had already leaped silently away and the beam found only the bare floor then the lights came on glaring bright after the darkness and he saw the barn it was standing by the control board its huge yellow eyes watching him he brought the blaster into line with it his finger on the firing stood it waited not moving he was drinking from what was coming the translucent golden eyes looked at him and beyond him as though they saw something not in the room he wondered if it was in contact with its own kind on Johnny's world and was telling them it had made the gamble for high stakes and had lost it was not afraid not asking for mercy the killing of it was suddenly an act without savor it was something he would do in the immediate future but first he would let it live long enough to save Throon he motioned with the blaster and said lead the way to the airlock and afterward you will kill me lead the way he replied harshly it said no more but went obediently past him and trotted down the corridor like great black dog he stood in the open airlock the barn against the farther wall where he had ordered it to stand Throon was in the radiation chamber and he had held his first intelligible conversation with the natives that day the barn was facing into the red black gloom outside the lighted airlock where the departing natives could be heard crossing the glade their thoughts no longer hold fear and suspicion it said this understanding is ended he raised the muzzle of the blaster in his hand the black head lifted as the golden eyes looked up at him I made you a promise he said I could demand none I can't stop to take you back to your own world and I can't leave you alive on this one with what you've learned from my mind you would have the natives build the barn a disintegrator equipped space fleet equal to our own ships we only want to go with you he told it what he wanted it to know before he killed it wondering why he should care I would like to believe you are sincere and you know why I don't dare to trusting a telepathic race would be too dangerous the barn would know everything we knew and only the barn would be able to communicate with each new alien race we would have to believe what the barn told us we would have to trust the barn to see for us and speak for us and not deceive us as we went across the galaxy and then in the end Terrence would no longer be needed except as a subject race they would be enslaved we would have laid the groundwork for an empire the barn empire there was a silence in which his words hung something cold and invisible between them then the barn asked very quietly why is the plan failing you already know he said because of the barrier the communication barrier that causes aliens to misunderstand the intentions of the exploration men and fear them there is no communication barrier between you and I yet you fear me and are going to kill me I have to kill you you represent a danger to my race isn't that the same reason why aliens kill exploration men he did not answer and his thought came quickly how does an exploration man appear to the natives of alien worlds how did he appear he landed on their world in a ship that could smash it into oblivion he stepped out of his ship carrying weapons that could level a city he represented irresistible power for destruction and he trusted no one and nothing and in return he hoped to find welcome and friendship and cooperation there the barn said is your true barrier your own distrust and suspicion you yourselves create it on each new world now you are going to erect it between my race and yours by killing me and advising the exploration board to quarantine my world and never let another ship land there again there was a silence as he thought of what the barn had said and of what it had said earlier we are a very old race there was wisdom in the barn's analysis of the cause of the plan's failure and with the barn to vanquish the communication stalemate the new approach could be tried they could go a long way together men and barn a long, long way or they could create the barn empire and how could he know which it would be how could anyone know except the telepathic barn the muzzle of the blaster had dropped and he brought it back up he forced the dangerous indecision aside knowing that he would have to kill the barn at once or he might weaken again and set harshly to it the risk is too great I want to believe you but all your talk of trust and good intentions is only talk and my race would be the only one that had to trust he touched the firing stud as the last thought of the barn came let me speak once more he waited the firing stud cold and metallic under his finger you are wrong we have already set the example of faith in you by asking to go with you I told you we did not intend to hurt your brother and I told you we saw the stars only as the little wild animals saw them the years in the dark caves you do not understand the eyes of the barn looked into his and beyond him beautiful, expressionless like polished gold the barn are blind end of Cry from a Far Planet by Tom Godwin recorded by Bryden Jones Waikāloa, Hawaii on September 14th, 2008 Druzel this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Moosh Boy Alfonzo Druzel by Frank Banta Jean Lenny could see that his girlfriend Judy Stokes thought it was the lamest excuse she had ever heard if your ballpoint pen won't write as you want it to your life doesn't stop she probably was thinking give yourself another pen you don't call off a marriage skeptically the girl with the long golden red hair pointed at his breast pocket this Druzel I must see and who's that other member of the partnership there beside him a never sharp pencil named Blackie no, that is the other end of Druzel permit me to introduce you blandly the tall young artist slid Druzel from his breast pocket straightened him from his U-shape and handed his twelve inch pen to her a snake she streaked what else why I thought those ruby eyes were jewels I must have squeezed right up against him when I kissed you she cried indignantly you did I felt him squirm a little and here I thought it was your heart beating wildly well maybe it was it does that sometimes let's try again this time hold your snake behind you the long legged girl stood on tiptoe to reach him it was your heart beating wildly she decided a moment later which makes me think you might not just be trying to get rid of me by a silly excuse believe me I'm not he urged Druzel is the key to all my fortunes alright tell me about it but first tell me where in the universe you got him just after I graduated from art school I was on my grand tour we had an unexpected stopover at the coffin planetary system I discovered ballpoint snakes with the chief export of coffin 2 when we lifted ship I had acquired my little puppy snake Druzel is a puppy snake like a puppy dog she asked fascinated I mean do they have their little domestic troubles such as the calls of nature oh he was thoroughly pocket broken before I acquired him but he did like his little jokes and I learned to leave him curled up in a circular ashtray until maturity sobered him well I should say you drew sketches with him didn't you tell me he nodded at first he only had one color of ink red and if I sketched with him all day he would commence to look wretchedly anemic he took two days to refill normally and in only one day's time provided I didn't mind the top three fourths of my pen laying on my arm I hope his weight didn't get tiresome she commiserated holding in her amusement I coped somehow he answered sturdily later he learned after I squeezed him on the liver a few times just to show him how to switch to a lovely shade of ochre which was delightful on pale green or pink paper why what's the matter Judy go on she choked go go go he beamed I write my letters with him too every day I wrote with him first in red and then an ochre to give him a rest he seemed to love to write more than to sketch he would jump into my hand with tail happily pointed downward as I sat down to my writing desk and when I later saw his dark green stripes turning pastel and knew that anemia was imminent and started to lay him down for an earned rest he would stiffen himself as if to say oh come come I'm good for half a page yet it sounds as though he was a willing worker but I still can't see why his malfunction makes our marriage impossible I haven't got to his career as a novelist yet there lies the heart of the tragedy please proceed to the heart of the tragedy it all began when I found him he marched up one morning writing by himself with difficulty it is true his first message to the world was I hold that the supine viewpoint is seldom downward I don't see how he could stand up on end to write for very long even with such a magnificent philosophy to bolster him what a terrible pun Jean groaned he couldn't stand up very long at first but I saw he had talent I hardly learned the skill of holding him upright in a relaxed manner so that he could express himself on paper in no time at all he had written what was to be his first sensational best-selling shocker naked bellies in the grass that does sound sensational not for snakes he neglected to mention his characters were snakes I fang you very much followed swiftly afterward and was just as successful mothers were amused with its lispy title and got it for the children sounds like a story with some meat in it yes something you can get your teeth into however his next offering a snake pit full of love was by far the topper was banned in Boston you haven't mentioned anything tragic so far she observed in fact you have made a pot of money right after my snake had filed his income tax returns I had enough money to purchase this house and to support us for a couple of years the only trouble is his royalties have stopped coming in and that money is all used up I still haven't been able to sell any of my landscape paintings so we haven't any income and that's why you and I can't marry for a long time yet if ever her exquisite brows wrinkled with concentration I don't understand has Druzel written himself out in parking Druzel on his knee he's writing more than ever the quality is gone then Jean shook his head no he's writing superlatively then what is the problem she asked not thoroughly mystified he's writing classics burst out Jean in baffled irritation he won't write anything else easily seeing the approaching catastrophe I wrote long persuading essays to him was pathetically useless proudly he continued to write his rise and fall of the western plainsmen in a lucid passionate prose which would evoke an imperishable picture but in three thousand pages I think classics are nice protested Judy and one of these days I'm going to read another one huskily Jean told her the worst writing classics consumes paper by the ton and if you ever get your 750 thousand word finished you must then start shrinking it back to an acceptable 75 thousand words this is a nearly hopeless task of course if you can get it back to 75 thousand words the digest magazines will have no trouble shrinking it to 15 thousand words or 15 pictures and then you get your fingers in the till he paused and all hope fled from his face Druzel won't live nearly long enough to get all of that shrinking done and in the meantime the scrambling snake is writing me out of house and home are you going to let him get away with it the girl challenged I don't know whether I am or not replied the young artist looking worried I thought I had the problem solved at first he got so sassy when we were arguing about him writing classics that I had no hesitation about applying a pinch of glue to his glittering little extremity that put him out of the writing business until he came to terms we're enterprising she approved didn't do any good though Jean grumbled despondently bowing his head he wouldn't bargain she asked incredulously he didn't have to he knew right where the cheese crater was ooh my sentiments exactly but I don't know what to do with him now you're all out of ideas oh we could sell this house and move down to skid row where the rinse are cheap he flung out airily plainly worried sick I've got a much better idea than that she said cheerfully getting a pad and pencil from her red handbag how about giving Druzel this ultimatum as she wrote Jean read over her shoulder suggest you begin writing fiction pleasing both to you and your master or we shall be forced to hand you over to the dog catcher Jean drew back amazed why we would do no such thing I know it silly I'm just negotiating no he grumps ready to be angry with her he got up and strode around the studio the dog catcher we will not lie to that snake Judy dropped the idea I've just now thought of another one here's an ultimatum we could give him and mean it too no more writing until we reach an agreement or we will take away all his writing paper and reading matter for good I thought of doing that Jean conceded but isn't that a monstrous way to treat a literary genius not at all she protested by taking on a work that will require more time than his lifetime he is defeating himself there's that way of looking at it agree the artist alright Druzel he called you heard us talking and you know we mean it no more writing until we reach an agreement or else Druzel quit writing at once while the girl and the young artist watched anxiously Druzel first wandered about uncertainly for a few minutes and then curled up on a newspaper and went to sleep he slept all evening he has beaten us again Jean Lanet told Judy Stokes resignedly when she arrived at his studio the following evening he watched Druzel fascinatingly as the snake moved his restless tail the margins of newspapers spread on the floor he doesn't know yet that I know I discover the fraud only by the nearest accident he isn't writing she asked perusing the newspapers for signs of Druzel's elegant script he most certainly is where look at him Jean exclaimed ignoring her question he's doing it again Druzel had ceased wriggling for the moment and lay there shaking violently but the paroxism passed and he took up his restless movements again the poor genius mourned Judy he must be sick with frustration sick my eye that snake has learned to centrifuge part of his blood while it is in his body so that the hemoglobin is separated out the result is invisible ink why I'll tell that Druzel off rave Judy here I sat feeling sorry for the little crumb Druzel did not mind while she ranted he brazenly began writing invisible ink once more how did you catch him at it she asked I used a piece of his newspaper to pick up a hot saw blade the heat turned the invisible ink brown Druzel said the girl passionately looking down at the writer you know your master is in great need of funds where is your sense of loyalty and self sacrifice for the one who has cared for you Druzel wrote poetically is there joy or any other good thing in abnegation is there beauty and sacrifice what handsome purpose do these serve a being in his race with time his days will soon be spent and they will come no more thus my criterion is this the most joy gathering awareness touching act of which he is capable none other is worthy of his time men are not so selfish objected John I am not a man wrote Druzel simply John turns staunchly to the girl Judy he has convinced me I've been wrong about him from now on he can write whatever he likes goodbye to our hopes then for the present yes assented John stoically as he brought fresh sheets of paper from his desk for Druzel my landscapes might begin to sell after a while he added without conviction rotten little crumb Judy fume glaring balefully at the snake but Druzel wrote serenely on his ruby eyes glowing enigmatically John interposed magnanimously I see now that I have been inexcusably selfish with Druzel I've kept him cooped up here not wanting to bother with him he was busy writing but most of his knowledge of earth has come from books he can't write classics about living things unless he sees living things as she picked up his trend of thought Judy's face lost its resentful expression and something like seraphic righteousness spread over it I see what you mean just how did you plan to make up for this shut in feeling that poor you've been suffering so much from all for all these years oh Judy I'm so glad you asked me he threw wide his arms to the world out into the wind and the rain we shall go and there I will draw my pictures while he observes then into the roaring brawling taverns we shall go where life thrives in all its abundance I've been robbing him by shutting him up here John looked at look at all the girl exclaimed pointing he has stopped in the middle of a page and is starting on a fresh one Druzel wrote please not out into the wind and rain please not into the roaring brawling taverns where life thrives in all its abundance I loathe shutter and tilt loathing is no reason to turn away from reality Druzel admonished the artist all justice shutter and tilt requires far less body English than its ancestor rock and roll Druzel argued carefully you will recall I heard some of it once when you took me into a particularly dirty bar over in the west end of town I feel as a result that I have observed this type of data to the extent that I can write of it competently without further study oh but that was months ago in through John the tunes have all changed by now new pals appear on the tapes every week you have missed countless soccer ruse already being cooped up in here you will bless me once you get accustomed to the realities of life see if you don't hi ho the wind and the rain the snake shuttered careful you'll centrifuge Judy warned John added reflectively studying the ceiling day by day month by month year by year the reality of everyday existence etches deeply into our consciousness if we will but have the fortitude to expose ourselves to it Druzel unadvoidably centrifuge this time but did manage with laborious lateral movements to mix the hemoglobin back with the plasma again he complained it is cruel of you to condemn me to this ugliness I want only to read my books and hear a few simple fugues by Bach it is not cruel you will have exactly the same existence I have chosen for myself as an artist it is fundamental that if you are to write serious literature you must rub your nose against the realities of life Druzel wriggled unhappily for a moment finally he wrote actually my writing may not be as serious as the title implies misunderstandings conceivably arise over titles instead of the rise and fall of the western plainsmen how about changing it to those low down scaly wrestlers that is really getting down to earth shkri zhan concealing his elation but if you are going to write serious literature who will I get to go on my painting trips with me take that female of yours suggested Druzel if she refuses to go inform her that we shall be forced to hand her over to the dog catcher do you suppose he means that wonder Jean of course not silly said Judy bright eyed he is only negotiating end of Druzel by Frank Banta