Grimly he looked at the nine feet of corded muscle and thick hide that lay directly in his path. Then his gaze swept the narrow confines of the cave. It was just possible that he could kill before it could rip him to shreds. But did he really want to kill Lad-nar?
The thought bothered him. He knew he had to kill—or be killed himself. And yet…
Outside the lightning flamed and crashed all around the cave. The long storm had begun.
Through the thin slit between the rocks and the creature Kettridge could see the sky darkening as the storm grew. Every moment there was a new cataclysm as streamers of fire flung themselves through the air.
Blestone’s atmosphere was an uncomfortable-to-humans 150 degrees Fahrenheit, and the creature’s body heat was almost certainly as high. The very nearness of the creature would have effectively ruined the aging career of Benjamin Kettridge had not the Earthman’s insulated suit protected him.
He hunched up small against the wall, uncomfortably aware of the rough stone through the suit.
He knew that the beam from the Jeremy Bentham was tuned to a suit-sensitive level, but he knew also that they wouldn’t come to pick him up until his search time expired. He wasn’t the only ecologist from the study ship on Blestone. But they were a low-pay outfit and secured the most for their money by leaving the searchers in solitude for the full time.
The full tune had another six hours to run.
In six hours Lad-nar would almost certainly get hungry.
Kettridge ran the whole thing through his mind, sifting the facts, gauging the information, calculating the outcome. It didn’t look good. Not good at all.
He knew more about Lad-nar than the creature could have told him, though, and that at least was a factor in his favor. He knew about its religion, its taboos, its—and here he felt his throat go dry again—eating habits, its level of intelligence and culture. The being had kept nothing back, and Kettridge had some astonishingly accurate data to draw upon.
Not quite what you signed up for, is it, Ben? Startled by his own mental speech, he answered himself wearily, No, not at all.
Kettridge wondered what Lad-nar would think were he to tell the Blestonian he wasn’t a blue-plate special, but a washed-out, run-down representative of a civilization that didn’t give one hoot about Lad-,nar or his religion.
He’ll probably chew me up and swallow me, thought Kettridge. A more bitterly ironic thought followed: which is exactly what he’ll do anyhow. It would take a powerful weapon to stop him.
It seemed so strange. Two days before he had been aboard the study-ship Jeremy Bentham, one year out of Capital City, and now he was the main course at a Blestonian aborigine’s feast.
The laughter wouldn’t come.
It wouldn’t come because Kettridge was old and tired, and knew how right it was that he should die here, with all hope cut off. Lad-nar was simply following his natural instincts. He was protecting himself. He was surviving.
Which is more than you’ve been doing for the last ten years, Ben, he told himself.
Benjamin Kettridge had long since stopped surviving. He knew it as clearly as he knew he would die here on this hot and steaming world far from the sight of men.
Think about it, Ben. Think it over. Now that it’s finished and you tumble out of things at sixty-six years of age. Think about the waste and the crying and the bit of conviction that could have saved you. Think about it all.
Then the story unfurled on a fleeting banner. It rolled out for Ben Kettridge there in a twilight universe. In the course of a few minutes he had found life in that shadowy mind-world preferable to his entire previous existence.
He saw himself again as a prominent scientist, engaged with others of his kind on a project of great consequence to mankind. He recalled his own secret misgivings as he had boldly embarked on the experiment.
He heard again the sonorous overtones and the pith and substance of his talk with Fennimore. He heard it more clearly than the blast and rush of the thunder outside…
“Charles, I don’t think we should do it this way. If something were to happen—”
“Ben, nothing whatever can possibly happen—unless we become careless. The compound is safe, and you know it. First we demonstrate its applicability. Then we let the dunderheads scream about it. After they know its worth, they’ll be the first to acclaim us.”
“But you don’t seem to understand, Fenimore. There are too many random. factors in the formulae. There’s a fundamental flaw in them. If I could only put my finger on it—”
“Get this, Ben. I don’t like to pull seniority on you, but I have no choice. I’m not a harsh man, but this is a dream I’ve had for twenty years, and no unjustified timidity on your part is going to put it off. We test the compound Thursday!”
And Fenimore’s dream had overnight turned into a nightmare of twenty-five thousand dead, and hospitals filled to overflowing with screaming patients.
The nightmare had reached out thready tentacles and dragged in Kettridge, too. In a manner of days a reputation built on years of dedicated work had been reduced to rubble. But he had not escaped the inquests. What little reputation he had left had saved him—and a few others—from the gas chamber. But life was at an end for him.
Ten years of struggling for mere survival—no one would hire him even for the most menial of jobs—had sunk Kettridge lower and lower. There was still a common decency about him that prevented utter disintegration, just as there was an inner desire to continue living.
Kettridge never became—as did some of the others who escaped—a flophouse derelict or a suicide. He just became—anonymous.
His fortunes ebbed until there was nothing left except slashed wrists or the bottle.
Kettridge had been too old by then for either. And always there had been the knowledge that he could have stopped the project had he voiced his doubts instead of brooding in silence.
Finally the study-ship post had saved him. Ben Kettridge, using another name, had signed on for three years. He had actually welcomed the cramp and the squalor of shipboard. Studying and cataloging under the stars had enabled him to regain his self-respect and to keep a firm grip on his sanity.
Ben Kettridge had become an alien ecologist. And now, one year out from Capital City, his sanity was threatened again.
He wanted to scream desperately. His throat muscles drew up and tightened, and his mouth, inside the flexible hood, opened until the corners stretched in pain.
The pictures had stopped. He had withdrawn in terror from the shadowed mind-world and was back in a stone prison with a hungry aborigine for keeper.
Lad-nar stirred.
The huge furred body twisted, sighed softly, and sank back into sleep again. Kettridge wondered momentarily if the strength of his thoughts had disturbed the beast.
What a fantastic creature, thought Kettridge, It lives on a world where the heat will fry a human and shivers in fear at lightning storms.
A strange compassion came over Kettridge. How very much like a native of Earth this alien creature was. Governed by its stomach and will to survive, and dominated by a religion founded in fear and nurtured on terror! Lightning the beast thought of as a Screamer from the Skies. The occasionally glimpsed sun was the Great Warmer.
Kettridge pondered on the simplicity and primitive common sense of Lad-nar’s religion.
When the storms gathered, when they finally built up sufficient potential to generate the lightning and thunder, Lad-nar knew that the cold would set in. Cold was anathema to him. He knew that the cold sapped him of strength, and that the lightning struck him down.