‘I feel him near,’ the old Martian said, turning the bigger and more grizzled of his two heads towards Philip Hardacre. ‘We shall see him soon now.’
The woman leaned against the ship’s side and stared out the port. ‘I can’t think why you have to go hunting these monstrosities. Two days it’s been since we left, and we could have been in Venusport all that while instead of cooped up in this steel jalopy a couple of light years from civilization. What’s so good about getting a xeeb even if you do get one? What does it prove, getting a xeeb?’
‘The xeeb is the largest life-form in this part of the galaxy.’ The young fellow was a school professor or something like that, and you could tell it from the way he spoke. ‘More than that, it’s the only sentient creature living out here in free space, and it’s ferocious; it’s been known to take on a scout ship. It’s the toughest damn thing there is. That’s it, isn’t it?’
‘That’s part of it,’ Philip Hardacre said. There was that, although there was much more, the freedom out there and the stars against the black and the men small in their suits and afraid and yet not afraid and even the xeeb small in the vastness and the cool joy if the xeeb was a good one.
‘He comes,’ the old Martian said in his whistling tones, his smaller head bent toward the screen. ‘See, lady.’
‘I don’t want to see,’ she said, turning her back. It was a deadly insult under the ancient Martian code of honour, and she knew it and Philip Hardacre knew she knew it, and there was hate in his throat, but there was no time now for hate.
He got up from the panel. There was no doubt about it. An amateur could have taken the blip for an asteroid or another ship but after twenty years you knew immediately. ‘Suit up,’ he said. ‘Spaceside in three minutes.’
He helped the young fellow with the helmet and what he had been dreading happened, the Martian had taken out his own suit and was stiffly putting his rear pair of legs into it. He went over to him and put his hand between the two necks in the traditional gesture of appeal. ‘This is not your hunt, Ghlmu,’ he said in the archaic Martian courtly tongue.
‘I am still strong and he is big and he comes fast.’
‘I know, but this is not your hunt. Old ones are hunted more than they hunt.’
‘All my eyes are straight and all my hands are tight.’
‘But they are slow and they must be quick. Once they were quick but now they are slow.’
‘Har-dasha, it is thy comrade who asks thee.’
‘My blood is yours as in all the years; it is only my thought that must seem cruel, old one. I will hunt without you.’
‘Hunt well, Har-dasha, then. I await you always,’ the old creature said, using the ritual formula of acquiescence.
‘Are we going to shoot this goddam whale or not?’ The woman’s voice was shrill. ‘Or are you and that thing going on whistling at each other all night?’
He turned on her savagely. ‘You’re out of this. You’re staying right here where you belong. Put that blaster back on the rack and take off that space-suit and start making food. We’ll be back in half an hour.’
‘Don’t you give me orders, you bum. I can shoot as well as any man and you won’t stop me.’
‘Around here I say what everybody does, and they do it.’ Over her shoulder he could see the Martian hanging up his suit and his throat went dry. ‘If you try to get in that airlock with us we head right back to Venus.’
‘I’m sorry, Martha, you’ll have to do as he says,’ the young fellow said.
The two big Wyndham-Clarke blasters were ready primed and he set them both at maximum, while they stood in the airlock and waited for the air to go. Then the outer door slid into the wall and they were out there in the freedom and the vastness and the fear that was not fear. The stars were very cold and it was black between the stars. There were not many stars, and the black was vast where there were no stars. The stars and the black together were what gave the freedom. Without the stars or without the black there would not have been the freedom, only the vastness, but with the stars and the black you had the freedom as well as the vastness. The stars were few and the light from them was small and cold, and around them there was the black.
He spoke to the young fellow over the suit radio. ‘Can you see him? Toward that big star with the small companion.’
‘Where?’
‘Look where I’m pointing. He hasn’t spotted us yet.’
‘How does he spot us?’
‘Never mind that. Now, listen. Each swoop he makes, give him one shot. Just one. Then go forward on your suit jet as fast as you can. That confuses him more than lateral movement.’
‘You told me.’
‘I’m telling you again. One shot. He homes on your shot. Get ready; he’s seen us; he’s turning.’
The great beautiful phosphorescent shape narrowed as it came head-on to them, then appeared to swell. The xeeb was closing fast, as fast as any he’d known. It was a big, fast xeeb and likely to be a good one. He’d be able to tell for sure after the first swoop. He wanted the xeeb to be a good one for the young fellow’s sake. He wanted the young fellow to have a good hunt with a good, big, fast xeeb.
‘Fire in about fifteen seconds, then jet,’ Philip Hardacre said. ‘And you won’t have too long before his next swoop, so be ready.’
The xeeb closed, and the young fellow’s shot arc’d in. It was too early to be a good shot and it barely flicked the tail end. Philip Hardacre waited as long as he dared and fired toward the hump where the main ganglia were and jetted without waiting to see where he had hit.
It was a good xeeb all right. From the way its phosphorescence had started to pulsate you could tell it had been hit somewhere in the nervous system or what passed for that, but within seconds it had turned and begun another great beautiful graceful swoop on the two men. This time the young fellow held his fire a little longer and got in a good shot near the hump and jetted as he had been told. But then the xeeb dropped in the way they did once in a hundred times and xeeb and man were almost on each other. There was nothing for Philip Hardacre to do but empty his Wyndham-Clarke all at once in the hope that the loosing of so much energy would get the xeeb to change its mind and home on him instead. Then he was jetting forward at top speed and calling over the suit radio to make for the ship at once.
‘It puffed something at me and I lost my blaster,’ came the young fellow’s voice.
‘Make for the ship.’
‘We won’t get there, will we?’
‘We can try. You may have damaged him enough with that last shot to slow him down or spoil his sense of direction,’ Philip Hardacre said. He already knew that it was all over for them. The xeeb was only a few miles above them and beginning to turn for a fresh swoop, moving slower but not slow enough. The ship was above them too in the other direction. This was what you faced every time you hunted xeeb and when it happened at last it was just the end of the hunt and the end of the freedom and the vastness, and they would have had to end some time.
There was a long arc of light from the ship and the xeeb was suddenly brighter than ever before for an instant, and then the brightness went out and there was nothing there.
The Martian had fallen into a crouching position in the airlock and the third Wyndham-Clarke was still in his pincers. The two men waited for the outer door to close and the air to flood in.
‘Why didn’t he put on his suit?’ said the young fellow.
‘There wasn’t time. He had about a minute to save us. A Martian suit takes much longer than that to put on.’
‘What would have got him first, the cold?’
‘Airlessness. They respire quickly. Five seconds at most. Just enough to aim and fire.’ He was quick after all, Philip Hardacre thought.