He was out the door then with flashlight in one hand and rifle in the other. He saw them at once. There were two of the six-legged terrors. One of them was raised up on its four back legs, its massive jaws ripping at the 'timber of the shed. Dandor could hear the terrified bellow of the cattle inside.
He ploughed through the snow toward the creature. It heard him and turned fiery red eyes in his direction. It kept on slashing at the logs for a second and then whirled and came at him in, great leaping bounds.
Caught by surprise, he had no time to drop the flashlight and lift the laser rifle to fringe position. He had to fire from the hip and the beam caught the monster in the shoulder.
It wasn't good enough. He sidestepped as the huge body hurtled past him and then blasted its head off. Then he almost died himself as the decapitated thing went slithering through the snow, spurting blood everywhere. He almost died because for a split second he had forgotten its mate.
He remembered only when the creature struck him from behind and sent him sprawling on the frozen ground. The monstrous beast was on top of him and he screamed as a claw ripped flesh away from his thigh and the powerful jaws moved toward his throat.
The flashlight had been flung from his hand but the real rifle was still resting in its sling attached to his shoulder. He found the trigger and fired at full power. The laser beam tore off a leg and haunch of the ice wolf, and it fell away from him as he blasted it again. Then blackness closed in over him.
When he came to, he was lying on the table in the cabin.
Nona and a strange man were bending over him.
„Well, you got yourself in a pretty mess this time!“ Nona said as his eyes opened.
„That leg is going to have to come off,“ the stranger said.
„Are you a doctor?“ Dandor asked in a husky croak.
„Only one this side of Alpha Centaury,“ the man said.
„The pain . . . can't you give me something for the pain?“
„I gave you the last morphine I had. Back on Earth we might have saved that leg, but here. . .“ He made a helpless gesture.
White-hot flame seemed to envelop the slashed leg. Dandor winced and then saw the half smile on Nona's lips as she said, „With no more morphine or anything else, cutting off that leg is gonna hurt like hell, ain't it. Doc?“
„I got some whiskey in my car,“ the doctor said. „I'll go get it.“
He went hobbling off, and Nona leaned over Dandor and looted of his eyes. „It's really gonna hurt, sweetie. It's gonna hurt like it hurt me all those times when you went offted left me. When you went off in your black box.“
„No, Nona, no! It didn't hurt you. You're not. . . “ He almost said she wasn't capable of being hurt. But he stopped, because he didn't know for sure if that were true.
„With only one leg, you're not gonna be able to get in that damn thing by yourself,“ she said. „You're gonna have to stay here and be nice to me.“
„Nona!! No, you don't understand!“ He started to plead with her, but then the doctor was back with a quart of whiskey and his black bag.
„Here, drink this fast,“ the man said, handing Dandor the bottle.
He drank deeply and quickly. But it didn't help much.
As the doctor cut and awed, Dandor was sure his screams would burst his skull. At times he wondered why his curses didn't snap the straps that held him down or drive off the two tormentors bending over him.
„Well, I guess that's it,“ the doctor was saying when the agony dragged him up into consciousness again. „We're gonna have to cauterize this stump or he'll bleed to death. I ain't got nuthin' but fire to do it with either. Come help me heat up the poker, woman.“
Dandor came fully awake as he caught the over-the-shoulder look Nona gave him and saw her eyes dart toward the Imagicon. It was almost as though she had said aloud, „You'll belong to me now . . . only to me. There won't be no more of that goin' off.“
But she couldn't! How could she? Through the haze of morphine, alcohol and pain, Dandor tried to ask himself . . . why should she treat him this way? He couldn't think of any answer.
And as they hurried off to prepare the cauterizing iron for the bloody stump of his leg, the black coffin-like shape of the Imagicon filled his eyes and his mind.
If the pain hadn't already been more than reason could bear, he wouldn't have had the courage to roll off the table and begin crawling toward the black box, leaving a trail of blood behind him. The black box. Somehow he knew it represented a surcease from pain, a promise of ultimate safety.
He reached it without their being aware of his actions, and by making a supreme effort, he pulled himself up high enough to press his palm against the sensor that identified him instantly and was the only thing in this or any other universe that could open it.
He collapsed, more dead than alive, into the Imagicon and it closed silently over him.
Then there was a bright, warm world around him, and bright young faces above him.
„Oh, Dandor, darling! Darling,“ Cecily cried, putting her soft, warm arms around him.
„Sweetheart, you've come back!“ Daphne whispered.
„We're so happy to see you!“ the redheaded Terri mur-mured.
„We're so happy to see you!“ her twin, Jerri, repeated.
„And I'm the happiest of all!“ Dandor assured them, gazing down at his leg . . . at his perfectly whole, intact leg which felt no pain whatever. „Thank God! Thank God, I'm back!“
The Imagicon had worked! It had worked once again! It had taken him to the world of imagination and back again to reality . . . to wonderful, wonderful reality!
Dandor sat up and looked around at his own warm, marvelous world. It was the world of Earth in 22300, the world a hundred years after The Plague. The Plague which had attacked the male genes and reduced the male population to a few thousand and made each man the center of an eager and worshipful harem of women.
Many of the surviving men had not been able to stand the strain. Too many years of adoration, too many years of having everything and every woman they wanted had proved too much for them.
Then there had come the Imagicon, the invention that made any world a man desired seem absolutely real. Some men had used it to create even more exotic and wonderful worlds than the one they lived in, but that had been only more of a good thing and had made them more dissatisfied than ever.
Dandor had been wise. With his Imagicon, he had created an entirely different kind of world . . . a world of cold and terror called Nestrond. Dandor had known a great truth.
What good was paradise without something to compare it to? Without a taste of hell from time to time, how could a man appreciate heaven?