I turned and looked. Sure enough, there he was, just at the edge of the trees down below me. The wallah looked directly at me, then sprang across to another tree, then to another, then turned and went deeper into the forest before I lost sight of him.
I went back to my work. More of the tiny octahedrons of magnetite, not much more than grains, really. A nice, perfectly formed crystal of mica. Worthless, in and of itself, but a museum on Earth would pay a small fortune for it, just because it came from Ascendance. Only problem was, there was no practical way for me to get it back to Earth.
The crashing of an animal—a large animal—at a full run. Getting closer. I spun and stared down at the tree line below me. Nothing, but now I could hear the animal snorting and heaving for breath as it ran.
Was it running from something… or towards me? And if it was running from something, what the hell was it running from?
I glanced at the rifle, then back… there… a flashing glimpse of reddish brown between the trees, and then it was hurtling straight up the hillside towards me. Large, powerful shoulders and bared teeth. Head lowered, hooves sounding a staccato beat on the bare rock.
I broke and ran, in the long-legged lope that people use running down shallow slopes. In the back of my mind a little voice awoke, chastising me for not having practiced more with the gun. Too late now.
I skidded to a stop just below my pack, made a long reach for the rifle, swung the ungainly thing around, pointed the barrel towards the oncoming beast, and groped for the trigger.
Being a laser, there was no sound or recoil, but the creature’s legs buckled and its chin plowed into the stone face of the hill. I watched the animal collapse in on itself, seemingly in slow motion. It rolled over once, more due to the slope of the hill than volition, and was still.
I looked in amazement at the rifle, then at the dead beast, then back at the rifle. Then allowed myself to breathe again.
Ha! The secret. In my fear, I had done the very tiling I had been told to do when shown how to operate the rifle: Hold your breath, it will make your aim steadier.
I placed the gun across my knees and sat looking at the mound of fur. It wasn’t something I recognized, but that didn’t mean anything. The entire planet was populated with things I wouldn’t recognize if they walked up and introduced themselves.
Was it dead, or merely wounded? It lay absolutely motionless. I groped behind me until I found the radio, unwilling to let my eyes leave the creature until I was certain that it wouldn’t drag itself to its feet and resume its charge.
“Base?” I started, trying to keep my voice steady.
It took a few seconds, but the reply came back. “Heath? You OK? You never call in this early.”
“Gilda? Yeah, I’m all right. At least I think I am, but there’s a big critter here I think someone ought to come take a look at. It charged me.”
“Charged you?” Everybody’s nightmare—something aggressive and big. She didn’t like what she was hearing. I could sympathize.
“Ran. Hard. Towards me. Scared the ever-living hell out of me.”
“What is it? Where is it now?” she asked.
“I don’t know what it is, but it’s right here in front of me… uh, Bare-back Ridge. Other side.”
“In front of you? It stopped? Are you up a tree, or what?”
“I killed it.”
“You what?”
Honestly, I didn’t blame her for being startled. My lack of prowess with a gun was widely known.
“I shot it. It’s dead. Well, it looks dead, anyway. I’m going to keep an eye on it, just to be sure.”
There was stunned silence for a few moments. “I’ll get somebody up there right away.”
“I’d appreciate that. Oh… Gilda?”
“Yes?”
“Tell them to hurry if they want a good look at this thing. I’ve got a wallah up here who seems to think it’s dinner time.”
Mike Gaston was, perhaps inevitably, first on the scene, followed shortly by George Evanston and Mia Sands. Mike landed his skitter at the top of the ridge and hopped out, immediately taking possession of the area for God and king just by planting his feet at shoulder width. He danced down the ridge as lightly as though he had done it thousands of times. In tact, I don’t think he had ever been there before—bare rock just didn’t interest him.
George and Mia were a little more cautious, circling the area once before landing their skitter next to Mike’s. They were slower to approach, too, stepping warily down the hillside. Like me, they acted as though the beast might spring back to life.
Mike squinted at the carcass as though interested, not in the animal itself, but in the details of its demise. “It charged you?”
I nodded.
“I hope you didn’t pay too much.”
It took me a moment to get it. I gave him a shaky grin.
“You shot it?”
I nodded.
“It’s still intact.”
“I think so. I only fired once.”
“Not continuous beam?” he asked, as though probing for a confession. Like Gilda, he didn’t have much confidence in my marksmanship. A continuous beam would have allowed me to slash, slicing the thing in half—requiring little in the way of aim.
I gestured. “Have a look.”
He walked confidently towards the body as though it was no more hazardous than a leaf. I safetied the rifle just as George and Mia walked up. They asked almost the same questions as Mike, so I repeated the same answers. They, like Mike, seemed politely skeptical that I could have brought the animal down with a single shot. Well, so was I.
Mike stopped about three meters away from the animal. The wallah eyed him warily, then resumed worrying a strip of hide off of the body. Without warning, Mike suddenly stomped his foot and waved his arms, shouting.
“Wah—!” the wallah shrieked, scampering towards the trees, dragging the strip of flesh with it.
Mike circled the body, then squatted near the head. He looked up at me, frowning, then back at the head, then back at me. “One shot, between the eyes,” he called.
As if his words were a signal, George and Mia started towards the body. Mia surveyed the animal, then, like Mike, she glanced back towards me, an appraising look.
After ten minutes and much discussion of dentition, jaw structure, musculature, and eye placement, they came to a consensus. It was omnivorous. As such it could conceivably have been a threat. Mike took pictures and a tissue sample, then left the carcass where it lay and came back to stand before me. George and Mia took up flanking positions behind him.
“That was a lucky shot, Heath. I’ll log it in and let the sequencer rebuild it from the DNA; Once we’ve got a model, we can take a closer look at the morphology and see what we’ve got.”
I sat quite still for a long time after their skitters left, just looking at the fallen creature. A strange mixture of feelings was running through me. Regret and shame for having killed a living being, no matter how alien. Pride in my hitherto unsuspected marksmanship. Residual fear, left over from having a wild animal, possibly a dangerous one, come charging at me. A primitive urge to beat my breast and yodel at the silent forest that I was a man, able to take care of myself.
After a while, I pushed myself to my feet. Below me, the wallah was edging its way back up the slope, staring hungrily at the carcass.
I quit early that afternoon and hiked back to our base camp. I was hungry and tired when I walked out of the trees and saw the neat rows of temporary shelters. It was a welcome sight. Gilda came rushing out of the one that served as our command post and slammed into me, wrapping me tightly in her arms. “I’m glad you’re safe.”