One had the red mouth of a female.
“He must have remembered it was time to kill his own woman,” Hum observed. The villagers waited, but nothing happened.
“Perhaps,” Rantan said, “perhaps he would like someone to kill her for him. It might be the custom of their land.”
Without further ado Rantan slashed down the female with his tail.
The male creature made a terrible noise and pointed a metal stick at Rantan. Rantan collapsed, dead.
“That’s odd,” Mishill said. “I wonder if that denotes disapproval?”
The things from the metal object—eight of them—were in a tight little circle. One was holding the dead female, and the rest were pointing the metal sticks on all sides. Hum went up and asked them what was wrong.
“I don’t understand,” Hum said, after he spoke with them. “They used words I haven’t learned. But I gather that their emotion is one of reproach.”
The monsters were backing away. Another villager, deciding it was about time, killed his wife who was standing in a doorway. The group of monsters stopped and jabbered at each other. Then they motioned to Hum.
Hum’s body motion was incredulous after he had talked with them.
“If I understood right,” Hum said, “They are ordering us not to kill any more of our women!”
“What!” Cordovir and a dozen others shouted.
“I’ll ask them again.” Hum went back into conference with the monsters who were waving metal sticks in their tentacles.
“That’s right,” Hum said. Without further preamble he flipped his tail, throwing one of the monsters across the village square. Immediately the others began to point their sticks while retreating rapidly.
After they were gone, the villagers found that seventeen males were dead. Hum, for some reason, had been missed.
“Now will you believe me!” Cordovir shouted. “The creatures told a deliberate untruth! They said they wouldn’t molest us and then they proceed to kill seventeen of us! Not only an amoral act—but a concerted death effort!”
It was almost past human understanding.
“A deliberate untruth!” Cordovir shouted the blasphemy, sick with loathing. Men rarely discussed the possibility of anyone telling an untruth.
The villagers were beside themselves with anger and revulsion, once they realized the full concept of an untruthful creature. And, added to that was the monsters’ concerted death effort!
It was like the most horrible nightmare come true. Suddenly it became apparent that these creatures didn’t kill females. Undoubtedly they allowed them to spawn unhampered. The thought of that was enough to make a strong man retch.
The surplus females broke out of their pens and, joined by the wives, demanded to know what was happening. When they were told, they were twice as indignant as the men, such being the nature of women.
“Kill them!” the surplus females roared. “Don’t let them change our ways. Don’t let them introduce immorality!”
“It’s true,” Hum said sadly. “I should have guessed it.”
“’They must be killed at once!” a female shouted. Being surplus, she had no name at present, but she made up for that in blazing personality.
“We women desire only to live moral, decent lives, hatching eggs in the pen until our time of marriage comes. And then twenty-five ecstatic days! How could we desire more? These monsters will destroy our way of life. They will make us as terrible as they!”
“Now do you understand?” Cordovir screamed at the men. “I warned you, I presented it to you, and you ignored me! Young men must listen to old men in time of crisis!” In his rage he killed two youngsters with a blow of his tail. The villagers applauded.
“Drive them out,” Cordovir shouted. “Before they corrupt us!”
All the females rushed off to kill the monsters.
“They have death-sticks,” Hum observed. “Do the females know?”
“I don’t believe so,” Cordovir said. He was completely calm now. “You’d better go and tell them.”
“I’m tired,” Hum said sulkily. “I’ve been translating. Why don’t you go?”
“Oh, let’s both go,” Cordovir said, bored with the youngster’s adolescent moodiness. Accompanied by half the villagers they hurried off after the females.
They overtook them on the edge of the cliff that overlooked the object. Hum explained the death-sticks while Cordovir considered the problem.
“Roll stones on them,” he told the females. “Perhaps you can break the metal of the object.”
The females started rolling stones down the cliffs with great energy. Some bounced off the metal of the object. Immediately, lines of red fire came from the object and females were killed. The ground shook.
“Let’s move back,” Cordovir said. “The females have it well in hand, and this shaky ground makes me giddy.”
Together with the rest of the males they moved to a safe distance and watched the action.
Women were dying right and left, but they were reinforced by women of other villages who had heard of the menace. They were fighting for their homes now, their rights, and they were fiercer than a man could ever be. The object was throwing fire all over the cliff, but the fire helped dislodge more stones which rained down on the thing. Finally, big fires came out of one end of the metal object.
A landslide started, and the object got into the air just in time. It barely missed a mountain; then it climbed steadily, until it was a little black speck against the larger sun. And then it was gone.
That evening, it was discovered that fifty-three females had been killed. This was fortunate since it helped keep down the surplus female population. The problem would become even more acute now, since seventeen males were gone in a single lump.
Cordovir was feeling exceedingly proud of himself. His wife had been gloriously killed in the fighting, but he took another at once.
“We had better kill our wives sooner than every twenty-five days for a while,” he said at the evening Gathering. Just until things get back to normal.”
The surviving females, back in the pen, heard him and applauded wildly.
“I wonder where the things have gone,” Hum said, offering the question to the Gathering.
“Probably away to enslave some defenseless race,” Cordovir said.
“Not necessarily,” Mishill put in, and the evening argument was on.
SEVENTH VICTIM
STANTON Frelaine sat at his desk, trying to look as busy as an executive should at nine-thirty in the morning. It was impossible. He couldn’t concentrate on the advertisement he had written the previous night, couldn’t think about business. All he could do was wait until the mail came.
He had been expecting his notification for two weeks now. The government was behind schedule, as usual.
The glass door of his office was marked Morger and Frelaine, Clothiers. It opened, and E.J. Morger walked in, limping slightly from his old gunshot wound. His shoulders were bent; but at the age of seventy-three, he wasn’t worrying much about his posture.
“Well, Stan?” Morger asked. “What about that ad?”
Frelaine had joined Morger sixteen years ago, when he was twenty-seven. Together they had built Protec-Clothes into a million-dollar concern.
“I suppose you can run it,” Frelaine said, handing the slip of paper to Morger. If only the mail would come earlier, he thought.
“‘Do you own a Protec-Suit?’” Morger read aloud, holding the paper close to his eyes. “‘The finest tailoring in the world has gone into Morger and Frelaine’s Protec-Suit, to make it the leader in men’s fashions.’”
Morger cleared his throat and glanced at Frelaine. He smiled and read on.
“‘Protec-Suit is the safest as well as the smartest. Every Protec-Suit comes with special built-in gun pocket, guaranteed not to bulge. No one will know you are carrying a gun—except you. The gun pocket is exceptionally easy to get at, permitting fast, unhindered draw. Choice of hip or breast pocket.’ Very nice,” Morger commented.