It was night. Rawlins had not heard from Boardman for several hours. He had not seen Muller since early afternoon. Animals were prowling the plaza, mostly small ones, all teeth and claws. Rawlins had come unarmed today. He was ready to trample on any beast that slipped between the bars of his cage.
Hunger and cold assailed him. He searched the darkness for Muller. This had ceased to be a joke.
“Can you hear me?” he said to Boardman.
“We’re going to get you out soon.”
“Yes, but when?”
“We sent a probe in, Ned.”
“It shouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes for a probe to reach me. These zones aren’t hazardous.”
Boardman paused. “Muller intercepted the probe and destroyed it an hour ago.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that?”
“We’re sending several drones at once,” Boardman told him. “Muller’s bound to overlook at least one of them. Everything’s perfectly all right, Ned. You’re in no danger.”
“Until something happens,” Rawlins said gloomily.
But he did not press the point. Cold, hungry, he slouched against the wall and waited. He saw a small lithe beast stalk and kill a much bigger animal a hundred meters away in the plaza. He watched scavengers scurrying in to rip away slabs of bloody meat. He listened to the sounds of rending and tearing. His view was partially obstructed, and he craned his neck to search for the drone probe that would set him free. No probe appeared.
He felt like a sacrificial victim, staked out for the kill.
The scavengers had finished their work. They came padding across the plaza toward him—little weasel-shaped beasts with big tapering heads and paddle-shaped paws from which yellow recurving claws protruded. Their eyes were red in yellow fields. They studied him with interest, solemnly, thoughtfully. Blood, thick and purplish, was smeared over their muzzles.
They drew nearer. A long narrow snout intruded between two bars of his cage. Rawlins kicked at it. The snout withdrew. To his left, another jutted through. Then there were three snouts.
And then the scavengers began slipping into the cage on all sides.
NINE
1
Boardman had established a comfortable little nest for himself in the Zone F camp. At his age he offered no apologies. He had never been a Spartan, and now, as the price he exacted for making these strenuous and risky journeys, he carried his pleasures around with him. Drones had fetched his belongings from the ship. Under the milky-white curve of the extrusion dome he had carved a private sector with radiant heating, glow-drapes, a gravity suppressor, even a liquor console. Brandy and other delights were never far away. He slept on a soft inflatable mattress covered with a thick red quilt inlaid with heater strands. He knew that the other men in the camp, getting along on far less, bore him no resentment. They expected Charles Boardman to live well wherever he was.
Greenfield entered. “We’ve lost another drone, sir,” he said crisply. “That leaves three in the inner zones.”
Boardman flipped the ignition cap on a cigar. He sucked fumes a moment, crossed and uncrossed his legs, exhaled, smiled. “Is Muller going to get those too?”
“I’m afraid so. He knows the access routes better than we do. He’s covering them all.”
“And you haven’t sent any drones in through routes we haven’t charted?”
“Two, sir. Lost them both.”
“Umm. We’d better send out a great many probes at once, then, and hope we can slip at least one of them past Muller. That boy is getting annoyed at being caged. Change the program, will you? The brain can manage diversionary tactics, if it’s told. Say, twenty probes entering simultaneously.”
“We have only three left,” Greenfield said.
Boardman bit convulsively into his cigar. “Three here in the camp, or three altogether?”
“Three in camp. Five more outside the maze. They’re working their way inward now.”
“Who allowed this to happen? Call Hosteen! Get those templates working! I want fifty drones built by morning! No, make it eighty! Of all the stupidity, Greenfield!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get out!”
“Yes, sir.”
Boardman puffed furiously. He dialed for brandy, the thick, rich, viscous stuff made by the Prolepticalist Fathers on Deneb XIII. The situation was growing infuriating. He knocked back half a snifter of the brandy, gasped, filled the glass again. He knew that he was in danger of losing his perspective—the worst of sins. The delicacy of this assignment was getting to him. All these mincing steps, the tiny complications, the painstaking edgings toward and away from the goal. Rawlins in the cage. Rawlins and his moral qualms. Muller and his neurotic world-outlook. The little beasts that nipped at your heels here and thoughtfully eyed your throat. The traps these demons had built. And the waiting extragalactics, saucer-eyed, radio-sensed, to whom even a Charles Boardman was no more than an insensate vegetable. Doom overhanging all. Irritably Boardman stubbed out his cigar, and immediately stared at its unfinished length in astonishment. The ignition cap would not work a second time. He leaned forward, got a beam of infrared from the room generator, and kindled it once more, puffing energetically until it was lit. With a petulant gesture of his hand Boardman reactivated his communication link with Ned Rawlins.
The screen showed him moonlight, curving bars, and small furry snouts bristling with teeth.
“Ned?” he said. “Charles here. We’re getting you those drones, boy. We’ll have you out of that stupid cage in five minutes, do you hear, five minutes!”
2
Rawlins was very busy.
It seemed almost funny. There was no end to the supply of the little beasts. They came nosing through the bars two and three at a time, weasels, ferrets, minks, stoats, whatever they were, all teeth and eyes. But they were scavengers, not killers. God knew what drew them to the cage. They clustered about him, brushing his ankles with their coarse fur, pawing him, slicing through his skin with their claws, biting his shins.
He trampled them. He learned very quickly that a booted foot placed just behind the head could snap a spinal column quickly and effectively. Then, with a swift kick, he could sweep his victim into a corner of the cage, where others would pounce upon it at once. Cannibals, too. Rawlins developed a rhythm of it. Turn, stomp, kick. Turn, stomp, kick. Turn, stomp, kick. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
They were cutting him up badly, though. For the first five minutes he scarcely had time to pause for breath. Turn. Stomp. Kick. He took care of at least twenty of them in that time. Against the far side of the cage a heap of ragged little corpses had risen, with their comrades nosing around hunting for the tender morsels. At last a moment came when all the scavengers currently inside the cage were busy with their fallen cohorts, and no more lurked outside. Rawlins had a momentary respite. He seized a bar with one hand and lifted his left leg to examine the miscellany of cuts, scratches, and bites. Do they give a posthumous Stellar Cross if you die of galactic rabies, he wondered? His leg was bloody from the knee down, and the wounds, though not deep, were hot and painful. Suddenly he discovered why the scavengers had come to him. While he paused he had time to inhale, and he smelled the ripe fragrance of rotting meat. He could almost visualize it: a great bestial corpse, split open at the belly to expose red sticky organs, big black flies circling overhead, perhaps a maggot or two circumnavigating the mound of flesh-Nothing was rotting in here. The dead scavengers hadn’t had time to go bad; little was left of most of them but picked bones by now anyway.