'How did the bundle get here?' Cherry asked.
'An alien climbed up the side of the cliff and tossed it in the entrance,' Dawes said. 'Then he beat it. He looked like a big brown spider skittering down the rock wall.'
Using the blade, Noonan sliced into the animal, while Dawes and the women watched. Dawes was fascinated with Noonan's surgical precision. The roughly flaked stone knife was razor sharp, and the big man had a ready way with the beast; he carved with the skill of a professional butcher. He laid the animal open speedily, pulling back flaps of its dark red underbelly skin, and scooped out the warm entrails. He dumped them to one side; they were slimy, oozing with blood.
'At least,' Noonan said, 'the alien blood is the right color.' He efficiently carved chunks of meat from the small creature. 'Maybe this meat is poison and maybe it isn't, but at least the blood's right.'
Carol shuddered. 'I've never eaten raw meat. Isn't there some way we can make a fire?'
Noonan paused to glance up at her. 'No, there isn't,' he said emphatically, 'I know you didn't want to come on this trip, girlie. But you're here, now. You'd better be ready to eat plenty of raw meat - and worse things.'
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
They ate, and it was a strange, silent, almost shamefaced meal. The veneer of civilization that still clung to all of them, even Noonan, dampened their spirits as they ate the bloody meat.
Dawes was voraciously hungry, and it wasn't as hard for him to overcome his conditioning against eating raw meat as he thought it would be. Still, something about the sticky blood that ran between his fingers, pasting them together, made him queasy. And he could see that Carol had to make a visible effort to choke the meat down. Noonan ate without inhibitions. Cherry put away her share with a certain reserve, but with no outward show of revulsion. The meat had an odd, pungent taste about it, even raw, that made it more appealing than it might otherwise have been.
There were ten of the blue gourds. After the meat course, Noonan doled out one gourd to each of them and put the remaining six aside. 'In case we don't get fed again too soon,' he explained. 'These things will keep. The meat won't.'
The gourds tasted sour, strongly acidified; they had a stringy, unpleasant texture, and needed plenty of chewing. But they were nourishing, and filled up the stomach well. Dawes finished his gourd quickly and turned his attention to the white grapes. These were doughy in consistency, dry, and not very good.
When everyone was through eating, Noonan gathered together the remnants of the meal, the bones of the small animal and the shells of the gourds, and hurled them from the cave mouth. After a distinct pause came the thudding sounds of landing.
'Why'd you do that?' Dawes asked.
'To show them that we appreciated the stuff. There's no better way than to toss back a carcass that's been cleaned of flesh. Anyway, we can't have that junk sitting around in here. Bad for sanitation.'
Cherry Thomas grinned uneasily. 'Sanitation. Glad you brought that matter up. This hotel don't have such good furnishings.'
'We'll set up a couple of latrines up here near the cavemouth,' Noonan said. "Better ventilation that way. All the comforts of home.'
'What's a latrine?' Carol asked.
'It's a hole in the ground, dearie.' Noonan's voice dripped concentrated H2SO4. 'Just a hole in the ground, that's all. You use it. We can have one for the menfolk, one for womenfolk, if you like.'
'Oh. I see,' Carol said in a small, unhappy voice.
Cherry Thomas giggled in her cold, tinkling way.
Noonan rumbled with laughter. Dawes felt profoundly embarrassed for Carol, but said nothing.
Noonan pointed upcavern, where the little stream split the cavern floor into two roughly equal sectors.
'Look here, Dawes. Suppose you and Carol take the far corner up there, on the right.'
'And you?'
'Cherry and I'll stay on the left, a little ways lower down toward the cave mouth. That's for sleeping. It's the best arrangement we can make.'
'It'll be something like living in a goldfish bowl,'
Cherry said.
Dawes shrugged. 'We'll have to manage.'
He rose, walked to the front of the cave, and peered out. Seven or eight aliens squatted on the ground a hundred and fifty feet below, looking up.
'More like a goldfish bowl than you think,' he said, turning around. 'They're watching us from down there.
Just watching. As if - as if we were really fish in a bowl, or pets in a cage.'
'Maybe we are,' Noonan said. He scooped up a handful of moist sand, compressed it in his clenched fist until it was a hard ball, and angrily hurled it down at the staring aliens. It broke apart in midflight and showered harmlessly down as a spray of sand. Noonan turned away, cursing softly.
The day dragged along horribly. Four people in an escape-proof cell a hundred yards long and perhaps seventy feet wide, without fire, without anything but themselves. And they hadn't yet learned to like each other much.
Dawes felt his nerves tightening like the tuned strings of a fiddle. There was nothing to do in the cave but stare at each other, talk, tell jokes. And there was so little to talk about. Noonan was monolithic; he spoke only when he chose, never speaking just for the mere sake of making noise. Carol's conversation seemed to be limited to expressions of faint hopes and fears; Cherry's, to jokes and reminiscences of show business.
Dawes found little to say himself, and spent the hours staring broodingly at his muddy feet. There was no telling how long they would have to stay here, but he saw already that however long it would be, it was going to be hellish.
Cherry had launched into an interminable monologue about her life and good times. It went on for nearly half an hour, as she told the unlistening trio of her happy days under the management of Dan Cirillo, a saint of a man if Cherry's account had any truth to it. She was working up slowly to the great tragedy in her life, when Dan had been selected, leaving her rudderless. But it was taking her a long time to that point.
'So I opened at the Lido on the 24th,' she said. 'Dan got me a great contract - three thousand a week, all the extras I could think of. Ninety-piece orchestra plus synthesizer accompaniment. And me in an evening gown that cost ten grand. I wish I had that evening gown now.
I wish I was back there in Nevada. I wish I was anywhere, anywhere but in this lousy cave.'
The monologue came to a temporary halt. In the silence Carol said, in a dead, flat voice, 'We aren't going to get out. I know we aren't. Not ever. We're just going to stay here and rot. There are times I feel like just jumping out and—'
'Carol I' Dawes burst out.
The girl looked up at him without understanding. Her eyes were glazed with fatigue and fear.
After a shocked little pause Cherry said, 'Well, the kid's got a point there. We're stuck in here for good. If I'd known what was good for me, I would have gone with Dan back in '14, and we'd be together somewhere having kids, instead of me being stuck here in this lousy cave where we can't even—'
'That's enough, Cherry,' Noonan interrupted. 'Stop moaning about what you didn't do in '14. What's past is past.'
'So we'll rot away here and—'
'That's enough, Cherry!' Noonan snapped to his feet out of a crosslegged position without using his hands.
'I've got an idea,' he said. 'Maybe it isn't worth much, but at least I can try it.'
He began to strip off his shirt, kicking off his shoes at the same time.
'What are you going to do?' Dawes asked.
Noonan unsnapped his trousers. Take a look at that underground stream up back. I'm going to get in there and wander around a little. Maybe the stream comes out somewhere. Maybe we can all get out the other side.'