"Oh, hell!" said Ordway. "We can't run all over the planet on the budget they gave me!"
"But Cyril, don't you see—"
The two executives had gradually raised their voices. Reith said, "Hey, pipe down! You're bothering the animals."
Timásh, pulling up beside the carriage, mumbled: "Ye had best turn and flee, Master Reit'. Yon cow hath taken an ill will to you."
The female bishtar had turned to face the carriage. Now she stood with little ears twitching and stumpy trunks sniffing.
"Help me wheel these ayas round," grated Reith, releasing the brake and hauling on the reins.
The road proved too narrow for easy turning. Reith had to back the vehicle so that its rear wheels crunched into the vegetation. Batting his big straw hat at the ayas' heads, Timásh turned them partly around; but then, rolling their eyes in terror, they balked. Out of control, they danced about nervously, unmindful of threat or encouragement.
Alicia slipped out of the carriage, seized the horns of the nearer animal, and hauled its head around by main force. Reith called: "Fine, Lish! Get up on a spare aya; it'll be safer for you."
Timásh threw Alicia the reins of one of the spares. She caught the strap and vaulted on to the back of the unsaddled beast.
Just then, the cow bishtar opened its vast maw, gave a thunderous snort, and began shuffling with appalling speed towards the travelers. Reith, having at last turned the animals and carriage, cracked his whip and shouted "Byant-hao!"
All the ayas broke into a gallop. Ordway, glancing back from his seat in the swaying barouche, cried: "My God, Fergus, that damned thing's gaining on us!"
The bishtar's pounding sextuple footfalls had indeed begun to close the gap. Ordway's ruddy face paled to a livid hue, and his jowls quivered like rolls of jelly.
"I think we're gaining," said White in a strangled voice that lacked conviction. But even as he spoke, the bishtar slowed to a stop, sides heaving, and shook its ponderous head. Reith let his team slow down. When the bishtar was almost out of sight beyond a slight bend in the road, Reith pulled to a halt and looked back.
"There she goes," he murmured at last, as the cow began plodding back the way she had come. When the beast was wholly out of sight, Reith turned the carriage again and cautiously resumed the journey.
"I say!" said Ordway, mopping his forehead. "That'll be something to tell the shooting crew about. Were we in real danger?"
Reith shrugged. "If she'd caught you, she'd have squashed you like a grape. But once we turned, I knew we had enough of a start to get away, unless we lost a wheel or something. Bishtars can move pretty fast, but they soon run out of breath. I once got away from one on foot."
"You did?" said White.
"Sure you're not pulling my leg?" added Ordway. "No; straight goods; tell you some time. There's nothing like being chased by an angry bishtar to bring out the best in a runner. But next time I say to keep your voices down, do it!"
By midafternoon they had reached the Qou ferry landing, where they waited an hour for the terry. At last a broad-beamed scow, propelled by a dozen oars, crawled like a water insect out of the drizzle. The oarsmen were Krishnans of the tailed species,' naked and hairy, who under the ferrymaster's direction swarmed chattering ashore. While Reith and Timásh led their nervous ayas out on the deck of the scow, the tailed ones manhandled the carriage aboard. White remarked: "Cyril, I've got a great idea! Couldn't we get Attila to write in a scene with these monkey-men?"
Ordway raised a skeptical eyebrow. "You know script writers."
When at last they were settled in Qou, Reith and his charges strolled about the slatternly village, staring at the tailed primitives. Scarcely assimilated into such civilization as the town possessed, they lived in a clump of circular reed huts and toiled at menial tasks.
White disappeared into another astrologer's shack. Alicia became engrossed in conversing, in a tongue full of grunts and clicks, with a group of idle primitives. Amazed that any tailless being could address them in their own language, the tailed ones crowded round, grinning and chattering.
"Look at her!" said Ordway, whose round lace bore a stubble of reddish-gold beard. "She can do anything, that gel. Makes one feel flat-out inadequate, just to watch her. I say, Fergus!"
"Yes?"
"Don't take this wrong; but are you and she—ah— contemplating ..."
"Damn it, Cyril—"
"Please, old boy, don't get off your bike! You know my reason for asking. Here am I, with a peg you could hang a fur coat on, while you two dance a land of hesitation waltz, circling round and round. I want the gel, and you're driving me loopy!"
Reith's expression did not change; experience had taught him to hide his emotions. After a pause, he coolly replied: "I'm afraid you'll have to put up with our dance a while longer. We're just living from day to day, enjoying life and promising nothing." He glanced at the setting sun, intermittently visible through tattered clouds. "We'd better get back; these people dine early."
Dinner, served by the innkeeper's wife and buxom daughter, looked like a kind of shrimp stew and tasted like spiced rubber. Reith entertained his companions with Krishnan tales.
"A French adventurer, Felix Borel, once worked the perfect swindle. He sold the Knights of Qarar the rights to a perpetual-motion machine. He'd have made a good thing of this flimflam, only he got into a duel with a Knight over a female. Being no fighter, he had to run for it—yes?" he said in Mikardandou. The innkeeper's half-grown son was plucking at his sleeve.
"Pray, Master Terran," said the boy, "hast seen my bozmaj?"
"No, my lad I have not. I'll watch for it."
"What's that?" asked Ordway.
The boy's lost his pet, a small relative of the shan. To get back to Borel's sad tale—"
White, staring at Reith's plate, made a strangled sound. Reith looked down to see one of the "shrimps" stagger to its eight feet and now, dripping gravy, wander off the plate. It plodded across the table top, leaving a double row of little brown spots where its feet had touched the wood.
Ordway, his blue eyes wide, said: "Good God, what's that? I thought the five spaghetti we've been eating was pretty revolting; but at least it didn't walk away on a lot of legs!"
"Oh, that's all right," said Reith. "Lots of lower Krishnan organisms still move after being boiled. Something in their proteins." He deftly skewered the creature with one of his eating spears and held it up. It arched its body and rhythmically waved its eight legs.
White clapped a hand to his mouth, rose, and bolted out the door. Reith called: "Madam Nirizi! Kindly take my little friend here back and boil him for another quarter-hour!"
Ordway sighed. "You two seem not only to be made of piano wires and india-rubber bands, but to have stainless-steel insides as well!"
"We've adapted," said Reith. "Actually, a Terran can eat most Krishnan foods. A few would upset or even kill you; but I see to it that my clients don't get them."
Alicia added sweetly: "So whenever a visitor acts obnoxious, all we have to do is to slip him the wrong land of eats."
Ordway shuddered. "I assure you I shall sprout wings! And never let it be said that a plucky British lad funked out at the sight of strange food. I've faced up to worse hazards on dear old Terra." He bravely attacked his pseudo-shrimp. Later he said: "Alicia, you haven't eaten half your dinner. Has that live prawn zapped your appetite, too?"
"No," she replied. "I eat what's good for me, no more."
Ordway sighed. "Wish I had your self-discipline."
"Suffering is the price of sylphishness." Ordway frowned. "What's selfishness got to do with it?''
"I said 'sylphishness.' You know, like a sylph."