War Against the Rull

by A. E. van Vogt

  "It seems to give you a sort of mournful satisfaction," Jamieson said dryly.

  She flashed, "I'm here to see that you don't get back alive to the settlement, that's all."

  Jamieson scarcely heard her. His face was screwed into a black frown. "I'm sorry that you came back. I regret keenly that a woman is in such a dangerous situation. Your friends are scoundrels to have permitted it. But I'll get back safely."

  She laughed contemptuously. "Impossible. You try living off the soil of this barren moon; try killing a gryb with your bare hands."

  "Not my hands," replied Jamieson grimly. "My brains and my experience. We're going to get back to the Five Cities in spite of these natural obstacles, in spite of you!"

  In the silence that followed, Jamieson examined their surroundings. He felt his first real chill of doubt as his eyes and mind took in that wild and desolate hell of rock that stretched to every horizon. No, not every! Barely visible in the remote distance of the direction they would have to go was a dark mist of black cliff. It seemed to swim there against the haze of semi-blackness that was the sky beyond the horizon. In the near distance the piling rock showed fantastic shapes, as if frozen in a state of writhing anguish. And there was no beauty in it, no sweep of grandeur, simply endless, desperate miles of black, tortured deadness—and silence!

  He grew aware of the silence with a start that pierced his body like a physical shock. The silence seemed suddenly alive. It pressed unrelentingly down upon that flat stretch of rock where they stood. A malevolent silence that kept on and on, without echoes, without even a wind now to whistle and moan over the billion caves and gouged trenches that honeycombed the bleak, dark, treacherous land around them. A silence that seemed the very spirit of this harsh and deadly little world, here under that cold, brilliant sun. ""Oppressive isn't it?"

  Jamieson stared at her without exactly seeing her. His gaze was far away. "Yes," he said thoughtfully. "I'd forgotten what it felt like; and I hadn't realized how much I'd forgotten. Well, we'd better get started."

  As they leaped cautiously over the rock, assisted by the smaller gravitation of the moon, the woman said, "What do you think you've found out about ezwals?"

  "I can't tell you that," Jamieson replied. "If you knew what I know, hating them, you'd destroy them."

  "Why didn't you tell the Council you had specific information instead of merely offering what seemed to be an hypothesis? They're sensible people."

  "Sensible!" echoed Jamieson, and his tone of voice was significant with irony.

  "I don't believe you have anything but a theory," said Barbara Whitman flatly. "So stop pretending."

  7

  Two hours later the Sun was high in those dark, gloomy heavens. It had been two hours of silence; two hours while they tramped precariously along thin stretches of rock between fantastic valleys that yawned on either side, while they skirted the edges of caves whose bleak depths sheered straight down into the restless bowels of the Moon; two hours of desolation.

  The great black cliff, no longer misted by distance, loomed near and gigantic. As far as the eye could see it stretched to either side; and from where Jamieson toiled and leaped ever more wearily, its wall seemed to rear up abrupt and glassy and unscalable.

  He gasped, "I hate to confess it, but I'm not sure I can climb that cliff."

  The woman turned a face toward him that had lost its brown healthiness in a gray, dull fatigue.' A hint of fire came into her eyes. "It's hunger!" she said curtly. "I told you what it would be like. We're starving."

  Jamieson pressed on, but after a moment slackened his pace and said, "This grasseater—it also eats the smaller branches of trees, doesn't it?"

  "Yes. That's what its long neck is for. What about it?"

  "Is that all it eats?"

  "That and grass."

  "Nothing else?" Jamieson's voice was sharp with question, his face drawn tight with insistence. "Think."

  Barbara bridled. "Don't take that tone to me," she said. "What's the use of all this anyway?"

  "Sorry—about the tone, I mean. What does it drink?"

  "It likes ice. They always stay near the rivers. During the brief melting periods each year, all the water from the forests runs into the rivers and freezes. The only other thing it eats or drinks is salt. Like so many animals, they absolutely have to have salt, and it's pretty rare."

  "Salt! That's it!" Jamieson's voice was triumphant. "We'll have to turn back. We passed a stretch of rock salt about a mile back. We'll have to get some."

  "Go back! Are you crazy ? "

  Jamieson stared at her, his eyes gray pools of steely glitter. "Listen, Barbara, I said a while ago that I didn't think I could climb those cliffs. Well, don't worry, I'll climb them. And I'll last through all today, and all tomorrow and the other twelve or fifteen or twenty days. I've put on about twenty-five pounds during the last ten years that I've been an administrator. Well, damn it, my body'll use that as food, and by Heaven, I'll be alive and moving and going strong—and I'll even carry you if necessary. But if we expect to kill a grasseater and live decently, we've got to have salt. I saw some salt, and we can't take a chance on passing it up. So back we go."

  They glared at each other with the wild, tempestuous anger

  of two people whose nerves are on ultimate edge. Then Barbara drew a deep breath and said, "I don't know what your plan is, but it sounds crazy to me. Have you ever seen a grasseater? Well, it looks something like a giraffe, only its bigger and faster on its feet. Maybe you've got some idea of tempting it with salt and then killing it with a knife. I tell you, you can't get near it, but I'll go back with you. It doesn't matter, because we're going to die, no matter what you think. What I'm hoping is that a gryb sees us. It'll be quick that way."

  "There is something," said Jamieson, "pitiful and horrible about a beautiful woman who is determined to die."

  "You don't think I want to die!" she flashed. Her passionate voice died abruptly, but Jamieson knew better than to let so much fierce feeling die unexplored.

  "What about your child?"

  He saw by the wretched look on her face that he had struck home. He felt no compunction. It was imperative that Barbara Whitman develop a desire to live. In the crisis that seemed all too near now, her assistance might easily be the difference between life and death.

  It was odd, the fever of talk that came upon Jamieson as they laboriously retraced their steps to the salt rock. It was as if his tongue, as if all of his body, had become intoxicated; and yet his words, though swift, were not incoherent but reasoned and calculated to convince her. He spoke of the problem of man landing on inhabited planets and of the many solutions that had been achieved by reason. Human beings often did not realize how deeply attached life was to its own planet and how desperately each race fought against intruders.

  "Here's your salt!" Barbara interrupted him finally.

  The salt rock composed a narrow ledge that protruded like a long fence which ran along in a startlingly straight line and ended abruptly at a canyon's edge, the fence rearing up, as if cringing back in frank dismay at finding itself teetering on the brink of an abyss.

  Jamieson picked up two pieces of salt rubble and slipped them into the capacious pockets of his plainsmanlike coat—and started back toward the dark wall of cliff nearly three miles away. They trudged along in silence. Jamieson's body ached in every muscle, and every nerve pulsed alarms to his brain. He clung with a desperate, stubborn strength to each bit of rock projecting from the cliff wall, horribly aware that a slip meant death. Once he looked down, and his brain reeled in dismay from the depths that fell away behind him.

  Through blurred vision he saw the woman's figure a few feet away, the tortured lines of her face a grim reminder of the hunger weakness that was corroding the very roots of their two precariously held lives.

  "Hang on!" Jamieson gasped. "It's only a few more yards."

  They made it and collapsed on the edge of that terrific cliff, too weary to climb the
gentle slope that remained before they could look over the country beyond, too exhausted to do anything but lie there, sucking the life-giving air into their lungs. At last Barbara whispered, "What's the use? If we had any sense we'd jump off this cliff and get it over with."

  "We can jump into a deep cave any time," Jamieson retorted. "Let's get going."

  He rose shakily to his feet, took a few steps, then stiffened and flung himself down with a hissing intake of his breath. His fingers grabbed her leg and jerked her back brutally to a prone position.

  "Down for your life. There's a herd of grasseaters half a mile away. And they mean life for us."

  Barbara crawled up beside him, almost eagerly; and the two peered cautiously over the knob of rock out onto a grassy plain. The plain was somewhat below them. To the left, a scant hundred yards away, like a wedge driven into the grassland, was the pointed edge of a forest. The grass beyond seemed almost like a projection of the forest growth. It, too, formed a wedge that petered out in bleak rock. At the far end of the grass was a herd of about a hundred grasseaters.

  "They're working this way!" Jamieson said. "And they'll pass close to that wedge of trees."

  A faint air of irony edged his companion's voice as she said, "And what will you do—run out and put salt on their tails? I tell you, Doctor Jamieson, we haven't got a thing that—"

  "Our first course," said Jamieson, unheeding, seeming to think out loud, "is to get into that thick belt of trees. We can do that by skirting along this cliff's edge and putting the trees between us and the animals. Then you can lend me your knife."

  "Okay," she agreed in a tired voice. "If you won't listen, you'll have to learn from experience. I tell you, you won't get within a quarter of a mile of those things."

  "I don't want to," Jamieson retorted. "You see, Barbara, if you had more confidence in life, you'd realize that this problem of killing animals by cunning has been solved before. It's absolutely amazing how similarly it has been solved on different worlds and under widely differing conditions. One would almost suspect a common evolution, but actually it is only a parallel situation producing a parallel solution. Just watch me."

  "I'm willing," she said. "There's almost any way I'd rather die than by starving. A meal of cooked grasseater is tough going, but it'll be pure heaven. Don't forget, though, that the bloodsucker grybs follow grasseater herds, get as near as possible at night, then kill them in the morning when they're frozen. Right now with darkness near, a gryb must be out there somewhere, hiding, sneaking nearer. Pretty soon he'll smell us, and then hell— "We'll come to the gryb when he comes for us," said Jamieson

  calmly- "I'm sorry I never visited this moon in my younger days; these problems would all have been settled long ago. In the meantime, the forest is our goal."

  Jamieson's outer calmness was but a mask for his inner excitement. His body shook with hunger and eagerness as they reached the safety of the forest. His fingers were trembling violently as he took her knife and began to dig at the base of a great, bare, brown tree.

  "It's the root, isn't it," he asked unsteadily, "that's so tough and springy that it's almost like fine tempered steel, and won't break even if it's bent into a circle? They call it eurood on Earth, and it's used in industry."

  "Yes," she said doubtfully. "What are you going to do—make a bow? I suppose you could use a couple of grass blades in place of catgut. The grass is pretty strong and makes a good rope."

  "No," said Jamieson. "I'm not making a bow and arrow. Mind you, I can shoot a pretty mean arrow. But I'm remembering what you said about not being able to get within a quarter of a mile of the beasts."

  He jerked out a root, which was about an inch in thickness, cut off a generous two-foot length and began to sharpen, first one end, then the other. It was hard going, harder than he had expected, because the knife skidded along the surface almost as if it were metal. Finally it obtained a cutting hold. "Makes a good edge and point," he commented. "And now, give me a hand in bending this double, while I tie some grass blades around to keep it this way."

  "Oh-oh!" she said wonderingly. "I see-e-e! That is clever. It'll make a mouthful about six inches in diameter. The grasseater that gets it will gobble it up in one gulp to prevent any of the others' getting the salt you're going,to smear on it. His digestive juices will dissolve the grass string, the points will spring apart and tear the wall of his stomach, producing an internal hemorrhage."

  "If s a method," said Jamieson, "used by the primitives of various planets, and our own Eskimo back on Earth uses it on wolves. Naturally, they all use different kinds of bait, but the principle is the same."

  He made his way cautiously to the edge of the forest. From the shelter of a tree he flung the little pieces of bent wood with all his strength. It landed in the grass a hundred and fifty feet away.

  "We'd better make some more," Jamieson said. "We can't depend on one being found."

  The eating was good; the cooked meat tough but tasty; and it was good, too, to feel the flow of strength into his body. He sighed at last and stood up, glanced at the sinking Sun, an orange-sized ball of flame in the western sky.

  "We'll have to carry sixty Earth pounds of meat apiece; that's four pounds a day for the next fifteen days. Eating meat alone is dangerous; we may go insane, though it really requires about a month for that. We've got to carry the meat because we can't waste any more time killing grasseaters."

  Jamieson began to cut into the meaty part of the animal, which lay stretched out on the tough grass, and in a few minutes had tied together two light bundles. By braiding grass together, he made himself a pack sack and lifted the long shank of meat until it was strapped to his back. There was a little adjustment necessary to keep the weight from pressing his electrically heated clothes too tightly against him; when he looked up finally, he saw that Barbara was looking at him peculiarly.

  "You realize, of course," she said, "that you're quite insane now. It's true that, with these heated suits, we may be able to live through the cold of tonight, provided we find a deep cave. But don't think for a second that, once a gryb gets on our trail, we'll be able to throw it a piece of sharpened wood and expect it to have an internal hemorrhage."

  "Why not?" Jamieson asked, and his voice was sharp.

  "Because it's the toughest creature ever spawned by a crazy evolution, the main reason I imagine why no intelligent form of life evolved on this moon. Its claws are literally diamond hard; its teeth can twist metals out of shape; its stomach wall can scarcely be cut with a knife, let alone with crudely pointed wood."

  Her voice took on a note of exasperation. "I'm glad we've had this meal; starving wasn't my idea of a pleasant death. I want the quick death that the gryb will give us. But for heaven's sake, get it out of your head that we shall live through this. I tell you, the monster will follow us into any cave, cleverly enlarge it wherever he has difficulty, and he'll get us because eventually we'll reach a dead end. They're not normal caves, you know, but meteor holes, the result of a cosmic cataclysm millions of years ago, and they're all twisted out of shape by the movement of the planet's crust. As for tonight, we'd better get busy and find a deep cave with plenty of twists in it, and perhaps a place where we can block the air currents from coming in. The winds will be arriving about a half an hour before the sun goes down, and our electric heaters won't be worth anything against those freezing blasts. It might pay us to gather some of the dead wood lying around, so we can build a fire at the really cold part of the night."

  Getting the wood into the cave was simple enough. They gathered great armfuls of it and tossed it down to where it formed a cluttering pile at the first twist in the tunnel. Then, having gathered all the loose wood in the vicinity, they lowered themselves down to the first level, Jamieson first in a gingerly fashion, the young woman—Jamieson noticed—with a snap and spring. A smile crinkled his lips. The spirit of youth, he reflected, would not be suppressed.

  They were just finishing throwing the wood down to the nex
t level when suddenly a shadow darkened the cave mouth. Jamieson glanced up with a terrible start and had a fleeting glimpse of great fanged jaws and glowing eyes that glared from a hideous head; a thick red tongue licked out in unholy desire, and a spray of saliva rained down upon their transparent metal helmets and leatherlike clothes.

  And then Barbara's leather-covered hands bit like sharp stones into his arm; he felt himself dragged over the edge.

  They landed unhurt among the loose pile of branches below and scrambled frantically to throw it farther down. A great mad clawing and horrible bass mewing above them whipped them to desperate speed. They made it just as that enormous head peered down from the second level, visible only by the phosphorescent glow of its eyes, like two burning coals a foot and a half apart.

  There was a terrific scrambling sound behind them as they pushed wildly down to the next level; a rock bounced down, narrowly missing them as it clattered past; and then, abruptly, silence and continuing darkness.

  "What's happened?" Jamieson asked in bewilderment.

  There was bitterness in her voice as she replied. "It's wedged itself in, because it's realized it can't get us in the few minutes left before it freezes for the night; and, of course, now we won't be able to get out past it, with that great body squeezed against the rock sides. It's really a very clever animal in its way. It never chases grasseaters but just follows them. It has discovered that it wakes up a few minutes before they do; naturally, it thinks we, too, will freeze and that it will wake up before we will. In any event, it knows we can't get out. And we can't. We're finished."