by Larry Niven
"Close enough," Jerry agreed.
"Then let's get some rest. Before this is over, we'll need every bit of it we can get. All right?"
Carlos looked at the wall, at the still form of his friend, strapped now to the table. "What about Cadmann?"
"I honestly don't know," Zack said wearily. "But I know that I'm too tired and sore to think. I need some rest. He'll keep."
"Everyone but Jerry out of here," Sylvia said.
"I want to stay." Mary Ann stood against the wall, her arms folded, eyes fixed on Cadmann.
Zack was still massaging his stomach, feeling for bruised ribs. Every few seconds he wheezed in pain. He said, "Carlos, take care of Mary Ann. We need to clear out so that Syl and Jerry can work."
"No, I'm not—"
Sylvia closed her mind to the sound until she heard the door close behind them.
Then she and Jerry methodically stripped Cadmann, sprayed his burns and minor wounds and covered them with gel. When they were done with the hemostats and the dissolving thread and the unguents, they slipped him into a clean smock and refastened the straps. Then they turned out the lights and left.
She shivered in the fog. Jerry turned to her. "What do you think happened out there? You don't really think Cadmann did that damage to himself?"
"I don't know. I don't know anything right now. We'll know in a little over an hour. Just let me close my eyes for a few minutes."
Jerry nodded and started back to his cottage, to the dubious, transitory comfort of a warm bed, when Sylvia's voice stopped him.
"I can tell you one thing, Jerry. No matter what we find out, we're not going to like it. I promise you that there aren't going to be any comforting answers."
"Yeah." Jerry hunched his shoulders against the chill. He turned to speak again, but Sylvia had already disappeared around a corner, or into the fog, and he was alone.
Chapter 9
CONTACT
A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green.
FRANCIS BACON
In the shadows beyond the fence, something watched. Something alive, silent, almost motionless save for the rise and fall of its torn and bleeding flanks.
The creature was badly hurt. It had passed the horizon of pain into territory that was strange indeed. Irreversible changes had taken place in its body. In a distant way, it even understood that it was dying. But first there was an obligation.
It hid in the shadowed fields beyond the reach of the searchlights. When it concentrated it could smell the man, the one who had hurt it. This one, whom it had badly underestimated, was the real threat. And every instinct screamed for it to get to him, to find and kill him.
It began to wiggle forward. It lay between rows of corn, just a few dozen meters southwest of the colony. The searchlights still swept across the ground, and the men still walked the edge of the camp.
How to get past the firevines? It moaned hungrily.
In the next instant the solution presented itself. One of the men ran his forepaw along a section of vine. He touched it—leaned on it. It recognized the section. This was the same stretch of firevine that had bitten it before. It seemed safe now. Perhaps firevines could only bite once...
The man was alone and not even looking in its direction. Now. Now, as the searchlights crisscrossed, there was a moment in which darkness was almost total, when shadow licked the fence, the man, and a stretch leading almost to the fields.
It moved.
It moved as fast as a Skeeter skimming at low altitude, moved so fast that the man at the fence hardly had time to look up, had no time to scream before it hit the fence with such momentum that the aluminum fencepost buckled and the lines snapped, that its impact slammed him back into the wall of the veterinary clinic.
His head dimpled the sheet metal and rebounded directly into the creature's flailing spiked tail. It shook the man's head free of the spikes, let the corpse slide to the ground.
It flowed onward, a quarter ton of rippling muscle and bone, black as a shadow, as dark and fluid as the river flowing behind and beneath the bluff, as much a part of the night as the stars or the twin moons.
The creature nudged the door open. It sniffed tentatively at first, then entered.
There was little light inside, but it needed less than it found. Animals were caged along the walls. Curiosity was almost as intense as the pain and resolve, and it stopped for a moment to peer up into one of the cages. A small white shape curled up in the corner, hidden in a mass of wood shavings. The tiny alien stirred slowly, then jerked to wakefulness, staring, blinking its tiny red eyes.
The creature had seen that look before, many times before. Total submission. A trembling readiness, the prey's acknowledgement that it was ready to be food. No running. No fighting, its heart ready to burst before it was ever touched.
Not now. The creature could smell the man, and it turned toward the smell.
The man lay on a table. He moaned softly, and moved limbs that seemed tangled in short vines. That was just as well. It had no urge to play with this one.
It braced its paws on the table, stretching, feeling the hurts in its body, the pain along its sides where it was burned and torn. The long wound in its flank opened again, trickling fluid. It braced itself and tried to jump up onto the table. The table was not a boulder. It tilted. The safety blocks on the wheels popped free, and the table skidded across the room, tubes ripping free of the man's forelimb, dark fluid spraying as they crashed into the wall and the table flipped onto its side.
As the table thudded to the floor, the man's eyes fluttered open.
Their eyes met.
Here it was. Here was the moment it craved. Here was the moment when the hunger and the pain and the anger vanished, and it saw into those eyes as down a deep, chill waterhole, a bottomless grotto. The man's eyes grew wide, wide enough to sink in, to swim in. The creature drew closer.
This was the deadly one. His skin was so soft, so fragile. It pawed experimentally, raking away flesh. Blood streamed from pinkish pulp beneath. The man grimaced, showed his teeth. Small teeth, flat and harmless.
The man was so weak! and yet he had hurt it as nothing else in its short life. The man was at the moment of death, his limbs bound, drawing back as far as he could, shrinking against the table, but his eyes held nothing of submission. His sluggish muscles struggled in the bonds.
So much had changed so quickly in its life. And this one Man had been at the center of so much of it. End it now.
But his eyes. They met its own so steadily. Helpless, bound, about to die—and yet...
And yet...
There was a scream from outside, and a sound of pounding feet. Its attention was split by confusion and uncertainty. It turned back to the man and saw triumph in his eyes, and it knew that somehow he had won, they would win, and that its life was over.
Pain bit into the back of its head, and it spun as a second bullet missed it by inches. It charged directly at the man holding a long stick which spat fire.
It felt another, awful pain, and then it was on him, his head in its mouth. There was a moment of bony resistance to its jaw muscles, then splintering collapse and softness. It spat him out and rushed for the door.
If it could reach the river...
But the doorway was crowded with men and their firesticks. It howled its agony, reversed directions, flailing its tail at them, feeling the pain bite deep until the thing in its body triggered, and the entire world seemed made of blood.
It exploded in the other direction. There were more of the vinelike things, and small metal objects. Strange smells filled the room as liquids spilled. The walls of this cave were thin, and bulged when the tail struck them. Instantly it wheeled. The head smashed at the thin walls. Something ripped open. An entire corner fell away. Outside was night, and the chance to find the river, to shed the heat that was cooking it from inside.
One man blocked its way, and it slammed its tail into him, the spikes piercing his leg.
It couldn't shake him loose! He screamed and screamed, confusing and slowing it, even with speed raging in its body and fire raging in its mind.
Another flick of the tail smashed him against the corner of a building. It pulled its spikes free, leaving him leaking and moaning on the ground.
But the men were everywhere now, and it ran this way and that, plowing into them, its body spasming, out of control now, blind with the blood in its eyes.
Chapter 10
NIGHTMARE
I fled, and cried out. Death:
Hell trembled at the hideous noise, and sighed
From all her caves, and back resounded, Death.
JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost: Book II
Sounds...
Someone screaming. A shot?
Sylvia groped her way up from a dream that clung like a moist membrane. The bubble of groggy sleep thinned as she wavered near wakefulness.
Tactile: Terry next to her, behind her. She felt the soft swell of his stomach against her backbone as they nestled like spoons.
Visual: Darkness. Outside, filtered by the drapes, a dim light glowed.
Searchlight's glow. All was well.
Auditory: The heavy, liquid sound of Terry's snoring. Nothing new or unusual there.
Sleep yawned, beckoned.
No. Wrong thought, wrong time. Her eyes fought to focus in the dark, to find the clock. How long had she slept? Was it time to get up again--?
Another sharp crack of sound, unmistakably a shot. A searchlight briefly lit the drapes. From all around the camp came shouted inquiries, groggy at first, then alarmed.
She lurched up in bed, throat scratchy with sleep, groping out for the reassuring warmth and protection of her clothing. "Terry. Terry—"
"Mmmph. Fug." Terry rolled onto his stomach, surprised when her body wasn't there to support him. His arm flopped out. "Huh? Sylvie?"
She was already pulling on her pants. Terry's fingers stretched out grazingly, and brushed one of her nipples. A wave of desire warmed her, startled her with its strength.
Terry, you pick the damnedest times.
She shut that part of her mind down and focused on the window, on the wildly swinging lights that filtered in through the drapes.
Terry came fully awake as Sylvia slipped on her shoes.
"What fool's raising the roof now?"
"I don't know. It's by the animal pens, and—"
And the veterinary clinic.
"Cadmann," she whispered.
A volley of shots. Terry virtually levitated from the bed.
"What in the hell--?"
There was screaming now. "Hurry up." She paused just long enough to be sure that he was rolling out of bed, then ran for the courtyard.
The huts were generally divided into two sections, sleeping and living. Although the communal dining halls were used by all, many—most of the colonists had their own private cooking facilities and a place to entertain friends. The space that she shared with Terry was small and might have been considered cozy, a place of warmth and—
She crossed the courtyard and stopped in horror. Figures backed out of the clinic. They were shrouded in darkness and fog that swirled like milk in thin tea. Four stylized shadows, posed—four generic riflemen. They fired into the doorway. Something within was screaming and shaking the building like a rat caught in a milk carton, screaming with such energized venom that for a moment she was frozen in her tracks.
She made herself move. A row of garden tools leaned neatly against' one of the huts and Sylvia snatched one in a two-handed death grip. She circled the bungalow, seeking a glimpse within.
No room in the doorway. Thank God! But she had to get closer. She recognized one of the riflemen. "Carolyn! What is it?"
There was no answer. Carolyn McAndrews and her companions fired wildly, fired without targets. They're crazy! Rifle bullets tore through the metal walls of the veterinary clinic. There were sounds of shattering glass from three buildings away. "For God's sake, what's happening?"
Colonists poured into the main boulevard outside the clinic. Robes and pajama bottoms still being pulled on, bare chests and legs or fully armed and dressed perimeter guards, they sprouted out of the darkness. Steps pounded behind her. Terry grabbed her arm. "What--?"
The metal wall of the veterinary shack cracked wide. Something screamed. The sound locked every muscle in her body. They're not crazy at all, she thought, and, It's come. The crowd scattered as the metal sheeting peeled back farther, distended, and something black smashed through the opening.
Terry's grip was like a vise. "Oh migod. He was right--!"
"Cadmann!" Sylvia tore free from her husband. He caught her again and pulled her back as the creature bounded into the crowd. Death was alive in the night, no longer something which haunted their dreams, no longer a specter to be buried with Alicia and the bloodied scraps of swaddling. It was alive, and glistening, and it moved among them like a demon of muscle and scale and teeth.
It moved too quickly for Sylvia to get a distinct picture. Dark! Too damned dark! And the searchlights swiveling to cover it were woefully inadequate, jerking spastically around the yard.
For a moment the monster was halted by a ring of colonists with sticks and guns. It stood at bay against the shattered remains of the veterinary-clinic wall. Handlamps, then the searchlight from the watchtower swung toward it. Sylvia saw eyes the size of oranges with huge black pupils. In the same moment those pupils closed to pinpoints. It hissed. Blood sprayed from a dozen wounds that ranged from neat punctures to raw craters, a red brighter than arterial blood. The massive tail smashed at the sheet metal. The screams smashed at the ears.
For just that instant it was contained, and then—
The pupils opened slightly. The creature shook the blood from its eyes and moved. Sylvia gasped. A good racing car might have accelerated that fast. Terry pulled hard on her arm and they were both falling backward as the monster smashed through the line. Two good men flew away like dry leaves in an autumn whirlwind, and one kicked Terry across the forehead as he flew over, all before Sylvia hit the ground.
She crawled behind a huge reel of insulated wire.
The great tail swung. There were spikes on the end—and Barney Carr flopped helplessly along the ground, spiked through the leg, as the monster whipped this way and that. Barney's head cracked into the corner of a building; his face disappeared in a smear of blood. The creature shook him loose and he lay still, only his hands clenching and unclenching spastically. Zack Moscowitz appeared from the shadows to stand over Barney. Tears streamed from his eyes. "Damn you!" he screamed. The creature turned.
Terry staggered up, muttered, "It's killing them!" He looked about wildly, then jerked an iron rod from a stack of fence stakes leaning against a shed. He glanced back at Sylvia, just one frightened flicker of his eyes.
"Terry—"
He turned away, turned to stand between hell and his wife and unborn daughter.
"Terry!"
He was already part of the melee.
The creature was big, larger than a large crocodile, and built like a tank: compact, invulnerable. It shouldn't have been fast—but, wounded and bleeding, it moved faster than anything ever bred on Earth. It leaped from the circle. Armed colonists ran to surround it. Others fired when they could see nobody behind it. Even as they ran it moved again, and again, so that they couldn't surround it.
Sylvia had never seen, never heard of anything that could move like that: streaking across the dirt, losing its balance and skidding to a stop; waiting, then blurring aside from a scattered volley of bullets. Move, stop, warily scan its enemies, see their intentions and move again—Thank God that it seemed more interested in escape than destruction, but even as it thrashed blindly it left death behind.
Red silk kimono and pale blond hair flagging behind her, Jean Patterson ran for her life. Before she could reach the safety of her hut she met the flailing spikes of the monster's tail. Her truncated scream was a barking sou
nd in the night, and she skidded and flopped along the ground to crumple close by Sylvia's concealing coil of wire.
"Jean!"
She stared up blindly, her head twisted far around. Too far. The spine was crushed. Dr. Patterson thrashed without feeling.
Jon van Don ran to intercept the monster and haplessly blocked its way as it fled toward the road. Instantly the monster was on him. It crushed him to the ground and left him behind, but its claws had pierced and dug, ripped through jacket and pajamas and skin, snapped bone and drove jagged ribs into lungs. The searchlight slid over him to show pink bloody froth at his mouth and nose. His screams never stopped.
Sylvia clapped her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes shut. It wasn't enough. She couldn't shut out the sounds and flashes of light: the shots, the screams, the slap of feet, and finally, the wave of heat that tore her from her cocoon. She couldn't help it, she peered through her fingers—
Greg. Somehow he had roused himself from drug-induced slumber. He staggered, legs mere rubber, but his face was a mask of rage as he advanced on the creature. On his back, slung skewed with only one of its shoulder straps buckled down, was one of the flame throwers that had been used to burn the bramble bushes from the plain. Its nozzle spewed a twenty-foot stream of liquid hell. Flame licked at the monster's bloody hide, and it reared in shock.
He was shouting something. She couldn't really hear his words over the roar of the flames, the human sounds of anguish and terror, the bellow of the creature. But she knew: Greg was screaming obscenities, the things she would be saying if her own wife and child—
Husband?
"Terry?" She couldn't see him, but there were bodies everywhere, people crawling and sobbing, and the B-movie monster skittering around the quad trying to find a way back to the darkness—the river?--its tail to the power shed now. It hissed as Greg advanced.
It sat there for a moment, and then with the speed of a flea jumping from a complete standstill, it leaped at Greg.
Greg didn't even flinch, too far gone with grief and rage to care. A tongue of flame lanced out and met the thing in midair with a horrific whoosh! that stole the dark and chill from the night. It hit the thing squarely, in one eye-searing moment converting it into a thrashing blur of fire.
