Robert Silverberg: Mournful Monster

He was dreaming of some pleasant tropical isle where there was nothing to do but sleep on the beach, swim, make love, and sip mild drinks. He felt the girl’s hand on his shoulder, but she had to shake him several times before he woke.

Finally he rolled over and blinked at her. “What’s the matter?”

“Your turn,” the girl whispered.

“Turn?” he repeated vaguely. Then he came fully awake. “Oh. I see.” He got to his feet and glanced at his watch. It read two o’clock. He made a rough computation into Loki time and decided that it was about six and a half hours before dawn.

He looked around. The Garveys and Kyle were sound asleep; Kyle was even snoring. The fire was getting a bit low. Marshall added some logs to it.

“Was there any trouble?” he asked.

“No,” Lois said. “Nothing happened. Good night.”

“Good night,” he replied.

She crossed the clearing and settled down to sleep. Marshall squatted by the fire and stared upward. A great white bird had settled on a tree-limb above him, and the huge creature was staring down at the camp with serene indifference. For a moment Marshall seriously considered shooting the big bird with the blaster he held; it would probably provide them with enough meat for several days. But he held back, reluctant to kill anything quite so beautiful. They still had some of the deer meat left, and there was no need to kill again just yet. After a short while the bird took wing, and flew off into the darkness with solemn dignity.

Marshall paced round the camp. An hour slipped by. He looked around, saw the girl Lois sitting up, her head propped against her hand, watching him. He walked over to her.

“Why are you up?”

“I can’t sleep. I’m wide awake again,” she whispered. “Mind if I keep you company?”

“You ought to get some sleep,” he told her.

“I know. But I can’t.” she got to her feet, and they strolled around the clearing together. He watched her with interest. She was certainly a lovely girl. In the past, he had never had much time to spare for women. His studies had always come first.

“How old are you?” he asked after a while.

“Nineteen,” she said. “You?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“You’re an anthropologist?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“A good one?”

“Not very,” he admitted. “Just run of the mill. I came here hoping to make my fame and fortune by discovering the native life of Loki.”

“You still may,” she said. “Aren’t they supposed to live somewhere in the jungle? Maybe we’ll find them while we’re travelling east.”

Marshall chuckled quietly. He had been so busy with the sheer problems of survival that he had never even stopped to consider that possibility. Of course, he thought! Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I stumbled right into an alien village!

They talked for a while longer, mostly about her. She went to school on Thor, the neighboring world; she had stopped at Marleyville to visit her brother, who was in business there, before going on to see her father at New Lisbon. Evidently, Marshall thought, she had led a rather plush and sheltered life up till now. But she was bearing up pretty well under the jungle life, he thought.

When his watch read half past four, he woke up Estelle Garvey. “Your turn,” he told her. “Your husband relieves you at six o’clock.”

He returned to his clump of grass. Lois settled down across the way from him. He was asleep within minutes.

They were all up at dawn. Garvey, who was very good with his hands, had made use of his time on watch to fashion a pair of fishhooks and some line. They discovered another small brook not too far from their campsite, and some patient angling by Garvey and Marshall provided their breakfast: small herring-like fish which had a sharp, pungent taste when cooked. After breakfast they washed up, the women bathing first, then the men. Personal privacy was being respected as best as possible among them.

They marched until noon, when the heat became almost intolerable and they were forced to stop for a siesta. Lois found a bush with round blue-green fruits the size of apples growing on it, and, after Garvey had boldly tasted one without immediate ill effects, they lunched on those and moved on half an hour later.

The forest creatures showed no fear of them. From time to time small rodents with huge hind legs would hop rabbit-fashion almost defiantly close to them, peering curiously out of gleaming blue eyes. Once a big beast clumsily blundered across their path—an animal the height of a man and about fifteen feet long, which clumped along on four immense legs. It was obviously a vegetarian, and just as obviously it had poor eyesight. It crossed their path only twenty feet in front of Marshall, who was in the lead, and paused briefly to gulp down a hillock of grass before continuing on its myopic way.

Morale remained high in the little band. Marshall estimated that they covered better than fourteen miles during the day, and when they stopped at sundown Garvey shot a long-eared gazelle-like animal for their dinner. Sniffing little hyenas came to investigate the kill, but rapidly scattered when Marshall hurled a rock at them. It was not worth wasting a blaster shot on such vermin.

The next day they moved on again, and that day they ran into their first serious problems in the jungle.

The initial snag came in mid-morning. The party was hacking its way through a particularly tangled stretch of pathless underbrush. Abruptly, a torrential rain descended on them—a warmish rain that fell by the bucketfull, drenching them within instants. There was no time to seek cover, and no cover to be had.

The rain lasted fifteen minutes, though there were moments when Marshall felt it was going to go on forever, cascading in endless sheets. They were soaked to the skin by the time it was over. Their clothing, already shredded and soiled after three days of jungle life, clung to their skins as if pasted there. Gnatlike insects came to hover around the bedeviled Earthmen, stinging and buzzing and flying into ears and eyes and noses and mouths. A glorious rainbow arched across the sky, glowing in the golden-green sunlight, but none of the Earthmen were in any mood to appreciate its beauty. They were wet and sticky and miserable. After a while, their clothes dried somewhat, though the humidity assured that nothing would ever dry completely. By noontime that day, colorful molds were already beginning to form on the soaked clothing. By the time they finished the trip, Marshall thought, their clothes would have rotted completely away.

The prospect of regular drenchings of this sort was not an appealing one. But, in the middle of the afternoon, a new problem presented itself. The stream that they had been following most of the day had widened suddenly into a river—and the river had taken a broad swinging curve out in front of them, where it blocked the eastward passage completely.

Marshall shaded his eyes and looked upriver. “Think we ought to try heading north for a while?” he asked.

Garvey shook his head. “Don’t think it’s wise to leave course, Marshall. We’d better build a raft.”

It took them most of the rest of the day to complete the raft, with Garvey, as the best hand craftsman of the group, directing the work. The raft, when it was finished, was a crude but serviceable affair—several dozen logs lashed solidly together by the tough, sinewy vines that grew everywhere in the jungle. The river that had so unexpectedly blocked their route was almost a mile wide. The Terrans huddled together while Marshall and Garvey poled the rickety raft across.

They were midway across when Kyle, who was holding the blaster, suddenly pointed and shouted: “L—look!”