Judith Merril - The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 6

“It puffed something at me and I lost my blaster,” came the young fellow’s voice.

“Make for the ship.”

“We won’t get there, will we?”

“We can try. You may have damaged him enough with that last shot to slow him down or spoil his sense of direction,” Philip Hardacre said. He already knew that it was all over for them. The xeeb was only a few miles above them and beginning to turn for a fresh swoop, moving slower but not slow enough. The ship was above them too in the other direction. This was what you faced every time you hunted xeeb and when it happened at last it was just the end of the hunt and the end of the freedom and the vastness and they would have had to end some time.

There was a long arc of light from the ship and the xeeb was suddenly brighter than ever before for an instant and then the brightness went out and there was nothing there.

The Martian had fallen into a crouching position in the airlock and the third Wyndham-Clarke was still in his pincers. The two men waited for the outer door to close and the air to flood in.

“Why didn’t he put on his suit?” said the young fellow.

“There wasn’t time. He had about a minute to save us. A Martian suit takes much longer than that to put on.”

“What would have got him first, the cold?”

“Airlessness. They respire quickly. Five seconds at most. Just enough to aim and fire.” He was quick after all, Philip Hardacre thought.

Inside, the woman was waiting for them. “What happened?”

“He’s dead, of course. He got the xeeb.”

“Did he have to get himself killed doing it?”

“There was one weapon on board and one place to use it from,” Philip Hardacre said. Then his voice went quiet “Why are you still wearing your space-suit?”

“I wanted to get the feel of it. And you said to take it off.”

“Why couldn’t you have taken the gun into the airlock?”

Her eyes went dull. “I didn’t know how the lock worked.”

“But Ghlmu did. He could have operated it from in here. And you can shoot, or so you said.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry I like,” the young fellow said. He didn’t sound like a school professor now, or afraid of her. “Sorry brings back that old guy as alive as ever he was, doesn’t it? Sorry is about the best I ever heard. And sorry is something else too. Sorry as all hell is how I feel when I drop you off in Venusport and take the shuttle to Earth by myself. You like Venusport, don’t you? Well, here’s your chance to get lost in it.”

Philip Hardacre finished composing the old Martian’s limbs and appendages and muttered as much as he knew of the prescribed incantation. “Forgive me,” he said.

“Get supper,” the young fellow said to the woman. “Right away.”

“This was your hunt,” Philip Hardacre said to his friend’s body.

Two years ago I had the pleasure of reprinting in this collection Richard McKenna’s first published story, “Casey Agonistes.” “Mac” was 44 when he sold “Casey.” Since then, he has established himself as a science-fantasy writer, made use of his first two careers (cowboy and sailor) in numerous stories and articles in the men’s adventure magazines, sold a story to The Saturday Evening Post, and is now at work on a novel derived from his own experiences while based at the Navy’s China Station.

Walter Cordice was plump and aging and he liked a quiet life. On what he’d thought was the last day of his last field job before retirement to New Zealand, he looked at his wife in the spy screen and was dismayed.

Life had not been at all quiet while he and Leo Brumm and Jim Andries had been building the hyperspace relay on Planet Robadur—they had their wives along and they’d had to live and work hidden under solid rock high on a high mountain. That was because the Robadurians were asymbolic and vulnerable to culture shock, and the Institute of Man, which had jurisdiction over hominid planets, forbade all contact with the natives. Even after they’d built her the lodge in a nearby peak, Martha was bored. Cordice had been glad when he and Andries had gone into Tau rapport with the communications relay unit.

That had been two months of peaceful isolation during which the unit’s Tau circuits copied certain neutral patterns in the men to make itself half sentient and capable of electronic telepathy. It was good and quiet. Now they were finished, ready to seal the station and take their pre-taped escape capsule back to Earth; only anthropologists from the Institute of Man would ever visit Robadur again.

And Walter Cordice stood in the wrecked lodge and the picture on the illicit spy screen belted him with dismay.

Robadurians were not symbol users. They simply couldn’t have raided the lodge. But the screen showed Martha and Willa Brumm and Allie Andries sitting bound to stakes at a forest edge. Martha’s blue dress and tight red curls were unruffled. She sat with her stumpy legs extended primly together and her hard, plump pout said she was grimly not believing what she saw either.

Near a stream, across a green meadow starred yellow with flowers, naked and bearded Robadurians dug a pit with sharp sticks. Others piled dry branches. They were tall fellows, lump-muscled under sparse fur, with low foreheads and muzzle jaws. One, in a devil mask of twigs and feathers, seemed an overseer. Beside Martha, pert, dark little Allie Andries cried quietly. Willa was straining her white arms against the cords. They knew they were in trouble, all right.

Cordice turned from the screen, avoiding the eyes of Leo Brumm and Jim Andries. In their tan coveralls against the silver and scarlet decor they seemed as out of place as the dead Robadurian youth at their feet. Leo’s chubby, pleasant face looked stricken. Jim Andries scowled. He was a big, loose-jointed man with bold angular features and black hair. They were young and junior and Cordice knew they were mutely demanding his decision.

Decision. He wouldn’t retire at stat-8 now, he’d be lucky to keep stat-7. But he’d just come out of rapport and so far he was clear and the law was clear too, very clear: you minimized culture shock at whatever cost to yourself. But abandon Martha? He looked down at the Robadurian youth. The smooth ivory skin was free of blue hair except on the crushed skull. He felt his face burn.

“Our wives bathed him and shaved him and made him a pet?” His voice shook slightly. “Leo ... Leo ...”

“My fault, sir. I built ‘em the spy screen and went to rescue the boy,” Leo said. “I didn’t want to disturb you and Jim in rapport.” He was a chunky, blond young man and he was quite pale now. “They—well, I take all the blame, sir.”

“The Institute of Man will fix blame,” Cordice said.

My fault, he thought. For bringing Martha against my better judgment. But Leo’s violation of the spy-screen ethic did lead directly to illicit contact and— this mess! Leo was young, they’d be lenient with him. All right, his fault. Cordice made his voice crisp.

“We minimize,” he said. “Slag the lodge, get over and seal up the station, capsule home to Earth and report this.”

Jim really scowled. “I love my wife, Cordice, whatever you think of yours,” he said. “I’m getting Allie out of there if I have to culture shock those blue apes to death with a flame jet.”

“You’ll do what I say, Andries! You and your wife signed a pledge and a waiver, remember?” Cordice tried to stare him down. “The law says she’s not worth risking the extinction of a whole species that may someday become human.”

“Damn the law, she’s worth it to me!” Jim said. “Cordice, those blue apes are human now. How else could they raid up here, kill this boy, carry off the women?” He spat. “We’ll drop you to seal the station, keep your hands clean. Leo and I’ll get the women.”