I backed away, further.
It watched me, alertly, with pleasure. It growled softly, almost a purrlike sound, but more intense, more excited.
Then its ears lay back against the side of its head.
I stumbled backward, and it sped toward me, swiftly.
I struggled, seized in its arms. I saw the blazing eyes. It lifted me from the ice, lifting me toward its mouth. It held me, looking at me for a moment. Then it turned its head to one side. I struggled and twisted futilely. Its breath was hot in my face, and I could scarcely see it for the vapors of our mingled breathings. Then its jaws reached for my throat. Suddenly and so suddenly for a moment I could not comprehend it there was a hideous shriek from the beast and I could hear nothing else for a moment and it was one of surprise and pain and I was momentarily deafened and then, too, at the same time, reflexively I was flung from it the stars and ice suddenly wild and turned and I struck the ice and rolled and slid across it. I scrambled to my knees. I was more than forty feet from the beast.
It stood, not moving, hunched over, looking at me.
I rose unsteadily to my feet.
It tried to take a step toward me, and then its face contorted with excruciating pain. It lifted its paw toward me.
Then, suddenly, as though struck from the inside, it screamed and fell, rolling, on the ice. Twice more it cried out, and then lay, motionless, but alive, on the ice, on its back, looking up at the moons.
The digestive juices, already released into the true stomach, continued with their implaccable chemical work. Bit by bit, loosened molecule by loosened molecule, in accordance with the patient, relentless laws of chemistry, the sinew slowly dissolved, weakening the bond which held the compressed, contorted, sharpened baleen, until the slender bond broke. The beast screamed again.
Thoughtlessly the beast must have devoured fifteen or twenty of the hidden traps.
I thought now I had little to fear.
I went to the sled. There seemed little of use there.
Fortunately I glanced upward. Somehow it was again on its feet.
It stood hunched over. It looked at me. How indomitable it was. It coughed, wracked with the pain of it, and spat glots of blood on the ice.
Slowly, step by step, it began to move toward me, its paws outstretched.
It then screamed with pain, bent over, as another of the wicked traps sprang open.
It stood there, whimpering on the ice. For a moment I felt moved.
Then, scrambling, on all fours, it charged. I overturned the sled between us. It fell screaming against the head of the sled and, with one paw, swept the sled to one side. It rolled on the ice, leaving it dark with blood. It coughed and screamed, and raged. Then two more of the treacherous baleen traps sprung open. It looked at the moons, agonized. It bit its lips and jaws in pain. It tore at its thigh.
I moved warily away from the beast. I did not think, now, I would have great difficulty in eluding it.
It was bleeding now, profusely, at the mouth and anus. The side of its mouth was half bitten through. The ice was covered with blood, and defecation. Too, it had released its water on the ice.
I moved away from it, drawing it in a circle from the sled. I then doubled back and, taking up the traces of the sled, turned back toward the complex concealed in the ice island.
I pulled the sled, returning toward the complex. The beast, step by painful step, bloody in the snow, followed. I did not let it approach too near.
Judging by its cries, those uttered before, and those which it uttered as it followed me, it must have taken nineteen of the traps into its body. It amazed me that it was not content to lie still and die. Each step must have been torture for it. Yet it continued to follow me. I learned something from it of the tenacity of the Kur.
At last, on the return to the complex, some four Ahn later, it died.
It is not easy to kill a Kur.
I looked down at the huge carcass. I had no knife. I must use my hands and teeth.
35
I Return To The Complex; What Occurred In The Complex
"It is not a Kur!" cried the man. "Fire!"
Then I had my hands on his throat, and threw him between me and his fellow. I heard the dart enter his body and I thrust him back and away from me and I saw him, rent and scattered, burst apart. The other fellow, also in what seemed to be a suit of light plastic, with a heating unit slung at his hip, fumbled with the weapon, to insert another charge in the breech. I dove toward him and the breech snapped shut and the weapon, struck to the side, discharged and I flung him to the ground, we both half tangled in the white fur of the Kur. With my left arm about his neck I struck his head to the side with the flat of my right hand. He lay still, the neck broken. It is a thing warriors are taught.
I looked up. It seemed quiet. Yet two weapons had been discharged. The tubular weapons discharge with a hiss. It is not particularly loud. The explosion of the darts, however, timed to detonate an instant after fixing themselves in the target, is much louder. The first explosion had been muffled in the body of its victim. The second, however, might have been heard. It had burst, after a long, parabolic trajectory, over a thousand feet below, showering ice upward more than two hundred feet into the air.
I had returned to the complex, crossing the ice near it, with the sled. This would assure me, I hoped, that I would not be mistaken for a common ice beast. I did not know what signs and countersigns, or signals, the white Kur might have had at its disposal to protect itself in this regard. I, at any rate, had none. Ice beasts, or common ice beasts, of course, do not use sleds. I think the sled let me approach more closely than I might otherwise have been capable of doing. The fur of the Kur, too, in the uncertain light, of course, was helpful. I had kept, too, as I could, to the cover of the pack ice. I had left the sled at the foot of the ice island and, with the fur of the Kur as a camouflage, had climbed, crag by crag, projection by projection, foothold by foothold, to the height of the island. The hatch through which I had exited did not have an obvious opening from the outside. Again, I did not know any signs or countersigns, or signals. I had climbed the height of the ice island looking for some mode of ingress to the complex. I was interested not so much in official thresholds, of a sort which I supposed would be provided to facilitate the work of lookouts and guards, as apertures more practical to my purposes, apertures unguarded through which passage would not require any system of recognition devices. The air in the complex had been fresh. It was my hope that there would be ventilation shafts. If the Kurii relied on a closed system I must take my chances with more standard portals.
It seemed quiet. I reached again for the fur of the Kur.
It came so swiftly I was not sure I saw it. I may have heard or sensed it the object cutting the fur of the parka and lodging a foot behind me in the ice and I flung myself away from it and the ice shattering and exploding outward and the blast and ice pushing me like a hand and I struck a projection of ice and slipped downward, and then I saw them coming two of them both armed and I slipped and lay contorted at the foot of the ice projection.
"He's dead," said one of the men.
"I shall put another dart into him," said the other.
"Do not be a fool," said the first.
"Can you be sure he is dead?" asked the other.
"See?" said the first. "There is no breath. If he were alive his breath, its vapor in the cold, would be clearly visible."
"You are right," said the second man.
Neither of these men, I gathered, had ever hunted the swift sea sleen. I was pleased that once, in kayaks, with Imnak, I had made the acquaintance of that menacing, insidious beast.