"For Pete's sake-it's a whole flock of those silly billies!" Then-"Hey! Get down! Quit licking my face!"
Carly's voice replied, "I think he's fallen in love with you, Joe. Say-Soapy said to arrest anything that walks: shall we take this one back to him?"
"Stow it!" There were sounds of scuffling, then the high bleating of a move-over both surprised and hurt.
"Maybe we ought to burn one and take it back anyway,'" Curly went on. "I hear they are mighty tasty eating."
"You turn this into a hunting party and Soapy will haul you up before the Old Man. Come on-we got work to do."
Don could follow their progress around the edge of the herd. He could even tell by the sounds when the two soldiers managed to cuff and kick the most persistent of the creatures off their trail. He continued to sit there long after they were gone, tickling the chin of a baby which had gone to sleep in his lap, and resting himself.
Presently it began to grow dark. The herd started to bed down for the night. By the time it was fully dark they were all lying down except the sentries around the edge. Because he was dead tired and completely lacking in any plan of action Don bedded down with them, his head cradled on a soft and velvety back and himself in turn half supporting a couple of youngsters.
For a while he thought about his predicament, then he thought about nothing.
The herd stirred and he awakened. There was much snorting and stomping mixed with the whimpering complaints of the young, still not fully awake. Don got his bearings and got to his own feet; he knew vaguely what to expect-the herd was about to migrate. Gregarians rarely grazed the same island two days in a row. They slept the first part of the night, then moved out before dawn when their natural enemies were least active. They forded from one island to another, using paths through the water known-possibly by instinct-to the herd leaders. For that matter, gregarians could swim, but they rarely did so.
Don thought: well, I'll soon be rid of them. Nice people, but too much is too much. Then he thought better of it-if the move-overs were moving to another island it was sure that it would not be Main Island and it would certainly have to be farther away from Main Island than was this one. What could he lose?
He felt a bit light-headed but the logic seemed right; when the herd moved out he worked his way up near the van. The leader took them down the island about a quarter of a mile, then stepped off into the water. It was still so nearly pitch dark that Don was not aware of it until he too stepped into it. It was only up to his ankles and did not get much deeper. Don splashed along almost at a dogtrot, trying to stay inside the body of the herd so that he would run no chances of blundering into deeper water in the darkness. He hoped that this was not one of the migrations involving swimming.
It began to grow truly light and the pace quickened; Don was hard put to keep up. At one point the old buck in the lead stopped, snorted, and made a sharp turn; Don could not guess why he had turned, for the morning mist was very thick and one piece of water looked exactly like another. Yet the way chosen turned out to be shallow. They followed it for another kilometer or more, twisting and turning at times, then at last the leader clambered up a bank with Don on his heels.
Don threw himself down, exhausted. The old buck stopped, plainly puzzled, while the herd gained the land and crowded around them. The leader snorted and looked disgusted, then turned away and continued his duty of leading his people to good pasture. Don pulled himself together and followed them.
They were just coming out of the trees that hedged the shore when Don saw a fence off to the right. He felt like singing. "So long, folksl" he called out. "Here's where I get off." He headed for the fence, while the main herd moved on. When he reached the fence he reluctantly slapped and swatted his attendants until he managed to shoo them off, then headed along the wire. Eventually, he told himself, I will find a gate and that will lead me to people. It did not matter much who the people were; they would feed him and let him rest and help him to hide from the invaders.
The fog was very thick; it was good to have the fence to guide him. He stumbled along by it, feeling feverish and somewhat confused, but cheerful.
"Halt."
Don froze automatically, shook his head and tried to remember where he was.
"I've got you spotted," the voice went on. "Move forward slowly with your hands up."
Don strained his eyes to see through the fog, wondered if he dared to run for it. But, with a feeling of utter and final defeat, he realized that he had run as far as he could. '~
XIII Fog-Eaters
"SNAP out of it!" the voice said, "or I shoot."
"Okay," he answered dully and moved forward with his hands over his head. A few paces advance let him see a man's shape; a few more and he made out a soldier with a hand gun trained on him. His eyes were covered by snooper goggles, making him look like some bug-eyed improbability from another planet.
The soldier halted Don again a few steps from him, made him turn around slowly. When Don turned back he had shoved the snoopers up on his forehead, revealing pleasant blue eyes. He lowered his gun. "Jack, you're sure a mess", he commented. "What in the name of the Egg have you been doing?"
It was only then that Don realized that the soldier was wearing not the mottled green of the Federation but the tans of the Ground Forces of Venus Republic.
The soldier's commanding officer, a Lieutenant Busby, tried to question him in the kitchen of the farm house inside the fence, but he saw very quickly that the prisoner was in no shape to be questioned. He turned Don over to the farmer's wife for food, a hot bath, and emergency medical attention. It was late that afternoon that Don, much refreshed and with the patches left by the mud lice a covered with poultices, finally gave an account of himself.
Busby listened him out and nodded. "I'll take your word for it, mainly because it is almost inconceivable that a Federation spy could have been where you were, dressed the way you were, and in the shape you were in." He went on to question him closely about what he had seen in New London, how many soldiers there seemed to be, how they were armed, and so forth. Unfortunately Don could not tell him much. He did recite "Emergency Law Number One" as closely as he could remember it.
Busby nodded, "We got it over Mr. Wong's radio." He hooked a thumb at the corner of the room. He thought for a moment. "They played it smart; they took a leaf from Commodore Higgins' book and played it real smart. They didn't bomb our cities; they just bombed our ships-then they moved in and burned us out."
"Have we got any ships left?" Don asked.
"I don't know. I doubt it-but it doesn't matter."
"Huh?"
"Because they played it too smart. There's nothing left they can do to us; from here on they're fighting the fog. And we fog-eaters know this planet better than they do."
Don was allowed to rest up the balance of that day and the following night. By listening to the gossip of the soldiers he came to the conclusion that Busby was not simply an optimist; the situation was not completely hopeless. It was admittedly very bad; so far as anyone knew all the ships of the High Guard had been destroyed. The Valkyrie, the Nautilus and the Adonis were reported bombed and with them Commodore Higgins and most of his men. There was no word of the Spring Tide-which meant nothing; what little information they had was compounded of equal parts rumor and Federation official propaganda.