Salsbury felt like stone.
He knew they were thinking of breaking him down into gravel any moment now.
He stood, nervously watching them.
They were a tableau, frozen on different ends of the room. In their eyes, Salsbury was the bad guy, they were the good guys. After all, he was the odd fellow. He was the one who had brought evil magic into their snug little haven when they had been asleep dreaming half-men dreams of half-women. His gun, his evil magic, had killed their buddy. It made no difference to them that their own stupidity was involved.
Before any of them could move, Salsbury jumped from the ledge, hit the cave floor running, and burst through the archway into the room from which the half-women had brought the soup earlier.
The women were still there, squatted about the room chittering to one another, their fingers messy with gruel, the hair around their mouths matted with revolting streaks of wet food. When Salsbury broke in on them, the four of them screamed and darted into a corner, huddling together, their eyes wide under the deep shelves of their heavy foreheads. He spotted another tunnel leading away from this chamber and started across the room toward it. He would have to pass within a few feet of the women, and he didn't like to think what would happen if one of them built up enough courage to swat at him. Baring his teeth and building his voice into a stentorian roar, he shouted: Aarrrggghhh! at the top of his lungs.
The half-women screamed and tried to crawl on top of one another. While they were thus engaged, trying to press farther into the corner, he went through the archway into the new tunnel and ran as fast as his weary legs would carry him. It would not be fast enough, he knew, for he could remember with what ease Keeper had loped past him in the forest.
In time with his fears, the white-haired chief and the rest of the pack entered the tunnel a hundred feet behind. Salsbury put on speed, then saw that he was running into more trouble instead of away from it. Ahead, in the cavern into which this passage fed, a lamp was lit and glowed cheery red. In that glow, he could see other half-men coming awake, roused by his pursuers who were screeching and hooting furiously.
He stopped-though every nerve in his body screamed to him to move-and searched the walls which were shot through with small, dead-end caves. One of these looked deeper than the rest; at least he could not see the back of it. Besides, it was only wide enough to admit a man. The gorilla-like morons would have a devil of a time trying to come in after him.
He didn't know what good it would do to gain a temporary respite. Did he really think dying of thirst or starving was any better than being torn apart by the local savages? You're damned right he did! Because he could imagine how slow a process the half-men would make of his death. Savages enjoyed torturing their enemies. He did not want to be their plaything. He crawled into the opening and wriggled into the cave to a place where it widened out enough for him to turn around. Just then, the chiefs face appeared at the opening, glaring in at him.
Salsbury backed up another foot, then settled down to see what would happen. The chief reached in with a long, filthy arm and groped for him, but the creature's fingers were a good five feet short of their target. Salsbury breathed a sigh of relief that he felt fully in every cell of his being. The chief withdrew his arm, mumbled with the others for a time. Several more of them took their chance, but none of them was long-armed enough.
Fifteen minutes passed without any action.
That was just enough time to give Salsbury a chance to calm down and consider the direness of his predicament. Seventy-six worldlines away from Lynda Stranded miles from the vacii ship which held his only chance of return Trapped in a cave just out of reach of a horde of gabbling, lame-brained monkeymen If he had been a betting man, he would not have placed more than twenty cents on his chances of living out the night. Or even the next hour, for that matter.
Soon the half-men were back. They had put their meager IQ's together and devised a plan. There was a rattling and scraping sound, a dimming of the light as the chief blocked the entrance again. Then something jabbed Salsbury hard on the shoulder, retreated, came back again, skinning the side of his face. They had cut a long stick, had sharpened the end, and were poking him with it in hopes of killing him, or wounding him sufficiently to make him crawl out where they could reach him.
He took two more jabs, the last of which broke the skin on his shoulder, then reached out and grasped the stick, thrust it backwards with all his might. He caught the chief off guard. The other end of the pole slipped through his paws and rammed him solidly in the chest. He heard the beast make a whuffing sound and suck in new breath. The stick was withdrawn and not used again.
But they were working their fevered little minds overtime to come up with something, and for a few terrible moments, it seemed as if they had hit upon a good idea. One of them brought a torch to the mouth of the cave and held it inside. A thin column of smoke was carried back to him. Another half-man collected a pile of grass and leaves, stacked that in the entrance and lit it. The ensuing smoke almost smothered Salsbury. It roiled by in blue-white clouds, thick as London fog. It clogged his nostrils, burned the back of his throat, and made his eyes water helplessly.
He was almost prepared to crawl forward and admit defeat when various little facts connected in the depths of his brain to mean something important. One: the smoke was being drawn toward the back of the cave, swirling past him. This meant his cave had to have an outlet of some sort to cause the draft. Two: even if the outlet was not large enough to crawl out of, it would provide, perhaps, a pocket of air to breath that was less smoky than that here. Instead of going forward to Keeper and Chief and the others, he turned around once more and worked with the smoke, seeking the outlet it had already found.
For long moments, he crawled with closed eyes to avoid getting them more inflamed than they already were.
His mouth tasted like the bottom of an ashtray.
It was a bad journey. At places, the walls of the narrow tunnel grew even tighter, pressed in more insistently. And, invariably, at these places, the walls were more jagged so that flesh was gouged out of his shoulders, hips and arms. The walls and floor became damp, and he crept through cold water that made him shiver uncontrollably. And there was always the smoke, just thick enough to keep him gasping and choking, but not so thick as to smother him altogether. His eyes were swollen, and tears were streaming down his face.
He came to what he thought was a dead end.
He felt around to all sides.
It was a dead end.
He beat his hands against the stone in front of him, cursing like a madman half crazed with heat prostration. Then he ceased acting like an imbecile long enough to let his skin pick up a hint of a draft. He felt around overhead, discovered that the tunnel went straight up for four feet, then broke to the left with a horizontal floor again. He squirmed up and through the bend, flopped onto the floor above and tried to catch his breath.
All he caught was a hefty lungful of smoke. He gagged, forced himself to crawl on. Slowly, the air began to improve. At last, he could take deeper breaths without coughing, and his chest had stopped its painful throbbing. Ahead, there was a dim circle of light. He made for it at a rapid crawl, pushed himself through, and fell full length onto a half-man who was waiting for him, a wide grin on its twisted face.
CHAPTER 17
There was no sense in struggling. They were even more sharp-witted than he had anticipated in his wildest moments. They had been aware that his tunnel might have an outlet somewhere, and they had dispatched sentries into the corridors of their maze to check for smoke. If one of them sported any, he was to wait there under the assumption Salsbury would follow the vapors. And Salsbury had. He was carried back into the main room where the half-men had eaten their porridge, where Keeper's friend had been killed by the gas pellet gun in the chief's hand.