The golden body lay with feet downhill, of one tone with the earth and the rocks, but silver down covered it: unconscious, unmoving… ribs and belly gave with breathing.
And female. Merritt approached it carefully, not least for the hazard of the slide… a woman-sized, fragile shape, long-limbed. The downy skin was torn and bloodied; the hair that thickened and closely capped the elongate skull was likewise touched with blood at the temple. Merritt bent and gingerly touched the long-fingered hand that was so nearly and so much not—human, saw the feet, long-toed, of that sort that had left prints the night the boat was set adrift. The face was humanlike: long eyes, closed, with silver lashes and faint silver brows; a short, flat nose; a thin, wide mouth—prognathic features, jaw farther forward then human, but delicate; the body was thin and wiry, the breasts hardly more than a child's, but the face gave the impression of a little more age.
Merritt considered a moment, with pebbles sifting downslope from under his braced feet and knee. He was anxious to move her, for it was no place to linger; but she was no human woman, and there was likely impressive strength in those slender limbs, like an animal's. He hesitated to take that awesomely alien thing into his arms, next his throat, but he detected no sign of consciousness, and finally with great tenderness of her injuries, he lifted her to him and rose. She was surprisingly heavy, limp muscle, like a relaxed cat. He walked the slide slowly, sweating with exertion and with caution, and finally had Jim's hand gripping his sleeve, drawing him up to solid ground. He let her down then on the ridge, at Jim's feet.
"I'd never seen one," Jim said in awe, dropping to his knees, and a flush came to his young face. "Sam, she's just about human, isn't she?"
"Just about." Merritt hesitated, then felt up and down the fragile limbs and body for broken bones. There were none that he could tell, and under the touch of his hands the being stirred, lips parted—teeth not quite human either. The canines were well-developed. Merrill drew back his hand quickly, chilled to the depth of him.
Brown eyes, almost all pupil, came open and widened, and with a spirting snarl the being came up and tried to bolt. Merrill seized her, and it was like taking rash hold of a frenzied animaclass="underline" she twisted and fought so that it seemed she must dislocate something, and when he grappled for a better hold she fastened her sharp little teeth into his hand and held like death itself.
"Get her!" he shouted at Jim, for the bite was like to crush bone and he could not break it; and there were several frantic moments on the ridge while he and Jim together worked to subdue the being. She fought them so long as she had a hand or a foot free, and it needed both of them using both weight and strength to restrain that twisting body short of striking her senseless.
Merrill took his belt and secured her hands, and Jim's about her ankles reduced her to stoical submission. She only lay panting for breath and staring off into the hills, while Merrill and Jim stood back and inspected their own wounds. They were all smeared equally with her blood and theirs, and for comment Jim only looked at Merritt and shook his head in wonder.
"There can't be much wrong with her, at least," Merritt said, pressing out the purpling wound in his hand. It was deep and exceedingly painful. "I'm glad she went for the hand first, and not my throat."
"I guess she's scared out of her mind," said Jim, and bent down and reached out for her shoulder. She snapped at him like a dog, but when he persisted and stroked her head as if she were an injured animal, she endured that harmless attention, though without pleasure. She began to shiver.
"What are we going to do with her?" Jim asked.
"I don't know," Merrill confessed. He knelt on the other side of her and she jerked about to look at him. Her strange eyes had gone brown now instead of black with hysteria. No white showed at all, just the iris, brown flecked with amber. They were not human eyes, but they were beautiful.
"Listen," he said to the creature, and held out his hand just outside the reach of a bite. "Listen, we're not going to hurt you, we don't want to hurt you, all right? You stay still. That's right."
He touched her shoulder as Jim had, and turned her over and picked her up, holding her tightly so she could not get at his throat. She could have made carrying her impossible; she did not. She tensed only while he rose, and then gave a little against him, still not quite relaxed, but not resisting either. He kept a tight grip on her arm, not letting her face toward him where he could help it.
"Are we taking her back to the house?" Jim asked incredulously. "Sam, they'll just kill her."
"No, they won't," he said.
It was impossible even to cross the bridge without attracting a crowd at the other end; by the time they had come as far as the courtyard of the main house, the news had preceded them, and there was a gathering of every man off duty and of all the household too.
Merritt found it impossible to force a way with all of them pressing in to see, every man of them at once curious and loathing their long-time enemies, the night-terror brought into plain daylight, restrained and helpless.
He had to set the creature down finally, amid the courtyard halfway to the house… let her rest her weight on her bound feet and balance against him. All the faces crowded in on her were too much. She turned her face against his chest and rested there, trembling.
Frank Burns arrived, the crowd breaking to let him through, and he stared in disbelief at what gift he had brought them; Hannah came out too, drying her hands on her apron as she came.
"I didn't believe it," said Burns finally. "How did you catch her?"
"She got into the blast area," said Merritt, "and I need a place right now to put her."
"Not in my house," said Hannah Burns, who was the soul of hospitality to everyone; and when Merritt gave her a look of disappointment she gave a quick sigh and a distressed shake of her head. "Sam Merritt, you expect me to take that in? Look what she's done to you. Look at you."
"We have the chance now to find out what these beings are and how they think. I need a place to put her where she can't get loose, maybe one of the storehouses—"
"There's a supply room upstairs," said Burns. "Next the closet. You know it."
"Thanks," said Merritt, and picked up his burden again, swung her sideways to take her through the curious bystanders, carried her up the steps and into the main house.
She screamed, fought, brought into that shadow. She gave a great heave that almost flung her out of his arms, and he would have dropped her, but that Jim quickly seized her feet. She continued to struggle until they had to throw her face down on one of the tables and hold her, but at last she seemed to realize it was hopeless. She lay quietly, breathing with the rapidity of hysteria, and Merritt relaxed his grip carefully, still keeping his hand on the small of her back lest she throw herself off the table and hurt herself. She did not move.
When he looked up, he saw Meg watching him from the foot of the stairs; and without conscious decision he drew his hand from the creature's warm skin. Meg crossed the room to look at the prisoner, stopped a few paces away and studied it, moving round to have view of its face, her own expression apprehensive: apprehension became alarm as the creature gave a sudden heave and almost came off the table. But for Jim's intervention, it would have fallen, and it would not rest satisfied until it had worked into a position in Jim's hands from which it could watch the both of them.
"It's female," Meg said with a frown of surprise, and stared at it uncomfortably where it half-lay against Jim. "I saw it from the window; I couldn't believe you'd bring it into the house. What do you intend with it, Sam?"
"To learn." He took the strap about the creature's ankles, worked it free: it had cut cruelly. The creature sat very still, only drawing her feet up when he had freed them.