He should have been concentrating, of course, on how to kill the Roller, but instead he grinned at the lizard and said, «Hello, there.»
The lizard took a few steps toward him. «Hello,» it said.
Carson was stunned for a moment, and then he put back his head and roared with laughter. It didn’t hurt his throat to do so, either; he hadn’t been that thirsty.
Why not? Why should the Entity who thought up this nightmare of a place not have a sense of humor, along with the other powers he has? Talking lizards, equipped to talk back in my own language, if I talk to them— It’s a nice touch.
He grinned at the lizard and said, «Come on over.» But the lizard turned and ran away, scurrying from bush to bush until it was out of sight.
He was thirsty again.
And he had to do something. He couldn’t win this contest by sitting here sweating and feeling miserable. He had to do something. But what?
Get through the barrier. But he couldn’t get through it, or over it. But was he certain he couldn’t get under? And come to think of it, didn’t one sometimes find water by digging? Two birds with one stone—
Painfully now, Carson limped up to the barrier and started digging, scooping up sand a double handful at a time. It was slow, hard work because the sand ran in at the edges and the deeper he got the bigger in diameter the hole had to be. How many hours it took him, he didn’t know, but he hit bedrock four feet down. Dry bedrock; no sign of water.
And the force-field of the barrier went down clear to the bedrock. No dice. No water. Nothing.
He crawled out of the hole and lay there panting, and then raised his head to look across and see what the Roller was doing. It must be doing something back there.
It was. It was making something out of wood from the bushes, tied together with tendrils. A queerly shaped framework about four feet high and roughly square. To see it better, Carson climbed up onto the mound of sand he had excavated from the hole, and stood there staring.
There were two long levers sticking out of the back of it, one with a cup-shaped affair on the end of it. Seemed to be some sort of a catapult, Carson thought.
Sure enough, the Roller was lifting a sizable rock into the cup-shaped outfit. One of his tentacles moved the other lever up and down for a while, and then he turned the machine slightly as though aiming it and the lever with the stone flew up and forward.
The stone arced several yards over Carson’s head, so far away that he didn’t have to duck, but he judged the distance it had traveled, and whistled softly. He couldn’t throw a rock that weight more than half that distance. And even retreating to the rear of his domain wouldn’t put him out of range of that machine, if the Roller shoved it forward almost to the barrier.
Another rock whizzed over. Not quite so far away this time.
That thing could be dangerous, he decided. Maybe he’d better do something about it.
Moving from side to side along the barrier, so the catapult couldn’t bracket him, he whaled a dozen rocks at it. But that wasn’t going to be any good, he saw. They had to be light rocks, or he couldn’t throw them that far. If they hit the framework, they bounced off harmlessly. And the Roller had no difficulty, at that distance, in moving aside from those that came near it.
Besides, his arm was tiring badly. He ached all over from sheer weariness. If he could only rest a while without having to duck rocks from that catapult at regular intervals of maybe thirty seconds each—
He stumbled back to the rear of the arena. Then he saw even that wasn’t any good. The rocks reached back there, too, only there were longer intervals between them, as though it took longer to wind up the mechanism, whatever it was, of the catapult.
Wearily he dragged himself back to the barrier again. Several times he fell and could barely rise to his feet to go on. He was, he knew, near the limit of his endurance. Yet he didn’t dare stop moving now, until and unless he could put that catapult out of action. If he fell asleep, he’d never wake up.
One of the stones from it gave him the first glimmer of an idea. It struck upon one of the piles of stones he’d gathered together near the barrier to use as ammunition, and it struck sparks.
Sparks. Fire. Primitive man had made fire by striking sparks, and with some of those dry crumbly bushes as tinder—
Luckily, a bush of that type was near him. He broke it off, took it over to the pile of stones, then patiently hit one stone against another until a spark touched the punklike wood of the bush. It went up in flames so fast that it singed his eyebrows and was burned to an ash within seconds.
But he had the idea now, and within minutes he had a little fire going in the lee of the mound of sand he’d made digging the hole an hour or two ago. Tinder bushes had started it, and other bushes which burned, but more slowly, kept it a steady flame.
The tough wirelike tendrils didn’t burn readily; that made the fire-bombs easy to make and throw. A bundle of faggots tied about a small stone to give it weight and a loop of the tendril to swing it by.
He made half a dozen of them before he lighted and threw the first. It went wide, and the Roller started a quick retreat, pulling the catapult after him. But Carson had the others ready and threw them in rapid succession. The fourth wedged in the catapult’s frame work, and did the trick. The Roller tried desperately to put out the spreading blaze by throwing sand, but its clawed tentacles would take only a spoonful at a time and his efforts were ineffectual. The catapult burned.
The Roller moved safely away from the fire and seemed to concentrate its attention on Carson and again he felt that wave of hatred and nausea. But more weakly; either the Roller itself was weakening or Carson had learned how to protect himself against the mental attack.
He thumbed his nose at it and then sent it scuttling back to safety by throwing a stone. The Roller went clear to the back of its half of the arena and started pulling up bushes again. Probably it was going to make another catapult.
Carson verified—for the hundredth time—that the barrier was still operating, and then found himself sitting in the sand beside it because he was suddenly too weak to stand up.
His leg throbbed steadily now and the pangs of thirst were severe. But those things paled beside the utter physical exhaustion that gripped his entire body.
And the heat.
Hell must be like this, he thought. The hell that the ancients had believed in. He fought to stay awake, and yet staying awake seemed futile, for there was nothing he could do. Nothing, while the barrier remained impregnable and the Roller stayed back out of range.
But there must be something. He tried to remember things he had read in books of archaeology about the methods of fighting used back in the days before metal and plastic. The stone missile, that had come first, he thought. Well, that he already had.
The only improvement on it would be a catapult, such as the Roller had made. But he’d never be able to make one, with the tiny bits of wood available from the bushes—no single piece longer than a foot or so. Certainly he could figure out a mechanism for one, but he didn’t have the endurance left for a task that would take days.
Days? But the Roller had made one. Had they been here days already? Then he remembered that the Roller had many tentacles to work with and undoubtedly could do such work faster than he.
And besides, a catapult wouldn’t decide the issue. He had to do better than that.
Bow and arrow? No; he’d tried archery once and knew his own ineptness with a bow. Even with a modern sportsman’s durasteel weapon, made for accuracy. With such a crude, pieced-together outfit as he could make here, he doubted if he could shoot as far as he could throw a rock, and knew he couldn’t shoot as straight.