As he spun from the rope’s end, facing first one way, then another, in the soaring white space, Eric weighed the irregular red ball in his right hand and waited for an opportunity. It was going to be complicated: he had to spit on the stuff before he threw it, and, once it was moistened, he had to get rid of it immediately. That meant he had to figure his opening exactly right—if the spin were turning him away from the Monster once he’d spat on the red ball, he’d have to get rid of it anyway; he’d have to throw his only real weapon away into emptiness and waste it.
Obviously, then, as he began to face the Monster, a moment before it was in full range—that was the time to go into action.
Eric began paying careful attention to the duration of each spin, absorbing the rhythm with his mind. There was no fear in him now; instead there was the beginning of an exultation that almost burst from his lips in a song. If he were successful, he knew, it would be the end of him. Once the explosion occurred, once the Monster was killed, he, Eric, would fall—with or without the rope—an enormous distance to the floor. He would be dashed to pieces upon it. But the life of his captor would have been extinguished first. At last a man would have done what so many men had dreamed of for so long—
Hit back at the Monsters!
The members of his own expedition would see it, Roy, Walter the Weapon-Seeker, Arthur the Organizer, they would see it and cheer themselves hoarse. Hit back at the Monsters! Hit back at them, not as a nibbling annoyance, as a thief of food or artifacts, but as a full and deadly antagonist. Hit back at the Monsters—and with their own weapon!
He hoped the expedition could still see him. The Monster had passed the circular table used for dissection and testing and was going on. Where?
It didn’t matter. Nor was it important if he were out of sight of his caged friends. Only one thing counted: get the rhythm of the spin right, make a throw at the exactly correct moment—and take a Monster with him into the sewers. What a trophy to exhibit before the ancestors!
Eric was positive he had the timing now. He allowed himself one more spin, however, and went through the whole process in his mind…
Here I spit. Here 1 throw. Here it hits, just as I begin to turn. Here the explosion. And here, as my back is toward him, the Monster begins to topple!
Yes, he had the rhythm. He started turning toward the Monster again and held the soft mass near his mouth, working up saliva. He began to see the creature out of the corner of one eye.
Now.
Slowly, carefully, he spat on the ball, turning it round and round in his hand. The arm went back and waited while a portion of his mind beat out the pulsations it had learned. Then, when the Monster was almost in front of him, he threw. He threw in a high arc, aiming for the creature’s head which quivered to and fro at the end of that impossibly long neck. It would hit. Holy Ancestors, he had thrown right!
But, as he began the turn away, Eric saw that something had gone wrong. The Monster had noticed the red ball. And its head had moved down to meet it, mouthopened avidly! The Monster was swallowing it! It was swallowing the weapon!
The last thing Eric saw on that turn was a ripple that went down the length of the great throat. And in the ugly purple eyes—unmistakable enjoyment.
Then the spin had turned his back to the Monster. He waited despairingly for the sound of an explosion—a cataclysm that would tear the immense creature apart from the inside. He didn’t hear it. There was a sound at last behind him, not at all an explosion, but loud and odd nonetheless. Eric allowed himself to hope again. The rope from which he hung jerked back and forth.
He twisted his head and strained his eyes as the spin back began. Where was it?
There!
Yes, there it was. He could see the Monster again. And his whole body went limp with defeat.
Ripples continued to run down that long stretch of throat, smaller and smaller ripples as the effect, whatever it was, evidently began wearing off. Whenever a ripple came down to the point where the neck joined the body, there was a repetition of the loud, odd’ sound Eric had heard when his back was to the Monster. Now, facing it and seeing the entire creature, Eric could almost recognize the sound: not quite a sneeze, a little more than a cough, and more than reminiscent of a human moan of pleasure—with the same enjoyment-filled upbeat at the end.
Yes, the effect was definitely wearing off. The odd sounds came at longer and longer intervals; they were less and less loud. At the end of the curving neck, the triangular head probed about restlessly in great arcs, searching, with what seemed to be a delighted hunger, for more red balls. The Monster’s eyes were alight with ecstasy.
Apparently, it did not in any way connect its tiny human captive with the pleasures it had experienced.
That was just as well, Eric decided, hanging from the green rope where it adhered to his back. There was enough of a humiliation involved in having the knowledge all to himself.
Eric the Monster-Toppler. Eric the Alien-Killer. That’s how he had seen himself in those few fierce moments of anticipation.
“How about Eric the Monster-Tickler?” he asked himself bitterly. “That’s a good name.”
What had gone wrong with the weapon? Well, to begin with, he realized, it had probably not been a weapon in the first place. Walter the Weapon-Seeker had stolen it from the Monsters and found it could be used as one—against humans. You added your saliva, threw it against a man—and he exploded. But among the Monsters, it could have been something totally different. A food, a condiment of some sort. A drug, perhaps even an aphrodisiac. Or, conceivably, part of some complex game that they played. Mixed with human saliva, its properties had no doubt been altered. But not in the direction of any danger to the Monster. Eric’s carefully mounted attack had given the alien no more discomfort than a concentrated, highly individualized orgy.
There was an important lesson here, something that attacked the foundations of Alien-Science with its belief that man could learn important and useful information from the Monsters. What was utterly inimical to humans could be salutary to the Monsters: it might be healthful, it might be merely pleasant, it might be both. And, logically, the proposition should be sometimes true in its reversed form. What nourished or stimulated humans might destroy Monsters—if such a thing could ever be isolated or discovered!
The thought suggested a line of approach to a weapon that men had dreamed of for countless downtrodden centuries—a true Monster-killer.
Eric began to get excited, to run through possibilities for research in his mind. But his captor’s abrupt halt brought him back to where he was at the moment: he had no weapons at all except his good right arm and a couple of spears. And if he was going to do any fighting before he was torn to pieces, he’d better get ready.
They had arrived at the Monster’s destination. The green rope to which he was attached was being lowered purposefully. He pulled at his back sling and, after a moment’s thought, selected a light spear for his right hand and a heavy one for his left.
If he had a chance, if the creature’s head came at all close, he would try a cast with the throwing spear. And he would use the heavy one to ward off the various dissecting ropes and implements. Not that he had much hope: the distances were too great for any decent aim, the power and strength which he faced were too far beyond his own.
But he was Eric the Eye, a warrior and a man.