“Not a clue, Mel. If I could talk to these—these alien ape men—” he paused and sighed. “I’m sure they’d know what we’re up against but there’s no way I can ask them. We got the word over the radio but they don’t even know there’s anything wrong yet.”
“If you’re going up I’ll get dressed and go with you.”
“Then hurry up. Eddie and the tracker already left. I was gonna’ try to explain to the aliens and get a couple of them to come along. We might need another gun before we’re through.”
Mel disappeared and returned less than five minutes later, all ready to go. By then, the sheriff had the alien heads nodding over a drawing in the dirt that showed the hole as a circle and a couple of stickmen with their limbs broken or severed. Mel couldn’t read any of their facial expressions, of course, but the faces were animated in an entirely different way than before.
When the sheriff and Mel started for the hole the two biggest aliens fell in and marched off with them. They talked to each other in hushed voices, which suggested they might already suspect what had happened but couldn’t figure out how the humans knew about it.
At the hole Dr. Aberg was in a highly agitated state. His big electric lantern lit a wide circle around the barely discernible periphery of the hole. There were tracks, lots of them, and a great deal of fresh blood.
A gasp went up from the aliens, followed by much murmuring. They knew at a glance what had happened, and they wanted to tell the humans what they thought.
Aberg already suspected the guards had been attacked by a cat. The signs were clear, he said, with claw marks appearing only intermittently. This indicated that the claws were retractable, as in all Earth’s large felines except the cheetah. These were, however, very much bigger than even the Siberian tiger’s pawprints, and the Siberian tiger was the biggest modern cat there was.
One of the aliens squatted, and smoothed out an area of bare ground before upending his javelin to draw. The drawing was crude, of course, like the sheriff’s stick figures, but there was one special feature that nobody could miss, the saber fangs. The alien had drawn a Similodon.
“There haven’t been any of those on Earth since the Pleistocene,” Eddie gasped.
“This was a big pussy cat,” the tracker added. “We better hope it went back through the hole instead of off on our side of it.”
“It’d be easier to find Bobby if they were over here,” the sheriff replied glumly.
“They’re not, Sheriff,” Aberg answered. “See those scuffs? The cat couldn’t hold Dave clear of the ground for very long at a time, so he intermittently dragged him.” He paused, flashed the light ahead. “Bobby was still OK when this happened. There’s his tracks following. Uh, Sheriff, we’re gonna’ have to go on through.”
The sheriff glanced around. Besides himself, the tracker, Eddie and Mel, and the two aliens, he had the two deputies who had relieved the missing guards. You guys stay here,” he said. “Get on the radio and tell the rest of them what we’re doing. I’ll take my handset along and report back to you on that. As long as we’re in range, that is.”
“What about getting some more help?” One of them asked.
The sheriff thought a moment. He studied the aliens. “No, not yet. I’ve got a feeling these guys are used to dealing with the cats, and we have the firepower to handle them once we know where they are. We’ll wait.”
The party started through, with the two aliens and Aberg in the lead.
The character of the land on the other side was radically different, the air a little cooler despite the fact that on this other world dawn was just beginning. Much of the vegetation closely resembled terrestrial types, at least to the untrained eye, but seasonally, that world seemed to be behind Earth. Here, it was still winter, and this vegetation was dry, with withered leaves, and there were occasional patches of ice and crusty snow.
“Blood!” the tracker shouted. “And spent brass.” He shined the light on the ejected cartridge, then picked it up. “Bobby was still alive and kicking when they got here.” He paused, flashed the light some more. “The cat stopped and turned on him, but didn’t chase him. Bobby ran back a ways.”
He followed the human tracks until they too stopped and turned, then bent down and picked up two more brass casings. “He got off two more shots, too. Let’s move ahead and see if he hit it.”
They crept forward, and as they did the aliens became very nervous. Both of them were sniffing the light dawn breeze, nostrils twitching as if to gather more of the scent. Mel began to see more and more of the logic in Eddie’s new theory. These aliens did seem to be more a pack than a tribe, and they did seem to share a close relationship to an old and honored terrestrial species.
As Mel watched he caught a little of their concern and checked to see that the shotgun’s safety catch was off. The aliens didn’t know about guns, of course. None had been fired when they were around, which left Mel wondering what they would do when all of a sudden they had that experience. He expected panic, and that the aliens would be useless as allies until this cooled.
Another thought gave him more comfort; he had a twelve-gauge shotgun, whereas Bobby had been armed with a thirty-eight caliber pistol. Up close, even a tiger shouldn’t be able to take more than one load of that.
“Up there,” the tracker yelled. He was shining his light in the direction in which the aliens pointed, into a jumble of bushes and boulders far to the right. “It’s like a cavern. The aliens must think the tiger’s in it.”
“Then, where’s Bobby? Unless the cat turned on him again, and got him, he ought to be around.”
Before anymore could be said, or anything decided about how they would approach the cat’s lair, assuming that was what this was, the aliens took the initiative. One of them guided Aberg’s arm, and the light, to the crest of this little rise from which the outcropping protruded. Four glowing eyes, not just two, appeared in the beam; two cats, not one. With this intrusion, came a jumble of low roaring. Both cats then rose, saber teeth glistening, muzzles dripping red.
Mel now realized that Bobby had become dinner for the second cat, just as his brother was for the first. He raised his gun, ready to start forward.
The aliens had other plans. The air whistled. Two dark streaks raced toward the cats. Two agonized howls followed. Both cats suddenly lurched and stumbled. It was over in an instant. They both dropped lazily to the ground and moved no more.
The aliens turned to gaze at the startled humans, as though they expected to be congratulated.
Mel was sure that had he been able to read their expressions these would have been grins of pride. They had done an amazing thing. With these primitive weapons they had overcome two ferocious beasts that had defied the efforts of men with guns. How? He wondered. It didn’t look to him as though the javelins had struck in particularly vulnerable places.
“The javelin heads were poisoned,” the tracker gasped. “Perhaps with something like the curare the Amazonian Indians use.” His thinking was far ahead of Mel’s. “Let’s go up.”
Cautiously, they did. Mel found himself wishing he hadn’t. His stomach was not prepared to meet the challenge. The sight of the gnawed bodies was more than it could take. Mel found he wasn’t the only one.
They were looking for the hole and couldn’t find it. During the time it had taken to bury what was left of the Bridges brothers daylight had arrived on both worlds, and that complicated the problem somewhat. But it wasn’t the entire explanation, since backtracking their own footprints should have led them right to it. And it hadn’t, and that meant the hole had moved.