I huddled and I cried, curled up in my bedroll. I hated this wretched planet, I was mad at Jimmy for letting me be alone like this, and I wasn’t any too happy with myself. I hadn’t expected Trial to be like this. So lonely, so strange. As I’d been riding during the afternoon, I had scared up some large animals. They were ungainly things with knobby knees and square, lumpy heads. When they noticed Ninc and me, they threw up their heads and stared at us. They had the kind of horns that sprout — antlers. After a moment, they bolted in a wobble-legged gallop that carried them crashing into the brush and then out of sight. They knew an outsider when they saw one, and I knew I didn’t belong. I didn’t get to sleep easily.
The sun was up in the morning. The morning was cold, but the day was brighter. As I moved around and as the sun rose higher, it became almost warm, the heat of the sun and the cold of the breeze balancing each other.
I wasn’t feeling much better, but I did keep busy and that took my mind off my troubles. I was recognizing a disadvantage to being a turtle that I hadn’t previously reckoned on. It gave me far too much time to appreciate the awfulness of planets in general and the specific failings of this particular place, not to mention the misery of being alone and deserted. I couldn’t stand that. I had to be a tiger to occupy my mind, if for no other reason.
So I packed up early in the morning, and I started Ninc in a great widening circle, the most efficient sort of search pattern. The country continued to be rough. If I had been following the line of the land, it wouldn’t have been so bad, but trying to go in a spiral was difficult. There were any number of times that I had to get off Ninc and lead him.
At one of these times, a small animal came bounding across my path. I’d seen other small ground animals and gliders in the trees once or twice, but never this close. I pulled my gun the instant I saw it. My first shot with the sonic pistol missed, the sighting beam slapping left, because Ninc chose that moment to toss his silly brown head. I shot again and dropped it this time. A sonic pistol is a nice short range weapon.
I led Ninc over and as I bent topick it up, there was a loud noise of something moving in the bushes. I turned to look. The thing that stood poised there was nothing short of startling. It stood on two legs and was covered with gray-green hair. It had a square, flat animal mask for a face. I had a feeling that I had just killed its intended dinner.
We looked at each other. Ninc snorted and started backing away. I dropped the reins and hoped Ninc wouldn’t run. I took a deep breath to quiet my pounding heart, and then I walked straight at it with my pistol in hand. I yelled, “Shoo. Get out of here,” and waved my arms. I yelled again, and after an uncertain moment, the thing shook its head and plunged away.
I turned back and grabbed Ninc, feeling surprisingly good. I’d been thinking about my general misery, my feeling I’d just had a shot. It struck me that if I had a choice, I’d be better off without a gun than without immunization. I’ll bet more explorers on old Earth died from the galloping whatdoyoucallits than were killed by animals, accidents and aborigines put together.
I kept going until the light began to fade. The animal I shot turned out to be edible. It’s all a matter of luck. In the course of Survival Training I’d had occasion to eat things that were so gruey that I wonder how anybody could choke them down (the point under demonstration, of course, being that the most astounding guck will keep you alive). I’d done better than just find something that would keep me alive, so I hadn’t done badly at all. By the time I had eaten, I was thoroughly tired, and I had no trouble at all in falling asleep.
It was the next day that I found the road. I was riding along and singing. I don’t like the idea of people who don’t sing to themselves when they’re all alone. They’re too sober for me. At least hum — anybody can do that. So I was riding and singing as I came to the crest of a hill. I looked down and through the trees I saw the road.
I brought Ninc down the hill, losing sight of the road for a time in the trees and rocks, and then coming clear of the welter of brown and gray and green to find the road. It curved before and behind, following the roll of the land with no attempt made to cut the land for a straighter, more even way. It was a narrow dirt road with marks of wagons and horses and other tracks I couldn’t identify. There were droppings, too, that weren t horse droppings.
We had come in over the ocean from the west and I knew we weren’t terribly far from it now. It seemed likely that one of the ends of this road was the ocean. I, of course, had no intention of going in that direction since I had already seen one ocean and counted that sufficient. My quota of oceans had been filled. It is an axiom that roads lead somewhere, so I oriented myself and headed eastwards — inland.
I came on my first travelers three hours later. I rounded a tree-lined bend, and pulled Ninc to a stop. Ahead of me on the road, going in the same direction that I was, were five men on horseback herding a bunch of the ugliest creatures alive. The creatures were making a wordless, chilling, lowing sound as they milled and plodded along.
I looked after them, my heart suddenly fluttering. For a brief moment I wanted to turn and head back the way I had come. But I knew I had to face these locals sometime if I was going to be a tiger, and after all, they were only Mudeaters. Only Mudeaters.
Ninc set into a walk as I kicked him. I got a better look at the creatures as we approached, and it seemed likely to me that they were brothers of the thing I had encountered in the woods the day before. They were quite unhuman. They were green and grotesque with squat bodies, knobby joints, long limbs and square heads. But they did walk on their hind legs and had paws that were prehensile — hands — and that was enough to give an impression of humanity. A caricature.
All the men on horseback had guns in saddle boots and looked as nervous as cats with kittens. One of them had a string of packhorses on a line, and he saw me and called to another who seemed to be the leader. That one wheeled his black horse and rode back toward me.
He was a middle-aged man, whatever middle age was here. He was a large man and he had a hard face. It was a normal enough face, but it was hard. He pulled to a halt when we reached each other, but I didn’t. I kept riding and he had to come around and follow me.
I believe in judging people by their faces, myself. A man can’t help the face he owns, but he can help the expression he wears on it. If a man looks mean, I generally believe he is unless I have reason to change my mind. This one looked mean, and that was why I kept riding. He made me feel nervous.
He said, “What be you doing out here, boy? Be you out of your head? There be escaped Losels in these woods.”
I had short-cut hair and I was wearing my cloth coat against the bite in the air, but still I wondered. I wasn’t ready to dispute the point with him, though. I had no desire to linger around him. I didn’t say anything. I believe I said once that I don’t talk easily in strange company or large crowds.
“Where be you from?” he asked.
I pointed to the road behind us.
“And where be you going?”
I pointed ahead. No other way to go except crosscountry. He seemed exasperated. I have that effect sometimes.
We had caught up to the others and the animals by then, and the man said, “Maybe you’d better ride on from here with us. For protection.”
He had an odd way of twisting his sounds, almost as though he had a mouthful of mush. It was imprecise, but I could understand him well enough. He wanted me to do something I didn’t want to.