What kind of a creature was this?
He was standing on a rocky hillside, surrounded by ragged cliffs. Far ahead was a tall range of misty blue mountains. The sun was in his eyes, blinding and hot. A black speck crawled up the hillside toward him.
Dillon kicked a stone out of his way and waited for the speck to resolve. This was the pattern of mental combat, where thought becomes physical, and ideas are touchable things.
The speck became a K’egran. Suddenly he loomed above Dillon, enormous, glistening with muscle, armed with sword and dagger.
Dillon moved back, avoiding the first stroke. The fight was proceeding in a recognizable—and controllable—pattern. Aliens usually conjured an idealized image of their race, with its attributes magnified and augmented. The figure was invariably fearsome, superhuman, irresistible. But usually, it had a rather subtle flaw. Dillon decided to gamble on its presence here.
The K’egran lunged ahead. Dillon dodged, dropped to the ground, and lashed out with both feet, leaving his body momentarily exposed. The K’egran tried to parry and respond, but too slowly. The blow from Dillon’s booted feet caught him powerfully in the stomach.
Exultantly, Dillon bounded forward. The flaw was there!
He ran in under the sword, feinted, and, while the K’egran tried to guard, neatly broke his neck with two blows of the edge of his hand.
The K’egran fell, shaking the ground. Dillon watched him die with a certain sympathy. The idealized racial fighting image was larger than life, stronger, braver, more enduring. But it always had a certain ponderousness about it, a sure and terrible majesty. This was excellent for an image—but not for a fighting machine. It meant slow reaction time, which meant death.
The dead giant vanished. Dillon thought for a moment that he had won. Then he heard a snarl behind him. He whirled and saw a long, low black beast, panther-like, with ears laid back and teeth bared.
So Arek had reserves. But Dillon knew how much energy this kind of a fight used up. In a while, the alien’s reserves would be gone. And then ...
Dillon picked up the giant’s sword and moved back, the panther advancing, until he found a high boulder against which he could set his back. A waist-high rock in front of him served as a parapet, across which the panther had to leap. The sun hung before him, in his eyes, and a light breeze blew dust in his face. He swung back the sword as the panther leaped.
During the next slow hours, Dillon met and destroyed a complete sampling of K’egra’s more deadly creatures, and dealt with them as he would deal with similar animals on Earth. The rhinoceros—at least, it resembled one—was easy in spite of its formidable size and speed. He was able to lure it to a cliff edge and goad it into charging over. The cobra was more dangerous, nearly spitting poison in his eyes before he was able to slash it in half. The gorilla was powerful, strong, and terribly quick. But he could never get his bone-crushing hands on Dillon, who danced back and forth, slashing him to shreds. The tyrannosaurus was armored and tenacious. It took an avalanche to bury him. And Dillon lost count of the others. But at the end, sick with fatigue, his sword reduced to a jagged splinter, he stood alone.
“Had enough, Dillon?” Arek asked.
“Not at all,” Dillon answered, through thirst-blackened lips. “You can’t go on forever, Arek. There’s a limit to even your vitality.”
“Really?” Arek asked.
“You can’t have much left,” Dillon said, trying to show a confidence he did not feel. “Why not be reasonable? I’ll leave you room, Arek, I really will. I ... well, I sort of respect you.”
“Thanks, Dillon,” Arek said. “The feeling is sort of mutual. Now, if you’d give in—”
“No,” Dillon said. “My terms.”
“OK,” Arek said. “You asked for it!”
“Bring it on,” Dillon muttered.
Abruptly, the rocky hillside vanished.
He was standing knee-deep in a gray marsh. Great gnarled trees rank with moss rose from the still green water. Lilies white as a fish’s belly jerked and swayed, although there was no breeze at all. A dead white vapor hung over the water and clung to the trees’ rough bark. There was not a sound in the swamp, although Dillon sensed life all around him.
He waited, turning slowly around. He sniffed the stagnant, slow-moving air, shuffled his feet in the gluey mud, smelled the decaying fragrance of the lilies. And a realization came to him.
This swamp had never existed on K’egra!
He knew it, with the certainty with which an Earthman senses alien worlds. The gravity was different, and the air was different. Even the mud beneath his feet was unlike the mud of K’egra.
The implications came crowding in, too quickly to be sorted. Could K’egra have space travel, then? Impossible! Then how could Arek know so well a planet other than his own? Had he read about it, imagined it, or—
Something solid glanced heavily off his shoulder. In his speculation, the attack had caught Dillon off guard.
He tried to move, but the mud clung to his feet. A branch had fallen from one of the giant overhanging trees. As he watched, the trees began to sway and crackle. Boughs bent and creaked, then broke, raining down upon him.
But there was no wind.
Half stunned, Dillon fought his way through the swamp, trying to find solid ground and a space away from the trees. But the great trunks lay everywhere, and there was no solidness in the swamp. The rain of branches increased, and Dillon whirled back and forth, looking for something to fight against. But there was only the silent swamp.
“Come out and fight!” Dillon shrieked. He was beaten to his knees, stood up, fell again. Then, half-conscious, he saw a place of refuge.
He struggled to a great tree and clung tightly to its roots. Boughs fell, branches whipped and slashed, but the tree couldn’t reach him. He was safe!
But then he saw, with horror, that the lilies at the base of the tree had twined their long stalks around his ankles. He tried to kick them loose. They bent like pale snakes and clung tighter to him. He slashed them loose and ran from the shelter of the tree.
“Fight me!” Dillon begged, as the branches rained around him. There was no answer. The lilies writhed on their stalks, reaching for him. Overhead was a whirr of angry wings. The birds of the swamp were gathering, black and ragged carrion crows, waiting for the end. And as Dillon swayed on his feet, he felt something warm and terrible touch his ankles.
Then he knew what he had to do.
It took a moment to get up his courage. Then Dillon plunged head-first into the dirty green water.
As soon as he dived, the swamp became silent. The giant trees froze against the slate sky. The lilies lost their frenzy and hung limp on their stalks. The white vapor clung motionless to the rough bark of the trees, and the birds of prey glided silently through the thick air.
For a while, bubbles frothed to the surface. Then the bubbles stopped.
Dillon came up, gasping for breath, deep scratches across his neck and back. In his hands was the shapeless, transparent creature who ruled the swamp.
He waded to a tree and swung the limp creature against it, shattering it completely. Then he sat down.
Never had he been so tired and so sick, and so convinced of the futility of everything. Why was he struggling for life, when life occupied so insignificant a part in the scheme of things? Of what significance was his instant of life, measured against the swing of the planets, or the stately flaming of the stars? And Dillon was amazed at the lewdness with which he was scrambling for existence.
The warm water lapped around his chest. Life, Dillon told himself sleepily, is nothing more than an itch on the hide of the non-living, a parasite of matter. Quantity counts, he told himself, as the water stroked his neck. What is the tininess of life compared to the vastness of nonliving? If nonliving is natural, he thought as the water touched his chin, then to live is to be diseased. And life’s only healthy thought is the wish for death.