Turning about, John saw the Terror had spotted him and was churning the water in his direction. John filled his lungs and dived, as if to hide again. But underneath the surface he changed direction and swam directly toward his opponent. He saw the heavy legs and arms churning toward him overhead; and, as they passed in the water, he reached up, grabbed one flailing foot and pulled.
The Terror reacted with powerful suddenness. He checked; and dived. John, flung surfacewards by the heel he had caught, released it and dived also, so that he shot downwards, behind and above the back of the Dilbian. He saw the wide shoulders, the churning arms; and then, as the Terror—finding no quarry—turned upwards again toward the surface, John closed in.
He passed the thin length of his belt around the Terror’s thick neck, wrapped it also around his own wrists and twisted the large loop tight.
At this the Terror, choking, should have headed toward the surface, giving John a chance to breathe. The Dilbian did. But there and then the combat departed from John’s plan, entirely. John got the breath of air he had been expecting at this moment—the one breath he had counted on to give him an advantage over the strangling Terror. But then Streamside plunged down again, turning and twisting to get at the human who was riding his back and choking him. And finally, and after all, John came at last to understand what sort of an opponent he had volunteered to deal with.
It is always easy to be optimistic; and even easier to underrate an enemy. John, in spite of all the evidence, in spite of all his experiences of the last three days, had simply failed to realize how much greater the Terror’s strength could be than his own. Physically, the Terror in sheer weight and muscle was a match for any two full-grown male Earthly gorillas. And, in addition to this, he had human intelligence and courage.
John clung like a fresh-water leech, streaming out in the wake of the Terror, as the Terror thrashed and twisted, trying to get a grip with his big fingers on the thin belt, sunk in the fur of his neck. While with the other nineteen-inch hand he beat backwards through the water, trying to knock John from his hold.
John was all but out of reach, stretched at arms-length by his grip on the belt. But now and again, the blind blows of the Terror’s flailing hand brushed him. Only brushed him—awkwardly, and slowly, slowed by the water—but each impact tossed John about like a chip in a river current. He felt like a man rolling down a cliff side and being beaten all over by baseball bats at the same time.
His head rang. The water roared in his ear. He gulped for air and got half a mouthful of foam and water. His shoulder numbed to one blow and his ribs gave to another. His senses began to leave him; he thought—through what last bit of semiconsciousness that remained as the fog closed about his mind—that it was no longer a matter of proving his courage in facing the Terror. His very life now lay in the grip of his hands on the twisted belt. It was, in the end, kill or be killed. For it was very clear that if he did not manage to strangle the Terror before he, himself, was drowned or killed, the Terror would most surely do for him.
Choking and gasping, he swam back to blurred consciousness. His mouth and nose were bitter with the taste of water and he was no longer holding the belt. The edge of the bank loomed like a raft to the survivor of a sunken ship, before him. Instinctively, no longer thinking of the Terror, or anything but light and air, he scrabbled like a half-drowned animal at the muddy edge of earth. His arms were leaden and weak, too weak to lift him ashore. He felt hands helping him. He helped to pull himself onto slippery grass. The hands urged him a little farther. His knees felt ground beneath him.
He coughed water. He retched. The hands urged him a little farther; and finally, at last completely out on solid land, he collapsed.
He came around after a minute or two to find his head in someone’s lap. He blinked upwards and a watery blur of color slowly resolved itself into the face of Ty Lamorc, taut and white above him. Tears were rolling down her cheeks.
“What—?” he croaked. He tried again. “What’re you doing here?”
“Oh, shut up!” she said, crying harder than ever.
She began wiping his face with a piece of cloth nearly as wet as he was.
“No,” he said. “I mean—what’re you doing here?” He tried to sit up.
“Lie down,” she said.
“No. I’m all right.” He struggled up into a sitting position. He was still in Glen Hollow, he saw, groggily. And the place was aswarm with Dilbians. A short way down the bank a knot of them were clustered around something.
“What—?” he said, looking in that direction.
“Yep, it’s the Terror, Half-Pint,” said a familiar voice above him. He looked up to see the enormously looming figure of the Hill Bluffer. “He’s still out and here you’re kicking your heels and sitting up already. That makes it your fight. I’ll go tell them.” And he strode off toward the other group, where John could hear him announcing the winner in a loud and self-justified voice.
John blinked and looked over at Ty.
“What happened?” he asked her.
“They had to pull him out. You made it to shore on your own.” She produced a disposable tissue from somewhere—John had almost forgotten such things existed during the last three days—wiped her eyes and blew her nose vigorously. “You were wonderful.”
“Wonderful!” said John, still too groggy for subtlety. “I was out of my head to even think of it. Next time I’ll try tangling with a commuter rocket, instead!” He felt his ribs, gently. “I better get back to the embassy in Humrog and have a picture taken of this side.”
“Oh! Are your ribs—”
“Maybe just bruised. Wow!” said John, coming on an especially tender spot.
“Oh!” Ty choked up again. “You might have been killed. And it’s all my fault!”
“All your fault—” began John. The dapper, small figure of Joshua Guy loomed suddenly over him.
“How are you, my boy?” inquired Joshua. “Congratulation, by the way. Oh, you must let me explain—”
“Not now,” said John. He clutched at the small man’s wrist. “Help me up. Now,” he said, turning to face Ty, who had also risen. “What do you mean, it was all your fault?”
“Well, it was!” she wailed, miserably, twisting the tissue to shreds. “It was my off-official recommendation. The Contacts Department sent me out here to survey the situation and recommend means for beating the Hemnoids to the establishment of primary relations with the Dilbians.”
“What’s that got to do with me?”
“Well, I—I recommended they send out a man who conformed as nearly as possible to the Dilbian psychological profile and we worked out a Dilbian emotional situation so as to convince them we weren’t the absolute little toylike creatures they thought we were—but people just like themselves. We needed to prove to them we’re as good men as they are, aside from our technology, which they thought was sissy.”
“Me?” said John. “Dilbian emotional profile?”
“But you are, you know. Extroverted, l-lusty—. They’ve got a very unusual culture here, they really have. They’re really much more similar to us humans when we were in the pioneering stages of culture than they are to the Hemnoids. We had to prove it to them that we could be the kind of people they could treat with on a level. The truth is, they’ve got chips on their shoulders because we and the Hemnoids are more advanced. But they can’t admit to themselves they’re more primitive than we are because their culture—anyway,” wound up Ty, seeing John was getting red in the face, “it would have been fine except for Boy Is She Built trying to throw you over that cliff. She was only supposed to take your wrist phone. And that altered the emotional constants of the sociological equations involved. And Gulark-ay almost got it all twisted to go his own way, and—”