Hitchcock scowled. “You speak as if men were animals,” he criticized. “As if an animal could have a mind.”
“Well, human beings are a form of animal,” Reese put in.
“That,” Hitchcock snapped, “is nonsense. Dangerous nonsense. I want to hear no more of it.” He hitched up his camera’s shoulder strap. “As for this matter of intellect, I have only your word they are not intelligent right now. I will have to have proof, Mr. Reese. I must have proof.”
Ben Reese gave up. He could not prove a thing to a man who refused to believe.
It was a good time to hunt. No wind blew loose snow on the screecher’s tracks, blotting them. No mistiness obscured the distance, and the sky’s light shimmered on the white land. Qua-orellee kept his eyes tightly lidded to lessen the glare. The tracks were new. The beast could not be very far ahead. Qua-orellee loped along, following them, but he stayed well aside of the trail for fear the snow would open under him like a mouth and devour him.
He had seen it happen, once. He and some other people were following the tracks of a bushy-tailed runner, and one of the people went close to the creature’s trail. A hole opened under him and he was gone. Qua-orellee and the other people fled instantly. Since that time, Qua-orellee had never gone closer than three body-lengths to any creature’s trail—not even his own.
The screecher’s tracks vanished over the crest of a rise. Qua-orellee veered away from the trail, to reach the crest well away from where the screecher had been. It was hard to climb the slope with only his rear legs. He dropped down and hobbled along using one of his front limbs. In the flipperlike hand of the other, he clutched his rock.
His rock was a treasure—his only possession. He would need it when he came upon the screecher and had to kill it. It was hard to find a rock of a good shape and size for killing beasts with, but a rock was wonderfully better than ice. Ice broke easily. It didn’t keep its shape. And, too, it took a much stronger blow to kill with it.
He never let the rock out of his sight, and rarely out of his hand. He clasped it to him when he slept, and he slept in his own secret place. Any other of the people would eagerly kill him—if they dared to try—to possess that rock.
He topped the rise. Below him, the screecher’s trail turned down along the valley, away from him. Qua-orellee let out a high-hacking cry, to tell the people who had joined him in the hunt that the screecher had turned in a new direction. Shrill, rasping calls came back from either side of him, repeating the news. Then another cry came from down-valley—the beast had been seen.
Qua-orellee clutched his rock against him and plunged eagerly down the slope. His big, flipper-feet and short legs made him stumble. He rolled all the way to the bottom in a cloud of snow, but he didn’t let go of his rock. No matter what happened, he would never let go of his rock.
He stood up and shook the snow out of his fur. Up-valley, two more people—not encumbered with rocks—were bounding down the hillside on all fours. They continued across the valley and up the other slope. When they reached the crest, they headed toward where the screecher had been seen. Qua-orellee stayed in the trough of the valley. He followed the trail.
The valley curved around the bulk of a massive, steep hill. As he rounded the turn, Qua-orellee saw the screecher far ahead. Three people up on the ridge had gotten abreast’ of the beast, and one of them was lolloping down into the valley to head it off. On the ridge on the other side of the valley, the two who had crossed over were rapidly catching up, running on all fours. Qua-orellee was far behind. He hurried as fast he could on his short legs and large feet.
The other people closed down into the trough of the valley, forming a wide-spaced crescent-circle line in front of the screecher. They had picked up chunks of ice and ice-spears. They confronted the beast.
The screecher stopped. It hunched down, as if to leap. They advanced toward it, ice weapons brandished. For a long moment, the screecher did not move. Then, with a snarl, it turned and retreated up the valley toward Qua-orellee.
Qua-orellee rushed to meet it. It saw him and veered away —started up the side of the valley. One of the people, galloping along in pursuit, headed it off. It swung back down into the valley, toward Qua-orellee. Qua-orellee stopped and stood erect, holding his rock high above him in both hands.
The beast charged. Its muscles pulsed and slackened rhythmically. It screamed its rage and savagery. Unflinching, Qua-orellee tensed himself to smash his rock down on the beast’s skull. He watched the beast surge toward him, screeching.
Fearlessly, he waited.
Ahead, the land loomed in the cold mist, a high mass of darkness rising out of the gray, frosty sea. Hitchcock cringed from it as it rushed overwhelmingly toward him, but then the pilot sent the skimmer sailing toward the crest. Hitchcock looked down dizzily at the crumbling, ice-crusted cliff. Sudden gusts of wind slammed into the small craft. It bucked and jolted, and the pilot fought silently. The engine surged.
Then they were over the land. The winds fell away. Hitchcock saw spread before him a desolate plain of ice and crumbling stone, and beyond, towering high, the white mountains.
But not one living thing.
The pilot twisted around and looked to the man in the midship seat. “Want to check the traps?” he asked. His parka hood was pushed back, and the wind mask dangled from his throat like a bib.
“Yeah,” Muller said. He had a snarling voice. “Check ‘em. He—” He meant Hitchcock. “He wants to see how we work. But they won’t have caught anything.”
The pilot nodded, shrugged, and turned front again. The skimmer leaped forward.
Hitchcock lifted his camera. The utter lifelessness of the rock-littered plain was oppressive. It was something the people back home ought to see. This scene, more than any words he could say to them, would impress on them how dreadful Xi Scorpii was.
Muller twisted around to face him. Reluctantly, Hitchcock put down the camera and waited for him to speak.
“We’ll see if our traps’ve caught anything,” Muller said. “If they haven’t, we’ll have to go catch our own.”
“What? Do you hunt them?” Hitchcock demanded. The mere idea was appalling.
“We got to get specimens somehow,” Muller told him.
The skimmer settled down close to the ground and streaked over the plain. The weathered boulders sprawled kaleidoscopically across their path, momentarily slashing at them, then vanished in the distance behind. Ahead, the glacier-choked mountains rose into high, wispy clouds.
“How’s it look?” Muller asked. “Pretty bare, huh?” He chuckled. “Wait a couple of months. Right now, it’s the tail end of summer.”
“Summer?” Hitchcock wondered incredulously. Here and there, a few hardy plants dug their roots into chinks in the rock, clinging to existence. Their segmented limbs and stems were frost-burst and coated with rime. Their fleshy, gray-green spines were spread in plaintive supplication to the distant sun.
Tentatively, Hitchcock raised his camera.
“Yeah, summer,” Muller repeated. “We get about a whole year of it—one out of four. We’re closer to the sun, then. Sometimes the temperature gets up as high as fifteen, here in the tropics—sometimes for weeks at a stretch.”
“Only fifteen?” Hitchcock gestured at the rock-strewn, snowless plain. “Why isn’t the snow—”
“Fifteen centigrade,” Muller explained shortly. “But it just thaws out close to the ocean. The other side of these mountains, there’s plenty of snow. You’ll see.”