It wasn't fair!
When Rod heard himself think that ancient and useless protest he had a sudden vision of the Deacon's kindly, cynical smile. He heard his dry drawclass="underline" Fair? You expected this to be fair, son? This is not a game. I tried to tell you that you were a city boy, too soft and stupid for this. You would not listen.
He felt a gust of anger at his instructor; it drove fear out of his mind. Jimmy was right; the Deacon would eat his own grandmother! A cold, heartless fish!
All right, what would the Deacon do?
Again he heard his teacher's voice inside his head, an answer Matson had once given to a question put by another classmate: "There wasn't anything I could do, so I took a nap.
Rod squirmed around, rested his hand on "Colonel Bowie" and tried to take a nap. The unholy chorus made it almost impossible, but he did decide that the stobor in his tree- or was it the next tree?- did not seem to be coming closer. Not that it could come much closer without breathing on his neck, but at least it did not seem disposed to attack.
After a long time he fell into restless sleep, sleep that was no improvement, for he dreamed that he had a ring of sobbing, ululating stobor around him, staring at him, waiting for him to move. But he was trussed up tight and could not move.
The worst of it was that every time he turned his head to see what a stobor looked like it would fade back into the dark, giving him just a hint of red eyes, long teeth.
He woke with an icy shock, tried to sit up, found himself restrained by his chest strap, forced himself to lie back. What was it? What had happened?
In his suddenly-awakened state it took time to realize what had happened: the noise had stopped. He could not hear the cry of a single stobor, near or far. Rod found it more disturbing than their clamor, since a noisy stobor advertised its location whereas a silent one could be anywhere- why, the nearest one could now be sitting on the branch behind his head. He twisted his head around, pulled the insect netting off his face to see better. But it was too dark; stobor might be queued up three abreast for all he could tell.
Nevertheless the silence was a great relief. Rod felt himself relax as he listened to the other night sounds, noises that seemed almost friendly after that devils' choir. He decided that it must be almost morning and that he would do well to stay awake.
Presently he was asleep.
He awoke with the certainty that someone was looking at him. When he realized where he was and that it was still dark, he decided that it was a dream. He stirred, looked around, and tried to go back to sleep.
Something was looking at him!
His eyes, made sensitive by darkness, saw the thing as a vague shape on the branch at his foot. Black on black, he could not make out its outline- but two faintly luminous eyes stared unwinkingly back into his.
"-nothing I could do, so I took a nap." Rod did not take a nap. For a time measured in eons he and the thing in the tree locked eyes. Rod tightened his grip on his knife and held still, tried to quell the noise of his pounding heart, tried to figure out how he could fight back from a hammock. The beast did not move, made no sound; it simply stared and seemed prepared to do it all night.
When the ordeal had gone on so long that Rod felt a mounting impulse to shout and get it over, the creature moved with light scratching sounds toward the trunk and was gone. Rod could feel the branch shift; he judged that the beast must weigh as much as he did.
Again he resolved to stay awake. Wasn't it getting less dark? He tried to tell himself so, but he still could not see his own fingers. He decided to count to ten thousand and bring on the dawn.
Something large went down the tree very fast, followed at once by another, and still a third. They did not stop at Rod's bedroom but went straight down the trunk. Rod put his knife back and muttered, "Noisy neighbors! You'd think this was Emigrants' Gap." He waited but the frantic procession never came back.
He was awakened by sunlight in his face. It made him sneeze; he tried to sit up, was caught by his safety belt, became wide awake and regretted it. His nose was stopped up, his eyes burned, his mouth tasted like a ditch, his teeth were slimy, and his back ached. When he moved to ease it he found that his legs ached, too- and his arms- and his head. His neck refused to turn to the right.
Nevertheless he felt happy that the long night was gone. His surroundings were no longer terrifying, but almost idyllic. So high up that he could not see the ground he was still well below the roof of the jungle and could not see sky; he floated in a leafly cloud. The morning ray that brushed his face was alone, so thoroughly did trees shut out the sky.
This reminded him that he had to mark the direction of sunrise. Hmm... not too simple. Would he be able to see the sun from the floor of the jungle? Maybe he should climb down quickly, get out in the open, and mark the direction while the sun was still Jow. But he noticed that the shaft which had wakened him was framed by a limb notch of another forest giant about fifteen meters away. Very well, that tree was "east" of his tree; he could line them up again when he reached the ground.
Getting out of his hammock was almost as hard as getting in; sore muscles resented the effort. At last he was balanced precariously on one limb. He crawled to the trunk, pulled himself painfully erect and, steadied by the trunk, took half-hearted setting-up exercises to work the knots out. Everything loosened up but his neck, which still had a crick like a toothache.
He ate and drank sitting on the limb with his back to the trunk. He kept no special lookout, rationalizing that night feeders would be bedded down and day feeders would hardly be prowling the tree tops-not big ones, anyway; they would be on the ground, stalking herbivores. The truth was that his green hide-away looked too peaceful to be dangerous.
He continued to sit after he finished eating, considered drinking more of his precious water, even considered crawling back into his hammock. Despite the longest night he had ever had he was bone tired and the day was already hot and sleepy and humid; why not stretch out? His only purpose was to survive; how better than by sleeping and thereby saving food and water?
He might have done so had he known what time it was. His watch told him that it was five minutes before twelve, but he could not make up his mind whether that was noon on Sunday or midnight coming into Monday. He was sure that this planet spun much more slowly than did Mother Earth; the night before had been at least as long as a full Earth day.
Therefore the test had been going on at least twentysix hours and possibly thirty-eight- and recall could be any time after forty-eight hours. Why, it might be today, before sunset, and here he was in fine shape, still alive, still with food and water he could trust.
He felt good about it. What did a stobor have that a man did not have more of and better? Aside from a loud voice, he added.
But the exit gate might be as much as twenty kilometers "east" of where he had come in; therefore it behooved him to reach quickly a point ten kilometers east of where he had come in; he would lay money that that would land him within a kilometer or two of the exit. Move along, hole up, and wait- why, he might sleep at home tonight, after a hot bath!
He started unlashing his hammock while reminding himself that he must keep track of hours between sunrise and sunset today in order to estimate the length of the local day. Then he thought no more about it as he had trouble folding the hammock. It had to be packed carefully to fit into a pocket of his vest pack. The filmy stuff should have been spread on a table, but where he was the largest, flattest area was the palm of his hand.