Chapter VI

She was leading the way to the thin, rough ridge that marched up the mountain between two of its smooth planes of fracture. She sprang to the ridge and began running lightly up it. At twenty feet she stopped.

The men were slower. The ridge was nothing but saw-toothed points of raw rock, hard and glassy and glittering. They had not had the girl's practice with it.

She motioned Kemp past her and called down to Pritchard. "This is our only hope. I've never seen The One on any of these mountains. I'm sure It can't climb the smooth sides--"

"And we can hold It back with our flamers. Good girl."

"But hadn't we better get a little higher?" queried Sturgis.

"Higher!" echoed the girl. "We've got to get to the top!"

Frantically, they climbed, taking insane chances, fantastically insecure holds, scrambling, cutting their hands on the raw rock edges, living a nightmare....

At last Kemp and Cornelia, weak with exhaustion, sank against the ridge, gasping and heaving. Sturgis, next in line, had no breath with which to berate them. He could only crouch there and stare helplessly at them both.

Pritchard braced his feet and dared to look down. The One was a straight red line across the meadow, a gleam of highlight from Its wet side where the afternoon sun struck It. (Unconsciously he thought of It now as Cornelia did, as a person.) It was heading for the foot of the ridge.

They all stared down, sucking in their tortured breaths. Waiting for It to reach the ridge and start climbing, Pritchard found himself studying It detachedly. He realized his courage and reason were somehow reviving.

It was, after all, a worm. It differed from a six-inch Terran night-crawler only in that It measured about a hundred and fifty feet in length, and was proportionately much thinner, like a snake. It also differed in those snail-like tips that probed out into slim, delicate points or contracted into thick stubs scarce six feet long. Those tips were investigating the jagged rock of the ridge now.

And he saw that there were tips at the other end, too. But one was missing. Only a round stump accompanied the other long trailing feeler. It was a fair index of The One's terrible strength, Pritchard thought--realizing where the rest of that tip was now--that, in trying to wrench Itself clear, It had knocked over a hundred-foot, five-thousand-ton space ship.

"It's coming," said Kemp in a shrill, brittle voice. The hunter shot a glance at the stocky youth and saw he was fighting hysteria.

The One was rippling slowly up the ridge. Pritchard guessed Its speed was greater than it seemed at that distance. Like a scarlet river, It poured steadily up.

"After I've used this," said Cornelia in an even, conversational voice, "you gentlemen can have it if you don't mind having to pull it out of me." She held up her long knife, and there was no expression on her face.

Kemp and Sturgis could only stare at her. Pritchard couldn't warn her by asking them to take it away from her, and anyway this was no place for a wrestle.

"And why do you think we would want that?" he asked in as pleasant a tone as he could manage.

"So much better than a flamer or jumping," she replied. "Take my advice and--"

"I wish you would pull yourself together," said Pritchard. "You're frightening Kemp up there."

Startled, Kemp stared back down at his chief, and then he closed his mouth in a firm line. Pritchard congratulated himself that the remark was a stone that had slain two birds.

"You don't honestly think there's a way out of this," exclaimed Cornelia, "with--with--"

"What I wouldn't give for my snapper!" breathed Kemp.

"Or one of those five-inchers," and Sturgis jerked his head at the little tumbled beetles over at the river.

"There isn't a rocket-tube down there I'd trust now," said Pritchard. "They're all bunged out of alignment. Some of the snappers might still be in shape to use...." His voice trailed off. Something was taking shape in his thoughts, something revolving about a word Cornelia had uttered--the word "jump."

"Well, what _can_ we do?" muttered Sturgis tensely. The worm was still well below, but coming steadily up. They could see the little scarlet tips now, questing over the jagged edges. Behind was all humping redness.

"We were very foolish--" Pritchard checked himself. "I was very foolish. I permitted us to be outmaneuvered. The one thing that monster doesn't want is for one of us to get back to the cruisers--"

"I've been thinking," Sturgis cut in. "Why don't we empty all our flamer tanks along the ridge here, climb all the way to the top and then, as soon as it's almost there, spark the fuel and give it a good roasting?"

Pritchard shook his head. "I thought of that. You forget how volatile that stuff is. By the time it gets there--no, I've got a better use for the flamers."

He began unstrapping the tank from his shoulders. "Kemp, pass yours on down. No, hang on to it, just in case. Sturgis, you take my position and hold It off as long as you can--" He glanced at the gauge on the light plastic tank and shook his head grimly. "Okay, children, let's get going--to the top."

The mountain wasn't really much of a mountain, being only some five hundred feet high. Their first frantic scramble up the ridge had carried them almost two-thirds of the way.

Behind them, the worm was flowing steadily upward, like a river of blood, along the narrow ridge.

"Kemp," panted Pritchard as the short young man finally and painfully inched over the knife-edged peak.

Kemp turned, stretching out a hand to Cornelia to help her up and over. "Yes?"

"I'm putting this girl in your charge. She's your responsibility--"

"What are you going to do?" put in Cornelia quickly.

Pritchard looked up into those gray-green eyes so intent upon him. A pang of regret stabbed through him. He was no longer seeing her sweet-lined body. Here was a girl he could have ridden the starways with. A person with enough courage and resource to have held her own in this killer-infested Eden.

"I'm taking a powder, as they used to say back on good old Terra. I'm gambling. Gambling that I can get back to the one cruiser that hasn't burnt up all its wiring, and call the ship." He slapped the leg-pocket of his breeches. Kemp nodded. The pocket contained a ready-packed emergency chute.

* * * * *

Cornelia shook her head slowly. "You'll never make it--"

"He might," said Kemp.

"I'll bet I can," said Pritchard. "I've got to."

"The One will get you," she said. "It can get into one of those things easily. It'll take only a little of Its digestive juice...." Her face puckered and those emerald eyes shone brighter, but she fought for and regained control.

"So?" Pritchard smiled. "You'll be well rid, then, of that notorious big-game hunter, Elmer Pritchard."

"I don't want to be rid of him," she said softly. "I want him with me--at the end."

He bowed. "Thank you, Miss Boyce."

"Call me Cornelia, please."

"And you," he said, "may call me Elmer--a name I permit no one to use--" he bent forward "--but you, now."

Their lips brushed and clung.

"Fine time for love-making," muttered Kemp.

Below them, a flamer squealed suddenly. Sturgis, unknown to them, had lingered behind. Now, a hundred feet down the ridge, he fired a burst at the worm--a warning burst, for the dread feelers hung high above his head on a long, curving tendon of red wetness.

The flamer had an effective range of only thirty feet, but the slimy scarlet rope curved away, dropping off to one side and extending out into the air. The feelers contracted to mere knobs and the end thickened into a club.

A haymaker, drawing back, poised and cocked. Pritchard saw it and howled, "Sturgis! Duck!"

But there was to be no ducking that swing. Sturgis hugged the thin spine of crag and threw up a blossom of fire. But the rope came flailing about, slashing through the flame, and neatly flicked him off.

They watched the body arcing out over the meadow, the spare flamer of Pritchard twisting after it, and saw it sink on down, to stop suddenly against the turf.

Kemp began to curse. Pritchard pulled the emergency chute pack from his leg-pocket and began snapping the light harness about his long frame.

"Cut that out," he said coldly. "Just hang on, Kemp, and watch. If I've got this baby figured out right, It's going to lose interest in you two in about as many seconds."

"Good-bye, Elmer," came Cornelia's voice forlornly.

The worm's first half was recovering from the follow-through of that swing, draping itself back along the ridge yard by relentless yard. Pritchard turned, holding the chute cord in his fist. He forced a grin that he was afraid looked more like a grimace. "So long, kiddies," he said, and jumped.

At this point the leaning peak overhung the ground and he flung himself as far out as possible, trying for distance. The smooth, almost polished wall slanted away from him and the meadow swung upward.

He pulled the cord at the last minute. As the filmy neosilk billowed above him, and the harness seemed to jerk him back up from the onrushing ground, he managed to twist a glance back up at the ridge.

The One was motionless. That was good.

It had seen him.

Then he drew up his knees. The ground slammed into him and he lay there, stunned, letting the filmy folds flutter down over him.

Then he was up, bruised but whole, on his knees and scrabbling out from under the light gray stuff. By crawling under every line he avoided entanglement and in a minute was clear and running, unsnapping the harness as he went.

Not until he was well away from the mountain did he dare a glance over his shoulder. Then he almost stumbled, at the chill terror gusting through him, freezing every muscle.

The worm was a red festoon, drooping from the ridge. Even as he looked, Its whole length came off, to fall writhing out of sight momentarily at the base of the mountain.

He hadn't expected that. He had planned for It to back laboriously down the way It came, giving him a decent margin of time. But it had crossed him up. Now he had seconds instead of minutes.

He put his head down and dug in, pumping his tired, aching legs furiously. This was the worst gamble of his career, against the longest odds. He had no idea how fast the worm could go on level ground.

Suddenly, he was racing a shadow. In the slanting light of Piramus, setting through the afternoon, something like an elongated caricature of a snail's head crept across the grass beside him--two long slivers of tapering purple shadow.

Then he saw his flamer, lying almost dead ahead where it had landed after being catapulted off the ridge. Sobs rasping his throat, he slanted toward it, dove and rolled, to come up clutching it.

There was a spattering sound close by, a spatter that changed to an angry fizzing. Pritchard swung the nozzle up in the very face of the glistening red column swaying toward him. He squeezed the handle-grip.

Through the booming flame, he saw the shape twisting aside and followed it with fire. It went down to the ground, backing away into a swelling body. The worm writhed desperately away from that searing plume of licking flames.

Pritchard wheeled and ran toward the cruiser that had not burned.

Evil-smelling juice slashed across the upturned belly of the ship as he savagely wrenched open the buckled door and tumbled in, dragging the flamer in after him. He stumbled across the roof-struts and lunged for the upside-down radio panel.

The cruisers' radios were on their own battery-powered circuits. He snapped the power on and heard the slow hum and sputter of the warming tubes. He poked in the button labeled AUT. EM. SIG. a standard repeating distress call on a tight beam.

Then he was flung against the opposite wall. As he struggled back to his feet, pressure against them told him the cruiser was rising, and he knew very well it was not doing so under its own power.

A glistening red wall bulged against the door-frame through which he had come. Pritchard realized that once again the cruiser was being hoisted aloft in the worm's coil. It was going to drop him, to kill him quickly, rather than poke inside and face his flamer.

Pritchard snatched the flamer and staggered toward the opening. Jabbing the nozzle into that scarlet slime, he gripped the handles.

* * * * *

Roaring heat beat back at him. He braced himself, ignoring his own singeing flesh and crisping hair.

The cruiser struck ground with a crash. He was flung sideways, threw up an arm, and heard it snap. He dragged himself to the door which now was turned to the ground. Gritting his teeth against the pain, Pritchard hung his head through the opening and peered out.

It was a crazy nightmare. The meadow was a ceiling, to his inverted eyes, against which a giant red riband rolled and writhed in fantastic configurations. Every melting convolution, every arching loop, expressed pain and wrath. And, now and again, a livid blotch appeared along its length, alternately turning purple and yellow, and dripping streamers of drool.

Then came a sound, a great tearing sound in the sky. Pritchard hauled himself back into the ship and crawled to the radio. He switched off the automatic signal and cut in the transmission band.

"--the hell you got down there?" came Captain Savage's rasp. "Is that you up on the rock, Mr. Pritchard? Mr. Pritchard--"

"Captain!" yelled Pritchard. "Step on it! Come down on that monster. I'm all right. Come ahead!"

Then he snatched up a pair of solar goggles and worked his way to a viewport, in time to see the _Apollo_, a magnificent column of metal in the sky, descend on a pillar of incandescence--at the bottom of which lay something that bubbled and cooked, rising in a last great arch of simmering agony.

The snaggle-toothed horizon of Thisbe II was rising across the dull indigo disk of setting Piramus. Pritchard and Savage sat in their gimbal chairs in the Forward Lounge. The old man's wispy white hairs stirred in the evening breeze sucked in by the blowers.

"And every time I wonder if my hunting days aren't over," sighed Pritchard. Experimentally, he worked on the flexicast on his right arm.

"Huh," grunted the captain. "Not you. One week on Terra and you'll be telling yourself the next time it just can't be as bad. Or that this wasn't as bad as it seemed. Anything, you'll tell yourself. Anything to start--"

Cornelia appeared in the doorway. "Good evening, gentlemen," she said coolly. She was wearing cordron slacks and a soft neosilk blouse, that seemed to enjoy clinging to her contours.

"Good evening," croaked Captain Savage. He stood up, and stretched restlessly.

"Oh, don't go," said Cornelia.

"Well, if we're blasting off in the morning, I've got things to do. These days it's the old men who do all the work." He chuckled as he eased past her through the door, and gave her shoulder a little pat. "Good hunting."

The girl watched him go down the passage. "Whatever did he mean by that?" she inquired. "'Good hunting'."

"Oh, it's just an expression," said Pritchard vaguely.

She came over to him and turned about on her bare feet. "No shoes that fit," she said. "How do you like what I managed to scrounge from the men?"

He pulled her down to him with one lazy reach of his good arm. "I'm afraid," he murmured, "that I liked you better the way you were."

"You know," she spoke muffledly against his shoulder, "you're something of a beast."