LITMIR.BIZ

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schooner will return. Eakins and I will leave then. The rest of you will have died.”

      “You’re bluffing,” Sorensen said. “What makes you think you could kill us? You didn’t do so well today.” He caught Drake’s attention and gestured at the radio. Drake shrugged his shoulders and went back to work.

      “I wasn’t trying,” the Quedak said. “The time for that was at night. This night, before you have a chance to work out a better system of defense. You must join me tonight or I will kill one of you.”

      “One of us?”

      “Yes. One man an hour. In that way, perhaps the survivors will change their minds about joining. But if they don’t, all of you will be dead by morning.”

      Drake leaned over and whispered to Sorensen, “Stall him. Give me another ten minutes. I think I’ve found the trouble.”

      Sorensen said into the walkie-talkie, “We’d like to know a little more about the Quedak Cooperation.”

      “You can find out best by joining.”

      “We’d rather have a little more information on it first.”

      “It is an indescribable state,” the Quedak said in an urgent, earnest, eager voice. “Can you imagine yourself as yourself and yet experiencing an entirely new series of sensory networks? You would, for example, experience the world through the perceptors of a dog as he goes through the forest following an odor which to him—and to you—is as clear and vivid as a painted line. A hermit crab senses things differently. From him you experience the slow interaction of life at the margin of sea and land. His time-sense is very slow, unlike that of a bird of paradise, whose viewpoint is spatial, rapid, cursory. And there are many others, above and below the earth and water, who furnish their own specialized viewpoints of reality. Their outlooks, I have found, are not essentially different from those of the animals that once inhabited Mars.”

      “What happened on Mars?” Sorensen asked.

      “All life died,” the Quedak mourned. “All except the Quedak. It happened a long time ago. For centuries there was peace and prosperity on the planet. Everything and everyone was part of the Quedak Cooperation. But the dominant race was basically weak. Their breeding rate went down; catastrophes happened. And finally there was no more life except the Quedak.”

      “Sounds great,” Sorensen said ironically.

      “It was the fault of the race,” the Quedak protested. “With sturdier stock—such as you have on this planet—the will to live will remain intact. The peace and prosperity will continue indefinitely.”

      “I don’t believe it. What happened on Mars will happen again on Earth if you take over. After a while, slaves just don’t care very strongly about living.”

      “You wouldn’t be slaves. You would be functional parts of the Quedak Cooperation.”

      “Which would be run by you,” Sorensen said. “Any way you slice it, it’s the same old pie.”

      “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” the Quedak said. “We have talked long enough. I am prepared to kill one man in the next five minutes. Are you or are you not going to join me?” Sorensen looked at Drake. Drake turned on the transmitter.

      Gusts of rain splattered on the roof while the transmitter warmed up. Drake lifted the microphone and tapped it, and was able to hear the sound in the speaker.

      “It’s working,” he said.

      At that moment something flew against the netting-covered window. The netting sagged; a fruit bat was entangled in it, glaring at them with tiny red-rimmed eyes.

      “Get some boards over that window!” Sorensen shouted.

      As he spoke, a second bat hurtled into the netting, broke through it and tumbled to the floor. The men clubbed it to death, but four more bats flew in through the open window. Drake flailed at them, but he couldn’t drive them away from the transmitter. They were diving at his eyes, and he was forced back. A wild blow caught one bat and knocked it to the floor with a broken wing. Then the others had reached the transmitter.

      They pushed it off the table. Drake tried to catch the set, and failed. He heard the glass tubes shattering, but by then he was busy protecting his eyes.

      In a few minutes they had killed two more bats, and the others had fled out the window. The men nailed boards over both windows, and Drake bent to examine the transmitter.

      “Any chance of fixing it?” Sorensen asked.

      “Not a hope,” Drake said. “They ripped out the wiring while they were at it.”

      “What do we do now?”

      “I don’t know.”

      Then the Quedak spoke to them over the walkie-talkie. “I must have your answer right now.”

      Nobody said a word.

      “In that case,” the Quedak said, “I’m deeply sorry that one of you must die now.”

      VII

      Rain pelted the iron roof and the gusts of wind increased in intensity. There were rumbles of distant thunder. But within the copra shed, the air was hot and still. The gasoline lantern hanging from the center beam threw a harsh yellow light that illuminated the center of the room but left the corners in deep shadow. The treasure-hunters had moved away from the walls. They were all in the center of the room facing outward, and they made Drake think of a herd of buffalo drawn up against a wolf they could smell but could not see.

      Cable said, “Listen, maybe we should try this Quedak Cooperation. Maybe it isn’t so bad as—”

      “Shut up,” Drake said.

      “Be reasonable,” Cable argued. “It’s better than dying, isn’t it?”

      “No one’s dying yet,” Drake said. “Just shut up and keep your eyes open.”

      “I think I’m going to be sick,” Cable said. “Dan, let me out.”

      “Be sick where you are,” Drake said. “Just keep your eyes open.”

      “You can’t give me orders,” Cable said. He started toward the door. Then he jumped back.

      A yellowish scorpion had crept under the inch of clearance between the door and the floor. Recetich stamped on it, smashing it to pulp under his heavy boots. Then he whirled, swinging at three hornets which had come at him through the boarded windows.

      “Forget the hornets!” Drake shouted. “Keep watching the ground!”

      There was movement on the floor. Several hairy spiders crawled out of the shadows. Drake and Recetich beat at them with rifle butts. Byrnes saw something crawling under the door. It looked like some kind of huge flat centipede. He stamped at it, missed, and the centipede was on his boot, past it, on the flesh of his leg. He screamed; it felt like a ribbon of molten metal. He was able to smash it flat before he passed out.

      Drake checked the wound and decided it was not fatal. He stamped on another spider, then felt Sorensen’s hand clutching his shoulder. He looked toward the corner Sorensen was pointing at.

      Sliding toward them were two large, dark-coated snakes. Drake recognized them as black adders. These normally shy creatures were coming forward like tigers.

      The men panicked, trying to get away from the snakes. Drake pulled out his revolver and dropped to one knee, ignoring the hornets that buzzed around him, trying to draw a bead on the slender serpentine targets in the swaying yellow light.

      Thunder roared directly overhead. A long flash of lightning suddenly flooded the room, spoiling his aim. Drake fired and missed, and waited for the snakes to strike.

      They didn’t strike. They were moving away from him, retreating to the rat hole from which they had emerged.

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