The Science Fiction Anthology - Fritz Leiber

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new grass, tender-tuffed, half mashed in places by heavy animal treads. It was there that they staked him out, tying the free end of the rope tightly around the base of a scaling tree.

      “You will scream,” Extrone instructed. With his rifle, he pointed across the water hole. “The farn beast will come from this direction, I imagine.”

      Ri was almost slobbering in fear.

      “Let me hear you scream,” Extrone said.

      Ri moaned weakly.

      “You’ll have to do better than that.” Extrone inclined his head toward a bearer, who used something Ri couldn’t see.

      Ri screamed.

      “See that you keep it up that way,” Extrone said. “That’s the way I want you to sound.” He turned toward Lin. “We can climb this tree, I think.”

      Slowly, aided by the bearers, the two men climbed the tree, bark peeling away from under their rough boots. Ri watched them hopelessly.

      Once at the crotch, Extrone settled down, holding the rifle at alert. Lin moved to the left, out on the main branch, rested in a smaller crotch.

      Looking down, Extrone said, “Scream!” Then, to Lin, “You feel the excitement? It’s always in the air like this at a hunt.”

      “I feel it,” Lin said.

      Extrone chuckled. “You were with me on Meizque?”

      “Yes.”

      “That was something, that time.” He ran his hand along the stock of the weapon.

      The sun headed west, veiling itself with trees; a large insect circled Extrone’s head. He slapped at it, angry. The forest was quiet, underlined by an occasional piping call, something like a whistle. Ri’s screams were shrill, echoing away, shiveringly. Lin sat quiet, hunched.

      Extrone’s eyes narrowed, and he began to pet the gun stock with quick, jerky movements. Lin licked his lips, keeping his eyes on Extrone’s face. The sun seemed stuck in the sky, and the heat squeezed against them, sucking at their breath like a vacuum. The insect went away. Still, endless, hopeless, monotonous, Ri screamed.

      A farn beast coughed, far in the matted forest.

      Extrone laughed nervously. “He must have heard.”

      “We’re lucky to rouse one so fast,” Lin said.

      Extrone dug his boot cleats into the tree, braced himself. “I like this. There’s more excitement in waiting like this than in anything I know.”

      Lin nodded.

      “The waiting, itself, is a lot. The suspense. It’s not only the killing that matters.”

      “It’s not only the killing,” Lin echoed.

      “You understand?” Extrone said. “How it is to wait, knowing in just a minute something is going to come out of the forest, and you’re going to kill it?”

      “I know,” Lin said.

      “But it’s not only the killing. It’s the waiting, too.”

      The farn beast coughed again; nearer.

      “It’s a different one,” Lin said.

      “How do you know?”

      “Hear the lower pitch, the more of a roar?”

      “Hey!” Extrone shouted. “You, down there. There are two coming. Now let’s hear you really scream!”

      Ri, below, whimpered childishly and began to retreat toward the tether tree, his eyes wide.

      “There’s a lot of satisfaction in fooling them, too,” Extrone said. “Making them come to your bait, where you can get at them.” He opened his right hand. “Choose your ground, set your trap. Bait it.” He snapped his hand into a fist, held the fist up before his eyes, imprisoning the idea. “Spring the trap when the quarry is inside. Clever. That makes the waiting more interesting. Waiting to see if they really will come to your bait.”

      Lin shifted, staring toward the forest.

      “I’ve always liked to hunt,” Extrone said. “More than anything else, I think.”

      Lin spat toward the ground. “People should hunt because they have to. For food. For safety.”

      “No,” Extrone argued. “People should hunt for the love of hunting.”

      “Killing?”

      “Hunting,” Extrone repeated harshly.

      The farn beast coughed. Another answered. They were very near, and there was a noise of crackling underbrush.

      “He’s good bait,” Extrone said. “He’s fat enough and he knows how to scream good.”

      Ri had stopped screaming; he was huddled against the tree, fearfully eying the forest across from the watering hole.

      Extrone began to tremble with excitement. “Here they come!”

      The forest sprang apart. Extrone bent forward, the gun still across his lap.

      The farn beast, its tiny eyes red with hate, stepped out on the bank, swinging its head wildly, its nostrils flaring in anger. It coughed. Its mate appeared beside it. Their tails thrashed against the scrubs behind them, rattling leaves.

      “Shoot!” Lin hissed. “For God’s sake, shoot!”

      “Wait,” Extrone said. “Let’s see what they do.” He had not moved the rifle. He was tense, bent forward, his eyes slitted, his breath beginning to sound like an asthmatic pump.

      The lead farn beast sighted Ri. It lowered its head.

      “Look!” Extrone cried excitedly. “Here it comes!”

      Ri began to scream again.

      Still Extrone did not lift his blast rifle. He was laughing. Lin waited, frozen, his eyes staring at the farn beast in fascination.

      The farn beast plunged into the water, which was shallow, and, throwing a sheet of it to either side, headed across toward Ri.

      “Watch! Watch!” Extrone cried gleefully.

      And then the aliens sprang their trap.

      None of his neighbors knew Mr. Jell’s great problem. None of his neighbors, in truth, knew Mr. Jell at all. He was only an odd old man who lived alone in a little house on the riverbank. He had the usual little mail box, marked “E. Jell,” set on a post in front of his house, but he never got any mail, and it was not long before people began wondering where he got the money he lived on.

      Not that he lived well, certainly; all he ever seemed to do was just fish, or just sit on the riverbank watching the sky, telling tall stories to small children. And none of that took any money to do.

      But still, he was a little odd; people sensed that. The stories he told all his young friends, for instance—wild, weird tales about spacemen and other planets—people hardly expected tales like that from such an old man. Tales about cowboys and Indians they might have understood, but spaceships?

      So he was definitely an odd old man, but just how odd, of course, no one ever really knew. The stories he told the children, stories about space travel, about weird creatures far off in the Galaxy—those stories were all true.

      Mr. Jell was, in fact, a retired spaceman.

      Now that was part of Mr. Jell’s problem, but it was not all of it. He had very good reasons for not telling anybody the truth about himself—no one except the children—and he had even more excellent reasons for not letting his own people know where he was.

      The race from which Mr. Jell had sprung did not allow

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