Tribesmen of Gor

21 What Occurred in the Dune Country

The Kur was an incredible animal. Without it I would not have survived.

The next day the water was gone.

To my surprise, though the Kur had pointed to the dune country, he led me in a path parallel to the dunes, through more normal Tahari terrain. I realized then that he had been pointing to his destination, whatever it might be, which lay within the dune country, as though I might know what it was, but that the route which he wisely selected would parallel the dune country, until he reached a given point, at which point he would strike out overland, into the forbidding dunes, to reach whatever objective it was within them which might concern him, or us.

“The water is gone,” I told him. I held the bag in such a way as to show him that no fluid remained within it. After his first drink, near the shelter trench, he had not had water.

The Kur watched the flight of birds. He followed them, for a day. He found their water. It was foul. We gratefully drank. I submerged the water bag I carried. We killed four birds and ate them raw. The Kur caught small rock tharlarion, and on this plenty, too, we feasted. Then we continued our journey. I drank much for the Kur seemed hurried. Surely he knew that one should move only at night, and yet the beast seemed tireless, and would press me on, as though I needed neither food nor sleep. Did he not know I was not a Kur? He, shielded by the fur, was less exposed to the sun. He would move day and night, but I could not.

Impatiently, he would crouch near me, when I fell to the sand, to sleep. He would, in an Ahn, awaken me, and point to the sun. Yet I did not think he wished to tell me the hour of the day, but call my attention to the passage of time. He seemed hurried. Surely even for his mighty body the heat, the sun, the scarcity of water, the scarcity of food, must have taken dreadful toll. At times his wounds must have tormented him. Twice I saw him lick bloody crusts from their eruptions. Yet, slowly, as though by force of will, he moved on. I was sure he would kill us both. One does not tease the desert. It is implacable, like a stone or furnace.

“I need water,” I told him. It had been gone, for more than a day.

The Kur held up eight fingers, and pointed to the sun.

I did not understand his meaning.

We continued our journey. An Ahn later, nostrils distended, head to the ground, he became excited. He pointed to the ground. He looked at me, as though I must understand. I did not, of course, understand. He looked at the sun, and at me, as though weighing the values of alternative courses of action. Then he swiftly departed from his original direction. I realized, several Ahn later, that he was following an animal trail, the odors of which my senses were not keen enough to detect. We fell on our bellies before the foul water, stinking with excrement, and drank, and again I filled the bag. There was a half-eaten tabuk by the water hole. The Kur warned me from certain pieces of the meat, smelling it. Other pieces, farther from the eaten areas, more exposed to the sun, he gave me. He himself broke free a haunch and, with swift motions, with his teeth, holding it, ripped the dry meat from the bone.

The Kur motioned me to my feet. We must again proceed. Fed, watered, I followed him, though each step because of my exhaustion, was torture.

He returned to his original trail, from which he made his detour, and continued his march.

The next morning he pointed to the sun, and held up seven fingers before me. But be let me sleep, in the shelter of a rock, while he watched. That night we again began the trek. The rest did me much good. The next morning he pointed to the sun, and held up six fingers before me. His rendezvous, I gathered, whatever it might be, must be accomplished within six days. It was for that reason that he had been driving us both.

Water became more scarce.

The Kur began to move more slowly, and drank more. I think its wounds had begun to tell upon it. No longer did it seem willing to risk leaving the trail to hunt for water. It was becoming a desperate beast. It feared, I gathered, missing its rendezvous. It had not counted on its own weakness. The leather I wore about my feet was in tatters, but in the footprints of the Kur there was blood. It moved on, indomitably.

Then the water was gone.

That morning the Kur had pointed to the sun and held up four fingers.

We went a day without water.

In a place, on the next day, we found flies, swarming, over parched earth.

There, with his great paws, slowly, painfully, the Kur dug. More than four feet below the surface be found mud. We strained this through the silk I had had tied to my wrist, into his cupped paws. He gave me almost all of this water. He licked from his moistened palms only what I had left, In another place, that night, we found a narrow channel of baked mud, the dried bed of a tiny, vanished stream, of the sort which in the winter, should it rain, carries water for a few days. We followed this to a shallow, dried pool. Digging here we found dormant snails. In the moonlight we cracked, the shells, sucking out the fluid. It stank. Only at first did I vomit. Again the Kur gave me almost the entire bounty of this find. Then we could find no more.

We retraced our steps to the point at which we had left the trail, and continued our journey.

The next morning the Kur pointed to the sun, and held up three fingers.

The water bag, in my hands, hung limp, dry.

“Let us rest,” I said to the Kur.

He pressed on. I followed the footprints. There was blood in them. I shut my eyes against the glare of the terrain.

I put one foot in front of the other, again and again. The Kur began to limp.

I felt weak, sleepy. I was not much interested in eating. I began to feel strangely hot. I felt my forehead. It was dry, and seemed unnaturally warm. I felt sick to my stomach, nauseous. That is strange, I thought. I have had little to cat. “We must rest,” I told the Kur. But he continued to press ahead. I tumbled after him, the water bag in my hand. I looked at it. It had cracked in the sun. I clung to it, irrationally. I would not release it. When the sun was high, I fell. The Kur waited until I regained my feet and then he limped on, ahead of me. “I’m dizzy,” I told him. “Wait!” I stood still, and waited for the dizziness to pass. The Kur waited. Then we went on again. I had a headache. I shook my head. The pain was severe. I put one foot before the other, continuing to follow the Kur. I began to itch. I scratched at my arms and body. I stumbled.

The Kur moved on ahead of me. It was odd to feel no saliva in one’s mouth. My eyes were dry. Bits of sand seemed to lie between the eye and the lid; I felt, too, the grit of sand in my mouth, I could not spit it out; my eyes would not form tears. My lips became sore and began to ache. My tongue felt large. I felt skin on my tongue peeling. I began to feel cramps in my stomach, and in my arms and legs. I looked about. There seemed much water here and there, in flat places, in the distance, rippling, stirring. Sometimes our path took us toward it, but when we reached it, it was sand, the air above it rippling and troubled in the desert’s heat.

“I can go no further,” I told the Kur.

He turned to face me, crouched over, He pointed now to his right, for the first time. He pointed directly eastward, toward the dunes. It was at this point, I understood, that he would enter the dunes for his overland trek.

I looked at the dunes to my left, shimmering with beat, rippled in the wind, the tops like bright, tawny smoke in the light.

It would be madness and death to enter them.

He pointed to his right, with the long arm, to the dunes.

“I can go no further,” I told him.

He approached me. I regarded him. He took me by the arms and threw me to his feet in the dirt. I heard him take the water bag, and heard it being ripped. My hands were jerked behind me and tied. My ankles were crossed and tied. With portions of the water bag and shreds from it, the Kur bound his feet, to protect them from the sand. He twisted a rope from other strips of the bag. I felt this, as I lay in the sand and grit, knotted about my throat. With his teeth he severed the leather that had bound my ankles. I almost strangled. I was jerked to my feet. The Kur turned toward the dunes, the rope of twisted leather in his right paw. Then he led me, tethered behind him, his human prisoner, climbing, slipping, up the first long, sloping crest, into the dunes.

“You are mad, mad!” I wanted to scream at him. But I could only whisper, and scarce could heir my own voice.

He continued on, and I, tethered, followed him.

The wind whipped across the sand.

I have marched to Klima, I told myself. I march again to Klima. I march again to Klima. But on the march to Klima I had had water, salt.

Sometime in the late afternoon I must have fallen unconscious in the sand. I dreamt of the baths of Ar and Turia. I awakened in the night. No longer was I bound. I was carried in the arms of the Kur, over the silvered dunes. He moved slowly. He was lame in his right foot. I lay against wounds in his upper chest.

They were open. But they did not bleed.

Again I fell asleep. The next time I awakened it was shortly before dawn. The Kur, near me, half covered with sand, stirred by the wind, slept. I rose to my feet, unsteadily. Then I fell. I could not stand.

I sat in the sand, my back against a dune. I watched the Kur. It had been an admirable, mighty beast. But now the deserts, and its wounds, were killing it.

It was now weak, and drawn. Its flesh seemed to hang upon its huge frame, a shrunken reminiscence of the former mightiness of the beast. I regretted, strangely, seeing its decline. I wondered at what drove it, why it strove so relentlessly in its mission, whatever that might be. It dared to pit itself against the desert. I noted its fur. No longer was it sleek, but now it seemed lifeless, brittle; it was dry; it was coated with sand. The leather of its snout, with the two nostrils, was cracked and, now, oddly gray. Its mouth and lips were dry, like paper. About the snout, the nostrils, the mouth and lips, were tiny fissures, broken open, filled with sand. Sand, too, rimmed the nostrils and eyes, and the mouth and lips. It lay in the sand, curled, its head facing away from the wind, like something discarded, needed no longer, cast aside. It, proud beast, had pitted itself against the desert. It had lost. What prize, I wondered, could be worth the risk the beast had been willing to take, the price it had been willing to pay, its own life. I wondered if it could rise again to its feet. I did not think either of us would survive the day.

The sun was rising.

The beast rolled to its feet, and shook the sand from its fur. It stood unsteadily.

“Go without me,” I said. “I cannot walk. You can no longer carry me.”

The beast lifted its long arm and pointed to the sun. It lifted two fingers.

It approached me. “I cannot go with you,” I said. “What is so important”‘ I asked.

The beast, with one of his digits, rubbed about its lips and tongue. It thrust the finger against my lips. I tasted sand, and salt.

“I cannot swallow,” I said.

The beast regarded me for a long time. Its corneas were no longer yellow, but pale and whitish. There seemed no moisture in the eyes. At the corners the tiny cracks about the eyes were coated with sand. My own eves stung. I no longer attempted to remove particles from them.

The beast turned away from me and bent his head over his cupped hands. When he again turned to face me I saw, in the black cup of his paws, a foul fluid. I thrust my face to his hands, and, my own hands trembling, holding his cupped hands, drank. Four times did the beast do this. It was water from the last large water hold we had visited, where the half-eaten tabuk had been found, held for days in the beast’s storage stomach. It was water, in a sense, from his own tissues he gave me, releasing it now, not into his own system, but yielding it to me, that I might not die. Again did the beast try to give me water, but then there was none left. He had given me the last of his water. Now again, from his mouth and lips, and body, he scraped salt. He took it, too, from the bloody crusts of his wounds. I took it, with the sand, licking at it, now able to swallow it. He had given me; it seemed an inexplicable gift, water and salt from his own body.

“I can trek again,” I told him. “It will not be necessary to carry me, should you be able to do this, or to bind me, leading me as a prisoner. You have given me the water and salt from your own body. I do not know what you seek, or what your mission may be, but I shall accompany you. We shall go together.”

But the beast motioned now that I should rest. Then he stood between me and the sun and, in the shade of his body, as he moved from time to time, I slept.

I dreamed of the ring he wore about the second finger of his left hand.

When the moons were high I awakened. Then I followed the Kur. He moved slowly, being lame. His desiccated tissues, I did not think, would much longer support life. The water he had been saving, perhaps for me, was gone.

I did not know what he sought. Yet I admired him that he should so indomitably seek it. I did not think it an ill or unworthy thing to die in the company of such a beast.

At his side I sensed the will and nobility of the Kur. They were indeed splendid foes for Priest-Kings and men. I wondered if either Priest-Kings or men could be worthy of them.

Thus, natural enemies, a human and a Kur, in a strange truce in the desert, side by side, trekked. I knew not toward what. I did not question, nor had I questioned, did I think my companion could have responded to me. I accompanied him.

Many times during the night he fell. He grew visibly weaker. I waited for him to regain his feet. Then we would again take up our march.

Near morning we rested. In an Ahn he tried to rise, but could not. He looked at the sun. In the sand, with one digit, he drew a single mark. He curled the great clawed right fist, and struck the sand once with it, hopelessly. Then he fell into the sand.

I thought that he would die then, but he did not. At times during the day, when I lay in the shadow of his body, I thought him dead but, putting my ear to his chest, I detected the beating of the large heart, slow, irregular, sporadic, fitful like the clenching of a weakening fist.

In the night I prepared to bury the Kur. I dug a trench in the sand. I waited for it to die.

I regretted that there would be no stone with which to mark the grave.

When the moons were full, he put back his bead and I saw the rows of fangs. To my horror he struggled again to his feet, and, shaking the sand from his body, took up again the march. In awe I followed it.

In the morning he did not stop to rest. He pointed again to the sun, and this time lifted a closed fist.

I did not understand his meaning. Then the hair rose upon the back of my neck.

He had indicated time, by pointing to the sun, and days, by lifting his fingers.

He had now pointed to the sun, and lifted only the great, dry fist, obdurate, closed.

I then understood, in horror, suddenly, the meaning of his mission.

There were no more days left. It was the last day. It was a world’s last day.

“Surrender Gor,” had been the message to the Sardar, from the Kurii ships. It had been an ultimatum. The Priest Kings, of course, had been only puzzled; their response had been curiosity, inquiry; it had never occurred to them, rational creatures, what might be the enormity of the plan of Kurii. I sensed there might be different parties among them, creatures so menacing, so fierce, so aggressive, so proud, so imperialistic, so uncompromising, factional and belligerent. After the failure of the major probe in Torvaldsland, it seemed not unlikely a given party or tribe might have fallen from power. I did not think it would be desirable, among Kurii, to be among a party which had fallen from power. It seemed clear to me then that a new force had come to power among the enemies of the Sardar, one willing, if necessary, to sacrifice one world to gain another.

The Kur had held up a closed fist. There were no more days. I found myself struggling to keep up with the beast.

The slave runs had been stopped. Doubtless key operatives, particularly those, who spoke languages of Earth, had been evacuated from Gor. Others, ignorant of the horrifying, strategy of interplanetary warfare would remain. Even Ibn Saran, with all his brilliance, did not, I supposed, conjecture his role as dupe in this plan, precipitating tribal warfare, thus effectively, for almost all practical purposes, closing the desert to intruders, strangers, agents either of Priest-Kings or even of alternative Kurii parties. Kurii, I suspected, were as little united as men, for they, too, are jealous, proud, territorial beasts.

Gor, I understood, was to be destroyed. This would eliminate a world, but with it, Priest-Kings, and leave Earth unsheltered, vulnerable, to the attack fleets of the steel worlds. Better one world than none.

Though it was in the heat of the Tahari noon the beast did not pause. The Kur, like the great cats, hunts when hungry, but it is a beautifully night-adapted animal. Its night vision is perhaps a hundred times keener than that of humans.

It can see even by starlight. It would be blind only in total darkness, as in a brine pit at Klima. The pupils of its eyes, like those of the cat, can shrink to pinpoints and expand to wide, dark, light-sensitive moons, capable of minute discriminations in what to a human being would seem pitch darkness. The Kur, commonly, emerges from its lair with the falling of darkness. It is then that its nostrils distend and its ears lift, listening, and that it begins its hunt.

I had no doubt that the destruction of the world, as would seem fitting to a Kur, would occur with the coming of night. It is then that the Kur, commonly, chooses to hunt.

In the late afternoon the Kur cried out with rage. It stood on the crest of a dune, sand almost to its knees, sand sweeping about it. The wind had picked up.

I saw its fur blown.

The wind had shifted again to the east.

Within moments the storm fell. The Kur pressed on, through the pelting sand. The sky was dark. I held to the fur at its arm, fighting to keep my balance.

Suddenly the Kur stopped, and stood, leaning against the wind. I opened my eyes, and saw, briefly, before me, not more than a hundred yards away, in a fleeting gap in the storm, swiftly closed again by the hastened, stinging sand, crooked, leaning to one side, half buried in the sand, a cylinder of steel; it was perhaps twelve feet in diameter, perhaps forty feet of it exposed; at its apex I saw clustered thrust chambers; it was a ship; it had been crashed into the sand.

I felt the hand of the Kur close on my arm.

It is difficult to speak of what I then saw. The Kur, near me, removed his hand from my arm. With his right hand he took the ring on his left hand, that on his second finger, and turned the bezel inward, so that the silvered plate set in the gold faced inward. On the exposed side of the ring there was a circular switch, which he then depressed. For a moment in the sand, he seemed to shimmer and then I saw only the sand, the whipping, pelting sand. I was alone.

I knew then it hunted, in the vicinity of the tower. On my hands and knees I crawled a few yards in the direction of the ship. I saw it again, once, briefly, in a break in the storm. It seemed to me of primitive design. The thrust chambers suggested a liquid-propellant rocket. It was not disklike. I supposed it might have been an obsolete ship, perhaps a derelict, even an ancient ship, little more now than the fuselage for housing a bomb.

I shuddered when I thought of the power concealed in that casing of steel.

I wanted to run, into the storm, away from it. But I knew that nowhere on Gor would there be escape from that inert ship. “Beware the steel tower, “ had been written on the rock. It was a weapon, pressed to the temple of a world, set to be discharged with the falling of darkness.

I thought I heard, wild. Though it was hard to tell in the wind, the screams of men. Then I heard the howling of a Kur, and four sudden, swift explosions.

Then I heard only the wind.

I waited, for more than a quarter of an Ahn. Then I sensed it near me. The air shimmered. It stood unsteadily. The Kur was before me. Its, paws were red. In its left thigh was one, and across its chest, were three holes, three quarters of an inch in diameter. Its eyes could not focus. It turned it’s back to me. In its back, where the force had burst loose of its body, were holes corresponding to those in his leg and chest. I smelled burned flesh. A white smoke, tiny, in wisps, like the smoke of dry ice, rose from the holes, then was whipped away by the wind. The Kur sank to the sand. I knelt over it. It opened its eyes. They focused on me.

“Is it accomplished?” I asked. “Is the work done?”

With its bloodied paw the ring from its finger. It thrust it toward me. It was covered with blood, that I assumed of men it had slain. The circle of the ring was not made for a human finger. It was an inch and a quarter in diameter. It pressed the ring into my hands. With a bit of leather string, from the wrappings on my feet, I tied it about my neck.

The beast lay in the sand. It bled slowly. I suppose it had little blood to bleed. Too, the force that had penetrated its body had, apparently, searing, half-sealed the wounds it inflicted. It was as though a hot poker, chemically active, had been thrust through the body. The sand beneath the beast grew red. I took wrappings from my feet, to thrust into the wounds. The beast pushed me away. He lifted his arm to where the sun must be, could it be seen.

I stood unsteadily beside it. Then, I started for the ship, through the storm.

Beside the ship I found the remains of a shelter of stones and tarpaulins.

Scattered about were men. I did not think they were alive. I froze, as I saw, through the wind and sand, another Kur. It was armed. In its right paw it held a small device. It was hunched over, it peered through the storm.

I was startled that there would be a Kur at the ship. I think, too, the Kur with whom I had trekked had not anticipated this development. Kurii, no more than men, willfully commit themselves to destruction. Yet there was a Kur here, guarding the ship. I knew it would be a determined, desperate beast. It was willing to die, apparently, that the success of the plan of its superiors be fulfilled. I supposed many Kurii had competed for this honor. This Kur, of all, in the cruel selections of the steel ships, had survived. Kurii do not believe in immortality. They do believe, however, in glory. This Kur, of all, in the cruel selections of the steel ships, had survived. He would be the most dangerous of all. He turned toward me.

I saw the paw lift and I threw myself to the side. A large, square rock, near me, one of those which had held the tarpaulin, leaped upward, split in two, burnt black, and the slightest instant, almost simultaneous, afterward I heard the atmospheric concussion of the weapon.

I think the Kur was startled to see me. It did not expect to find a human at the ship. Perhaps it was this which, in his startled reflex, spoiled his aim. Then the sand closed between us. I crawled from the area of the shelter. I saw him, twice, through gaps in the sand. But he did not see me. The next time I saw him, he turned toward me, hunched down. I backed away. He approached, through the sand. He did not fire. He held the weapon outward from him, toward me. He tried to hold his balance. I conjectured that his weapon held a limited number of charges. It did not fire like a ray, but rather on the analogy of a cartridge weapon. Suddenly I felt the steel of the ship at my back. The beast emerged from the sand. I saw its lips draw back; it steadied the weapon in the whipping wind with both paws; I thrust at the circular switch on the ring about my neck.

Suddenly I saw the Kur as though in red light, and the sand, too, darkly red to black. To my amazement, it seemed startled; it hesitated; I leapt to the side. A blast from the hand-held weapon struck the steel of the ship. In its side there was a blackened hole, as though drilled; metal ran in droplets down the side of the ship.

I suddenly realized, with elation, that the Kur could not see me.

The ring concealed a light-diversion device, encircling the orbit of its wearer with a field. We see in virtue of light waves reflected from variously textured surfaces, which waves impinge on the visual sensors. We see in virtue of the patterns of these waves. The field about me, I conjectured, diverted and reconstituted these waves in their original patterns; thus, a given wave of light in the normal visual spectrum which might strike me and be reflected to the visual sensor of another organism did not now strike me but was diverted; similarly patterns of light from objects behind me were diverted about my field and reconstituted beyond it, to impinge, as though I were not there, on the visual sensor of an observing organism. The light in virtue of which I saw was shifted in its spectrum; it was, I suspect, originally in the nonvisible portion of the spectrum, perhaps in the infrared portion of the spectrum, which could penetrate the field, but was shifted in such a way by the diversion field that I, within the orbit of the field, experienced it in a range visible to myself.

It was thus, I conjecture, that I could not be seen by those outside the field and yet that I, within the field, could experience the world visually which lay beyond it. Such a device would have been useless among Priest-kings, for they do not much depend on their visual sensors. Among Kurii I was not certain how effective it would be. Kurii, like men, are visually oriented organisms, but their hearing and their sense of smell is incomparably more acute.

I did not know how many charges the weapon of the Kur held. Further, I was unarmed. I slipped back into the whipping sand. I crouched down.

The howling of the wind screened the sounds of my movements; its swift, lacerating blasts must have torn the atmosphere of my scent to pieces, scattering it wildly about, affording the Kur only sudden, misleading, fleeting, confused sensations. He could not at the moment locate me. I saw him, red in the twisting, howling sand, moving about, weapon ready, hunting me.

I was puzzled that the Kur with whom I had trekked, who had worn the ring, had been hit four times, accurately, with the weapon of the Kur who stalked me.

Furthermore, he had been struck, as nearly as I could determine, head-on. It was not as though the Kur with the weapon had located him at the throat of a man, and then fired.

It seemed likely then that the Kur must have been struck as it had framed itself, perhaps in an opening, the other Kur, smelling it, hearing it, firing when it bad tried to enter. The Kur with the weapon had then come out, hunting for it, to finish it.

He had not counted on there being an ally, and one who was human.

Similar thoughts must have coursed through the brain of the Kur and I, but I did not know the position or nature of the portal.

I saw him turn toward the ship, abandoning my bunt, recollecting his principal objective.

He thus led me to the portal. He reached it before I did. He scrambled, claws slipping on the leaning steel, and then crouched in it. The opening must once have been the outer opening of a lock; it was rectangular; the exterior hatch was missing; there was twisted metal at the side of the opening, as though it had been wrenched away from rusted hinges; the beast crouched in the lock, peering into the storm. Then it disappeared within.

My heart sank; time was on its side; it would soon be night; it needed only wait. I made my way to the stones and tarpaulin; there, feeling, about, I located one of the bodies, which was mostly whole. Some were missing arms and heads.

I carried the body toward the side of the ship. Though the Kur had not used them, there were cuts in the side of the ship, probably used by the humans in entering and leaving it. A steel ladder, twisted, fitted the rounded side of the ship. Given the attitude of the ship, however, the ladder was roughly at a twenty-degree angle to the ground, and some twenty feet from the sand: it was useless to me. I would use the cuts. I made no effort to conceal sound. I scraped the side of the steel. I made certain that the Kur within, if he could hear aught, would be able to tell that someone ascended the side of the ship, dragging an inert weight, presumably a body.

I knew the Kur must be cunning, if not brilliant. It could be no accident that this Kur and not another had received this dreadful assignment, to protect the device of a planet’s destruction until its detonation.

But also it would be under stress. And in the storm it could not see clearly beyond the portal. It would assume that I would not relinquish the shield of the ring’s invisibility. A diversion would be ineffective, for what could draw the Kur from his position? If the blood of the slaughtered humans about had not been sufficient to override his obedience to the dark imperative of the steel worlds, I did not think anything I might contrive could lure him forth. He had resisted blood; the will of this Kur, restraining its instincts of feasting and carnival, must be mighty indeed. He would assume, perhaps, I might attempt to draw fire with a decoy, thus slipping into the ship. The only likely object to use in such a plan would be the body of one of the humans about, victims of the Kur with whom I had shared the march in the desert. I made no attempt to conceal my wounds. I let it be clear that I was outside the portal, that I had ascended the side of the ship, that with me, dragged, was an inert weight, presumably a body.

A likely plan, it seemed to me, would be to thrust the inert body into the portal, and draw the fire of the Kur within. Perhaps then, in the sudden moment of confusion, one might slip within, behind it, invisible.

It would be an elementary decoy strategy.

This was a likely plan. I did not adopt it. The Kur waited within. I did not think I played Kaissa with a fool.

But I would use a decoy strategy. Only I, myself, would be the decoy. Behind the decoy there would be nothing. One thing the Kur would not expect would be that I would surrender the shield of invisibility; one thing he would not expect would be that it would be I, myself, who would present myself to his weapon. I clung to the side of the portal. I propped the body beside me, holding it that it not be swept from the side of the ship. I counted slowly, five thousand Ihn, that the reflexes of the Kur within be drawn to a hair-trigger alertness, that the whole nervous might of the beast might be balanced on a razor’s edge of response, that every instinct and fiber in his body would scream to press the trigger at what first might move. But I counted, too, on its intelligence, its control, that it would not fire on what first might move, particularly if it were visible.

The wind howled and the sand swirled about the ship. I pressed the circular switch on the ring tied about my neck. I again saw in the normal range of the spectrum. I now realized I saw in the light of the moons; I broke out in a sweat; it was night. Limply, as though thrust from behind I pushed myself, awkwardly, sagging, into the opening, and fell forward. Scarcely had I fallen into the lock than I heard, loud, over me, the concussions of the weapon, firing five times; almost simultaneously the Kur leaped from somewhere within, from a nest of piping, and scrambled past me; its foot pressed on my shoulder; it peered out into the storm; it spied the body below, which had slipped from the side of the ship when I had entered the ship, no longer holding it; it seemed momentarily puzzled; it fired into the body twice more; it scrambled from the opening, turning, slipping on the steel, and slid down to the sand at the side of the ship.

I came alive, crawling through the interior hatch, which was hanging back open, fastened back, so that the Kur could have his clean shot. I slipped inside, and nearly fell, my feet scraping for a hold. I found it. I heard the Kur outside howl with rage. I tried to swing the hatch shut, to lock it, but it hung crooked on its hinges and would not close. Perhaps it had been damaged in the crash of the ship. Perhaps the Kur with whom I had trekked had, with the frenzy of a Kur’s strength, wrenched it aside, before meeting the four charges of the other Kur’s weapon. I heard the Kur’s claws swift on the steel outside, scraping, climbing. I reached for the ring at my neck. It was gone! The bit of leather, brittle, worn from the sun, had separated. I heard the snap of the hand weapon.

I looked up. It was not more than eighteen inches from my face. It snapped again. I dropped into the darkness of the ship. It was empty. The Kur howled with rage. I fell, dropping, striking objects, sliding for perhaps forty or fifty feet, until stopped by a compartment wall. I looked up. The interior of the ship was suddenly illuminated. In the cylinder above me, in the portal, his paw at the disk, stood the Kur. He looked down at me. His lips drew back. He had discarded the weapon. I looked about myself, wildly. The interior of the ship, given its attitude, seemed oddly askew. Beyond this it was not as compact as I would have expected, as filled with devices, panels and storage cabinets. It had been muchly stripped, apparently, presumably to lighten it. I saw the Kur easily, gracefully for its bulk, with its long arms, pipe to pipe, swing down toward me. When it reached my level I tried to climb upward, clinging to piping at the ship’s side. Its hand closed about my ankle and I felt myself torn from the piping. I was lifted in the air and hurled against the wall of the ship, and I fell back from the wall, falling some ten feet to the remains of a twisted, ruptured bulkhead, slipped from it and fell another five feet into a debris of scrap and wire. I crawled on my bands and knees. I heard the Kur approach. Under some pipes, below me, suddenly, I saw the ring. I fell to my stomach, my arm clawing downward. I could not reach it. I scrambled to my feet. The Kur looked down, he, too, seeing the ring. I backed away, stumbling a bit, back in the debris and wire. I looked upward, in the inclining cylinder of the ship. High above me, some sixty or seventy feet, I saw six dials. The Kur reached down with its long arm. I bent to the pile of debris and wire. The Kur’s arm was long enough to reach the ring, as mine was not, but the piping beneath which it had fallen was too closely set to accommodate the large arm of the Kur. I began to climb upward, on projections, on spaced piping, on the remains of sundered bulkheads, toward the dials. The Kur took the pipes in his hands, to bend them apart. He had separated them some five inches when he looked up. He saw me. He howled with rage. No longer did, he concern himself with the ring. Instantly he began to climb toward me. He climbed swiftly, purposefully.

I crouched on a steel beam athwart the cylinder, opposite the six dials. The first four dials were motionless. The last two were still in motion. Each dial had a single sweep. Each dial was divided into twelve divisions. The sweeps in the first four dials were vertical. I could not read the numerals on the dials.

I surmised the vertical position was equivalent to twelve or zero. It was the position, at any rate, it seemed clear, in which the devices stopped. The movement of the sweeps was counterclockwise.

The Kur was climbing toward me.

The first dial, I surmised, registered something equivalent to months, the second to weeks, the third to days, the fourth to hours. I did not know the rate of revolution of the Kurii’s original planet, nor the rate of its rotation. I had little doubt that these measurements, however, were calibrated on the movements of a world, presumably vanished, destroyed in their wars. They had destroyed one world; they now desired another.

With my teeth I tore the insulation from a part of the wire I had taken from the pile of debris and wire, coiled and, in my teeth, carried with me in my climb.

I looped the noose where the wire was naked. As the Kur climbed near me, his back to me I caught its great shaggy bead in the loop and drew it tight. It tore at the fine wire with its thick digits but they could not slip beneath it. I flung myself backward off the beam and the wire pulled the Kur from the side of the ship until it hung, struggling, I hanging a few feet below it. It flung out its paws but could grasp on nothing. It tried to hold the wire, and climb on it, or relieve the pressure on its throat, but its great paws slipped on the slender strand; then its weight began to pull me upward; I, hands knotted in the insulated portion of the wire, kicked the Kur back as it reached for me; then I was above it, being drawn by its weight to the height of the beam; the shoulders of the Kur were mantled in red; blood ran heavily from its throat, in throbbing, gigantic glots; I braced, myself, head down, feet pressed up against the beam, to hold the Kur in place; then, without warning, the wire parted; when the wire parted I was almost horizontal to the beam, trying to keep from being pulled over it, trying to hold the Kur; the force of my legs, relieved suddenly of the counter tension of the Kur’s weight, flung me back, almost to the other side of the ship, and I slid down a few feet and caught some piping. The Kur, striking four times, fell some sixty or seventy feet, to the lowest level of the ship, past the door, well below the level of the sand outside.

I looked to the dials. The fifth sweep, on the fifth dial, was almost vertical.

Outside I knew it was night. The storm still raged.

There was heavy glass over the faces of the dials. I climbed to the beam from whence I had snared the Kur. I could not reach the dials.

I cast about wildly. I could not stop them.

Below me, to my horror, I saw the Kur, a mass of blood, struggle to its feet. It was still bleeding, heavily, from the throat. I had little doubt that the great vessel of its throat had been opened, if not severed.

The beast seemed indomitable. Its strength was almost inconceivable.

It climbed slowly. I saw its uplifted face, its terrible eyes, the fangs, the ears laid back against its head. Hand over hand, not swiftly now, not easily, but foot by torturous foot, it climbed.

I seized a narrow pipe over my head, jerking at it. It contained wire. In a frenzy I tried to free it of the side of the ship. I could not loosen it.

The beast was nearer now, and still climbing. I saw its eyes. It moved another six inches toward me.

I tore loose the pipe. The sweep on the fifth dial, suddenly, stopped. The sweep on the sixth dial began to move toward the vertical, swiftly, counterclockwise.

I did not think its journey would take more than a few seconds. I struck at the sixth dial with the pipe, again and again, shattering the glass. I saw the Kur not a foot below me. It tried to lift its hand, to seize me. Blood no longer ran from its throat. It was dead. It tumbled back from the piping on the side of the ship, and fell to the lower level.

I jammed the thin pipe, like a spear from the beam, into the face of the dial.

The sixth sweep, a moment later, struck against this obstacle, stopping short of the vertical mark.

I lay on-the beam and wept, and feared that I would fall.

When I dared to move, I left the ship. Outside the storm had abated. I found the Kur in the sand, with whom I had trekked.

“The task is accomplished,” I told him. “It is done.”

But he was already dead.

His lips were drawn back from his teeth, which, in the Kur, as I understand it, is analogous to a smile. I think he died not unhappily.

I returned to the ship, in which I found much food and water. In the next days, carefully, as I could, disconnecting them, I dismantled and destroyed components within the ship. In time, Priest-Kings would find the ship and more adequately disarm it. I buried the men who had died near the ship. Though I removed the one Kur from the ship, I did not bury either of them. I exposed them for the scavengers of the desert, for they were only beasts.