Killer

Chapter Four

It waited in its burrow beneath the river bank, waited patiently for its wounds to heal-patiently, for it watched the boats pass up and down the Tiber, and it knew it was only a short matter of time before its red dreams were fulfilled.

It had learned a great deal from observing these soft-skinned bipeds who appeared to be the dominant race of this world. To an extent, it no longer regretted its capture during its initial few hours on this world, when the bipeds had surrounded it, dazed and injured, and had renewed the captivity from which it had only just escaped in the explosion of the metal ship. The bipeds had sheltered and fed the phile-or lizard-ape, as they named it in their various tongues-much the same as its previous captors had done. This had given it time to regain its strength, and to assess the dangers of this new world.

The bipeds themselves posed no real threat, except in their numbers. The phile had already proven to itself how easily they died; their flesh was better than the brief sport their struggles offered, and their bodies should provide excellent hosts. Their weapons were far more primitive than those of the race who had taken the phile from its homeworld, and considering how slowly these soft bipeds moved, the only real danger lay in being cornered or surrounded.

The phile shook with rage as it remembered that one biped who had pursued it this last time. It had touched that biped's aura, recognized that this one was different from the other naked-skinned creatures-another species, perhaps, and trained to kill for its master as the phile itself had been trained. The phile was certain that this one biped had accepted the personal challenge of stalking it-that this one had been responsible for the lower-species quadrupeds that had been sent in pursuit. That last one had provided interesting sport-it was almost the phile's superior.

The phile angrily regretted that it had not destroyed the bipedal hunter as well when chance had twice permitted. The arrival of reinforcements with projectile weapons had saved the hunter once, and at their next encounter the phile's judgment had accepted the fact that, crippled from its wounds inflicted by the large striped creature, it would probably have sustained fatal injury from the biped's weapon. While it felt certain it could have killed the biped despite such a wound, the phile obeyed the urgency of a more basic instinct-the only instinct more basic than its need to kill.

Perhaps this one hunter would offer combat again. The phile hoped it would. In the meantime, its egg sacs were growing full within its abdomen. It was time to seek out a secure lair-and the other things it must have to nourish its brood.

By the second nightfall its shoulder had healed sufficiently to restore function. The phile had had to align as best it could the bones broken by the mauling it had suffered from the large quadruped. It had been enough for the fragmented ends to knit rapidly. There was pain, but the phile recognized pain without any emotional component-pain was no more than an indication that warned of momentary physical inadequacy. The phile had healed more quickly than it had dared hope-even the gashes in its scaled flesh were no more than smooth lines of scar. The unnaturally benign climate and the lighter gravity of this world made it a paradise beyond the phile's dreaming, if the phile had ever indulged in dreams beyond the need to wrest survival from every deadly moment.

It was hungry now-terribly hungry. This world's pale sun had risen and set twice now since the phile had last eaten its fill. The few insignificant life forms it had caught and devoured from its burrow could not resist starvation for a metabolism that required its weight in flesh at close intervals-even if the egg sacs were not distending its flanks, demanding sustenance.

The phile had made its plans while it rested. It had already observed that the bipeds here required more than natural means of light in order to see, once their sun had set. As one of their slow-moving surface conveyances plodded upstream in the starlight, the phile chose the moment and slithered noiselessly into the river. The currents were almost stagnant compared to those of its home planet, and it swam easily despite the physical density that would have let it sink to the bottom.

It crossed the distance as certainly as an arrow pierces the sky. Its claws easily locked into the porous substance of the vessel's hull, and for a moment the phile rested and let its senses explore the craft. There were many bipeds here, and there was not one whisper of alertness from them. That was good.

That was very good.

As silent-and as fleeting-as a shadow of a bat against the moon, the phile lifted itself over the rim of the surface conveyance, and part of the rage it felt toward the hunter who had stalked it was quickly slaked as the phile had its will with those it found on board.