The Collection Read Online Free PDF Page A

there instead. By the time Carson could pick up and throw another
rock, the Roller was forty yards back from the barrier and going strong.
    His second throw missed by feet, and his third throw was
short. The Roller was out of range of any missile heavy enough to be damaging.
    Carson grinned. That round had been his.
    He stopped grinning as he bent over to examine the calf of his
leg. A jagged edge of the stone had made a cut several inches long. It was
bleeding pretty freely, but he didn’t think it had gone deep enough to hit an
artery. If it stopped bleeding of its own accord, well and good. If not, he was
in for trouble.
    Finding out one thing, though, took precedence over that
cut: the nature of the barrier.
    He went forward to it again, this time groping with his
hands before him. Holding one hand against it, he tossed a handful of sand at
it with the other hand. The sand went right through; his hand didn’t.
    Organic matter versus inorganic? No, because the dead lizard
had gone through it, and a lizard, alive or dead, was certainly organic. Plant
life? He broke off a twig and poked it at the barrier. The twig went through,
with no resistance, but when his fingers gripping the twig came to the barrier,
they were stopped.
    He couldn’t get through it, nor could the Roller. But
rocks and sand and a dead lizard.... How about a live lizard?
    He went hunting under bushes until he found one, and caught
it. He tossed it against the barrier and it bounced back and scurried away
across the blue sand.
    That gave him the answer, so far as he could determine it
now. The screen was a barrier to living things. Dead or inorganic matter could
cross it.
    With that off his mind, Carson looked at his injured leg
again. The bleeding was lessening, which meant he wouldn’t need to worry about~
making a tourniquet. But he should find some water, if any was available, to
clean the wound.
    Water — the thought of it made him realize that he was
getting awfully thirsty. He’d have to find water, in case this contest
turned out to be a protracted one.
    Limping slightly now, he started off to make a circuit of
his half of the arena. Guiding himself with one hand along the barrier, he
walked to his right until he came to the curving sidewall. It was visible, a
dull blue-grey at close range, and the surface of it felt just like the central
barrier.
    He experimented by tossing a handful of sand at it, and the
sand reached the wall and disappeared as it went through. The hemispherical
shell was a force-field, too, but an opaque one, instead of transparent like
the barrier.
    He followed it round until he came back to the barrier, and
walked back along the barrier to the point from which he’d started.
    No sign of water.
    Worried now, he started a series of zigzags back and forth
between the barrier and the wall, covering the intervening space thoroughly.
    No water. Blue sand, blue bushes, and intolerable heat.
Nothing else.
    It must be his imagination, he told himself that he was
suffering that much from thirst. How long had he been there? Of course,
no time at all, according to his own space-time frame. The Entity had told him
time stood still out there, while he was here. But his body processes went on
here, just the same. According to his body’s reckoning, how long had he been
here? Three or four hours, perhaps. Certainly not long enough to be suffering
from thirst.
    Yet he was suffering from it; his throat was dry and
parched. Probably the intense heat was the cause. It was hot, a hundred
and thirty Fahrenheit, at a guess. A dry, still heat without the slightest
movement of air.
    He was limping rather badly and utterly fagged when he
finished the futile exploration of his domain.
    He stared across at the motionless Roller and hoped it was
as miserable as he was. The Entity had said the conditions here were equally
unfamiliar and uncomfortable for both of them. Maybe the Roller came from a
planet where two-hundred-degree heat was the norm;