The Collection Read Online Free PDF Page B

taken from an older story of Earth — ‘Pretty soon you
get so lonesome you find yourself talking to the lizards, and then not so long
after that you find the lizards talking back to you....’
    He should have been concentrating, of course, on how to kill
the Roller, but instead he grinned at the lizard and said, ‘Hello, there.’
    The lizard took a few steps towards him. ‘Hello,’ it said.
    Carson was stunned for a moment, and then he put back his
head and roared with laughter. It didn’t hurt his throat to do so, either; he
hadn’t been that thirsty.
    Why not? Why should the Entity who thought up this nightmare
of a place not have a sense of humour, along with the other powers he had?
Talking lizards, equipped to talk back in my own language, if I talk to them —
it’s a nice touch.
    He grinned at the lizard and said, ‘Come on over.’ But the
lizard turned and ran away, scurrying from bush to bush until it was out of
sight.
    He had to get past the barrier. He couldn’t get through it,
or over it, but was he certain he couldn’t get under it? And come to think of
it, didn’t one sometimes find water by digging?
    Painfully now, Carson limped up to the barrier and started
digging, scooping up sand a double handful at a time. It was slow work because
the sand ran in at the edges and the deeper he got the bigger in diameter the
hole had to be. How many hours it took him, he didn’t know, but he hit bedrock
four feet down: dry bedrock with no sign of water.
    The force-field of the barrier went down clear to the
bedrock.
    He crawled out of the hole and lay there panting, then
raised his head to look across and see what the Roller was doing.
    It was making something out of wood from the bushes, tied
together with tendrils, a queerly shaped framework about four feet high and
roughly square. To see it better, Carson climbed on to the mound of sand he had
excavated and stood there staring.
    There were two long levers sticking out of the back of it,
one with a cup-shaped affair on the end. Seemed to be some sort of a catapult,
Carson thought.
    Sure enough, the Roller was lifting a sizable rock into the
cup-shape. One of his tentacles moved the other lever up and down for a while,
and then he turned the machine slightly, aiming it, and the lever with the
stone flew up and forward.
    The stone curved several yards over Carson’s head, so far
away that he didn’t have to duck, but he judged the distance it had travelled,
and whistled softly. He couldn’t throw a rock that weight more than half that
distance. And even retreating to the rear of his domain wouldn’t put him out of
range of that machine if the Roller pushed it forward to the barrier.
    Another rock whizzed over, not quite so far away this time.
    Moving from side to side along the barrier, so the catapult
couldn’t bracket him, he hurled a dozen rocks at it. But that wasn’t going to
be any good, he saw. They had to be light rocks, or he couldn’t throw them that
far. If they hit the framework, they bounced off harmlessly. The Roller had no
difficulty, at that distance, in moving aside from those that came near it.
    Besides, his arm was tiring badly. He ached all over.
    He stumbled to the rear of the arena. Even that wasn’t any
good; the rocks reached back there, too, only there were longer intervals
between them, as though it took longer to wind up the mechanism, whatever it
was, of the catapult.
    Wearily he dragged himself back to the barrier again.
Several times he fell and could barely rise to his feet to go on. He was, he
knew, near the limit of his endurance. Yet he didn’t dare stop moving now,
until and unless he could put that catapult out of action. If he fell asleep,
he’d never wake up.
    One of the stones from it gave him the glimmer of an idea.
It hit one of the piles of stones he’d gathered near the barrier to use as
ammunition and struck sparks.
    Sparks! Fire! Primitive man had made fire by striking
sparks, and with some of those dry