The Fredric Brown Megapack Read Online Free PDF Page B

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 crumbly bushes as tinder…
    A bush of that type grew near him. He uprooted it, took it over to the pile of stones, then patiently hit one stone against another until a spark touched the punklike wood of the bush. It went up in flames so fast that it singed his eyebrows and was burned to an ash within seconds.
    But he had the idea now, and within minutes had a little fire going in the lee of the mound of sand he’d made. The tinder bushes started it, and other bushes which burned more slowly kept it a steady flame.
    The tough tendrils didn’t burn readily; that made the fire-bombs easy to rig and throw; a bundle of faggots tied about a small stone to give it weight and a loop of the tendril to swing it by.
    He made half a dozen of them before he lighted and threw the first. It went wide, and the Roller started a quick retreat, pulling the catapult after him. But Carson had the others ready and threw them in rapid succession. The fourth wedged in the catapult’s framework and did the trick. The Roller tried desperately to put out the spreading blaze by throwing sand, but its clawed tentacles would take only a spoonful at a time and its efforts were ineffectual. The catapult burned.
    The Roller moved safely away from the fire and seemed to concentrate its attention on Carson. Again he felt that wave of hatred and nausea—but more weakly; either the Roller itself was weakening or Carson had learned how to protect himself against the mental attack.
    He thumbed his nose at it and then sent it scuttling back to safety with a stone. The Roller went to the back of its half of the arena and started pulling up bushes again. Probably it was going to make another catapult.
    Carson verified that the barrier was still operating, and then found himself sitting in the sand beside it, suddenly too weak to stand up.
    His leg throbbed steadily now and the pangs of thirst were severe. But those things paled beside the physical exhaustion that gripped his entire body.
    Hell must be like this, he thought, the hell that the ancients had believed in. He fought to stay awake, and yet staying awake seemed futile, for there was nothing he could do while the barrier remained impregnable and the Roller stayed back out of range.
    He tried to remember what he had