Footfall

He has refused surrender. Harpanet trumpets: rage, woe, betrayal. He sweeps up his own weapon and fires back. The enemy’s forelimbs and head explode outward from a mist of blood.

In Harpanet’s mind his past fades, his future is unreal. His digits stroke his side, feeling for the death wound.

No death wound; no hole big enough for a digit to find. What did the human intend? Torture? Harpanet’s whole right side is a burning itch covered with a sheen of blood. An eight to the eighth of black dots form a buzzing storm around him. He lurches through the infinite land, away from roads, downhill where he can, within the buzzing storm and the maddening itch The jaws of his mind close fast on a memory, vivid in all his senses, more real than his surroundings, He moves through an infinite fantasy of planet, seeking the mudroom aboard Message Bearer.

Green… tall green plants with leaves like knife blades, but they brush away the hungry swarming dots… water? Mud?

He rolls through mud and greenery, over and over, freezing from time to time to look, smell, listen.

Harpanet’s past fades against the strange and terrible reality. If he has a future, it is beyond imagining, a mist-gray wall. There is only now, a moment of alien plants and fiery itch and cool mud, and here, mudroom and garden mushed together, nightmarishly changed. He rolls to wash the wounds; he plucks gobs of mud to spread across his tattered flank.

Afraid to leave, afraid to stay. What might taste his blood in the water, and seek its source? The predators of the Homeworld were pictures on a thuktun, ghosts on an old recording tape, but fearsome enough for, all their distance. What lurks in these alien waters? But he hears the distant sound of machines passing, and knows that they are not fithp machines.

A machine comes near, louder, louder. Harpanet’s ears and eyes project above the water.

The machine balances crazily on two wheels, like men. It slows, wobbles, stops.

Humans approach on foot.

Harpanet’s muscles know what to do when he is hurt, exhausted, friendless, desperate, alone. Harpanet’s mind finds no other answer. But he sees no future—

He lurches from the water. Alien weapons come to bear. He casts his gun into the weeds. He rolls on his back and splays his limbs and waits.

The man comes at a toppling run. No adult fi’ would try to balance so. The man sets a hind foot on Harpanet’s chest, with such force that Harpanet can feel it. He swallows the urge to laugh, but such a weight could hardly bend a rib. Nonetheless he lies with limbs splayed, giving his surrender. The man looks down at his, captive, breathing as if he has won a race…

“We got him!” Harry shouted “Now what?” He waved uphill, where a score of armed men, hidden, waited with weapons ready.

“I can talk to them—” Carlotta sounded doubtful.

“They won’t listen.” And dammit, this is my snout, they can’t kill it now. Harry thought furiously. A guilty grin came, and he lifted the seat of the motorcycle, where he kept his essential tools.

“You’ve thought of something?”

“Maybe.” He dug into the tool roll and found a hank of parachute cord. It was thin, strong enough to hold a man but not much use against one of those. He gestured to the captive, using both hands to make “get up” motions.

The alien stood. It looked at them passively.

“Gives me the creeps,” Harry said. He clutched his rifle. One 30-06 in the eye, and we don’t have a problem. “See if it’ll carry you,” Harry said.

“Carry me?”

“Sheena. Queen of the Jungle. I know they’re strong enough.”

A dozen truckers and farmers stood with ready weapons.

Harry walked ahead of the invader, leading it on a length of cord. Carlotta rode its back, sidesaddle, She beamed at them. “Hi!” she called.

None of the watchers spoke. Perhaps they were afraid of saying something foolish.

“It surrendered,” Carlotta shouted. “We’ll take it to the government.”

There was a loud click as a safety was taken off.

Harry whistled: Wheep. wheep, wheep! “Here, Shep! Hey, it’s all right, guys. Shep big gray peanut-loving doggie!”

There were sounds of disgust.

19. THE SCHOLARS

Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes,

And pause a while from learning to be wise.

There mark what ills the scholar’s life assail—

Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.

—DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON, Vanity of Human Wishes

COUNTDOWN: H PLUS 150 HOURS

Pavel Aleksandrovich Bondarev fingered the priceless tapestry covering the bare concrete wall. “It doesn’t really look like a bomb shelter,” he said.

Lorena rolled lazily in the big bed. “They are very nice rooms,” she said.