Killer

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.

Chapter Five

As he grew older, Vonones found solace in the creature comforts his slowly accumulated wealth could now furnish him. While the heavyset body of his youth might now be taking on a veneer of softness, nevertheless Vonones had not forgotten that he had attained his wealth through hard work. Thus Vonones made a point of being at his office in the main compound at dawn, whether or not a new shipment was expected.

The escape and destruction-Lycon swore it was destroyed-of the sauropithecus a few nights before had been an ordeal. But Vonones had suffered worse, and thanks to Lycon he had avoided real disaster-though he would have to increase his prices on this shipment to offset the losses for the lizard-ape and the tiger, not to mention payments to Lycon, Galerius and his men, and bribes all around. He'd come out of it with a whole skin and would still turn a good profit, and that was what really mattered, although Vonones knew he would see the lizard-ape in nightmares for the rest of his life.

What happened when Vonones reached his home on the Caelian only proved how badly that near-disaster had shaken him. The messenger Vonones had sent ahead from Portus had given his house slaves hours to prepare for his arrival. Vonones had bought a new mistress, an Egyptian, just before he left to meet the shipment at Portus. She had used the time in preparation to make Vonones' first trial of her particularly memorable.