Out of Their Minds by Clifford D. Simak

officer and there’d have been no opportunity to do anything after it was made.
    I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the way I’d handled the situation and I felt a sense of guilt, but as I beat it back and forth in my mind I could see no other acceptable alternative.
    Night had fallen, but a faint light still hung above the river. From the shore came the distant lowing of a cow and the faint barking of a dog. All about me the water whispered with its eternal talk and at times a fish flopped, making a sudden plop and setting up a concentric eddy of ripples. I seemed to be moving across a great plain; the dark, tree-lined river banks and the distant hills were simply shadows at the periphery of the plain. It was a deeply peaceful place, this realm of water and of shadow. Strangely, I felt safe out there on the river. Detached might be a better word. I was alone and in the center of a tiny universe and the universe stretched out on every side, untenanted. The sounds that came across the water, the lowing of the cow and the barking of the dog, had so much the sense of distance in them that they accentuated, rather than destroyed, the smug sense of detachment.
    Then the detachment ended. In front of me the water humped and as I paddled frantically to steer free of the hump, a blackness rose up out of the river—yards and yards of blackness, with water streaming off it.
    The chain of blackness reared into the air, a great, long, sinuous neck with a nightmare head attached. It came up into the air and bent in a graceful curve so that the head hung just above me, and looking up, I stared in fascinated fear into the red, jewellike eyes that glittered in the faint light reflected from the surface of the water. A forked tongue flickered out at me and then the mouth came open and I saw the fangs.
    I dipped the paddle and with a mighty heave drove the canoe forward in a sudden surge. I felt the hot breath of the beast upon my neck as the lunging head missed me by bare inches.
    Glancing back over my shoulder, I saw the head poised again, ready for another strike and I knew that the odds were stacked heavily against me. I’d fooled the creature once; I doubted that I’d be able to do it a second time. The shore was too far away to reach and the only thing that was left for me to do was to dodge and run. For a moment the thought of abandoning the canoe crossed my mind, but I was not too good a swimmer and this was some sort of water monster that undoubtedly could scoop me out of the water with remarkable ease.
    It was taking its time now. It didn’t need to hurry. It knew it had me, but this time it wasn’t going to take a chance of missing. Water rippled behind it in a neat V as it moved toward me, the long neck curved and ready, the head with jaws agape, the fangs shining in the starlight.
    I swung the canoe sharply in the hope of catching it off balance, forcing it to get squared around again to make a new approach.
    As I swung the canoe sharply some object rolled and rattled in its bottom. And when I heard that rattle, I knew what I had to do—no reason to it, no logic, it was just plain damn silly, but I was at the end of my rope and fast running out of time. I had no hope that I could do what I planned to do—well, not a plan, more like a reflex response—and no idea what I’d do if it really worked. But I had to do it. Mostly, I suppose, because it was the only thing that I could think of doing.
    I hit the water a lick with the paddle to turn the canoe end for end, so I could face the creature. Then I reached down and picked up the rod and stood up. A canoe ordinarily is not the sort of craft a man should stand up in, but this one was fairly steady and I’d been doing some practicing, standing up in it, that afternoon.
    I had a bass plug hooked onto the line and it was a fairly heavy plug (perhaps a bit too heavy for good bass fishing) and it had three gang hooks in it.
    The critter