moist trail, then pushed past him and tipped off the ledge again. His last sight of it was as it swooped and dived toward the south.
He began to laugh. He laughed until his ribs ached and the cold air was torturing his throat, and then he laughed again.
The next day, when he returned, the parradile had half-filled the cave with soft, warm materials—stolen cloth woven by men, graat-hair, dry grasses, whole animal-hides tanned and softened for leather. Out of this mass the creature’s head poked ridiculously, teeth displayed in a warning snarl. But that lasted only a moment; then it appeared to recognize him, and relaxed.
He offered it food again, but this was refused, and the creature seemed to be trying to explain that it had fed well, for it opened its jaws wide and blew breath scented with a raw-meat tang.
He stayed with it for a while. It was his only link with home. Meantime, he ate what was in his pouch, since the parradile had declined it.
That set a pattern fen: the next day, and those following, until they had begun to build the snow-wall across the sanctuary door and he realized this visit must be his last. He was afraid he might not reach the cave on this final day, for there was a blizzard from shortly after dawn until the afternoon, and the days were very short now.The going was far too treacherous to think of trying to get back from the cave in the dark.
However, he seized his chance when the snow gave over for a while and made haste to bid his friend farewell for the winter.
The parradile, which by now had grown accustomed to his presence, gave a grunt of greeting the moment his head showed at the mouth of the cave. As he entered, going cautiously because it was so dim in here, it turned on its side in its big soft nest and raised one pinion to display what was hidden underneath.
A sleeping human being …
CHAPTER TEN
Afterward, Maddalena realized that she had been conscious during more of the disaster than she had believed at the time. She could remember practically nothing when she found herself lying three-quarters buried in a gigantic snowdrift, astonished that she was even alive; but that was the effect of shock, and the speed with which events had succeeded one another. Later, disconnected pictures, like dreams, pieced together in her mind and she was able to figure out what must have happened.
There was the pilot’s cry over the helmet phones announcing the presence of a ship in orbit around Fourteen, and Gus Langenschmidt’s horrified response. And the crash directly after. Presumably the orbiting ship had heard static on their subspace communicators; suspecting that it might be due to an approaching Patrol cruiser, they were on the alert. Directly they realized that their fears were confirmed, they holed the new arrival with a well-aimed projectile. It might have been a purpose-built missile, but it needed only to be a chunk of metal with a ferry-rocketwelded to it Somewhere or other she had picked up the information that a ferry-rocket pushing a ton of solid metal could break through the meteor-bumpers fitted to any vessel smaller than Sirius class, and a Patrol cruiser was half that size. Hitting at two or three hundred miles a second such a projectile would have opened the cruiser up like a split peascod.
There were more flash-pictures remembered from a little later, in the landing-craft: Gus Langenschmidt struggling with the controls to free them from the parent ship. A second jolting crash. The shock of looking back along the cabin and seeing a gash in their hull, and the rear edge of the gash glowing red-hot and melting in brilliant droplets as the thin outer air of the planet tore at it There was Langenschmidt giving her incisive orders, which she obeyed mechanically, although she barely heard them for the howl of air blasting across the opening in the hull, like wind in an organ pipe. The convincing feeling that she was jumping to her death, as she piled out of that same gap,
He began to laugh. He laughed until his ribs ached and the cold air was torturing his throat, and then he laughed again.
The next day, when he returned, the parradile had half-filled the cave with soft, warm materials—stolen cloth woven by men, graat-hair, dry grasses, whole animal-hides tanned and softened for leather. Out of this mass the creature’s head poked ridiculously, teeth displayed in a warning snarl. But that lasted only a moment; then it appeared to recognize him, and relaxed.
He offered it food again, but this was refused, and the creature seemed to be trying to explain that it had fed well, for it opened its jaws wide and blew breath scented with a raw-meat tang.
He stayed with it for a while. It was his only link with home. Meantime, he ate what was in his pouch, since the parradile had declined it.
That set a pattern fen: the next day, and those following, until they had begun to build the snow-wall across the sanctuary door and he realized this visit must be his last. He was afraid he might not reach the cave on this final day, for there was a blizzard from shortly after dawn until the afternoon, and the days were very short now.The going was far too treacherous to think of trying to get back from the cave in the dark.
However, he seized his chance when the snow gave over for a while and made haste to bid his friend farewell for the winter.
The parradile, which by now had grown accustomed to his presence, gave a grunt of greeting the moment his head showed at the mouth of the cave. As he entered, going cautiously because it was so dim in here, it turned on its side in its big soft nest and raised one pinion to display what was hidden underneath.
A sleeping human being …
CHAPTER TEN
Afterward, Maddalena realized that she had been conscious during more of the disaster than she had believed at the time. She could remember practically nothing when she found herself lying three-quarters buried in a gigantic snowdrift, astonished that she was even alive; but that was the effect of shock, and the speed with which events had succeeded one another. Later, disconnected pictures, like dreams, pieced together in her mind and she was able to figure out what must have happened.
There was the pilot’s cry over the helmet phones announcing the presence of a ship in orbit around Fourteen, and Gus Langenschmidt’s horrified response. And the crash directly after. Presumably the orbiting ship had heard static on their subspace communicators; suspecting that it might be due to an approaching Patrol cruiser, they were on the alert. Directly they realized that their fears were confirmed, they holed the new arrival with a well-aimed projectile. It might have been a purpose-built missile, but it needed only to be a chunk of metal with a ferry-rocketwelded to it Somewhere or other she had picked up the information that a ferry-rocket pushing a ton of solid metal could break through the meteor-bumpers fitted to any vessel smaller than Sirius class, and a Patrol cruiser was half that size. Hitting at two or three hundred miles a second such a projectile would have opened the cruiser up like a split peascod.
There were more flash-pictures remembered from a little later, in the landing-craft: Gus Langenschmidt struggling with the controls to free them from the parent ship. A second jolting crash. The shock of looking back along the cabin and seeing a gash in their hull, and the rear edge of the gash glowing red-hot and melting in brilliant droplets as the thin outer air of the planet tore at it There was Langenschmidt giving her incisive orders, which she obeyed mechanically, although she barely heard them for the howl of air blasting across the opening in the hull, like wind in an organ pipe. The convincing feeling that she was jumping to her death, as she piled out of that same gap,
Similar Books
