Part 3

The Tegurian's yellow eyes blinked as if he had not heard.

Outside, Dollard's lungs expanded to draw in deep gulps of the luxuriant tropical air that characterized a warmer Terra. At a considerable distance from the nearly deserted spaceport, he saw that a brilliant city of high towers capped by narrow glass spires raised its shining structures to the sky. The sharp-pointed buildings could be seen to be interlaced with countless spidery cables and glistening bridges.

For Dollard's observing eyes, the vista of the metropolis evoked--by some indefinable ancient suggestiveness--a buried Terran memory of a giant banyan tree pierced by lean striped bamboos.

"Bengul, our capital," Shir K'han told him. "This way, now." He pointed to a waiting air vehicle on the lonely drome. "In there--and you'll only have five more minutes." The feline nostrils wrinkled.

"Five more minutes?" said Dollard. "Aren't you going?"

"No, I wasn't invited."

"I'm to go alone?"

"Yes," Shir K'han replied. The prolonged effort of speaking in a strange tongue was reflected in his increasingly roughened tones. "I've been ordered to put you in the cage-flier. Then, my job is done. The cage will transfer you to the leaders' quarters--where all else will be done. Farewell, primate. It has been interesting. I could almost swear that...."

He paused.

"Something troubling you?" said Dollard, who didn't usually concern himself with other persons' inner disturbances. He wondered now what instinct prompted this particular inquiry of solicitude on his part.

"You trouble me," replied Shir K'han. "I would almost swear you had ... a high intelligence ... and a soul worthy of a Tegurian. But, of course, I know that isn't so."

"That's not what I meant," Dollard said, fretfully. "There's something else--" For a moment, he felt like screaming, "--something you haven't told me."

"Would you really like to know?" said Shir K'han. "I had thought it was better you didn't. But, then I have often been accused of strange sympathies for a Tegurian--"

"I demand to know."

"Then, I must hurry. Only a few minutes remain. Let me try to draw you a mental picture, primate. Your race, like ours, was carnivorous. You feasted on many delicacies--on species extinct like the steer, the pheasant, the squirrel. It was your very nature, your undeniable primal instincts, that made you enjoy the rending and devouring of flesh--"

"True," admitted Dollard. His body was now trembling.

"I remember," continued Shir K'han, "one of our archeologists translated an account of how the primates of your time unearthed the body of a mastodon, buried in the glacial ice. The mastodon flesh, a delicacy, was so well-preserved that it was still edible. And so, it was eaten."

"I--I don't think I understand what you're getting at," declared Dollard.

* * * * *

He looked anxiously about him, but the flat plain bore no shelter--or for that matter, no other objects save the waiting air vehicle and the recently-landed space ship on the drome. Lights began to glow in the far-off city.

"The point is," said the feline interpreter, "that it would have made no difference to the primates had the mastodon been intelligent. They would have eaten him anyway. In your epoch, primates ate many domestic animals who differed less in intelligence quotient from them than differ civilized Tegurians from human primates like yourself ... the gap today is much greater...."

"Then, you--"

"Not me. Only the leaders of my world, shall I say. By virtue of their exalted rank, they have the right to the choicest of foods. Since the dawn of our history, the flesh of primates has been our greatest delicacy--but it has grown scarcer and scarcer, until now it is virtually non-existent. And such specimens, as are trapped, are stringy and barely edible."

Dollard looked down guiltily at his own plump body. His face bore the flushed expression of one suddenly conscious of sin.

"But you," continued Shir K'han, "your body is fat and well-preserved. When we found you on your derelict ship, our commander communicated with the rulers of Tegur immediately. He was ordered to change course and bring you to Bengul--"

The feline's speech broke off. Edwin Dollard had suddenly commenced to run from the horror of this alien world, recognition of his fate having burst like a rocket in his panic-stricken mind. His heart was pounding.

But loping easily along as his ancestors might have pursued a baboon or antelope, Shir K'han overtook the screaming human. He seized his obese bulk by the waist and lifted him high above his head. While Dollard kicked and moaned, the feline bore him back to the air vehicle and deposited him in a wire mesh cage in the flying craft's cockpit. A tangle of the sticky ropes descended from the cage's roof, further entangling the trapped industrialist and serving to reduce him to helplessness.

Shir K'han adjusted knobs and switches on the vehicle's control board, until he had produced the desired setting. Then, he stepped back.

"As I said before," he declared "this vehicle will automatically transport you to the leaders' banquet hall--to arrive in five minutes. There, you will be prepared and presented to our rulers. I hope you please them. The reward for our commander and his crew will be great."

"Then, all along, what you've been trying to tell me is ... is that ... I'm to be--"

The remainder of Dollard's words melted into a jumble of gibberish.

"Exactly," confirmed the Tegurian, walking away from the vehicle. If the creature's feline countenance showed a trace of conscience, Dollard from his position within the rising cage could not discern it--not that it particularly mattered in his last moment of sanity on earth.

And it would puzzle Shir K'han for many years just why the last shrill scream of the primate was: "Garth--_Garth, you did this to me_!"

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