Part 4

Raising the heavy firearm to my shoulder, I waited. "Keenlogh!" the Hog squealed. The sound of his breathing reached me. The oily stench of him came through the tunnel.

Pausing between each step to listen, I moved forward. The tunnel twisted sharply and then branched. Each branch again divided. The Hog grunted, "Huh, huh, huh, huh!"

I moved to the right toward the sound. Down the leafy corridor, a red spot glittered. It blinked from sight before I could aim.

I reached another branch in the tunnel, and my light chose that moment to go out. I stood in total darkness, remembering that I had failed to install a new generator.

"Go back," I whispered in terrified accents. "Light's gone. Toal?"

"Here."

"Go back." Walking sideways, I began a fumbling withdrawal. I brushed against the invisible vines, slipped, and almost fell. "Keep together," I said. "Are you there, Toal?"

I retreated about twenty more steps and said, "Grab my belt, or we'll be separated."

Toal did not answer. The Hog did. He squealed, "Toooaaal!"

"Toal!" I yelled.

"Over here," she said from a distance. "Where are you?"

* * * * *

The Hog crashed and grunted along the tunnel. I found myself running through the darkness toward a dim, green patch. "Hide, Toal!" I called. I did not pass her. I reached a part of the tunnel in which I could see. I heard the Hog behind me, but did not look back.

Sprinting as if I were a good runner in splendid condition, I reached the open grove. I stopped and turned. The Hog emerged from the wall of vines. Coagulated blood caked his neck and head. His single usable eye blinked in the light. He charged, but he took evasive action, swerving to either side.

In my excitement and unfamiliarity with the weapon, I pulled both triggers of the firearm. The twin barrels discharged with a deafening blast. The recoil knocked me down. A vine burst where the projectiles passed through it.

The Hog galloped over me. One sharp hoof brushed my face. As the Hog turned, I practically ran up a vinetree.

Ten meters above the ground, I sat in the springy branches and breathed hoarsely. The Hog sniffed, twisted his short neck, and fixed his eye on me. "Eet oo, Keenlogh!" he grunted.

The Hog struck at the vine trunk with his forefeet. Rearing slightly and raising his front legs, he worked his way up the vines until his body, which must have weighed nearly fourteen metric tons, stood at a sixty degree angle. The vines bent and cracked. The Hog's three whole tusks gnashed close to my feet.

I crawled higher and found a vine rope hanging over open ground and leading to another trunk. Dangling first from one hand and then the other, I started across. My arms were ready to pull loose, before I reached the other vinetree and clamped myself to it. The Hog had difficulty in once more putting all feet on the dirt.

Through an opening, I glimpsed the deforested area where we had left the pentacycle. I could see Toal nowhere, nor could I now see the tunnel.

The Hog approached my new refuge, but, instead of rearing, began tearing at the thick stems with his tusks. I became aware that my face bled where his hoof had brushed it.

The Hog worked energetically, ripping and rooting. His armored sides heaved with his panting. He sweated profusely, and the end of his ugly snout dripped with moisture.

The trunks supporting me sagged. I tried to devise some plan, some sure method of escape, but my mind was a panicky jumble. Then I recalled that boring booklet, _Initial Experiments in Earthian Swine_ (Sus scrofa) _Production on Freesphere_. The Hog was not of _Sus scrofa_, but he had similar traits. And I had no other plan.

"Yaaa!" I yelled. "You stinking pig! Climb up! I'll kick your snout off!"

The Hog rumbled, backed off, and then ran forward. He lifted his forequarters into the air and smashed into the tangle, temporarily trapping himself. I almost fell from the swaying vines. I climbed down past one of the Hog's protruding feet and dropped to the ground.

I looked for the firearm I had lost, but the Hog was breaking loose. I turned and ran the other way, out of the grove, past the toothie colony, and away from the river toward the open field.

I trotted into the wilderness of rocks, stumps, brush, and creepers. Joe's Sun seared my head, which no longer wore a cap. Heat waves quivered across the blighted land. Heat simmered from exposed rocks. I looked back to see the Hog emerging from the trees.

Faster, I ran, jumping gullies and struggling through patches of thorny creepers. Already I regretted trusting my stiffened muscles and poor running ability to this race. The Hog pursued with incredible speed for an animal his size.

I tried to hurdle a rock, struck the top with one foot, and rolled down a slope. When I again ran, one knee did not function well. My lungs burned, and I made sounds like the tractor.

The Hog had closed the distance between us to twenty meters. He panted loudly, and his whole body glinted wetly.

For agonizing minutes, I moved at the fastest gait I could muster, but it seemed slower than walking. At the top of a low hill, I saw the pentacycle not more than one hundred meters away.

When I started down the slope, the Hog's wheezing warned me. Abruptly, I changed direction. The great boar brushed past me. He staggered down the gentle hill. Spasms jerked his huge body. By the time he had turned, I had flanked him, and, burning unsuspected energy, I ran for the parked pentacycle.

* * * * *

The hog charged, almost blindly, forcing me toward the rocks beside the river. The rocks were incinerators in the heat of Joe's Sun. The hot ground burned through my boots. I flopped into a narrow gap. The Hog sniffed at the opening, then moved away. I crawled into the warm shade of an overhanging boulder and lay groaning and gasping.

Swaying in the blazing sunlight, the Hog vomited. He collapsed ponderously on his side. His legs twitched. He struggled to raise his massive head, but his snout fell in the dirt.

I crawled out of the rocks and reeled toward the pentacycle. A toothie scooted from beside the front wheel, and two others watched from the concealment of a creeper.

Several times, I had heard that the Hog seldom stayed in the sunlight, and the booklet, _Initial Experiments in Earthian Swine_ (Sus scrofa) _Production on Freesphere_, had said that swine were susceptible to heatstroke. I trembled at the risk I had taken, but I felt a sense of peace I had not known on Planet Maggie.

One thousand x-tops, fifty coupons, the Jury would pay me for killing the Hog, the last animal I would kill for money. My hunting career had reached a successful end. An unhectic life on Mother Earth awaited me.

I suspected that I was becoming delirious in the heat. When I reached the pentacycle, I opened the dynamite box and took one tube in each hand. The tubes were fitted with time fuses.

The Hog breathed spasmodically. I warily neared the heaving mountain of flesh, uncertain of the dynamite's power, but calculating that two detonations near the creature's head would be enough.

Opening his one good eye, the Hog looked at me. His tusks grated together. Weak noises came from his mouth. "Uhdoo nuut keel!"

Sixday evening, I had been momentarily convinced that the Hog could speak, but had found it hard to accept that faculty in a swinish animal without grasping organs. However, appearance did not always indicate intellectual ability, and the Hog's skull contained ample space for a large brain. Today, now that I recalled his noises, I knew he had again threatened to eat me.

"Uhdoo nut keel, Keenlogh," the Hog grunted. He seemed to be asking for his life.

Perhaps I did not feel so strange as would a man who had never conversed with a nonhuman intelligence. Two of my close friends were Triangularians. I said, "What can I do but kill you? You helped kill 238 people."

The Hog made sounds. With great difficulty, I translated his answer as a question. "Is wrong to kill and eat? Men kill and eat. No way to leave this land. Eat toothies. Are hard to catch. Little other food but Maggiese."

The Hog closed his eye and wheezed through his open mouth. I argued with myself.

Galactic Government specified the correct procedure when an intelligent species was discovered. All possible efforts toward peaceful contact and negotiation should be made, however strange or dangerous the species might be. The discoverer could not molest the creatures on his own responsibility. Technically, the Hog was a murderer, but GG renounced the ancient belief that he who kills must be killed, and considered that murderers suffered from a curable illness.

Betty Toal--if she lived--and all other Maggiese would rejoice if I dynamited the Hog. I would receive my fee. No one would realize the Hog had been anything but a man-eating brute. Centuries might pass before GG zoologists examined the giant swine of Planet Maggie, if, indeed, others existed beyond the peninsula. The Hog would probably die of heatstroke, whatever I did.

With some surprise, I found that my pack remained on my shoulders, although it dangled by a single strap. I pulled the water pump from its pocket, walked to the river, and threw in the intake hose. Uncoiling the line, I moved back toward the Hog. The hose was too short, but I set the nozzle for maximum force and, remembering instructions in the booklet, sprayed water over the Hog's head.

The liquid revived him until he could push himself to a grotesque sitting position with his front feet. I shot water into his mouth and said, "Did you catch the woman in the tunnel?"

"Nooo," the Hog answered.

"You killed Toal," I said, dropping the hose and once more filling my hands with dynamite.

"Nooo," the Hog repeated. With a mouth unsuited for speech, he laboriously made a proposal. If I would spare him, he would attempt to leave the peninsula, going around the swamp to the coast and risking the currents and sea life in an effort to swim to the main continent.

With my finger on a dynamite fuse, I considered the plan. The Hog swayed to his feet.

Something fiendish screeched overhead. An explosion thundered in the rocks beside the river. Fragments whined through the hot air. The Hog squealed. I dropped prone and wriggled into a depression.

A second explosion rent the ground in front of me, showering me with dirt and brush. The Hog tried to run. His weakened legs quivered under him.

The third blast occurred between his front hoofs.

I crawled into a gully and, idiotically clutching the dynamite tubes, put my arms over my head. Tensed for more destruction, I lay there for several minutes. When I looked up, five or six toothies ran past my face.

Wearily, I stood erect. The Hog's remains lay in a pond of blood. Toothies scuttled out of the brush and the rocks and moved around the carcass. Having seen enough nonhuman intelligence for the present, I refused to believe the rodents were dancing in gleeful victory.

I stumbled off toward the vinetrees to learn the fate of Betty Toal, but she peeped over a rock. "You killed the Hog," she said. "What was that screeching?"

I stopped and breathed deeply. Toal said, "Was lost in the side tunnels."

"No," I murmured, "I didn't kill the Hog."

XIV: SEVENDAY EVENING

Long shadows fell across a device on a hill two kilometers from the river. The thing was a large firearm with a heavy barrel about three meters long. The barrel rested on wooden supporting and trailing pieces and projected from between two high wheels. Rasmussen lay with his fat right leg crushed and twisted under a wheel.

The old hunter shook an optical instrument at Betty Toal and me. We were wet from the usual daily thunderstorm, which had delayed our search for the killer of the Hog. "Blasted him!" Rasmussen groaned. "Take this cannon off me! Have waited hours. Why did you not come?"

I grasped two spokes and pushed with what little energy remained in my depleted body, but I could not tilt the ponderous firearm. I said, "Can you drive his tractor over here, Toal? You can tow the canner off."

"Not enough pain for you?" Rasmussen gasped. "Use a lever. Lift the wheel."

"Cut a pole," Toal said and drew a knife.

Rasmussen continued to rave. "Where is gratitude? I saved you! Could not kill him by spraying his head."

I said, "You almost blasted me. Yesterday, you left us out here."

"Did as the old books instruct," Rasmussen said. "Bracketed the Hog with two shells. Third round killed him! Forgot the recoil that time. Cannon broke my leg." The old man's brown face had turned a sickly, greenish white.

"Where did you get this canner, uh, cannon?" I said.

Rasmussen moaned, tried to sit up, and sank back on his elbows. "Is what you saw when grounding in the shuttle."

Toal brought a stout pole, and we piled rocks for a fulcrum. I pushed one end of the pole through the wheel spokes and under the axle.

Rasmussen said, "Maximum Eijkman had it built in secret. Could have shot the Hog weeks ago. Eijkman had dreams of changing our government into something strange. Himself as head."

Toal and I threw our weight on the lever. The wheel lifted. Rasmussen crawled sideways. We eased the cannon to the ground.

I said, "Galactic Government forbids private planets to make such weapons."

Rasmussen gasped, "Nonsense. Was required to protect us from native life."

XV: FOURDAY AFTERNOON

As Joe's sun moved behind rising clouds toward the horizon, an odd little procession walked from Joetropolis. Toal said, "The Jury still refused to pay anything?"

"Yes," I said. "I told them again that Rasmussen wouldn't have killed the Hog if I hadn't lured him into the open. They wouldn't pay even part of my fee, and they wouldn't reimburse me for the equipment I've lost. They quoted Ordinances and said I stole a firearm and a box of dynamite. They hinted that I broke Rasmussen's leg."

Toal said, "You'll make other hunts on other worlds. Their people will reward you."

"I suppose so," I sighed.

Ahead of us, former Foreman Maximum Eijkman, now reduced to Recessive--Alien Status, stalked in injured majesty. Two couples and their Alien children followed us.

Against black thunder-clouds, the shuttle, _Joe Nordo III_, pointed to the sky but appeared incapable of rising above the surface. Somewhere in space and light-hours distant, the astraplane, Ap-GG-12C, approached the orbital rendezvous.

Farmers leaned on their primitive rotor tillers and watched us pass. Several, swinging sticks and shovels, pursued a swarm of toothies. Hundreds of toothies squeaked around the shed at the edge of the spacefield.

Eijkman climbed the chain ladder into the shuttle. As the four men and women helped their children climb, I looked into Toal's blue eyes and said, "Uh, Toal--I mean, Betty. I've rather enjoyed Planet Maggie, in spite of a lot of things. I admire you, Toal. That is, I've never seen another woman quite like you. Your bravery and, uh, all that. What I'm trying to say is, well, you're a hunter, and it looks as if I'll keep on being a hunter. You don't know anyone in the Explored Galaxy. Except me, uh--that is, would--"

Preliminary raindrops spangled the tarnished fuselage of the shuttle. I wiped my face with my sleeve and said, "Doreen, and Laurinda, and Celestine would like you, I'm sure, and you'll like them. They're one of the happiest groups--most of the time, at least. Yes, uh, I'm sure they would approve if--"

"Who are Doreen, Laurinda, and Celestine?" Toal asked.

"Why, they're my wives," I explained. "Out in the Explored Galaxy, almost everyone has--"

Toal's clenched fist struck me squarely in the mouth. She whirled and ran up the ladder.

I spat out a tooth that, anyway, had not been very successfully transplanted. I crawled through the rain, up the swaying ladder, and the first symptoms of spacesickness wrenched my stomach.

Shuttle Pilot Ypsilanti waited on the first deck. He said, "Ordinance 419: Aliens ride the lowest deck."