Part 2

I used my own rifle to knock his aside as it went off. The Marlin Magnum packs a kick and he stumbled back a step. I went after him and when he pointed his rifle at me again and looked as if he would squeeze the trigger I had no choice. I swung my own rifle like a club and brought it down with savage force on his shoulder.

There was a sound and the sound said his shoulder was broken. He merely scowled and brought his rifle up again, broken shoulder and all, and then I knew.

I shot him. I poured the whole clip into him and the rifle kept kicking back against my shoulder, the stock slapping my cheek, and I didn't want to think. It was not until the last bullet went _whonking_ home that he fell. It was a sound that only a hunter or a killer knows--the _whonk_ of lead into flesh at close range. It is a horrible sound when what you're shooting at is a man.

Was a man.

Or looked like a man.

Because, as he fell, Jason Woods Stevenson changed. The features melted, became indistinct. The limbs fell in on themselves. The body grew big and round--bloated and somehow obscene. In seconds what had been a man was a shapeless, quivering, dying mass of protoplasm. A Wompan.

Then Harry Conger screamed.

It was a scream of sudden awareness and fear. It was worse for Harry than it was for me. Harry was falling in love with Ginger, and now--

I went crashing through the fern-brake, seeking them. I shouted at the top of my lungs now. "Harry! Harry!"

I found them when it was almost too late. Harry was down on his back, a dazed look on his face. There was a smear of blood across his face from ear to mouth. There was a strange look in his eyes.

Ginger Stevenson stood over him with the short-barrelled Mannlicher. I shot six times with a new clip before she fell. Harry climbed to his feet and stormed at me, raging like a mad-man. "You killed her!" he cried. "You--"

Then I made him turn around. He saw what was there and what was there was not and had never been Ginger. He sobbed once and I led him back to the stockade.

* * * * *

"But I don't get it," he said later. I had given him three stiff drinks and they had helped some, but only a little. Harry needed time to think and time to forget. "What happened to the Stevensons? To Ginger?"

"There weren't any Stevensons. No Ginger. Don't you remember they came right after we heard the Wompan make like a swamp-buggy?"

"Yeah--"

"And when we got back there was no spaceship in the stockade, right?"

"Yeah--"

"It was the Wompan all along. There never was a Mr. Stevenson or his daughter."

"Yeah, but--"

"You're thinking the Wompan needs a model?"

"I guess so."

"It probably had one. The Stevensons last year at Venus Joe's. Isn't that what it said--as Mr. Stevenson?"

Harry agreed, but he didn't really care. He had fallen in love--with a girl who didn't exist.

"Buck up," I said.

"It's all right for you to say."

"No. Buck up, will you?"

"What for? What the hell for?"

"Because Venus on the Half Shell has a chance now. Because we killed a Wompan. It's only the fourth one ever and we're going to get a lot of free publicity--which ought to make this place."

"Yeah, that's true," Harry said. But his heart wasn't in it.

"We'll take pictures," I said. "We'll write it up and send in into Spaceman's magazine and we'll have it made. Sportsmen will be flocking here for a crack at Wompans. No wait. I have a better idea. We'll take pictures and write it up and you'll deliver our story in person to Spaceman's magazine on Earth."

"Me? I just want to be alone, Gil. I don't feel like going anywhere."

I smiled. "Yes, you do. You'll deliver the pictures and the story in person--to Spaceman's outdoor editor, who the Wompan saw at Venus Joe's last year. To Jason Woods Stevenson."

"Yeah," Harry said.

"And maybe you'll get to meet his daughter, Ginger."

"Yeah," Harry said again. But this time he was smiling.