"No. It vanished when I tried to activate the menta-blaster and is now watching me from the concealment of the trees."

"How do you know it is?"

"I can sense it watching me."

"Your menta-blaster has no doubt become defective," Eska said again. "Test it. Lower your head behind the protection of the biped and test it."

Sesnar dropped his head lower and his eyes searched for a suitable target. They fell on the quadruped, still motionless under his control. It would serve the purpose admirably and it was of no other use to him. With the biped's body between himself and the thing in the trees the disturbance was gone from his mind. He felt the familiar thought patterns come easily: Type I, quarter force-fire!

* * * Confused thoughts swirled in Hart's mind. Why had the snake not killed whatever it saw behind him? It had started to do so-there had been the first dim glow from the tube on its head-and then it had stopped? Why? The snake had been disturbed by what it saw-why hadn't it eliminated it?

He turned his head as far as he could but the trees were directly behind him and he could not see them. Neither could he tell what it might have been by Flopper's reaction; the pup's back was to the trees, too.

The faith was still in Flopper's eyes. He was afraid of the thing before them and could not understand the awful paralysis that held him, but he knew with all his dog's heart that his master would help him. Then the snake dropped its head to the level of Hart's chest and looked directly at the pup. Frantic, imploring appeal flashed into Flopper's eyes as he sensed what was coming.

There was a blue-white flash from the tube on the snake's head and a crackling sound.

A puff of dust hid Flopper from view for a moment. When it cleared he was lying on the ground, broken and still, a tiny trickle of blood staining his mouth.

"The blaster functions perfectly, the thought patterns are produced without effort, when I am not under the direct gaze of the thing in the trees," Sesnar reported.

"Proceed with the biped toward its dwelling," Eska ordered. "Permit it to retain its weapon-should the other thing appear again, force the biped to kill it."

It had killed Flopper!

Hart felt sick with the futility of his hatred for the stinking, scaly thing before him; he wanted, more than he had ever wanted anything in his life, to reach the pistol and empty it into the glazed belly, to watch the snake fall and then tramp its head into a shapeless ma.s.s. He wanted-but the command came to turn and he was doing so.

He turned and began the walking back down the trail, the snake slithering along beside him. They pa.s.sed the limp little bundle of black and white fur that had been Flopper and went on, bypa.s.sing the shortcut through the junipers and following the sandy canyon bed. Was the thing still afraid of what it had seen in the trees? His chest was a sheet of fire and his heart was slugging heavily. Then the trees were behind them and they were back on the trail again, pa.s.sing by the place where Gwen had intended to get the watercress. Were they going to the cabin? They came to the place where the trail climbed out of the canyon and his heart pounded harder as they started up it. There was a limit to the injury and pain a man could stand, no matter how hard he might fight to ignore it, and he had withstood injury and pain to such an extent that his body could take little more of it.

They were climbing up the grade and the snake could have but one reason for going to the cabin. It wanted Gwen; it wanted a pair of specimens of the native life to study; specimens that it would crush and examine as emotionlessly as he would crush and examine a specimen of ore. It hadn't told him, but he knew. It would force him to stand there where the trail came out on top of the bank and motion to Gwen to come to him.

She might even now be starting out to gather the watercress; she would be able to see him easily from the cabin and she would come without question when he motioned her to do so. She had no reason to suspect any danger. He would have to do something-what? His breath was coming harsh and labored and a blur kept trying to form before his eyes. It was hard to think, yet he had to think. He had to do something, and quickly. He was weakening and his time for action was running short- Stop.

He stopped, the snake beside him, and wondered why they had done so. It was looking up the trail, up at the top of the climb, and he shook his head to clear the blur away from his eyes. There was something gray there- Kill it!

He saw what it was as his hand obediently reached for the pistol. It was one of the gray kittens. Why didn't the snake kill it? He thought of the rattlesnake he had killed so long ago and he knew what it was the snake-thing had seen in the trees, knew why its cold, merciless mind had been so disturbed.

Kill it!

Kill it-he must kill the kitten because the snake was afraid of it! The snake couldn't kill it! There was a flooding of hope through him. He had a plan, now; held deep and vague in his mind as he brought the sights of the pistol in line with the kitten's face. There was no time to inspect the plan, not even the hazy sub-conversion inspection it would have to be. He had been ordered to kill the kitten and his muscles were no longer his own; he could not disobey. His mind was his own, however, and he could- The front sight was on the kitten's head, outlined in the rear sight, and he made his thought sharp and clear: This pistol shoots low; I must draw a coa.r.s.e bead. Another thought tried to make itself heard: No-no-it shoots high. He drowned it out with the one of his own creating: Shoots low-draw a coa.r.s.e bead. The front sight came up in obedience to the thought he was making sharp and clear, the snake unable to read the thought he was keeping submerged. The sight loomed high in the notch of the rear sight and he pressed the trigger. The startled kitten vanished in the brush beside the trail as the bullet snapped an inch over its head.

I did it! There was exultation in the thought-it was difficult to keep it hidden. There was a plan that would work-it would have to work- "What is your plan?"

The snake's question came hard and cold and the tentacles flicked at his mind-the plan-the plan- His hope became despair. He had let part of his thoughts get through to the surface, and now the snake knew of them-the plan-the plan- The tube was coming in line with his chest again. He would, in the end, tell the snake what it wanted to know-his mind would be sent spinning into the glare of pain and it would no longer be his own. But if he could delay it for a while . . .

"I'll tell you," he said calmly. The snake waited, the tube still in line with his chest.

"Cats-they chase mice," he went on, his mind two things; a frenzied effort to think and to talk calmly to the snake with one part of it and a desperate planning in the darkness of sub-conversion with the other part. "Cats chase mice and I was going to yell at them- Susie-SNAKE!"

At his shout he expected, with the part of his mind he was keeping hidden from the snake, that the tube would flash violet again as the snake detected the subterfuge. But it had not-not for the moment, at least. Susie would come, she had to- "They always chase these mice and the reason I sent for them-" The snake wouldn't let him talk nonsense for long-Susie would have to come soon- "I sent for them because the mice scared the farmer's wife when the clock-" What if she had gone back to the cabin? What if there was nothing to hear him but the gray kitten?- "struck one.

I-".

"You are hiding something."

The tube flashed violet and his mind went reeling into the white glare where the tentacles lashed like whips-the plan-the plan- Something was saying: You are a snake and snakes are afraid of cats. I called Susie so you couldn't use the tube-so I could kill you before you could kill Gwen and me . . .

His mind came out of the glare again, out of the blinding intensity of pain. Vision returned and he saw the snake before him, with the tube once again crystal white. It knew, now, of his plan-he had resisted the questioning as long as he could and all he could do now was hope that Susie had heard him, that she was coming and had not returned to the cabin, after all. The cabin was too far away for her to have heard his call from there . . .

The snake was watching the top of the trail, its little hands fidgeting. He followed the snake's gaze, to find the trail empty. Susie-Susie-he thought-don't fail us now. It's Gwen and me and maybe every human on Earth if this thing isn't killed. Hurry, Susie, and help me-help me so I can kill it- Then something appeared at the top of the trail, something gray. Susie! She had heard him! She came down the trail without pausing, flowing along low to the ground with her eyes fixed on the snake. She stopped eight feet short of them, her eyes stone-hard and unwavering in their stare.

Kill it.

There was a hint of emotion to the command this time; a touch of urgency where, before, the commands of the snake had been as dispa.s.sionate as its own hard-scaled face.

Again his hand brought up the pistol, but this time his will was delaying it a little. Not much, but a little. Susie was not a kitten; she was a mature cat with a mature cat's contempt for snakes. A cat, even a kitten, instinctively knows the difference between a harmless snake, such as a garter snake, and a poisonous snake, such as a rattlesnake. A small kitten will kill a garter snake but it will not tackle a rattlesnake until it has acquired the necessary strength, speed and experience. For all its size, the snake-thing before Susie was still a snake; a snake without fangs. It could not harm her except by physical force and to do so it would have to move faster than she did. All her experience had taught her that no snake could ever equal her own lightning coordination. The effect of her stare upon the snake would be far stronger than that of a kitten; that it was stronger was made evident by the manner in which his hand was bringing up the pistol so slowly. She could not harm the snake, but such would not be necessary. She had only to sit there and torment its mind with her cold stare-in the end the snake-thing's mind and will would break, its fear would become so complete that it would lose all control over him. And then-he would kill the thing- Kill it!

The command was more urgent and he was raising the pistol faster despite his efforts to hold it back. It would take time for her stare to fully affect the thing and it was not going to permit that. The sights were coming in line with Susie's face-all his will could not halt the movement and he was going to kill her. When he shot her, he would destroy the only hope for survival-when he pulled the trigger he would be killing himself and Gwen as surely as though the muzzle was against their own heads. He tried the subterfuge of thinking the gun shot low, but it failed. His hand brought the front sight down low in the notch of the rear sight and his finger tightened on the trigger. He concentrated on the movement of the finger, forgetting everything else in the effort to delay the squeeze of the trigger. The command came again: Kill- It broke and he felt the control lessen.

It came once more, but differently: Kill them!

Them? The pistol had dropped and was no longer in line with Susie. He looked up the trail and saw why; the two gray kittens were trotting down the trail. They stopped beside their mother, one on each side of her, and their eyes as coldly upon the snake as hers.

No further command came for the time and the snake's hands fluttered with greater nervousness. The pistol was still in his hand but the muzzle had dropped toward the ground. There were six green eyes watching the snake now, and it was getting worried.

It would try again-it would have to try again, and soon. It took a little time for the stare of a cat to break a snake and the snake knew it. It was a snake and there was something about the impenetrable mind of a cat that it feared-but it was intelligent and it knew it could still escape if it acted quickly enough . . .

Gravel rattled down the face of the cliff his back was against. He twisted his neck to look up and saw the yellow kitten making its way along the ledge over his head. The kitten stopped just over him and there were eight cold eyes watching the snake. Three kittens to go, he thought, and then someone is going to get hurt. There was another yellow one and the red one, and the far-ranging spotted one should have been the one the snake saw in the trees-it should be coming up the trail any moment.

More gravel fell from the ledge above him; the other yellow one. The snake was darting its glance from the kittens on the ledge to Susie and the two beside her and did not see the spotted one trot up the trail and stop near the end of its long, thin tail. The red one was at the spotted one's heels and stopped beside it.

There was a trembling to his legs as the control lessened. The snake was breaking- he could not raise the gun to shoot the snake; it could not force him to shoot the cats. He felt an elation through the sickness and pain. The snake would break soon, would break and turn to flee. When it did the control would vanish and he would kill it. He would empty the pistol into the mottled green coils of it . . .

"Drop the weapon!"

His hand tried to spread open to drop the pistol and he tried to force it to clench the pistol tighter. If he dropped the pistol, the snake would scoop it up and use it to kill the cats-but his fingers were obeying the command, they were spreading apart.

He spoke quickly: "Did you know there are two more at your tail?"

It had the affect he had hoped for; the snake flicked its glance toward the two kittens, then there was a flurry of movement as it whipped its tail away from them and closer about its body.

His grip was firmer on the pistol and for the first time he smiled at the snake.

"Disconcerting, aren't they?"

"There are seven of the creatures," Sesnar reported. "I am not sure whether or not they can harm me physically-they display a complete lack of fear as though they might possess some power to destroy me of which I am unaware. The biped has now become a menace; I am losing control of it and when my control weakens sufficiently it intends to kill me. It is too strong for me to wrest the weapon from its hand but it is rapidly weakening from the effects of its injuries. As soon as it weakens sufficiently, I shall take the weapon away from it. Since the biped's primitive weapon operates by manual control, I can use it to kill the other creatures. I am now going to release the biped of all control but for the hand that holds the weapon. This will cause it to feel the full extent of its injuries and reduce it to helplessness very quickly. My control, itself, is steadily deteriorating but the biped is so severely injured that I have no doubt it will be helpless long before my control over it is completely gone."

He was standing with his back to the cliff, his feet spread a little, when the control over everything but his hand suddenly vanished. His knees turned to rubber and he fell back against the cliff. He had not realized, while his muscles were under the absolute control of the snake, just how weak he was. His back b.u.mped against the cliff and he braced his feet, shoving as hard as his weakness would permit against the cliff to keep himself standing. It was not enough and he began to drop, his backbone sc.r.a.ping along the rough rock face. For a moment a fold in his shirt caught on a projection and supported him, then it slipped off and he dropped to the ground in a squatting position. It seemed he dropped with a terrible jar and the h.e.l.l-fire rippled across his chest. The sickness flooded over him and the blur clouded his eyes. He put all his will into one thought: Hold tight to the pistol!

The blur faded away and he could see the snake, its head now above him. He was sitting with his legs doubled under him and his heart was a small flub-flub within him. He was sweating the cold sweat of shock and the hand that held the pistol was no longer tan but an odd grayish color. He watched it and waited, hoping the spell would pa.s.s before the snake realized how weak he was.

The worst of it did pa.s.s and a little color came back to his hand. His heart, relieved of the burden of supplying his legs with blood, began to beat a little stronger and the blackness that had hovered around him withdrew.

The snake was in a close coil a few feet before him, the coils sliding and slithering together and the snake-like arms a succession of nervous ripplings.

"Afraid, aren't you?" he asked. "You need a dog-cats run from dogs." He kept his mind free of information-giving surface thoughts and went on to bait it. "You could easily control a dog and force it to chase all these cats away."

The snake asked the question he had expected. "What is a dog?"

"The animal you killed was a dog." He regretted that the snake's expressionless face prevented his seeing the effect of the disclosure but the thought would be galling bitterness in the snake's mind. It had no emotions-but one. There was one emotion it had to have; the fear of death. Without that a species would never survive. It was afraid, now, and the greater its fear became, the weaker its control over him would become. He would have no time to spare; the blackness had merely withdrawn a little way and it kept threatening to swoop back over him. He would have to fight it off as best he could and at the same time do what he could to increase the snake's fear.

"Cats," he said to it. "You're afraid of them and they're not afraid of you. Do you know why they're not afraid of you?"

"Why?" The question was like a quick hiss, intense in its desire to know.

"Ask them," he answered. "They know; they can tell you. Ask them-look at them, go into their minds and learn why they don't fear you. Go ahead-go into their minds-"

A wisp of the darkness reached out to cloud his eyes and he waited for it to pa.s.s, holding tight to the pistol. The darkness withdrew and he repeated: "Go ahead-go into their minds. Burn them like you did me-make them tell you-go ahead-try it." He smiled up at the snake, twisted and mirthless. "They know what's going on in your mind; they know how they're breaking you without ever touching you. Why don't you go into their minds and learn why they hate you and hold you in contempt? Look into their eyes-go deep into their minds and see what you find . . ."

The cloud came again and he let his voice trail off to concentrate on holding to the pistol.

"The biped has not weakened yet?" Eska asked.

"It is weakening very rapidly, though not yet helpless," Sesnar replied.

"We dare take no risks-this absurd situation must be remedied at once," Eska informed him. "The thought pattern of your menta-blaster is on file and will be given to myself and the other eight members of the Colonization Board present here. The recording projector is being set up now. As soon as the last connections are made the pattern of your blaster will be projected to you with the power of the nine minds of the Board behind it. Since none of us are under the influence of the creatures before you, the pattern projection will be of absolute precision and irresistible power. Your own mind need serve only as the carrier. The final connections are being made now and you will receive the pattern projection at any moment."

He shook his head, trying to drive the darkness away. It withdrew, slowly and reluctantly, hovering near to close in on him again. His time was running out-all his will and determination could not much longer hold unconsciousness at bay. Time-he needed more time. Susie and the kittens were doing the best they could but their only weapon was the green stare of their eyes. In the end they would break the snake-but he would have to be there to kill it when they did so. If he lost consciousness all would be lost; the snake would use the pistol to kill the cats, it would go on to the cabin where Gwen was . .

He needed time and he could not have it. He would have to bring it all to a showdown fast-in the little time he did have. Maybe if the cats were closer . . .

He called to Susie. His voice was a vague mutter and he tried again, making it clear.

"Susie, come here-snake, Susie-snake!"

She came at his call, with the same silent, flowing motion. She stopped close beside him, so near that her whiskers tickled the back of his hand that held the pistol as she stared up at the snake's head and the writhing arms of it.

"The biped has called the largest of the creatures to its side," Sesnar reported. "I can see nothing about the creature capable of harming me but I sense a distinct menace-an utter lack of fear. It must possess some means of harming me of which I am unaware, otherwise it would not display this complete lack of fear. The effect of its stare upon my control over the biped is considerably greater at this close range and I am afraid to delay any longer. I am sure the biped has now weakened sufficiently for me to wrest the weapon from its grasp. I cannot wait any longer or my control over it will be completely gone. Project my menta-blaster pattern as soon as possible but I must take the biped's weapon now and kill it and the other creatures."

"The connections have been made and the charge is building up in the relay now,"

Eska said. "The moment it reaches full potential you will receive the pattern."

The snake settled lower in its coils until its head was barely a foot higher than his own. "I wish to talk to you," it said, leaning forward a little toward him. "I intend you no harm."

Subterfuge! The foreknowledge of the snake's intention was an electric shock through the haze of pain and sickness. Subterfuge-it was trying to put him off guard a little before it s.n.a.t.c.hed the pistol from his hand.

The showdown had come.

He moved with all the desperate quickness his weakness would permit, trying to bring his left hand over in time to help his still-controlled right hand hold onto the pistol. The movement was hardly begun when the hand of the snake flashed out. At the same moment it ordered with all the force at its command: "Release the weapon!"

Susie reacted then, instinctively and instantaneously. It was beyond her ability to understand that the snake wanted only the pistol; that it wanted no contact with her. She had been waiting and watching, her eyes and body coordinated like a perfect machine and ready to act at the lightning-fast instant of her command. The snake-like arm darted toward her, as a rattlesnake would strike, and she replied to its threat as she would to the strike of a rattlesnake. Its hand was yet four inches from the pistol when her paw made its invisibly swift slash and the razor-sharp claws laid the soft-scaled hand open in four long gashes.

It flipped its body back at the slash of her claws and the control was suddenly gone, something like a scream coming through the channel where it had been. It was soundless but it was terror, complete and absolute.

Now! The glazed yellow belly was before him and the control was gone. He brought the pistol up, spurred by the frantic fear that the snake would resume control when victory was only a split second away. Up, where the sickening glaze was so near him-up and in line- The pistol barked, vicious and savage, and the snake lurched from the impact, a small, round hole in the glaze. Up and fire-up and fire- It was as he had wanted it to be when the snake held him helpless; as he raised the pistol and fired, raised and fired, the little black holes ran up the glazed belly while the snake kept lurching from the impacts and leaning farther backward, out over the edge of the trail. There were six of the little black holes in it when it toppled over and fell into the canyon below.

He heard the thump of it as it hit the bottom and he crawled to the rim of the trail to look down at it. It was lying in the sand of the canyon floor, twisting aimlessly, sometimes the dark green back up and sometimes the glistening yellow belly up.

It was twisting and turning as all dead snakes do; it was going nowhere; it was no longer a menace.

He turned away from it and saw that Susie and all the kittens were lined up beside him, looking down at the thing they had helped kill.

"I think," he said to them, "that the hungry old cat and the scrawny kittens we gave a home to one cold, rainy night have repaid us."

He was still in the hospital nine months later-with release a month away-when Earth's first s.p.a.ceship was completed and the christening ceremony held. The snake- thing's ship had possessed every conceivable kind of weapon as well as the hyper-s.p.a.ce drive and the military had been given orders, and unlimited priority, to create a Hypers.p.a.ce Interceptor Fleet. There had been tapes and records in the ship that had left no doubt as to the snake-thing's mission. Industry had combined genius and ma.s.s- production to do the impossible; it had turned out the first complete and fully armed interceptor in less than nine months.

Gwen made her daily visit on the afternoon of the day of the ship's christening.

"This one will be the flagship, I guess you'd call it," she said. "Now that they're tooled up for production, they say they'll be turning out a ship a week."

"The things might try again," he said. "I don't think they will for some time; when Susie struck the snake it let its mind go wide open to my own mind for a moment-not only its mind but I could sense the thoughts of the other ones that it was in communication with-and they were afraid. Even the others were afraid, afraid because the one here was terrorized by something it couldn't control or understand. I think these snake-things got where they are by pure, unemotional logic; they happened to be an older form of life than the ones on the worlds they conquered and their knowledge of physical things, such as weapons, was greater. I suppose they had plans for ultimately conquering every habitable world in the galaxy. They were utterly without mercy in their plans; they, alone, were ent.i.tled to life because they, alone, had developed methods of destroying all other forms of life. They knew all about physical laws and they made use of their knowledge to devise weapons that made them invincible. But they overlooked what I like to think is a law higher than any they knew: the law that no species alone, is ent.i.tled to survival."

Gwen smiled at him. "The law that causes people to feel sorry for lost and hungry dogs and cats and want to give them a home. It's a good law, and it doesn't have to be written down for people; it's just our nature like it was the nature of that snake-thing to be cold and logical in everything it did." "And its cold logic caused it to die," he said, "with it, even as it died, still wondering at our illogical affection for other creatures. And speaking of other creatures; how is Susie taking all the publicity and fame?"

"She's completely unphotogenic, and bewildered besides. She just wants to keep on being a common cat and she can't understand why all those people keep coming to see her and take her picture."

"Well-after all, she can't know just how important was the thing she and the kittens did. That thing was a snake and she was a cat; she just did the usual, normal thing for a cat to do."

"She was wanted at the ship's christening today, too," Gwen said. "They wanted her there to go out over all the television channels. I had to put my foot down flat on the idea, though."