3

He missed the weight around his hips. Passing the creek, he felt suddenly thirsty, yet hesitated to drink water that he’d never tasted undistilled. No use experimenting with it, he decided; the still was undamaged.

But thirst grew as he wandered on. He knew it was psychological—a trick of his vagrant mind. He put a pebble under his tongue.

Without conscious thought, he’d started in his usual direction, toward the garden and the cliff behind it. Carefully he observed the small animal-forms that crawled, wriggled, ran, and flew out from under his feet. None of them seemed to be eating at the moment.

Well, if he couldn’t eat what they ate, he could possibly eat some of them. American Indians, he remembered, had liked grasshoppers; he was himself fond of shrimp.

But if there were no predators here, it might be a mistake for him to act like one—to make himself feared. Not, of course, that the natives’ reactions would matter. He had no intention of getting in touch with them, Sam reminded himself.

Certainly not! He’d only chosen this particular direction to walk in because he knew the way. He was going to the garden as a matter of course, because its obviously artificial plantings might be crops. There wasn’t the slightest chance, Sam emphatically told himself, that he’d break his promise to Sally.

But when he got to the garden, Sam could clearly see, as he’d seen many times before, that it wasn’t a farm; the several acres contained too wide a variety of plants. The place was, more like a horticultural museum than a food-growing area. Whether the plants were of types selected for food or for ornamentation, he couldn’t tell. They were all sizes and shapes—lichens as big as pines, shrubs that looked like miniature hardwoods, flowering plants, and some that seemed downright ugly.

He looked among them for fruits and berries, handicapped by the fact he was not a biologist but a sociologist—remorseful because he’d never before searched out local food-resources. Painstaking effort redoubled his thirst—made him hungry despite the short time since breakfast. And, as Altair rose higher and higher, his appetite acquired a genuine excuse for its clamor.

Regularly, every fifteen minutes, he told himself he must go back before Sally got upset again, just as regularly, he assured himself that in another fifteen minutes he’d find manna.

Under the influence of hunger, his sense of smell became more active. He sniffed the wind like a hound—and found a message in it. There was an odor borne on the light breeze—something he couldn’t place, though it seemed familiar. Something pleasant; he decided to trace the scent to its source.

The source was a pool in a corner of the garden—slightly scummy, bubbling occasionally, clouded, and brownish. The tall vegetation that grew all around had concealed it from his earlier, more casual inspections.

Leaning over the pool, he recognized its odor, or thought he did. It was yeasty, like a bakery. Or—that was it—a brewery! Something was fermenting here.

He felt an overwhelming desire to taste the product of that fermentation. Thirst, in the back of his mind for hours, now, became a sharpnailed hand, clawing at his throat. Alcohol was a disinfectant, he assured himself; this would be safer to drink than water.

Kneeling, he thrust a hand beneath the scummy surface, finding the fluid warmish, slightly viscid. He cupped his fingers and drew out a small amount. It smelled good.

His hand didn’t cool very rapidly in the air—not the way it would have if the fluid had been high proof. There couldn’t be enough alcohol in it to hurt him, he decided; he thrust out his tongue and licked up the few drops that had not yet dribbled through his fingers.

They tasted sweetish, as if the fluid were high in sugar content. Perhaps it might give him a little quick energy, stave off hunger as well as thirst. He cupped both hands together, plunged them into the pool, drew out a fairish quantity, and gulped it down.

The drink gave him no pleasure. A sense of guilt had touched his mind before the fluid touched his stomach. He became fully aware that this was an unnecessary risk—mentally acknowledged that, for Sally’s sake, he should have been more careful. Furtively he rose to leave.

As he turned away, his attention was caught by a rapid motion seen in the corner of one eye. From halfway around the pool, a native waved its arms vigorously and looked straight at him.

It could have been the one he’d seen in the garden yesterday, Sam thought, but he wasn’t sure; all the creatures looked alike to him. Certainly this one displayed excitement, though; it seemed to be waving him away from the pool!

Well, to hell with that, Sam decided. This stuff seemed to be harmless—refreshing, in fact. Besides, if the beast wanted to communicate with him, it could damned well go jump. He’d promised Sally, and by golly he wasn’t going to have anything to do with them; defiantly, he took another drink.

By the time he’d risen and wiped his lips on his sleeve and his hands on his pants, the native was upon him, showing unmistakable agitation in the urgent way it waved its arms. Impulsively, Sam thrust out his hand, and mockingly said, “How do you do?”

There was no audible reply. The native stopped waving its arms, took Sam’s warm damp hand in a cooler, oily, hard one, and drew him away from the pool, scuttling backward. Mildly repelled, but not frightened, Sam disengaged his hand and followed freely.

He stumbled, though, and had to be helped by a renewed grip of that shell-coated hand. On his empty stomach the alcoholic fluid churned and burned; he was getting drunk, knew it, and was very much amused at the idea.

Sam permitted himself to be drawn into the shade of some trees. Then, suddenly obstinate, he balked. Instead of going further, he lay down, giggling.

Dizziness stopped the giggles. Sam felt dissociated from himself, as if floating free in space, whirling around and around like a planet in its orbit, except that he was sun as well as planet. The trees around him circled nauseatingly. The native wavered as if seen through heated air.

Sam shut out these sights by closing his eyes. Almost immediately, he was whirled off into sleep.

Evening’s chill awakened him. His head ached. He was stiff from lying on the ground; he was dizzy; his stomach was upset. For a few seconds he not only forgot where he was, but feared to open his eyes and find out.

When he did open them, it was to squint at a gyrating world only now slowing down from the rotation that had sent him to sleep. As the speed decreased, he made out the sheltering vegetation, and what looked like several natives.

He’d never before seen several natives in a group. He thought he was deluded, and closed his eyes to shut out the hallucination. Then, cautiously, he opened just one eye, and looked again.

No, by golly! He wasn’t suffering from double vision! Six unblinking natives stared in a row!

Carefully, Sam moved each aching limb in turn. They felt battered, but more or less whole. And they were unrestrained. He rolled over to his stomach and got slowly to hands and knees. The exertion made him violently ill.

It took five minutes to get to his feet. The natives offered helping hands, but he rudely brushed them off. He wished they’d do something he could blame them for; it would be nice to say this was all their fault.

But it wasn’t. He knew exactly where he was, now—and how he’d gotten there. He promised not to leave Sally alone, and had left her alone. He’d promised not to have anything to do with the natives, and had displayed obvious weakness before them. He had come out to find food, and had gotten drunk. He was, Sam felt, the lowest form of life that had ever fouled up an important assignment.

He must get control of himself. Those beasts were probably plotting some fiendish revenge for the one that had burned. And he could hardly stand without falling.

Maybe another drink would fix him, Sam felt vaguely. Sure—hair of the dog!

Ignorant of the proper direction to take, he staggered off in search of the pool, the natives following in a silent semicircle.

He found it. Guided by odor or submerged memory, he stumbled through the growth around it, flopped to his knees, blew some of the scum away, rested his hands on the bottom, and drank.

A native tugging at his jacket made him stop. He looked around, and saw that the other five were waving their arms frantically.

Sam didn’t care. The natives seemed suddenly ridiculous, like a team of cheer-leaders from some school for defectives. He was going to settle his—urps!—settle his stomach. And then go home, s’help him.

But after he’d had another drink, and had gotten clumsily to his feet with only the native who clung to his jacket keeping him from falling into the pool, Sam decided he couldn’t go home yet, though it was almost dark. Nope! Dark or not, gotta have something to show for this little excursion. Gotta bring home some food!

Since the natives were gesturers, he gestured, making all the signs he could think of for eating, food, hunger, and weakness. They seemed mainly interested in edging him away from the pool. He gave up signalling, therefore, and plucked a lettuce-like leaf from a plant beside him, opening his mouth to eat it.

Instantly the natives closed in, tearing the leaf from his grasp, forcing him to wipe his hand on the ground. They had little regard for his thin skin—scraped some of it off on the twigs and pebbles underfoot, made it to blister.

Sam didn’t like that. He lurched away from them down the aisle of plantings to a bush with small berries on it, like pepper-corns. He plucked a few, and tried to eat them.

Again his find was knocked from his hand. This time, though, the natives didn’t damage his skin. They’d better not! Sam told himself fiercely.

He tried another plant, tearing a piece of soft and rubbery bark from a tree nearby. Once more the material was taken violently from him; this time three of the natives grasped his clothing, trying to pull him in a specific direction.

Out of the garden, he thought. Away from their precious plants. But they had plenty—they could afford to share them!

“No, you don’t!” he muttered, and savagely beat them off.

What happened next was never clear to him. All six natives seemed to close in as if by signal. With horny hands they pounded at his legs. The more he struggled, the harder they hit. Finally, he tripped. Then, with a single sharp blow to the base of his skull, one of them knocked him out.

He came to with the sensation of being carried—horizontally, but face downward; his nose kept bumping something.

Opening his eyes, he found that his nose was bumping the back of a native. He was being carried feet first through the darkness on two of them, while others grasped him with painfully clawlike hands. He felt awful.

An overwhelming desire to escape surged through him. But it had been, he recalled, another overwhelming desire—to drink from that loathsome pool—that had gotten him into this mess. He lay still, letting consciousness return slowly but fully. He was almost sober, now; sober enough to feel both sick and sorry.

And helpless. He’d fought these natives once, and lost. Might lose again. And if he escaped, would they be far behind? He had no place to run but the shack, no desire to lead a group of irate captors to Sally.

Besides, it was dark, now. He couldn’t see where he was going. And it wouldn’t help anything if he found out. He decided to let them revenge themselves, satisfy themselves. As far from the shack as possible. It was the least he could do....

He was feeling quite heroic when they set him on his feet, but that pleasant sensation evaporated when he saw why he’d been released.

They wanted him to open the door of his shack. Obviously they had seen him pass through here, but apparently they didn’t know how to work the latch. He realized they must long have been aware that he’d regained consciousness.

What could he say to Sally? Sam wondered frantically. What could he do to avoid shocking her?

He’d never before been brought home drunk. Searching his mind for the right way to greet her, he called, “Company, honey,” and waited for her to answer.