Away Games: Science Fiction Sports Stories (20 page)

• • •

We dragged Marx’s body out of the forest and loaded in into the back of the safari vehicle.

“My God!” whined Desmond. “He’s dead! He was the only one of us who knew the first damned thing about hunting, and he’s dead! We’ve got to get out of here!”

“He was also a friend,” said Ramona. “You might spare a little of your self-pity for
him.”

“Ramona!” said Pollard harshly.

“I’m sorry,” she said with a total lack of sincerity.

Pollard had been staring at Marx’s body since we brought it out of the forest. “Jesus, he’s a mess!” he said at last. “Did he suffer much?”

“No,” I assured him. “Not with wounds like those—he would have gone into shock immediately.”

“Well, we can be thankful for that, I suppose,” said Pollard. He finally tore his eyes away from the body and turned to me. “What now?”

“Now it’s not a matter of sport anymore,” I said, morbidly wondering whether the authorities would revoke my license for losing a client, or simply suspend it. “He’s killed one of us. He’s got to die.”

“I thought that was the whole purpose of the safari.”

“The purpose was a sporting stalk, with the odds all on the game’s side. Now the purpose is to kill him as quickly and efficiently as we can.”

“That sounds like revenge,” noted Ramona.

“Practicality,” I corrected her. “Now that he knows how easy it is to kill an armed man, we don’t want him to get into the habit.”

“How do you stop him?”

“There are ways,” I said. “I’ll use every trick I know—and I know a lifetime’s worth of them—before he has a chance to kill again.” I paused. “Now, so I’ll know which traps to set, I want you to tell me what he actually looks like.”

“Like a huge red ape with big glaring eyes,” said Pollard.

“No,” said Ramona. “He looked more like a brown bear, but with longer legs.”

“He was sleek,” offered Pollard.

Ramona disagreed again. “No, he was shaggy.”

“Wonderful,” I muttered. “I trust you at least took a couple of holos, Mr. Pollard?”

He shook his head. “I was so surprised when he burst out of there that I totally forgot the camera,” he admitted shamefacedly.

“Well, that’s an enormous help,” I said disgustedly. I turned to Desmond. “How about you?”

“I don’t know,” he whimpered. Suddenly he shuddered. “He looked like Death!”

“You must forgive Philemon,” said Ramona, with an expression that said
she
wasn’t about to forgive him. “He’s really very good at investments and mergers and even hostile takeovers. He’s just not very competent at
physical
things.” She patted his medal. “Except running.”

• • •

Marx had a wife and three grown children back on Roosevelt III, and his friends felt sure they’d want him shipped home, so we put his body in a vacuum container and stuck it in the cargo hold.

After that was done, Chajinka and I went to work. We set seven traps, then went back to camp and waited.

Early the next morning we went out to see what we’d accomplished.

That was when I learned that the Snark had a sardonic sense of humor.

Each of the traps contained a dead animal. But lest we mistakenly think that
we
had anything to do with it, each one had its head staved in.

The son of a bitch was actually mocking us.

• • •

“For the Snark’s a peculiar creature, that won’t

Be caught in a commonplace way.

Do all that you know, and try all that you don’t:

Not a chance must be wasted today!”

• • •

I awoke the next morning to the sound of vaguely familiar alien jabbering. It took me a minute to clear my head and identify what I was hearing. Then I raced out of my Bubble and almost bumped into Chajinka, who was running to meet me.

“What’s going on?” I demanded.

He responded in his native tongue.

“Where’s your t-pack?” I asked.

He jabbered at me. I couldn’t understand a word of it.

Finally he pulled me over to the area where the Dabihs ate and slept, and pointed to the shapeless pile of metal and plastic and computer chips. Sometime during the night the Snark had silently entered the camp and destroyed all the t-packs.

I kept wondering: was he just lucky in his choice, or could he possibly have
known
how much we needed them?

Mbele, awakened by the same sounds, quickly emerged from his Bubble.

“What the hell is going on?” he asked.

“See for yourself,” I said.

“Jesus!” he said. “Can any of the Dabihs speak Terran?”

I shook my head. “If they could, they wouldn’t need t-packs, would they?”

“Was it the Snark?”

I grimaced. “Who else?”

“So what do you do now?”

“First, I try to figure out whether it was mischief or malice, and whether he had any idea what havoc it would cause.”

“You think he might be a little smarter than your average bear in the woods?”

“I don’t know. He lives like an animal, he acts like an animal, and he hunts like an animal. But in a short space of time he’s killed Marx, and he’s seen to it that the five remaining Men can’t communicate with the twelve Dabihs.” I forced a wry smile to my mouth. “That’s not bad for a dumb animal, is it?”

“You’d better wake the others and let them know what’s happened,” said Mbele.

“I know,” I said. I kicked one of the broken t-packs up against a tree. “Shit!”

I woke the Desmonds and Pollard and told them what had occurred. I thought Philemon Desmond might faint. The others were a little more useful.

“How long ago did this happen?” asked Pollard.

“Chajinka could probably give you a more accurate estimate, but I can’t speak to him. My best guess is about two hours.”

“So if we go after him, he’s two hours ahead of us?”

“That’s right.”

“We’d better kill him quickly,” said Ramona. “He could come back any time, now that he knows where our camp is.”

“Give me a laser rifle,” added Pollard. “I haven’t fired a gun since I was a kid at camp, but how the hell hard can it be to sweep the area with a beam?”

“You look a little under the weather, Mr. Desmond,” I said. “Perhaps you’d like to stay in camp.”

Actually, he looked incredibly grateful for the out I’d given him. Then his wife ruined it all by adding that he’d just be in the way.

“I’m going,” he said.

“It’s really not necessary,” I said.

“I paid. I’m going.”

And that was that.

“There’s no sense taking gunbearers,” I said as the four of us walked to the safari vehicle. “We can’t talk to them, and besides, the rules don’t apply in this case. If we see him, we’ll take him from the safety of the vehicle, and it’ll give you something solid to rest your rifles on while you’re sweeping the area.” They climbed onto their seats. “Wait here a minute.”

I went back, found Mbele, and told him that we were going after the Snark, and that he should use the Dabihs to set up some kind of defensive perimeter. Then I signaled to Chajinka to join me. A moment later he had taken his customary position on the hood of the vehicle, and we were off in pursuit of the Snark.

The trail led due northeast, past the savannah, toward rolling country and a large, lightly-forested valley. Two or three times I thought we’d spot him just over the next hill, but he was a cagy bastard, and by midafternoon we still hadn’t sighted him.

As dusk fell Chajinka couldn’t read the signs from the vehicle, so he jumped off and began trotting along, eyes glued to the ground. When we entered the valley, he was following the trail so slowly that Ramona and Pollard got out and walked along with him while I followed in the vehicle and Desmond stayed huddled in the back of it.

• • •

But the valley grew narrow and narrower still,

And the evening got darker and colder,

Till (merely from nervousness, not from good will)

They marched along shoulder to shoulder.

• • •

Night fell with no sign of the Snark. I didn’t want to chance damaging the vehicle by driving over that terrain in the dark, so we slept until sunrise, and then drove back to base camp, reaching it just before noon.

Nobody was prepared for the sight that awaited us.

The eleven Dabihs we’d left behind were sprawled dead on the ground in grotesquely contorted positions, each with his throat shredded or his intestines ripped out. Dismembered arms and legs were everywhere, and the place was swimming in blood. Dead staring eyes greeted us accusingly, as if to say: “Where were you when we needed you?”

The stench was worse than the sight. Ramona gagged and began vomiting. Desmond whimpered and curled up into a fetal ball on the floor of the vehicle so he wouldn’t have to look at the carnage. Pollard froze like a statue; then, after a moment, he too began vomiting.

I’d seen a lot of death in my time. So had Chajinka. But neither of us had ever seen anything remotely like this. There hadn’t been much of a struggle. It doesn’t take a 400-pound predator very long to wipe out a bunch of unarmed 90-pound Dabihs. My guess was that it was over in less than a minute.

“What the hell happened here?” asked Pollard, gesturing weakly toward all the blood-soaked dismembered bodies when he finally was able to speak.

• • •

“The method employed I would gladly explain,

While I have it so clear in my head.

If I had but the time and you had but the brain,

But much yet remains to be said.”

• • •

“Where’s Mbele?” I asked, finally getting past the shock of what I was looking at and realizing that he wasn’t among them.

Before anyone could answer, I raced to the hatch and entered the ship, rifle at the ready, half-expecting to be pounced on by the Snark at any moment.

I found what was left of Captain Mbele in the control room. His head had been torn from his body, and his stomach was ripped open. The floor, the bulkheads, even the viewscreen were all drenched with his blood.

“Is he there?” called Ramona from the ground.

“Stay out!” I yelled.

Then I searched every inch of the ship, looking for the Snark. I could feel my heart pounding as I explored each section, but there was no sign of him.

I went back to the control room and began checking it over thoroughly. The Snark didn’t know what made the ship work, or even what it was, but he knew it belonged to his enemies, and he did a lot of damage. Some of it—to the pilot’s chair and the Deepsleep pods and the auxiliary screens—didn’t matter. Some of it—to the fusion ignition and the navigational computer and the subspace radio—mattered a
lot.

I continued going through the ship, assessing the damage. He’d ripped up a couple of beds in his fury, but the most serious destruction was to the galley. I had a feeling that nothing in it would ever work again.

I went back outside and confronted the party.

“Did you find Captain Mbele?” asked Ramona.

“Yes. He’s in the ship.” She started walking to the hatch. I grabbed her arm. “Trust me: you don’t want to see him.”

“That’s it!” screamed Desmond. “We were crazy to come here! I want out! Not tomorrow, not later!
Now
!”

“I second the motion,” agreed Ramona. “Let’s get the hell off this planet before it kills any more of us.”

“That’s not possible,” I said grimly. “The Snark did some serious damage to the ship.”

“How long will it take to fix it?” asked Pollard.

“If I was a skilled spacecraft mechanic with a full set of tools and all the replacement parts I needed, maybe a week,” I answered. “But I’m a hunter who doesn’t know how to fix a broken spaceship. I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“You mean we’re stranded?” asked Ramona.

“For the time being,” I said.

“What do you mean, ‘for the time being’?” shrieked Desmond hysterically. “We’re here forever! We’re dead! We’re all dead!”

I grabbed him and shook him, and when he wouldn’t stop screaming I slapped him, hard, on the face.

“That won’t help!” I said angrily.

“We’ll never get off this goddamned dirtball!” he bleated.

“Yes we will,” I said. “Mbele had to check in with Silinger & Mahr every week. When they don’t hear from us, they’ll send a rescue party. All we have to do is stay alive until they get here.”

“They’ll never come!” moaned Desmond. “We’re all going to die!”

“Stop your whining!” I snapped.
This is just what I needed
now,
I thought disgustedly;
we’re surrounded by dismembered
corpses, the very ground is soaked with blood, the Snark’s
probably still nearby, and this asshole is losing it.
“We have work to do!” They all looked at me. “I want the three of you to start digging a mass grave for the eleven Dabihs. When that’s done, I want us to burn everything—every tree, every bush, everything—to get rid of the smell of blood so it doesn’t attract any predators. What we can’t burn, we’ll bury.”

“And what are
you
going to be doing?” demanded Desmond, who had at least regained some shred of composure.

“I’m going to bring what’s left of Mbele out of the ship and clean up all the blood,” I said bluntly. “Unless you’d rather do it.” I thought he was going to faint. “Then, if I can make myself understood to Chajinka, he and I will try to secure the area.”

“How?” asked Ramona.

“We got some devices that are sensitive to movement and body heat. Maybe we can rig up some kind of alarm system. Chajinka and I can hide them around the perimeter of the camp. If we finish before you do, we’ll pitch in and help with the grave. Now get busy—the sooner we finish, the sooner we can lock ourselves in the ship and decide on our next move.”

“
Is
there a next move?” asked Pollard.

“Always,” I replied.

It took me almost four hours to clean Mbele’s blood and innards from the control room. I put what was left of him into a vacuum pouch, then hefted it to my shoulder and carried it outside.

I found Chajinka helping with the grave. I called him over and showed him, with an elaborate pantomime, what I had in mind, and a few moments later we were planting the sensing devices around the perimeter of our camp. I saw no reason to stay in the Bubbles with such a dangerous enemy on the loose, so I collapsed them and moved them back into the cargo hold. The grave still wasn’t done, so Chajinka and I helped finish the job. Desmond wouldn’t touch any of the corpses, and Ramona looked like she was going be get sick again, so the Dabih, Pollard and I dragged the corpses and spare body parts to the grave, I added the pouch containing Mbele’s remains, and after we four humans and Chajinka filled it in, I read the Bible over it.