Big Book of Science Fiction (20 page)

From under the second bush, it
looked out at him.

Carson grinned at it. Maybe he
was getting a bit punch-drunk, because he remembered suddenly the old story of
the desert-colonists on Mars, taken from an older desert story of Earth— “Pretty
soon you get so lonesome you find yourself talking to the lizards, and then not
so long after that you find the lizards talking back to you—”

He should have been
concentrating, of course, on how to kill the Roller, but instead he grinned at
the lizard and said, “Hello, there.”

The lizard took a few steps
toward him. “Hello,” it said.

Carson was stunned for a moment,
and then he put back his head and roared with laughter. It didn’t hurt his
throat to do so, either; he hadn’t been
that
thirsty.

Why not? Why should the Entity
who thought up this nightmare of a place not have a sense of humor, along with
the other powers he had? Talking lizards, equipped to talk back in my own
language, if I talk to them— It’s a nice touch.

He grinned at the lizard and
said, “Come on over.” But the lizard turned and ran away, scurrying from bush
to bush until it was out of sight.

He was thirsty again.

And he had to
do
something. He couldn’t win this contest by sitting here sweating and feeling
miserable. He had to
do
something. But what?

Get through the barrier. But he
couldn’t get through it, or over it. But was he certain he couldn’t get under
it? And come to think of it, didn’t one sometimes find water by digging? Two
birds with one stone—

Painfully now, Carson limped up
to the barrier and started digging, scooping up sand a double handful at a
time. It was slow, hard work because the sand ran in at the edges and the
deeper he got the bigger in diameter the hole had to be. How many hours it took
him, he didn’t know, but he hit bedrock four feet down. Dry bedrock; no sign of
water.

And the force-field of the
barrier went down clear to the bedrock. No dice. No water. Nothing.

He crawled out of the hole and
lay there panting, and then raised his head to look across and see what the
Roller was doing. It must be doing something back there.

It was. It was making something
out of wood from the bushes, tied together with tendrils. A queerly shaped
framework about four feet high and roughly square. To see it better, Carson
climbed up onto the mound of sand he had excavated from the hole, and stood
there staring.

There were two long levers
sticking out of the back of it, one with a cup-shaped affair on the end of it.
Seemed to be some sort of a catapult, Carson thought.

Sure enough, the Roller was
lifting a sizable rock into the cup-shaped outfit. One of his tentacles moved
the other lever up and down for a while, and then he turned the machine
slightly as though aiming it and the lever with the stone flew up and forward.

The stone arced several yards
over Carson’s head, so far away that he didn’t have to duck, but he judged the
distance it had traveled, and whistled softly. He couldn’t throw a rock that
weight more than half that distance. And even retreating to the rear of his
domain wouldn’t put him out of range of that machine, if the Roller shoved it
forward almost to the barrier.

Another rock whizzed over. Not
quite so far away this time.

That thing could be dangerous, he
decided. Maybe he’d better do something about it.

Moving from side to side along
the barrier, so the catapult couldn’t bracket him, he whaled a dozen rocks at
it. But that wasn’t going to be any good, he saw. They had to be light rocks,
or he couldn’t throw them that far. If they hit the framework, they bounced off
harmlessly. And the Roller had no difficulty, at that distance, in moving aside
from those that came near it.

Besides, his arm was tiring
badly. He ached all over from sheer weariness. If he could only rest awhile
without having to duck rocks from that catapult at regular intervals of maybe
thirty seconds each—

He stumbled back to the rear of
the arena. Then he saw even that wasn’t any good. The rocks reached back there,
too, only there were longer intervals between them, as though it took longer to
wind up the mechanism, whatever it was, of the catapult.

Wearily he dragged himself back
to the barrier again. Several times he fell and could barely rise to his feet
to go on. He was, he knew, near the limit of his endurance. Yet he didn’t dare
stop moving now, until and unless he could put that catapult out of action. If
he fell asleep, he’d never wake up.

One of the stones from it gave
him the first glimmer of an idea. It struck upon one of the piles of stones he’d
gathered together near the barrier to use as ammunition, and it struck sparks.

Sparks. Fire. Primitive man had
made fire by striking sparks, and with some of those dry crumbly bushes as
tinder—

Luckily, a bush of that type was
near him. He broke it off, took it over to the pile of stones, then patiently
hit one stone against another until a spark touched the punklike wood of the
bush. It went up in flames so fast that it singed his eyebrows and was burned
to an ash within seconds.

But he had the idea now, and
within minutes he had a little fire going in the lee of the mound of sand he’d
made digging the hole an hour or two ago. Tender bushes had started it, and
other bushes which burned, but more slowly, kept it a steady flame.

The tough wirelike tendrils didn’t
burn readily; that made the fire-bombs easy to make and throw. A bundle of
faggots tied about a small stone to give it weight and a loop of the tendril to
swing it by.

He made half a dozen of them
before he lighted and threw the first. It went wide, and the Roller started a
quick retreat, pulling the catapult after him. But Carson had the others ready
and threw them in rapid succession. The fourth wedged in the catapult’s
framework, and did the trick. The Roller tried desperately to put out the
spreading blaze by throwing sand, but its clawed tentacles would take only a
spoonful at a time and his efforts were ineffectual. The catapult burned.

The Roller moved safely away from
the fire and seemed to concentrate its attention on Carson and again he felt
that wave of hatred and nausea. But more weakly; either the Roller itself was
weakening or Carson had learned how to protect himself against the mental
attack.

He thumbed his nose at it and
then sent it scuttling back to safety by throwing a stone. The Roller went
clear to the back of its half of the arena and started pulling up bushes again.
Probably it was going to make another catapult.

Carson verified—for the hundredth
time—that the barrier —, was still operating, and then found himself sitting in
the sand beside it because he was suddenly too weak to stand up.

His leg throbbed steadily now and
the pangs of thirst were severe. But those things paled beside the utter
physical exhaustion that gripped his entire body.

And the heat.

Hell must be like this, he
thought. The hell that the ancients had believed in. He fought to stay awake,
and yet staying awake seemed futile, for there was nothing he could do.
Nothing, while the barrier remained impregnable and the Roller stayed back out
of range.

But there must be
something.
He tried to remember things he had read in books of archaeology about the
methods of fighting used back in the days before metal and plastic. The stone
missile, that had come first, he thought. Well, that he already had.

The only improvement on it would
be a catapult, such as the Roller had made. But he’d never be able to make one,
with the tiny bits of wood available from the bushes—no single piece longer
than a foot or so. Certainly he could figure out a mechanism for one, but he
didn’t have the endurance left for a task that would take days.

Days? But the Roller had made
one. Had they been here days already? Then he remembered that the Roller had
many tentacles to work with and undoubtedly could do such work faster than he.

And besides, a catapult wouldn’t
decide the issue. He had to do better than that.

Bow and arrow? No; he had tried
archery once and knew his own ineptness with a bow. Even with a modern
sportsman’s durasteel weapon, made for accuracy. With such a crude,
pieced-together outfit as he could make here, he doubted if he could shoot as
far as he could throw a rock, and knew he couldn’t shoot as straight.

Spear? Well, he
could
make
that. It would be useless as a throwing weapon at any distance, but would be a
handy thing at close range, if he ever got to close range.

And making one would give him
something to do. Help keep his mind from wandering, as it was beginning to do.
Sometimes now, he had to concentrate awhile before he could remember why he was
here, why he had to kill the Roller.

Luckily he was still beside one
of the piles of stones. He sorted through it until he found one shaped roughly
like a spearhead. With a smaller stone he began to chip it into shape,
fashioning sharp shoulders on the sides so that if it penetrated it would not
pull out again.

Like a harpoon? There was
something in that idea, he thought. A harpoon was better than a spear, maybe,
for this crazy contest. If he could once get it into the Roller, and had a rope
on it, he could pull the Roller up against the barrier and the stone blade of
his knife would reach through that barrier, even if his hands wouldn’t.

The shaft was harder to make than
the head. But by splitting and joining the main stems of four of the bushes,
and wrapping the joints with the tough but thin tendrils, he got a strong shaft
about four feet long, and tied the stone head in a notch cut in the end.

It was crude, but strong.

And the rope. With the thin tough
tendrils he made himself twenty feet of line. It was light and didn’t look
strong, but he knew it would hold his weight and to spare. He tied one end of
it to the shaft of the harpoon and the other end about his right wrist. At
least, if he threw his harpoon across the barrier, he’d be able to pull it back
if he missed.

Then when he had tied the last
knot and there was nothing more he could do, the heat and the weariness and the
pain in his leg and the dreadful thirst were suddenly a thousand times worse
than they had been before.

He tried to stand up, to see what
the Roller was doing now, and found he couldn’t get to his feet. On the third
try, he got as far as his knees and then fell flat again.

“I’ve got to sleep,” he thought. “If
a showdown came now, I’d be helpless. He could come up here and kill me, if he
knew. I’ve got to regain some strength.”

Slowly, painfully, he crawled
back away from the barrier. Ten yards, twenty—

The jar of something thudding
against the sand near him waked him from a confused and horrible dream to a
more confused and more horrible reality, and he opened his eyes again to blue
radiance over blue sand.

How long had he slept? A minute?
A day?

Another stone thudded nearer and
threw sand on him. He got his arms under him and sat up. He turned around and
saw the Roller twenty yards away, at the barrier.

It rolled away hastily as he sat
up, not stopping until it was as far away as it could get.

He’d fallen asleep too soon, he
realized, while he was still in range of the Roller’s throwing ability. Seeing
him lying motionless, it had dared come up to the barrier to throw at him.
Luckily, it didn’t realize how weak he was, or it could have stayed there and
kept on throwing stones.

Had he slept long? He didn’t
think so, because he felt just as he had before. Not rested at all, no
thirstier, no different. Probably he’d been there only a few minutes.