It had been rainingthat morning when the strato-rocket from Dhergabar had landed him atthe Hagraban Synthetics Works, on the First Level; unaffected by theprobabilities of human history, the same rain had been coming down onthe old Kinchwalter farm, near Rutter's Fort, on the Fourth Level.And it had persisted all day, in a slow, deliberate drizzle.
He didn't like that. The woods would be wet, muffling his quarry'sfootsteps, and canceling his only advantage over the night-prowler hehunted. He had no idea, however, of postponing the hunt. If anything,the rain had made it all the more imperative that the nighthound bekilled at once. At this season, a falling temperature would speedilyfollow. The nighthound, a creature of the hot Venus marshes, wouldsuffer from the cold, and, taught by years of domestication to findwarmth among human habitations, it would invade some isolated farmhouse,or, worse, one of the little valley villages. If it were not killedtonight, the incident he had come to prevent would certainly occur.
Going to the barn, he spread an old horse blanket on the seat of thejeep, laid his rifle on it, and then backed the jeep outside. Then hetook off his coat, removing his pipe and tobacco from the pockets, andspread it on the wet grass. He unwrapped a package and took out a smallplastic spray-gun he had brought with him from the First Level, aimingit at the coat and pressing the trigger until it blew itself empty.A sickening, rancid fetor tainted the air--the scent of the giantpoison-roach of Venus, the one creature for which the nighthound borean inborn, implacable hatred. It was because of this compulsive urge toattack and kill the deadly poison-roach that the first human settlerson Venus, long millennia ago, had domesticated the ugly and savagenighthound. He remembered that the Gavran family derived their titlefrom their vast Venus hotlands estates; that Gavran Sarn, the man whohad brought this thing to the Fourth Level, had been born on the innerplanet. When Verkan Vall donned that coat, he would become his ownliving bait for the murderous fury of the creature he sought. At themoment, mastering his queasiness and putting on the coat, he objectedless to that danger than to the hideous stench of the scent, to obtainwhich a valuable specimen had been sacrificed at the Dhergabar Museumof Extraterrestrial Zoology, the evening before.
Carrying the wrapper and the spray-gun to an outside fireplace, hesnapped his lighter to them and tossed them in. They were highlyinflammable, blazing up and vanishing in a moment. He tested theelectric headlamp on the front of his cap; checked his rifle; drewthe heavy revolver, an authentic product of his line of operation,and flipped the cylinder out and in again. Then he got into the jeepand drove away.
For half an hour, he drove quickly along the valley roads. Now and then,he passed farmhouses, and dogs, puzzled and angered by the alien scenthis coat bore, barked furiously. At length, he turned into a back road,and from this to the barely discernible trace of an old log road. Therain had stopped, and, in order to be ready to fire in any direction atany time, he had removed the top of the jeep. Now he had to crouch belowthe windshield to avoid overhanging branches. Once three deer--a buckand two does--stopped in front of him and stared for a moment, thenbounded away with a flutter of white tails.
He was driving slowly, now; laying behind him a reeking trail of scent.There had been another stock-killing, the night before, while he hadbeen on the First Level. The locality of this latest depredation hadconfirmed his estimate of the beast's probable movements, and indicatedwhere it might be prowling, tonight. He was certain that it wassomewhere near; sooner or later, it would pick up the scent.
Finally, he stopped, snapping out his lights. He had chosen this spotcarefully, while studying the Geological Survey map, that afternoon;he was on the grade of an old railroad line, now abandoned and itstrack long removed, which had served the logging operations of fiftyyears ago. On one side, the mountain slanted sharply upward; on theother, it fell away sharply. If the nighthound were below him, itwould have to climb that forty-five degree slope, and could not avoiddislodging loose stones, or otherwise making a noise. He would get outon that side; if the nighthound were above him, the jeep would protecthim when it charged. He got to the ground, thumbing off the safety ofhis rifle, and an instant later he knew that he had made a mistakewhich could easily cost him his life; a mistake from which neitherhis comprehensive logic nor his hypnotically acquired knowledge ofthe beast's habits had saved him.
As he stepped to the ground, facing toward the front of the jeep,he heard a low, whining cry behind him, and a rush of padded feet.He whirled, snapping on the headlamp with his left hand and thrustingout his rifle pistol-wise in his right. For a split second, he saw thecharging animal, its long, lizardlike head split in a toothy grin,its talon-tipped fore-paws extended.
He fired, and the bullet went wild. The next instant, the rifle wasknocked from his hand. Instinctively, he flung up his left arm to shieldhis eyes. Claws raked his left arm and shoulder, something struck himheavily along the left side, and his cap-light went out as he droppedand rolled under the jeep, drawing in his legs and fumbling under hiscoat for the revolver.
In that instant, he knew what had gone wrong. His plan had been entirelytoo much of a success. The nighthound had winded him as he had driven upthe old railroad-grade, and had followed. Its best running speed hadbeen just good enough to keep it a hundred or so feet behind the jeep,and the motor-noise had covered the padding of its feet. In the fewmoments between stopping the little car and getting out, the nighthoundhad been able to close the distance and spring upon him.
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It was characteristic of First-Level mentality that Verkan Vall wastedno moments on self-reproach or panic. While he was still rolling underhis jeep, his mind had been busy with plans to retrieve the situation.Something touched the heel of one boot, and he froze his leg intoimmobility, at the same time trying to get the big Smith & Wesson free.The shoulder-holster, he found, was badly torn, though made of theheaviest skirting-leather, and the spring which retained the weapon inplace had been wrenched and bent until he needed both hands to draw.The eight-inch slashing-claw of the nighthound's right intermediary limbhad raked him; only the instinctive motion of throwing up his arm, andthe fact that he wore the revolver in a shoulder-holster, had savedhis life.
The nighthound was prowling around the jeep, whining frantically. It wasbadly confused. It could see quite well, even in the close darkness ofthe starless night; its eyes were of a nature capable of perceivinginfrared radiations as light. There were plenty of these; the jeep'sengine, lately running on four-wheel drive, was quite hot. Had he beenstanding alone, especially on this raw, chilly night, Verkan Vall'sown body-heat would have lighted him up like a jack-o'-lantern. Now,however, the hot engine above him masked his own radiations. Moreover,the poison-roach scent on his coat was coming up through the floor boardand mingling with the scent on the seat, yet the nighthound couldn'tfind the two-and-a-half foot insectlike thing that should have beenproducing it. Verkan Vall lay motionless, wondering how long the nextmove would be in coming. Then he heard a thud above him, followed by afurious tearing as the nighthound ripped the blanket and began rendingat the seat cushion.
"Hope it gets a paw-full of seat-springs," Verkan Vall commentedmentally. He had already found a stone about the size of his two fists,and another slightly smaller, and had put one in each of the sidepockets of the coat. Now he slipped his revolver into his waist-beltand writhed out of the coat, shedding the ruined shoulder-holster atthe same time. Wriggling on the flat of his back, he squirmed betweenthe rear wheels, until he was able to sit up, behind the jeep. Then,swinging the weighted coat, he flung it forward, over the nighthoundand the jeep itself, at the same time drawing his revolver.
Immediately, the nighthound, lured by the sudden movement of theprincipal source of the scent, jumped out of the jeep and bounded afterthe coat, and there was considerable noise in the brush on the lowerside of the railroad grade. At once, Verkan Vall swarmed into the jeepand snapped on the lights.
His stratagem had succeeded beautifully. The stinking coat had landedon the top of
a small bush, about ten feet in front of the jeep andten feet from the ground. The nighthound, erect on its haunches, wasreaching out with its front paws to drag it down, and slashing angrilyat it with its single-clawed intermediary limbs. Its back was toVerkan Vall.
His sights clearly defined by the lights in front of him, the paratimercentered them on the base of the creature's spine, just above itssecondary shoulders, and carefully squeezed the trigger. The big .357Magnum bucked in his hand and belched flame and sound--if only theseFourth Level weapons weren't so confoundedly boisterous!--and thenighthound screamed and fell. Recocking the revolver, Verkan Vall waitedfor an instant, then nodded in satisfaction. The beast's spine had beensmashed, and its hind quarters, and even its intermediary fighting limbshad been paralyzed. He aimed carefully for a second shot and fired intothe base of the thing's skull. It quivered and died.
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