to kill by penetration only. They would not shatter or explode. That could ruin a good trophy. He lowered his gaze to the telescopic sight, activated the laser, and squinted.
The Phororhacos remained in the cross hairs, the red dot of the laser playing across wind-ruffled feathers. Of the Smilodon there was no sign.
He jerked his eyes away from the sight. Damn. He'd taken his eyes off it for a second, and it had vanished into the storm. Probably heard the gun moving and got spooked.
For a wild moment he thought of going after it. Only for a moment. The storm could intensify any minute.
Anyhow, he was no tracker. He was a sportsman. Sportsmen hired trackers. They didn't try to imitate them.
Maybe it'll return for its kill, he thought. If so, the Wincolt's heat sensor would alert him. Meanwhile he could turn the blind so it was pointing this way. To hell with the rhino. He'd stumbled across something far more worth killing.
Better get about it. Turning the blind would be a job, and Thackeray wasn't used to physical labor. He started back down the slope.
As he neared the entrance, the gun started beeping softly. He turned a wild circle, keeping the muzzle pointed outward. Snow whistled in his ears, mocked him from behind naked rock. Nothing else moved in the Quaternary evening.
Then he saw the sides of the blind moving. The sabertooth hadn't run off. It was inside.
He did not panic. Some men do not panic because they are brave. Some do not panic because they are too frightened to move. A few, like Thackeray, do not panic because of an overriding arrogance. –
This should be easy, he thought. Even easier than up on the hill. Holding the rifle at the ready, he slipped around the blind until he was standing facing the entrance. When the Smilodon finished its exploration of the interior, it would come out. There was only the one exit. Thackeray would have his trophy.
Not on the wall, this one. Not with that pelt, he mused. Make a rug of it.
Time passed, cold time. Thackeray's face was beginning to get numb. His hands were starting to chill even through the thick, insulated gloves. He couldn't shoot into the blind for fear of hitting the Chronovert.
Come out, damn you. Why don't you come out? Come out where I can kill you.
It occurred to him that having discovered a nice, warm shelter, the saber-tooth might be settling down to wait out the storm. Surely the blind was more comfortable than whatever cave it had been living in.
It had to come out. Thackeray was a little concerned now. It must be hungry. Soon it would emerge to drag the body of the dead Phororhacos back to its new lair.
Soon, soon . . . Thackeray discovered he was shaking from the cold. If he waited outside much longer, he'd be shaking too hard to aim the rifle. Also, it wag almost dark. He couldn't wait for full night. In the dark anything could happen. He never had liked the dark.
For the first time he began to think of the saber-tooth as a possible danger instead of an unmounted trophy.
The Wincolt's stock boasted a number of specialized controls. Thackeray made a decision, used numbed fingers to push one control several notches forward. Now the weapon was on full automatic. He could spray forty shells in as many seconds. Not very sporting, but then, neither was freezing to death. He'd played the sportsman long enough. It wasn't his fault if the dumb animal was refusing to cooperate. He wanted a defrost supper and some hot coffee.
If he was careful, he could catch it easily. Maybe it would be sleeping. He'd just have to be careful of the Chronovert. He was freezing.
Slowly he approached the entrance. Dim light showed inside, activated by a photocell as eight descended. With the tip of the rifle he nudged the material aside, played the laser pinpoint over the blind's interior. Nothing moved inside. And the heat sensor wasn't beeping anymore.
As he moved inside he saw the hole in the back of the blind. It was impossible, of course. The material should have been impervious to anything like a simple tooth or claw. Not that there was anything simple about a nineinch-long saber. The ragged edges of the gap flapped in the wind.
That decided it for him. He couldn't guard two entrances. Forget the coffee, skip the supper. Still holding the rifle, he made his way to the Chronovert and settled himself into the padded seat. He'd return home and come back to these same coordinates with a bigger, stronger blind, a professional tracker, and proper snow travel gear. Maybe an sir car. Then he'd go out and hunt down that damn uncat.
He could see it clearly as he activated the Chronovert's instrumentation: the spotted skin spread out on his trophy room floor, those terrible serrated saber teeth propping up the flattened skull, green eyes replaced by equally bright spheres of glass.
Oh, he'd bring it back, all right. You just had to have the right tools. He'd come after rhino, not mountain saber-tooth.
He activated the controls. The Chronovert started to hum, the puncture field forming around it. The outlines of the blind's interior began to waver.
Something grunted in the machinery. He frowned. This was no time for a mechanical problem. The Chronoverts were supposed to be foolproof. They had to be. You couldn't find a time physicist shop in the Quaternary. The field, however, continued to brighten properly. He turned to check the projectors.
Staring out of the cargo compartment were a pair of bright green eyes. They were barely a foot from his face. A snarl rose from beneath them. It was a hungry snarl, as Thackeray had correctly surmised.
He screamed across ten million years.
Thackeray had always enjoyed the Pleistocene. It was only fair that the Pleistocene enjoy him.
NORG GLEEBLE GOP
When I began reading science fiction, women's issues generally referred to what brand of washer-dryer to buy for the house or whether one's habitation suffered from the dread waxy yellow buildup. The latter always suggested to me some insidious, infectious alien disease (is there a story there?).
My, de times how dey do change.
1 never had any problem with equality, as it were, perhaps because from the start so many of my editors, not to mention my agent, Virginia Kidd, were women. Just to prove it (largely to myself, l suppose), I made the protagonist of my second novel female. A character I would have enjoyed meeting.
Much more difficult than writing a character who happens to be of the opposite sex is trying to do a story in which that character has to deal with a problem particular to his or her gender. It's as if C. L. Moore had tried to do a story dealing with Northwest Smith's fear of impotence.
The only way, I believe, that a writer can handle such a difficult situation is to discuss it with members of the opposite sex. Even then, there is always the fear that you're treading psychological water instead of getting at something real.
'It's just that they're so cute,' Deering said. Her friend and fellow xenologist AI Toney disagreed. 'The Inrem are a primitive, utterly alien race that we still know next to nothing about, which is why SA has gone to the trouble of sponsoring this expedition. Although the attitude of the natives toward us thus far has, been friendly, we don't know nearly enough about their culture to start making generalizations. 'Cute' qualifies as a generalization, Cerice, and not a very scientific one at that. These people are hunter-gatherers who have developed a complex social structure we are just beginning to understand. Their language remains incomprehensible, with its floating internal phrases and switchable vowel sounds, and their rituals no less confusing.'
Cerice Deering leaned back in her chair and stared out the glass port at the surface of Rem V . The sun was slightly hotter than that of her home, the atmosphere thick and moist. And it boasted that rarest of all discoveries, a native intelligent race. How intelligent remained to be determined. She considered herself fortunate to be counted
