depth of the drifts, the bow of the trees after they had borne so many weeks of heavy snow. The wolves had been driven out of the higher levels of the park, down from the dense upper forests into the more civilized areas. Food would be scarce up there in this weather. Farther down, there was still good hunting? 'They must have caught the odor of blood-maybe from the rabbits you skinned. If that's the case, they've been searching for some time now, and they're bound to be near mad with excitement.'
Just as I finished, the first wolf loped into sight, a scout of the main pack. He came over the brow of the next hill and stood looking at us across the little valley that separated him from us. His eyes were hot coals, feverish, gleaming between the beads of the snow curtain that draped the night. His muzzle quivered, and he bared his teeth. Two prominent fangs arched up from his lower jaw and shone wickedly yellow-white in the gloom, fangs that could rip out a man's throat in seconds, free the bubbling blood in human veins. He danced backward, then forward again, examining us, his excitement growing by the second. Then he raised his head and dropped his lower jaw to howl.
I leveled my gun and fired a burst of pins that caught him in the throat. He gagged, shook his head, and toppled over. He writhed a moment, his legs kicking spasmodically, and lay still, sleeping. But the sounds of his comrades indicated little gap between the scout and the body of the main force. They would be on us in seconds. Their reaction to the limp body of their companion would decide our fate-whether they advanced for revenge or turned tail and ran. Somehow, the latter seemed unlikely.
The other wolves crested the ridge and stopped like a line of Indians confronting the cavalry in a cheap Western movie. They moved around uncertainly, taking turns sniffing the scout's body. When they realized he was not dead but sleeping, some of their bravura was restored. They pranced around more lightly now, their feet hardly touching the ground, springing like wind-up toys-though their teeth were real enough. A few threw their heads back and let go some really wild howls at the low sky. The echo beat around the foothills, carried to the wall at the base of the mountain and boomed back in a loud whisper.
'What should we do?' He asked, though He didn't seem very concerned-nowhere near as concerned as I was when I looked at those brutes.
'Let's wait and see what move they make,' I said. 'If we try to run, that might give them enough confidence to attack.'
Meanwhile, I counted them. With the scout, there were sixteen.
Sixteen.
I could swear it got colder and that the wind blew the snow more insistently than ever, but it may have been my imagination. Besides, I was sweating, a switch if ever I saw one. We waited.
They made their move. Three of the braver beasts started down the opposite slope, gained confidence and loped full speed across the small valley which they easily covered in a dozen strides. When they reached the base of our hill, I shouted, 'Fire!'
We opened with our pin guns and stopped them before they were halfway up our hill. They kicked, jerked, went down in a tangle of legs, lay very still, the drugs doing quick work on them. One of them, the largest and most darkly-furred, snored.
The other beasts snorted and snarled among themselves, much like football players planning strategy in a huddle. They milled around, looking at each other, then at us, then back to each other.
'Maybe they'll go away now,' He said.
'Not a wolf. For one thing, we've insulted them. A wolf is too proud a creature to give up without a fight. Besides, they look rangy, hungry. They won't stop as long as they think they've found their supper. And that's just what we must look like to them.'
Just then, four more wolves flashed down the slope and after us, snarling, foam flecking the corners of their twisted mouths, their eyes fierce and glowing like crimson gems. The attack was a surprise and launched with startling swiftness, almost as if they had mutually agreed to take us unaware. But our vantage point was too good, too safe. I brought the last one down only a dozen feet away from me. Just in time to hear the vicious growl behind us!
We whirled.
Two wolves had detached from the main pack and had slunk around behind us and had come up the back of our hill, almost in the footprints we had made. Now we were surrounded. I caught one with a narcodart burst as he leaped for me. He twisted in midflight, his entire body wracked with spasms as the drugs relaxed his mind and released his tense muscles from their constriction, draining the savage fury from him like a tap drains a keg. He crashed short of me by two feet, throwing up a spray of snow. He choked, tried to get up, and slammed back to the ground, passed out. The second wolf had come too fast and had landed on His shoulders, bearing Him to the ground and sinking teeth into His pseudo-flesh. Apparently, the pseudo-flesh, the cultured meat that was grown in the Artificial Wombs, was as good as regular meat, for the wolf did not draw back, but went after its prey in a frenzy.
It swung its head down to tear open my android's neck. I fired a round of pins, but they rolled just then, and the narcodarts sank uselessly into the snow. The next moment, the beast's teeth raked over the exposed skin of His neck, but did not sink in very deeply. Little rivulets of blood ran down His skin. I was searching for an opening, when He suddenly swung His fist against the side of the wolfs head and crushed its skull as completely as if He had used an iron mallet. He had evidently hardened His flesh into a hammer-like weapon, just as He had earlier shaped it into a scoop. The wolf gurgled once and fell off Him.
'Your face,' I said. His cheek had been badly chewed, and He was bleeding profusely.
'It'll be all right.' Even as He spoke, the bleeding slowed and stopped. His cheek seemed to crawl with a life of its own, wriggling, shivering, pulsating. He reached up and tore away the flap of flesh the wolf had loosened. I could see, beneath, the welling brightness of smooth, new skin. In moments, there was no sign of His wound; He had healed completely. 'The other six,' He said, indicating the last of our enemy.
But they were slinking off along the ridge, watching us carefully but with no apparent intent of attack. They had seen ten of their kind fall before us, and they had suddenly lost some of their pride-enough, anyway, to let them give up in hopes of finding easier prey.
'Let's go,' I said, 'before they change their minds and come back. Or before their comrades wake up.'
'Just a minute,' He said, kneeling before the wolf He had killed with His hand. He flopped it onto its back and began working on it. In a minute, He had skinned it as He had the rabbits. He tore large chunks of meat from its flanks and stuffed them into His mouth, ripping with His teeth just as the wolves would have ripped us had we not been too much for them.
'Wolf meat should be stringy,' I said inanely.
'I need it,' He answered. 'I don't much care about the taste or the texture. The changes are accelerating, Jacob. I'll only be a few minutes here.' He swallowed noisily. 'Okay?'
'Yeah. Sure.'
'Good,' He said.
He continued cramming the bloody meat into his mouth, swallowing it with the minimum of chewing. I guess He had adapted His digestive system in some way to handle what He was throwing at it. Such a bolted meal of raw flesh would have had anyone else retching for the next three days as the stomach cleansed itself. I would have given just about anything at that moment to have been able to X-ray Him, run tests on Him to see exactly what He had done to Himself. It was the doctor in me, the medical curiosity surfacing even while wolves stalked in the night and World Authority police ranged somewhere behind, closing the gap. Ten minutes later, He had devoured most of the animal and was ready to go.
We walked down the slope and across the wolf-strewn valley.
I kept looking behind, expecting the flash of teeth, a guttural snarl, ripping claws.
It was going to be a bad night
An hour and forty-five minutes after dawn, afraid every minute that we would be seen and apprehended even though the park seemed deserted, we reached the cabin. The sight of it filled me with the first warmth I had felt since the wolves had set me to sweating inside my bulky insulated clothing. The place was as I remembered it, a comfy nook nestled in a grove of pine trees with its back door facing a sheer cliff and its front door giving view to a breathtaking panorama of snow and trees and gentle foothills. It was not the sort of place a hardy outdoorsman would go to rough it. Harry and others like him paid well for the modern conveniences in the trappings of rustic simplicity.
