I huddled in a sea-carved hollow at the base of a crumbling twenty-foot cliff of sandy clay, breathing in vast gulps of cold, damp air, hearing the slap and hiss of the surf that curled in phosphorescent sheets almost to my feet. Far out on the black Mediterranean, gleaming points of light winked on the horizon-ships lying to anchor in the road-stead off Tamboula.
I pulled my coat off, peeled my blood-stiffened shirt from my back. By the light of the moon I examined the gouges across my left forearm, made by the demon's teeth. Tiny gleaming filaments of metal showed in the cuts; the thing's fangs had been as hard as diamond.
Cold night wind whipped at me. Felix hadn't thought to install any insulation in the course of the remodeling. I tore a sleeve from my shirt, bound up my arm. There were cuts on my face and shoulders from the glass; not deep, and thanks to Felix's hypnotic commands, not painful-but blood was flowing freely. I got to my feet and waded out ankle-deep, scooped cold salt water on my wounds, then pulled my shirt and coat back on. It was all I could do in the way of first aid. Now it was time to give my attention to survival.
I didn't know how many miles I had run-or how far behind the dog-things trailed me. I keened my hearing, breath stopped, hoping there would be nothing but the sigh of the wind…
Far across the plain, I heard the slap of galloping beast-hands-how many, I couldn't tell. There was a chance that if I stayed where I was, in the shelter of the cliff, they might pass me by-but they had come unerringly to me as I sat in the bright-lit restaurant with Felix…
I wouldn't wait here, to be cornered in the dark; better to meet them in the open, kill as many as I could before they pulled me down.
There was a narrow strip of wet, boulder-dotted beach running along the base of the sheer wall behind me. I went a few yards along it, splashing through shallow pools; an earth-fall had made a shelving slope to the level ground above.
At the top, I lay flat, looked out across the plain. I saw that I was at the tip of a tongue of desert thrusting out into the sea, a narrow peninsula no more than a hundred yards wide at its base. Far away, the city was a pink glow against the sky; near at hand, I saw dark shapes that could have been rocks-or crouching enemies.
I squinted down hard to trigger my visual booster complex. The desert sprang into instant, vivid clarity. Every stone fragment, mesquite bush, darting ground rat, stood out as under a full moon…
A hundred yards away, a long, dark-glistening creature bounded from the shelter of a rock slab, swinging its pale, snouted face from right to left as it ran. Over the roar of the surf, the distant whir and clatter of night-locusts, the pad of its feet was loud; its breathing was a vile intimacy in my ears.
When the thing was fifty feet away, it stopped abruptly, one white hand raised. Its gleaming eyes turned toward my hiding place. It leaped straight toward me.
I came to my feet, caught up a head-sized rock that seemed as light as cork, threw it. It slammed off the creature's flank with a sound like a brick hitting a board fence, knocked it off its feet-but the thing was up in an instant, leaping across the last few yards…
I leaned aside, swung a kick that went home with a thud, then chopped a bone-smashing blow behind the shoulder ruff, felt the spine shatter. The thing struck heavily, rolled, lay for a moment, stunned. Then the head came up; it moved feebly, scrabbling with its front legs. I felt the skin prickle along the back of my neck.
'What are you?' I called hoarsely. 'Where do you come from? What do you want?'
The ruby eyes held on my face; the broken body lunged forward another foot.
'You understand me-can't you speak?'
Still it dragged itself on, its jaws smiling their skull-smile. The smell of its blood was a poison-chemical reek. I looked back toward the city. Far away, I saw movement-low shapes that galloped silently. From all across the barren plain they streamed toward the point of land where I stood, summoned by the dying creature at my feet.
I stood at the edge of the cliff above the breaking surf, watching them come. It was useless to run any farther. Even if I escaped the trap I had entered, there was no refuge along the coast; Algiers was sixty miles to the east. To the west, there was nothing between me and Oran, over a hundred miles away. I could run for half an hour, cover perhaps twenty miles, before oxygen starvation would force me to stop; but the aliens would follow with the patience of death.
Out across the dark water, the nearest ship lay no more than two miles offshore. The dog-things were close now. I could see them silhouetted against the lesser sky-glow, like some evil swarm of giant rats piped from their lair by the music of hell-a plague of demons. The leaders slowed, coming on cautiously, dozens of them, almost shoulder to shoulder…
I turned, leaped far out toward the black surf below. I felt the icy waters close over me. Swimming just above the muddy bottom, I struck out for deep water, heading out to sea.
The ocean floor by night was a magic land of broken terrain, darting schools of many-colored fishes, waving screens of green, translucent weed. A hundred feet from shore, the bottom fell away, and I swept out over a dark chasm, feeling the chill currents of deep water as I angled downward. The small fish disappeared. A great, dark, lazy shape sailed toward me out of the blackness, was swallowed up in the gloom. There were noises; grunts, shrill whistles, the grind and thud of tide-stirred rocks on the bottom, the distant, mechanical whirring of a propeller-driven boat.
After twenty minutes, my vision began to blur; I was feeling the strain in my arms, and the first stifling sensations of oxygen starvation. I angled upward, broke the surface, and saw the low silhouette of a half-submerged vessel a quarter of a mile away across rippled ink-and-silver water, streaked with the winking reflections of her deck lights.
I trod water, looking around; a bell-buoy clanged a hundred yards away. Farther off, a small boat buzzed toward shore from a ship in the distance. There was a smell of sea-things, salt, a metallic odor of ship's engines, a vagrant reek of oil. There was no sign of pursuit from the shore.
I swam on toward the ship, came up on her from the starboard quarter, and made out the words
Farther forward, small deck cranes poised over an open hatch like ungainly herons waiting for a minnow. I caught a faint sound of raucous music, a momentarily raised voice. The odor of petroleum was strong here, and there was a glistening scum on the water. She was a tanker, loaded and ready to sail, to judge from the waterline, a foot above her anachronistic plimsoll.
I pulled myself up on the corroding hull-plates, inched my way to the rail, crossed to the deck-house. The door opened into warmth, light, the odors of beer, tobacco smoke, unlaundered humans. I took a great, grateful lungful; this was familiar, reassuring-the odor of my kind of animal.
Steep stairs led down. I followed them, came into a narrow corridor with a three-inch glare-strip along the center line of the low ceiling. There were doors set at ten- foot intervals along the smooth, buff-colored walls. Voices muttered at the far end of the corridor. I stepped to the nearest door, listened with my hearing keened, then turned the handle and stepped inside.
It was an eight-by-ten cell papered with photo-murals of Central Park, chipped and grease-stained at hand level. There was a table, a metal locker, a hooked rug on the floor, a tidy bunk, a single-tube lamp clamped to the wall above it beside a hand-painted plaster plaque representing a haloed saint with a dazed expression.
Footsteps were coming along the corridor. I turned to the door as it opened, and nearly collided with a vast, tall man in a soiled undershirt bulging with biceps, blue trousers worn low to ease a paunch that looked slight against his massive bulk.
He stared down at me, frowning; he had curly, uncut hair, large, dull-brown eyes, a loose mouth. There was a deeply depressed scar the size of an egg on the side of his forehead above his left eye. He raised a hand, pointed a thick finger at me.
'Hey!' he said, in a startlingly mellow tenor. He blinked past me at the room. 'This here is
'Sorry,' I said. 'I guess I kind of stumbled into the wrong place.' I started past him. He moved slightly, blocking the door.
'How come you're in my flop?' he demanded. He didn't sound mad-just mildly curious.
'I was looking for the Mate,' I said. 'He must be down the hall, eh?'
'Heck, no; the Mate got a fancy place aft.' He was looking me over now. 'How come you're all wet?'
'I fell in the water,' I said. 'Look, how are you fixed for crew aboard this ship?'
The giant reached up, rasped at his scalp with a fingernail like a banjo pick.
'You want to sign on?'
'Right. Now-'
'Who you want to see, you want to see Carboni. Oh, boy…' the loose mouth curved in a vast grin. 'He'll be surprised, all right. Nobody don't want to sign on aboard the
'Well,
The grin dropped. 'Huh?'
'Where can I find Mr. Carboni-so I can sign on, you know?'
The grin was back. He nodded vigorously. 'He's prob'ly down in the ward room. He's prob'ly pretty drunk.'
'Maybe you could show me the way.'
He looked blank for a moment, then nodded. 'Yeah. Hey.' He was frowning again, looking at my shoulder. 'You got a cut on ya. You got a couple cuts. You been in a fight?'
'Nothing serious. How about Mr. Carboni?'
The finger was aimed at me like a revolver. 'That's how come you want to sign on the
'Not as far as I know, big boy. Now-'
'My name ain't Big Boy; it's Joel.'
'Okay, Joel. Let's go see the man, all right?'
'Come on.' He moved out of the doorway, started off along the corridor, watching to be sure I was following.
'Carboni, he drinks a couple of bottles and he gets drunk. I tried that, but it don't work. One time I drank two bottles of booze but all it done, it made me like
