To Sorensen’s neck, just above the right collarbone.
Sorensen raised his hands, then lowered them again. He turned toward Drake, raising his rifle. His face was perfectly calm. He looked as though his only purpose in life was to kill Drake.
Drake fired from less than two feet away. Sorensen spun with the impact, dropped his rifle and fell.
Drake bent over him, his revolver ready. He saw that he had fired accurately. The bullet had gone in just above the right collarbone. It was a bad wound. But it had been much worse for the Quedak, who had been in the direct path of the bullet. All that was left of the Quedak was a splatter of black across Sorensen’s chest.
Drake applied hasty first aid and hoisted Sorensen to his shoulders. He wondered what he would have done if the Quedak had been standing above Sorensen’s heart, or on his throat, or on his head.
He decided it was better not to think about that.
He started back to camp, with his dog trotting along beside him.
Endnotes
Colophon
Short Fiction
was compiled from short stories published between 1952 and 1960 by
Robert Sheckley.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Matic Likar,
and is based on a transcription produced between 2005 and 2021 by
Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan, Stephen Blundell, Sankar Viswanathan, and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans available at the
Internet Archive.
The cover page is adapted from
Circles in a Circle,
a painting completed in 1923 by
Wassily Kandinsky.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.
The first edition of this ebook was released on
October 8, 2021, 12:02 a.m.
You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at
standardebooks.org/ebooks/robert-sheckley/short-fiction.
The volunteer-driven Standard Ebooks project relies on readers like you to submit typos, corrections, and other improvements. Anyone can contribute at standardebooks.org.
Uncopyright
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