Arcturus Times Three by Jack Sharkey

Author:Jack Sharkey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pronoun

* * *

Jerry turned to look at the cub. Its eyes were glazing. It was breathing in gasps through its open mouth, staggering as it tried to remain on its feet.

“We’re poisoned,” Jerry groaned. “And it’s not on purpose. That cub didn’t trot here with that squirrel just to knock off its old man! There’s something else has to be done, something I’ve overlooked. And my stupidity is killing us.”

Weakly, almost automatically, Jerry’s conscious mind did the only thing possible under the circumstances. Cliche of old Peters or not, “When in doubt, black out” was the only solution. Jerry swiftly relinquished his grip on the controls, and let the lion-thing take over its own destiny.

The first thing it did was rush toward the scarlet surface of the boiling sulphur pit near the cub. The muscles relaxed and showed no sign of relaxing in that flame-bound gallop, and Jerry grabbed at its mind and got back in control just as its forefeet stood on the brink of that blue-flaming red pool.

“Oh, damn!” he groaned, agonized by both his fear of fire and the growing discomfort within his stomach. “Of all the creatures in the universe, I have to hit one with the lemming-instinct. This damn thing’s bent on boiling itself alive if I let go. And if I stay in control, I die of ptomaine!”

Jerry Norcriss wasted nearly thirty seconds feeling sorry for himself. And then he remembered something about lemmings. And also something about cubs.

Lemmings, those strange little rodents that take it periodically in their heads to all go rushing into the ocean and drown, are not suicide-bent. Their ancestry is older than the continent on which they live. At one time the spot wherein they plunge into the ocean was linked with the next continent over. The migration—for that’s what it is with lemmings—had at one time been perfectly safe. So safe that the migration of the lemmings became instinctive. And, after the continents separated, or the band of land joining them sank beneath the sea, the lemmings blithely continued their trek, and perished. Lemmings might die, but the ages-old instinct of the specie wouldn’t.

No animal, Jerry realized, is deliberately self-destructive. No animal but man—who is more than animal, and can decide upon his own destiny despite what his instincts buck for.

And cubs, Jerry recalled with chagrin, are not always born knowing survival-tactics. Some cubs have to be taught how to survive. And this one is still in the process of learning, and only senses that—since it is becoming deathly ill—something is horribly wrong. It wants its sire to show it survival, and its sire is in the hands of a nincompoop like me....

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