Dare by Philip José Farmer

Author:Philip José Farmer [Farmer, Philip José]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction; American, Fiction in English, Fiction, Science Fiction, English Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780704311657
Google: eJ9aAAAAMAAJ
Amazon: 160010438X
Publisher: Quartet Books
Published: 1974-06-15T04:00:00+00:00

The moon was bright with fullness. There was no wind. The only sound was the rustle of shoes through the ruggrass, a muffled cough that several swore at under their breaths, the wheezing of Josh Mowrey.

The circles at the bases of the cadmi were black and seemingly empty. Jack could not help visualizing eyes staring out from the shadows and hands gripping bows and spears. Was an arrow even then being centered on his unarmored chest?

Ed whispered to Mowrey, “Where do you suppose Polly is? Could she have left before we got here?”

Josh’s eyes rolled whitely, and he wheezed, “I don’t know. I’m not worried about her. What I’d like to know is where’s that dragon?”

Ed snorted and said, “The only dragon you saw came from a bottle.”

“Not me! When I drink, I don’t wheeze. And you can hear me now, can’t you? But where in hell could it be?”

As if he had been overheard and was being answered, a bellow came from directly behind them. It was a roar such as none had ever heard, a throatiness and a basso profundo that made a bear’s seem reedy. They whirled; they screamed. The thing rushing from the woods loomed twice as high as a tall man. It ran on two thick legs, its columnar body upright. The legs were crooked like a dog’s hind limbs except for the feet, which spread five tremendous toes to support its weight. Two arms stretched straight out. Compared with the lower extremities, they looked tiny. Actually, they were thick as a man’s body. Each of its three-fingered hands held a club, a young tree trunk.

The teeth flashed wickedly in the moonlight.

Its face was a mixture of beast and man: a high crest of cartilage on the bald pate, a tall forehead, thick supraorbital ridges, flaring lyre-shaped ears, a sloping canine muzzle, a heavy hominoid jaw, a prominent chin, and a bagging wrinkled reddish wattle. A dozen pencil-thick whiskers bristled from the sides of the grinning lips.

Even as it charged with a sound that rolled back from the surrounding forest like thunder from clouds, another bellow came from the creekbank. The men wheeled to see a second dragon.

Ed, screaming like a maddened unicorn, managed to make himself heard by some of his men. “Flamethrowers! Shoot at them with your projectors! Fire’ll scare them off!”

But the men were unfamiliar with their apparatus. Fright did not help their fumbling fingers. And half the twelve carrying the equipment threw it off their backs and ran.

One managed to ignite his thrower. A long fountain of red shot up into the night and fell, not on the oncoming monster, but on a group of men. Frantically, the thrower swerved his spray from them and toward the dragon. It was too late for half a dozen. Screaming, batting at their clothes, writhing on the ground, they burned. One ran for the creek. Halfway there, he fell and did not rise.

The flames forced the beast to pause, to whirl, to run around

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