The Book of Frank Herbert by The Book of Frank Herbert (v1.0)

Author:The Book of Frank Herbert (v1.0)
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-07-22T15:49:02+00:00

Somewhere, he could hear running water. It was dark where he was, or perhaps lighted by a faint redness. His eyelids were stuck tightly. He could feel folds of cloth around him. A parachute! The robot controls of the lifeboat had ejected him in the chute-seat as a last resort.

Trent tried to move. His muscles refused to obey. He could sense numbness in his hips, a tingling loss of specific perception in his arms.

Then he heard it—the baying of a hound—far and clear. It was a sound he had never again expected to hear. The bugling note was repeated. It reminded him of frosty nights on Earth, following Bess and Eagle and…

The baying of a hound!

Panic swept through him. The hound mustn’t find him! He was Earth-human, loaded with deadly virus!

Straining at his cheek muscle, Trent managed to open one eye, saw that it was not dark, but a kind of yellow twilight under the folds of the parachute. His eyelids had been clotted with blood.

Now he could hear running feet, a hound’s eager sniffing.

Please keep him away from me! he begged.

An edge of the chute stirred. Now there was an eager whining. Something crept toward him under the cloth.

“Go away!” he croaked.

Through the blurred vision of his one eye, Trent saw a brown and white head—very like Eagle’s. It bent toward something. With a sick feeling, Trent realized that the something was one of his own outstretched, virus-filled hands. He saw a pink tongue come out, lick the hand, but could not feel it. He tried to move and unconsciousness overwhelmed him. One last thought flitted through his mind before the darkness came—

“Each man kills the thing he…”

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