Repetition by A. E. van Vogt

Author:A. E. van Vogt [Vogt, A. E. van]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sci Fi & Fantasy Novelette
Publisher: Astounding Science Fiction
Published: 1940-04-29T00:00:00+00:00

Thomas’ body ached in every muscle, and every nerve pulsed alarms to his brain. He clung with a desperate, stubborn strength to each bit of rock projecting from the cliff wall, horribly aware that a slip meant death. Once he looked down, and his brain reeled in black dismay from the fearful depths that fell away behind him.

Through blurred vision he saw the young man a few feet away, the tortured lines of his face a grim reminder of the hunger weakness that was corroding the very roots of their two precariously held lives.

“Hang on!” Thomas gasped. “Its only a few more yards.”

They made it, and collapsed on the very edge of that terrific chasm of cliff, too weary to climb the- gentle slope that remained before they could look over the country beyond, too exhausted to do anything but lie there, sucking the life-giving air into their lungs. At last Ray Bartlett gasped:

“What’s the use? If we had any sense we’d jump off this cliff and get it over with.”

“We can jump into a deep cave any time,” Thomas retorted. “Let’s get going.”

He rose shakily to his feet, took a few steps, then stiffened and flung himself down with a hissing intake of his breath. His Angers grabbed the other’s leg and jerked him back brutally to a prone position:

“Down for your life. There’s a herd of grass eaters half a mile away. And they mean life for us.”

Bartlett crawled up beside him, almost eagerly; and the two peered cautiously over the knob of rock out onto a grassy plain. The plain was somewhat below them, Thomas saw. To the left, a scant hundred yards away, like a wedge driven into the grassland, was the pointed edge of a forest. The grass beyond seemed almost like a projection of the forest growth. It, too, formed a wedge that petered out in bleak rock. At the far end of the grass was a herd of about half a hundred grass eaters.

“They’re working this way!’’ Thomas said. “And they’ll pass close to that wedge of trees.”

A faint Are of irony edged Bartlett’s voice as he said: “Ann what will you do—run out and put salt on their tails? I tell you, Thomas, we haven’t got a thing that—”

“Our first course,” said Thomas, unheeding, seeming to think out loud, “is to get into that thick belt of trees. We can do that by skirting along this cliff’s edge, and putting the trees between us and the animals. Then you can loan me your knife.”

“O. K.!” the young man agreed in a tired voice. “If you won’t listen, you’ll have to learn from experience. I tell you, you won’t get within a quarter of a mile of those things.”

“I don’t want to,” Thomas replied. “You see, Bartlett, if you had more confidence, in life, you’d realize that this problem of killing animals by cunning has l>een solved before. It’s absolutely amazing how similarly it has been solved on different worlds, and under widely differing conditions.

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