Cat and Mouse - Ralph Williams

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Cat and Mouse by Ralph Williams. The Warden needed to
have a certain, very obnoxious pest eliminated, and he knew
just the pest eradicator he needed. The Horn first came
to the Warden's attention through its effect on the game
population of an area in World seven of the Warden sector.

(00:23):
A natural ecology was being maintained on world seven as
a control for experimental seedlings of intelligent life forms in
other similar worlds. How the horn got there, the Warden
never knew. In its free moving larval state. The horn
was a tick like creature which might have sifted through
a natural interdimensional rift, or it might have come through

(00:46):
on a hitchhiker, on some legitimate traveler, possibly even the
Warden himself. In any event, it was there now, free
of natural enemies and competition. It had expanded enormously. So
far the effect in the control world was localized, but
this would not be the case when the horn seated

(01:07):
prompt action was indicated. The Warden's inclination and training was
in the direction of avoiding direct intervention in the ecology
of the worlds under his jurisdiction. Even in the field
of predator control. He considered introduction of natural enemies of
the horn from its own world, and decided against it.

(01:27):
That cure was as bad, if not worse, than the
disease itself. There was, however, in one adjacent world, a
life form not normally associated with the horn, but which
analysis indicated would be inimical to it and reasonably amenable
to control. It was worth trying anyway. October third, Ed

(01:49):
Brown got up to the base cabin of his trap
line with his winter's outfit. He hung an n C
Company calendar on the wall and started marking off the days.
October eighth, the hole into the other world opened in
the meantime. Of course, Ed had not been idle all summer.
The cabin had stood empty. He got his bedding, stove,

(02:13):
and other cabin geared down from the cash and made
the place livable. The mice were thick, a good fur sign,
but a nuisance otherwise. Down in the cellar hole. When
he went to clear it out for the new spud crop,
he found burrowings everywhere. Well, Old Tom would take care
of that in short order. Tom was a big black

(02:36):
bob tailed cat eleven years old who had lived with
Ed since he was a kitten. Not having any feline
companionship to distract him, his only interest was hunting mice. Generally,
he killed a lot more than he could eat, racking
the surplus in neat piles beside the trail, on the doorstep,
or on a slab in the cellar. He was the

(02:58):
best mouser in interior Alaska. Ed propped the cellar hatch
with a stick so old Tom could come and go
as he pleased, and went on about his chores, working
with a methodical efficiency that matched Tom's, and went with
his thinning gray hair and forty years in the woods.
He dug the spuds he had planted that spring. He

(03:19):
made a swing around to his beaver lakes, tallying the
blankets in each house. He took the canoe and moved
supplies to his upper cabin. He harvested some fat mallards
that had moved down on the river. With the coming
of skim ice on the lakes, he bucked up firewood
and stacked it to move into the camp. With the
first snow. On the fifth morning, as he was going

(03:42):
down to the boat landing with a pail for water,
he found the hole into the other world. Ed had
never seen a hole into another world, of course, nor
even heard of such a thing. He was as surprised
as any one would naturally be to find one not
fifty feet from their front door. Still, his experience had

(04:03):
been all in the direction of believing what his eyes
told him. He had seen a lot of strange things
in his life, and one more didn't strain him too much.
He stood stock still where he had first noticed the hole,
and studied it warily. It was two steps off the
trail to the left right, beside the old leaning birch,

(04:24):
a rectangular piece of scenery that did not fit. It
looked to be as nearly as he could judge about
man size six by three. At the bottom, it was
easy enough to see where this world left off and
that one began. On the left side. The two worlds
matched pretty well, but on the right side there was

(04:44):
a nigger head in this world, the moss covered relic
of a century's old stump, while that world continued level,
so that the nigger head was neatly sliced in two. Also,
the vegetation was different, mossy on this side on that on.
Up around the hole, though it was harder to tell,

(05:05):
there was no clear cut line, just the difference in
what you could see through it. In the other world
the ground seemed to fall away, with low scrubby brush
in the foreground. Then a mile or so away there
were rising hills with hardwood forests of some kind, still
green with summer covering them. Ed stepped cautiously to one side.

(05:27):
The view through the hole narrowed, as if it faced
the trails squarely. He edged around the old birch to
get behind it, and from that side there was no hole,
just the same old Alaskan scenery, birch and rose bushes
and spruce from the front, though it was still there.
He cut an alder shoot about eight feet long, trimmed it,

(05:50):
and poked it through the hole. It went through easily enough.
He prodded at the sod in the other world, digging
up small tufts. When he pulled the stick back, some
of the other world dirt was on the sharp end.
It looked and smelled just like any dirt. Old Tom
came stretching out into the morning sun and stalked over

(06:12):
to investigate. After a careful inspection of the hole, he
settled down with his paws tucked under him to watch
Ed took a flat round can from his pocket, lined
his lip frugally with snuff, and sat down on the
up ended bucket to watch too. At the moment, that
seemed the likeliest thing to do. It was nearly swarming time.

(06:36):
The horn had many things to preoccupy it, but it
spared one unit to watch the hole into the other world.
So far, nothing much had happened. A large biped had
found the opening from the other side. It had been
joined by a smaller quadruped, but neither showed any indication
yet of coming through. The sun was shining through the hole,

(06:59):
a large, young, yellow sun, and the air was crisp
with sharp, interesting odors. The biped ejected a thin squirt
of brown liquid through the hole, venom of some sort. Apparently.
The horn hastily drew back out of range. The hole
into the other world stayed there as unobtrusively fixed, as

(07:21):
if it had been there since the beginning of time.
Nothing came through, and nothing moved in the other world
but leaves stirred now and then, with the breeze clouds
drifting across the sky, Ed began to realize it was
getting late in the morning, and he had not yet
had breakfast. He left Old Tom to watch the hole,

(07:43):
got stiffly to his feet and went on down the
trail to get the pail of water he had started for.
From the cabin door, he could still see the hole
into the other world. He kept one eye on it
while he cooked breakfast. As he was finishing his second
cup of coffee, he noticed the view into the other
world becoming duller, dimming in a peculiar fashion. He left

(08:06):
the dirty dishes and went over to look more closely.
What was happening, he found, was just that it was
getting dark in the other world. The effect was strange,
much like looking out the door of a brightly lighted
room at dusk. The edges of the hole cast a
very clearly marked shadow now, and outside this shaft of sunlight,

(08:28):
the view faded until a few yards away it was
impossible to make out any detail. Presently, the stars came out.
Ed was not an astronomer, but he had a woodsman's
knowledge of the sky. He could find nothing familiar in
any of the stars. He saw in some way that
was more unsettling than the hole itself had been. After

(08:51):
he had finished the dishes, he cut two geep whole spruce,
trimmed them and stuck one on each side of the hole.
He got some thin threat he used to tie beaver
snares and wove it back and forth between the poles,
rigging a tin can alarm. It seemed likely someone or
something had put the hole there. It had not just happened.

(09:13):
If anything came through. Ed wanted to know about it,
just to make sure. He got some number three traps
and made a few blind sets in front of the hole.
Then he went back to his chores. Whatever was going
to happen with the hole would happen when it happened,
and winter was still coming. He set some babbage to

(09:34):
soak for mending his snow shoes. He ran the net
he had set at the edge of the eddy for
late silvers and took out two fish. Old Tom had
pretty well cleaned up the mice in the cellar hole,
but they were still burrowing around the sills of the
lean to. Ed took a shovel and opened up a
hole so Tom could get under the lean two floor.

(09:55):
He got out his needles, palm, thread and wax, and
mended his winter moccasins off and on. He checked the
hole into the other world, there was nothing but the
slow progression of alien stars across the sky. Finally, Old
Tom grew bored and left to investigate the hole under
the lean to. Shortly there were scuddings and squeakings as

(10:19):
evidence that he too, had got back to business. Toward evening,
Ed got to wondering how a living creature would take
transition into the other world. He had no intention of
trying it himself until he knew a lot more about it,
but he thought he might be able to scare up
a surrogate out by the wood pile. Some live traps

(10:40):
were piled under a spruce from the time when Ed
had been catching martin for the fish and wildlife to transplant.
One was still in pretty fair shape. He patched it
up and set it among the cottonwoods at the head
of the bar, where there were some rabbit trails. When
he went to bed, it was still dark in the
other world. He left the cabin door ajar so he

(11:02):
could see it from his bed, and set his shot
gun loaded with double hot buck handy. Nearing sixty, Ed
was not a sound sleeper, even when he had nothing
on his mind. About ten it started to get light
in the other world, and that woke him up. He
patted out to look, but there was no change. It

(11:22):
looked about the same as yesterday. He went back to bed.
The next morning, there was a rabbit in the live
trap with a pole. Ed pushed the trap with the
rabbit in it, threw into the other world, and watched
nothing happened. After a while, the rabbit began nibbling at
some spears of grass that pushed through the wire of
the cage. Ed pulled it back and examined the rabbit carefully.

(11:46):
It seemed healthy and about as happy as a rabbit
could expect to be in a cage. It did not
get dark in the other world till about noon that day,
and about seven, when it was dark in both worlds,
Ed heard the jangle of the tin can alarm, followed
by the snap of one of the steel traps. He
took a flashlight and found a small hoofed animal hardly

(12:08):
bigger than old tom, rearing and bucking with a broken
leg in the trap. It had sharp, little spike horns
only a few inches long, but mean Ed got several
painful jabs before he could get the animal tied up
and out of the trap. He restrung the alarm, then
took his catch into the cabin to examine. It was

(12:30):
herbivorous and adult from the looks of its teeth and hoofs,
though it only weighed about fifteen pounds as an approximation,
Ed decided it was female when he killed it and
opened it up. At first glance, it looked reasonably familiar
on closer study less so. The blood anyway, was red,

(12:52):
not blue or yellow or green, and the bones were bones,
just odd shaped. Ed cut off a slice of heart
and tossed it to Old Tom. The cat sniffed it dubiously,
then decided he liked it. He meowed for more. Ed
gave it to him and fried a small sliver of ham.
It smelled and tasted fine, but Ed contented himself with

(13:16):
a single delicate nibble. Pending further developments. Anyway, it was
beginning to look like a little exploration would be feasible.
The horn also was well satisfied with the way things
were going. It had been a strain to pass up
the juicy little quadruped in the cage, but the inhabitants

(13:37):
of the other world seemed shy, and the Horn did
not wish to frighten them. At least it knew now
that life could come through the hole, and the small
herbivore it had heard it through confirmed that passage in
the opposite direction was equally possible. Plus a groddess demonstration
of the other world's pitiful defenses. At swarming time, the

(14:00):
whole new world would be opened to embryo Horn as
well as this world it presently occupied. It looked like
a really notable swarming. The Horn budded three more planters
on the forcing stem to be ready to take full
advantage of it. It got light in the other world
at one in the morning that night. Ed had the

(14:22):
days there pretty well pegged now. They were roughly twenty
seven hours, of which about thirteen hours were dark. Not
too high a latitude apparently, and probably late summer by
the looks of the vegetation. He got up a little
before daylight and looked at the rabbit and Old Tom.
Both seemed to be doing nicely. Old Tom was hungry

(14:45):
for more other world meat. Ed gave it to him
and made up a light pack. After some thought, he
took the four fifty bear gun he used for back
up when guiding whatever he ran into over there the
four fifty A model, so seventy one throwing a four
hundred grain slug at twenty one hundred fps should handle it.

(15:06):
The first step through into the other world was a
queasy one, but it turned out to be much the
same as any other step. The only difference was that
now he was in the other world looking back from
this side. The nigger head at the threshold was sliced sharply,
but it had been kicked down a little when he
came through, And what with shoving the cage through and

(15:28):
pulling it back, so that some clods of moss and
dirt were scattered in the other world. For some reason,
that made Ed feel better. It seemed to make the
joining of the two worlds a little more permanent. Still,
it had come sudden, and it might go sudden. Ed
went back into his own world and got an axe,
a saw, more ammunition, salt, a heavy sleeping robe, a

(15:53):
few other possibles. He brought them through and piled them
in the other world, covering them with a scrap of
old tarp. He cut a couple of poles, peeled them,
and stuck them in the ground to mark the hole
from this side. Then he looked around. He stood on
the shoulder of a hill in a game trail that
ran down toward a stream below, in what seemed to

(16:15):
be a fairly recent burn. There were charred stumps, and
the growth was small stuff, with some saplings pushing up through.
There was timber in the valley below, though, and on
the hills beyond deciduous somewhat like oak. South was where
East had been in his own world, and the sun

(16:36):
seemed smaller but brighter. The sky was a very dark blue.
He seemed lighter in this world. There was a spring
in his step he had not known for twenty years.
He looked at his compass. It checked with the direction
of the sun. He studied the trail. It had seen
a lot of use, but less in recent weeks. There

(16:59):
were sharp hoof prints of the animal he had caught
larger hoof prints, vague pad marks of various sizes, but
nothing that looked human. The trail went under a charred
tree trunk at a height that was not comfortable for
a man, and the spacing of the steps around the
gnarled roots of an old slump did not fit a

(17:20):
man's stride. He did not notice the harned creature at all,
which was understandable. It was well camouflaged. He worked circumspectully
down the trail, staying a little off it, studying tracks
and droppings, noticing evidences of browsing on the shrubs, mostly old,
pausing to examine tufts of hair and an occasional feather.

(17:43):
Halfway down the slope he flushed a bird about ptarmigan size,
grayish brown in color. The trail was more marked where
it went into the timber. It wound through the trees
for a few hundred yards and came out on a
canoe sized stream. Here it forked. One trail crossed the
stream and went up the hill on the other side.

(18:03):
The other followed the stream up the valley. The horn
followed Ed's movements, observing carefully. It needed a specimen from
the other world, and this biped would serve nicely, But
it might as well learn as much as possible about
him first. It could always pick him up some time

(18:24):
before he returned to his own world, just to make sure.
It sent a stinging unit to guard the entrance. All
his life, except for a short period in France, Ed
had been a hunter, never hunted. Still, you don't grow
old in the woods by jumping without looking, coming into

(18:45):
a new situation, he was wary as an old wolf.
There was a little shoulder right above the fork in
the trail. He stood there for a few minutes, looking
things over, and then went down and crossed the stream
at the next riffle above the ford. By doing so,
although he did not know it, he missed the trap
the harn maintained at the ford for chance passers by.

(19:08):
On the other side of the creek, the trail ran
angling off down stream, skirted a small lake hidden in
the trees, climbed over another low shoulder, and dropped into
a second valley. As Ed followed along it, he began
to notice a few more signs of life, birds, small
scuriers on the ground and in tree tops, and this

(19:30):
set him to thinking the country had picked over feel
to it a hunted and trapped out feel, worse where
he had first come through, but still noticeable here. The
horn did not like to cross water. It could, but
it did not like to. Ed looked at the sun

(19:53):
it was getting down in the sky. If there was
any activity at all around here, the ford at dusk
would be as likely a place as any to find it.
He worked back along the ridge to a point above
where he judged the ford to be. The breeze was
drawing up the valley, but favoring the other side a little.
He dropped down and crossed the stream a quarter mile

(20:15):
above the ford, climbed well above the trail and worked
along the hillside until he was in a position where
he could watch both the ford and the fork in
the trail. He squatted down against a tree in a
comfortable position, laid his gun across his knees, and rummaged
in his pack for the cold flapjacks wrapped around slices
of duck breast which he had packed for lunch. After

(20:39):
he had finished eating, he drank from his canteen. The
water in this world might be good, it might not.
There was no point in taking chances till he could
try it on the cat, and took an economical chew
of snuff. He settled back to wait. The horn had
lost d after he crossed the creek. It used a

(21:00):
fallen tree quite away further up for its own crossing,
and did not pick him up again until just before
he crossed back. Now, however, he had been immobile for
several minutes This looked like about as good a time
as any to make the pick up. The horn had
a stinging unit just about positioned, and it had despatched

(21:21):
a carrier to stand by. After a while sitting there,
Ed began to feel uneasy. The timber was big here
and open underneath, almost parklike. The nearest cover was fifty
or sixty yards off to his left, a little tangle
of brush where a tree had fallen and let a
shaft of sunlight through. It looked possible, but it didn't

(21:44):
feel quite right. Still, it was about the only place
anything big enough to bother him could hide. The feeling
was getting stronger. The back hairs on Ed's neck were
starting to stand up now, without visible movement or or
even noticing himself that he was doing it, He let
awareness run over his body, checking the position and stiffness

(22:08):
of his legs. He had been sitting there quite a while,
the balance of the gun across his knees, the nearness
of his thumb to the hammer. Thoughtfully, still studying the
patch of brush, he spat a thin stream over his
left shoulder at a pile of leaves a few feet away.
Thinking about it later, Ed could almost have sworn the

(22:28):
tobacco juice sizzled as it hit. Actually, this was probably imaginary.
The stinging unit was not that sensitive to tobacco, though
it was sensitive enough. As the drops splattered it. The
pile of leaves erupted with a snuffling hiss, like an
overloaded tea kettle into a tornado of bucking, twisting activity.

(22:52):
Ed's reflexes were not quite as fast as they had
been when he was young, but they were better educated. Also,
he was already keyed. Almost as it started. The flurry
in the leaves stopped with the roar of his rifle.
Fired like that, the heavy gun just about took his
hand off, but he did not notice it at the moment.

(23:12):
He came erect in a quick scramble, jacking in a
fresh round as he did so, the scene took on
that strange, timeless aspect it often does in moments of emergency,
with a man's whole being focused on the fleeting. Now
you know in an academic sort of way that things
are moving fast. You are moving fast yourself, but there

(23:35):
seems plenty of time to make decisions, to look things
over and decide what has to be done to move
precisely with minimum effort and maximum effect. Whatever the thing
at his feet was, it was out of the picture now.
It had not even twitched after the heavy bullet tore
through it. There was a stomping rush in the little

(23:55):
thicket he had been watching. Ed took two long, quick
steps to one side to clear a couple of trees,
threw up the gun and fired. As something flashed across
a thin spot in the brush, He heard the whack
of the bullet in flesh and fired again. Ordinarily he
did not like to shoot at things he could not
see clearly, but this did not seem the time to

(24:16):
be overly finicky. There was no further movement in the brush.
He stood there several long moments listening, and there was
no further movement anywhere. He eased the hammer down, fed
in three rounds to replace those he had used, and
walked slowly back to the first thing he had shot.
At that range. The bullet had not opened up, but

(24:40):
it had not needed to. It had practically exploded the
creature anyway. The four fifty was two tons of striking
energy at the muzzle. From what was left Ed deduced
a smallish rabbit sized thing smooth skinned, muscular, many legged, flatish,
modeled to camouflage perfectly. In the leave, there was a

(25:01):
head at one end, mostly undamaged since it had been
at the end of a long, muscular neck, with a
pair of glazing, beady eyes and a surprisingly small mouth.
When Ed pressed on the muscles at the base of
the skull, the mouth gaped roundly, and a two inch
long spine slid smoothly out of an inconspicuous slot just

(25:21):
below it. At middling distances or better, Ed could still
see as well as ever, but close up he needed help.
He got out his pocket magnifier and studied the spine.
It looked hollow, grooved back. For a distance from the point,
a drop of milky looking substance trembled on its tip.

(25:43):
Ed nodded thoughtfully to himself. This was what had made
him uneasy. He was pretty sure what was the thing
in the brush. Then innocent bystander, He got stiffly to
his feet, conscious now of the ache in his wrist
that had taken most of the recoil of the first shot,
the torn web between the right thumb and forefinger where

(26:03):
the hammer spur had bitten in, and walked over to
the thicket. The thing in the brush was larger, quite
a bit larger, and the bullets had not torn it
up so badly. It lay sprawled, with three of its
eight legs doubled under it, A bare sized animal with
a gaping, cavernous, toothless mouth out of all proportion to

(26:25):
the slender body, which seemed designed mainly as a frame
for the muscular legs. It was not quite dead. As
Ed came up. It struggled feebly to get up, but
one of the heavy slugs had evidently hit the spine
or whatever carried communications to the hind quarters. It fell back,
shuddering convulsively, and suddenly regurgitated a small furry animal. Ed

(26:49):
stepped back quickly to bring his rifle to bear, but
the newest arrival was obviously already dead. He turned his
attention back to the larger animal. It too was dead.
Now there was an obvious family resemblance to the smaller
one he had shot in the leaves. Both were smooth skinned,
many legged, and now that he looked closely, he could

(27:12):
see that one had two mouths, a small one just
under the nostrils, purse lipped and tiny in its huge face.
But quite like that of the other creature. Neither looked
even remotely like anything he had ever seen before. He
laid down his rifle and took out his knife. Ten
minutes later. He knew quite a bit about the thing,

(27:34):
but what he knew did not make much sense. In
the first place, its blood was green, a yellowish pussy green.
In the second place, the larger mouth, complete with jaws
and impressive musculature, opened not into a digestive system, but
into a large, closed pouch which comprised most of the

(27:54):
animal's torso there was no proper digestive system at all,
only a root mintary gut, heavily laced with blood vessels,
terminating at one end in the small second mouth, at
the other in an even smaller anus. Otherwise, the thing
had no insides except a good pair of lungs and
a stout heart. None at all bone muscle, lung heart,

(28:19):
plus the ridiculously inadequate gut. That was it. What about
the small furry animal, then, the one the other had
been carrying in its pouch. There was nothing much out
of the way about it. A feline sort of carnivore,
something like a martin. The fur looked interesting, and he
skinned it, casing the hide on the left hand. The

(28:42):
skin was punctured, and there was a swollen, bluish area
about the sort of wound that would be made by
the fang of the first thing he had shot. Ed
squatted back on his heels, studying it and putting two
and two together. What two and two made was pretty
hard to believe, but it fitted the evidence. He wiped

(29:03):
his knife carefully on the grass, put it back in
its sheath, and got to his feet. Suddenly, the feeling
that he was not alone recurred. He looked quickly round
back where he had shot the first thing. A man
in forest green whipcord trousers and jacket was leaning over,
hands on knees, looking at the remains. The man looked

(29:27):
up and met Ed's eyes. He nodded casually and walked
over to the second thing, prodded it with his toe.
After a long moment, he nodded again to Ed, smiled briefly,
and winked out. Ed stared at the empty air where
the other man had been, mouth open. It was just
a little too much. A lot of things had happened

(29:49):
to him in the last few days. He had been
able to take most of them more or less as
they came along. But after all, he wasn't a chicken
any more. He was pushing sixty, and there's limit to
what a man should have to put up with at
that age. The thought of his snug cabin with a
good fire going, moosemeat bubbling in the pot, the gas

(30:09):
lantern hissing, and the bottle of Hudson's Bay rum he
had tucked under the eaves against just such an occasion
as this was suddenly very appealing. Besides, it was getting late,
and he didn't think he cared to be stumbling around
this world in the dark. He elbowed his pack up,
hooked the left shoulder strap and headed for home, staying

(30:31):
off the trail in ordinary caution and watching his footing,
but moving pretty fast just the same. Actually, he need
not have been so careful. The horn had been surprised
and shocked by the explosive violence of the man's reaction
to a routine harvesting maneuver. It was a relatively young harn,
but it retained memories of its own world, where there

(30:54):
were also nasty, violent things which killed horn. It was
not pleasant to think that it might have evoked some
such monster in this hitherto peaceful place. Then to top that,
there had been the sudden appearance of the Warden. The Horn,
of course, saw the Warden not as a man, but
in its true aspect, which was not at all friendly.

(31:16):
All in all, this did not seem the moment to
start any new adventures. The Horn pulled in all its
mobile units, including the stinger it had left it the
hole into the other world. It huddled protectively together in
its nest. Considering these new developments. By ten that evening
ed in conference with Old Tom and the bottle of

(31:37):
Hudson's Bay, had done considerable hard thinking pro and con
of course, he didn't have to go into the other
world just because the hole was there. He could block
it off, seal it up with timbers, and forget it.
He sat there and thought about this, absently, smoothing the
strange fur on his knee. For an old timer like himself,

(32:01):
things weren't too hot in this world. Fur didn't bring
much of a price anymore, and he couldn't get it
in as he had when he was younger. His wants
were simple, but there was a certain rock bottom minimum.
He had to have two The winters were starting to
bother him a little. The arthritis in his hands was
getting worse every year. Times he hardly had the strength

(32:25):
in his left hand, which was the worst to hold
an axe. Another five ten years and it would be
the Pioneer's Home for him if he did not get
stove up or sick sooner and die right here in
the cabin, too helpless to cut wood for the fire.
He had helped bury enough others bed and all when
they didn't come down the river at break up, and

(32:47):
somebody had to go up and look for them to
know it was possible. The other world was milder. It
had game and fur, good fur too from the looks
of it, something new that could any mutation or synthetic
on the market, and the income tax had still left
a few fellows who could pay through the nose to
see their women look nice. And the country was new.

(33:10):
He'd never thought he'd have a crack at a new
country again, a new good country. Often he'd thought how
lucky people had been who were born a one hundred
and fifty years ago, moving into an easy, rich country
like the Ohio or Kentucky when it was new, instead
of the bitter north. The horn would be a nuisance.

(33:32):
Ed did not think of it as the horn, of course,
but just as they. But he supposed he could find
a way to clean them out. A man generally could
if varmit's got troublesome enough, and the man in forest
green whipcord, well, he could have been just an hallucination.
Ed did not really believe in hallucinations, but he had

(33:55):
heard about them, and there was always a first time.
Ed sighed, looked at the clock, measured the bottle with
his eye, still better than three quarters full. All in all,
he guessed he'd leave the door into the other world open.
He put Old Tom out and went to bed. The
first order of business seemed to be to get better

(34:17):
acquainted with the horn. The first thing in the morning,
he said about it. He took the rabbit out of
the live box and tethered it in a spot in
the other world close to the hole where raw earth
had been exposed by a big blowdown, sweeping the ground
afterwards to clear it of tracks. Getting better acquainted with
the horn, though, did not mean he had to have

(34:39):
it come in and crawl in bed with him before
going to bed. The night before, he had set half
a can of snuff to steep in some water. He
loaded a bug gun with this and sprayed the ground
around the hole into the other world. From the reaction yesterday,
he judged the stinging units did not like tobacco juice,

(35:00):
and this should discourage them from coming through. He checked
his bare snares and found three in good enough shape
to satisfy him. The large harn beast, he suspected, would
be about like a grizzly to hold three would hardly
be enough for a serious trapping program. Ed made his
own snares from old aircraft control cable, using a lock

(35:24):
of his own devising, which slid smoothly and cinched down
tight and permanently. He got out his roll of wire
in box of locks and started making up some more,
sitting where he could watch the rabbit he had staked out.
By the middle of the afternoon, the snares were done,
but there had been no action with the rabbit, nor

(35:45):
was there for the rest of the day. In the morning,
though it was gone, there were three new sets of
tracks in the bare spot, two smaller ones, either of
which would have fitted the stinging unit, and what looks
like a carrier's the action was clear enough. The small
things had prowled round the rabbit for some time, stopping

(36:06):
frequently as if uncertain and suspicious. Finally one had moved
in with a little flurry of action when it met
the rabbit. Then it had moved back and squatted again.
The big tracks came directly to the rabbit and went
right out again. They were heavy enough to be clear
in the grass beyond the bare spot. Ed went back

(36:27):
to the cabin and rummaged till he found a pair
of snake proof pants. A state side sport had once
given him, heavy duck with an interlining of woven wire.
They were heavy and uncomfortable to wear, and about as
useless as wings on a pig in Alaska, where there
were no snakes. But they had been bran new and

(36:49):
expensive when given to him, and he had put them away,
thinking vaguely he might find a use for them some day.
It looked like that day might be now. He slipped
them on to his rifle and hunting pack, and set
out to follow the animal that had taken the rabbit.
The trail showed well in the morning dew, going straight

(37:09):
away along the hillside, as if the thing were headed
someplace definite. Ed followed along for a quarter mile or so,
then found himself on a fairly well beaten path, which
presently joined another and then another till it was a
definitely well used trail. It began to look to him
like the thing might have a den of some sort,

(37:30):
and he might be getting pretty close to it. He
left the trail and climbed up into a lone tall tree,
fire scorched but still struggling for life. From there, he
could follow the trail pretty well with his glasses for
a couple of hundred yards before he lost it. Finally,
he settled on a spot under an old, burnt stump

(37:51):
as a likely spot for the den. He focused the
glasses carefully, and after a few minutes saw a flash
of movement there, as if something had slipped in or out.
Nothing else happened for about an hour. Then the grass
along one of the trails began to wave in a
large beast similar to the one he had shot trotted

(38:12):
into sight. It slipped in under the stump and disappeared.
For the rest of the morning, nothing went in or out.
There was a very good reason for this, and Ed
was it all night and day after he shot the
stinging unit and the carrier unit. The harn had stayed

(38:32):
in its nest. By the second evening, it was getting hungry.
It ventured out and found a few morsels, but the
organized hunting network it ordinarily maintained had been disrupted. It
had lost track of things, and the pickings were poor.
Then it stumbled on the rabbit ed had staked out.
Its first impulse was to leave the rabbit strictly alone.

(38:56):
In spite of its early promise, the other world had
so far given nothing but trouble. On the other hand,
the rabbit was meat, and very good meat by the
smell and looks of it. The horn kept its observation
unit prowling irresolutely around the target for half the night
before it finally gave in to appetite and sent in
a stinger to finish the rabbit off a carrier to

(39:19):
pick it up. It was still uneasy about this when
it noticed ed near the nest the next morning, confirming
its fears, It promptly broke up the net it had
been re establishing and pulled all units back in. Maybe
if it left him strictly alone, he might still go
on about his business. Whatever that was. And let the

(39:41):
horn go back to its harvesting. By noon, Ed was
getting pretty stiff sitting in the tree. He climbed down
and eased over toward the stump, watching where he set
his feet. He was pretty sure the snakeproof pants would
stop the stingers, but he saw no point in putting
them to the test until he had to About fifty

(40:02):
yards away. He got a good view, and it did
look like there might be a sizeable hole under the stump.
He studied it carefully with the glasses. There was a
smooth beaten mound in front, and exposed roots were worn slick.
As he got closer, he noticed an unpleasant smell, and
near the mouth of the den he got a sudden

(40:22):
whiff that almost gagged him, a sour acid carrion stink
like a buzzard's nest. He moved back a little. The
hole was wide and fairly high two or three feet,
but too dark to see back into. Still, he had
a sense of something stirring there, not too far back.

(40:44):
Ed had considerable respect for caves and dens with unseen occupants.
He had once helped carry in the bodies of two
men who had poked a stick into a spring Grizzly's den.
At the same time, he wanted pretty badly to know
what was in there. Expected there was a good deal
more than what he had already seen. The bug gun,

(41:05):
loaded with tobacco juice was in his pack, and a flashlight,
a small light one designed for a lady's purse, which
he always carried when away from camp. He got them
out and leaned his rifle against a route sticking out
just at the left of the den. Taking the bug
gun in his left hand and the flashlight in his right,

(41:25):
he stooped over to shine the light in keeping as
well clear of the entrance as possible. All in all,
he must have got about a five second look, which
is a lot longer than it sounds when things are happening.
His first impression was a jumble eyes, scurrying movement, and bulk.

(41:46):
Then things started to shape up. About ten feet back
from the entrance was a huge, flatish, naked, scabrous bulk,
pimpled with finger sized teats. Clustered around and behind this
were a tangle of slinging units, carrier units, observation units.
Some had their mouths fixed to teats. For a long

(42:08):
second or two, the scene stayed frozen. Then the front
edge of the bulk split and began to gape. Ed
found himself looking down a manhole sized gullet into a
shallow puddle of slime, with bits of bones sticking up
here and there. Toward the near end, a soggy mass
of fur that might have been the rabbit seemed to

(42:29):
be visibly melting down. At the same moment, the tangle
of lesser monsters sorted themselves out, and a wave of
stingers came boiling out at him. Ed dropped the flashlight,
gave two mighty pumps of the bug gun, and jumped
clear of the entrance. For a moment, the den mouth
boiled with stingers, hissing and bucking in agony. Ed sprayed

(42:54):
them heavily again, snatched up his rifle, and ran, looking
back over his shoulder. The stingers showed no inclination to follow,
though the tobacco juice seemed to be keeping them well
occupied for the moment. Half way home, Ed had to
stop and rest for a moment while he took a
spell of the shuddering and gagging as a sudden picture

(43:14):
of the slimy gullet came into his mind with ed
Brown laying where the rabbit had been, melting down into
a stinking soup of bones and gobbits of flesh. When
he got to the hole, his arrangement of tin cans,
traps and tobacco juice no longer looked nearly as secure
as it had. He got his axe and cut two

(43:34):
stout posts framing the hole, built a stout slab door
and hung it from them. Then he drove stakes close
together at the threshold to foil any attempts to dig under,
and trimmed a sill tight to the door. His feeling
in this matter, as it happened, was sound. The horn

(43:55):
was beginning to develop a strong dislike for Ed Brown.
Three of its stinging units were dead and most of
the rest were in poor shape. Thanks to the tobacco spray.
It had got a little whiff of the stuff itself,
not enough to do any serious damage ordinarily, but right now,
so close to swarming time, ed was going to have

(44:16):
to go So far in this world, the horn had
needed only the three basic types of mobile units. There
were other standard types, however, for dealing with more complicated situations.
As it happened, a couple of carrier embryos were at
just about the right stage. With a little forcing, they

(44:37):
could be brought on in not too long a time. Meanwhile,
the horn would do what it could with the material available.
When Ed came through the next day to set his snares,
the horn was prepared to test his snakeproof pants they held,
which was disconcerting to the horn, but it was a
hard creature to convince once thoroughly a road roused. Ed

(45:01):
was not too sure of how well the pants would
stand up to persistent assaults. Himself. After the third ambush,
he took to spraying suspicious looking spots with tobacco juice.
He shot two more stingers in this way, but it
slowed him up quite a bit. It took him all
day to make four sets. In the next three days

(45:23):
he made a dozen sets and caught two carriers. Then
the fourth day, as he adjusted a snare as seeming,
a root suddenly came to life and slashed at his hand.
He was wearing gloves to keep his scent from the snares,
and the fing caught the glove and just grazed the
ball of his left thumb. The hatchet he had been
using to cut a toggle was lying by his knee.

(45:45):
He snatched it up and chopped the stinger before it
could strike again. Then yanked off the glove and looked
at his hand. A thin scratch, beaded with drops of
blood showed on the flesh. Unhesitatingly, he drew the razor
edge of the hatchet across it, sucked and spat, sucked
and spat again and again. Then he started for home.

(46:07):
He barely made it. By the time he got to
the hole, he was a very sick man. He latched
the door, stumbled into the cabin, and fell on the bed.
It was several days before he was able to be
about again, his hand still partly paralyzed. During that time,
the situation changed. The horn took the offensive. Ed's first

(46:30):
notice of this was a rhythmic crashing against the cabin.
He managed to crawl to where he could see the
gate he had built to block the hole into the
other world. It was shaking from repeated batterings from the
other side. Dragging his rifle with his good hand, he
scrabbled down to where he could see through the chinks
in the slab door. Two of the carrier units were there,

(46:53):
taking turns slamming their full weight against it. He had
built that gate scuukum, but not to take something like that.
He noted carefully where they were hitting it, then backed
up twenty feet and laid the four fifty across a log.
He let them hit the door twice more to get
the timing before he loosed off a shot. At the

(47:15):
moment of impact, the battering stopped abruptly, and through the
chinks he could see a bulk piled against the gate.
For a while, there was no more action. Then after
a few tentative butts at the door, the battering started again.
This time Ed wasn't so lucky. The battering stopped when

(47:35):
he fired, but he got an impression that the carrier
ran off. He thought he might have hit it, but
not mortally. In an hour or so, the horn was back,
and it kept coming back. Ed began to worry about
his ammunition, which was not unlimited. Ordinarily, two or three
boxes lasted him through the winter. He got his thirty

(47:57):
eight six, for which he had a sugar sack full
of milklitary ammunition. The light, full patch stuff did not
have the discouraging effect of the four fifty, though, and
he had to shoot a lot oftener. Another thing. He
wasn't getting any rest, which was bad in his already
weakened condition. Every time he dozed off, the battering would

(48:18):
start again, and he would have to wake up and
snap a few shots through the door. He held pretty
much on one spot, not wanting to shoot the door
to pieces, but the horn noticed this and started hitting
the door in other places. The second day of the attack,
the door came down. It had been pretty shaky for
some time, and Ed had got the cabin ready for

(48:41):
a siege, filling butter kegs with water and nailing up
the windows. As the horn poured through, he shot several
and then broke for the cabin. A carrier ran at
him full tilt, bent on bowling him over. Once off
his feet, he would have been easy meat for one
of the stingers, He sighed, swung his shotgun up in

(49:02):
one hand he had kept it handy for the close fighting,
and blew the carrier's spine in half. He had to
kick it aside to slam the cabin door. For a
few minutes, then things were pretty hectic. Ed went from
one to another of the loopholes he had cut, blasting
first with a shotgun. As the horn crowded around, then

(49:23):
using the thirty. As they grew more cautious after the
first rush, it was obvious to the harm that the
cabin was going to be a tough nut to crack.
On the other hand, there was no rush about it either. Necessarily,
it had let its hunting go the last several days
while it concentrated on Ed. It was pretty hungry, and

(49:44):
it was in rich pickings. Now. Ed had always kept
from disturbing game close to the cabin, partly because he
liked to see it around, and partly because he had
an idea that someday he might be in a fix
where he couldn't travel very well and would want close
meat to hand. The horn felt no such compunctions. The

(50:04):
stinging units spread through the woods, and shortly a steady
procession of floated carriers began to stream back through the hole.
Ed picked off the first few, but then the horn
found could rout them up the river trail in such
a way that he got only a glimpse as they
flashed through the hole. After that, he did not hit
very many. Ed stopped shooting. He was getting short on

(50:28):
ammunition for the thirty now too, he counted up there
were eighteen rounds for the four fifty half a box
of two twenty grain soft point for the thirty, plus
about the same amount of military stuff, and a handful
of shotgun shells. Of course, there was still the thirty
luguer with a couple of boxes, and the twenty two,
but there were not much account for this kind of work.

(50:51):
He looked at the cabin door. It was stout, built
of hwed three inch slabs, but it wouldn't last forever
against the kind of beating the gate had got. Even
if it did, he was going to run out of
water eventually. Ed thought about that for a while, sitting
at the table staring at the little pile of cartridges.

(51:12):
He was going to be run out of here sooner
or later. He might as well pick his own time,
and now seemed about as good as any while the
horn was busy exploring and hunting. He sighed and got
up to rummage around the cabin. The snakeproof pants had
done real good, but he did not trust them entirely.
There was some sheet iron laid over the ceiling joists,

(51:34):
which he had brought up to make new stoves for
his line camps. He got this down and cut it
into small pieces. Around the edges. He drilled a number
of small holes. Then he got out his mending gear
and began sowing the plates in an overlapping pattern to
the legs of the snakeproof pants and to an old
pair of moccasins. When he finished, he was pretty well

(51:58):
armored as far as his crotch. It was an awkward
outfit to move around in, but as long as he
was able to stay on his feet, he figured he
could be reasonably secure from the stingers. As for the
bigger ones, he would just have to depend on seeing
them first and the four fifty. Next, he needed some gasoline.

(52:19):
The fuel cache was under a big spruce about twenty
yards from the door. He made the round of his loopholes.
There were no horn in sight. They were apparently ignoring
him for now. He slipped out the door, closing it
securely behind him, and started for the cash. As he
stepped out, a stinger came from under the sill log

(52:40):
and lashed at his foot. He killed it with the
axe beside the door, saving a cartridge, and went on
walking fairly fast, but planting his feet carefully. A little
awkward in his armor, he picked up a five gallon
can of gas, a quart of motor oil, and the
twenty feet of garden hose he used for siphoning gas

(53:00):
down the bank to the boat. On the way back,
another stinger hit him. He kicked it aside, not wanting
to set down his load, and it came at him
again and again just outside the door. He finally caught
it under a heel and methodically trampled it to death.
Then he snatched open the door, tossed the stuff inside,
and pulled it quickly shut behind him. So far, so good.

(53:25):
He lashed the gas can solidly to his pack board,
slipped the end of the hose into the flexible spout,
and wired it tight. Then he cut up an old
wool undershirt and wrapped the pieces around miscellaneous junk, old
nuts and bolts, chunks of lead, line, anything, to make
up half a dozen packages of good throwing heft. He

(53:46):
soaked these in oil and stowed them in a music bag,
which he snapped to the d rings of the pack.
One of the metal plates on his moccasin was hanging
by a thread, probably he had torn it loose in
the scuffle at the door. They weren't going to take
too much kicking and banging around he could see, and
once he was on his way, it wouldn't be a

(54:06):
very good idea to be caught bending over with his
bare hands at ground level to fix them. On the
other hand, he couldn't be using all his cartridges on
the stingers either. He had to save them for the carriers.
He thought about this sum while mending the moccasins and
decided to take the bug gun. It might not kill
the stingers, but it ought to discourage them enough so

(54:27):
they wouldn't keep pestering him. With his bad left arm,
he had trouble getting the pack on his back. He
finally managed by swinging it up on the table first.
It was not too much of a load, forty or
fifty pounds, he guessed. Still shaky as he was, it
was about as much as he could manage. He had
intended to just try it on for size, but after

(54:51):
he got it up he thought, well why not now.
He picked up the four fifty, stowed the extra cartridges
in his pocket, checked to make sure he had matches,
hung the bug gone on his belt, and opened the door.
It was just getting dusk, but the other world was
in broad daylight. The days and nights were almost completely

(55:12):
reversed again. As he stepped through the hole, the first
stinger struck. He gave it a good squirt of tobacco juice.
It went bucking and twisting off, and he went on
stepping carefully and solidly. Luckily, most of the horn was
foraging in the new world. Two more stingers ambushed him,
but the tobacco juice got rid of them, and he

(55:34):
had no serious trouble till he got close to the den.
Two carriers came out and rushed him there. He shot
them both and then killed the stinger that was pecking
at his shins. He moved quickly. Now he had an
idea that in about a minute all hell would break loose.
He swung the pack down on the up hill side
of the den, wet the music bag with a quick

(55:57):
spray of gas, tossed it over his shoulder, jammed the
free end of the hose into the den mouth, and
stabbed the can with his knife to vent it. As
the gas poured into the den, he lit one of
his oil and gas soaked bombs and ran around in front,
lighting one after another from the one in his hand
and tossing them into the den. The music bag caught fire,

(56:20):
and he snatched it from his shoulder and tossed it.
After the bombs, a woof and a sheet of flame
blew out. About fifty yards away, there was a slender,
popple like tree. Ed thought if he could make that,
he would be reasonably secure. While the horn burned. He
ran for it as hard as he could, beating at
the flames that had spattered on him from the burning gas,

(56:43):
but he never made it. Harn were erupting everywhere. A
carrier suddenly came charging out of the brush to his left.
While Ed dealt with that one, the Horn played its
ace in the hole. The two special units it had
been developing to deal with Ed were not quite done yet,
but they were done enough to work for the few

(57:04):
minutes the Harn needed them. Ed heard a coughing grunt
behind him and spun around to see something new crawling
out of the flame and smoke at the den entrance.
This one was a roughly carrier shaped creature, but half
again as large, built for killing. It had powerful fanged jaws,
and its eight feet were armed with knifelike disemboweling claws,

(57:27):
and it came at Ed in a lumbering rush. Another
came crawling out after it ed shot four times as
fast as he could work the action. The heavy slugs
did the job, but not quite well enough. With its
dying lunge, the thing got to him and tossed him
ten feet like a rag doll. He lit on his

(57:48):
bad hand and felt the wristbones go as he struggled
to get up, digging his elbow in and using one hand,
he saw a stinger darting in at him. He had
lost both the bug gun and his rifle when the
fighting unit swiped him. He swiveled on his hips and
kicked the stinger away. Then he saw the second fighting

(58:08):
unit coming. He forgot about the stinger. It still might
get to him, but if it did, it would be
too late to matter. He drew his knife, managed to
get to one knee, and crouched there like an old
gray rat, stubbily, lips drawn back from worn teeth in
a grin of pain and rage. This was one he
wasn't going to win, he guessed. Ten feet away, the

(58:32):
fighting unit suddenly ran down like a clockwork toy. It
toppled over, skidded past him under its own momentum, and
lay there, kicking spasmodically. Ed glared at it uncomprehendingly. It
arched its neck back to almost touch its haunches, stiffened,
and was still. Ed looked around. The stinger was dead too,

(58:55):
three feet from his shoulder, and half a dozen more,
which had been making for him a cloud of greasy,
stinking smoke, was rolling out of the den. The horn
was dead. Ed put his knife away and lay back.
He did not quite pass out, but things got pretty
dim after a while. He got hold of himself and

(59:15):
sat up. He was not too surprised to see the
man in forest Green prodding at the bodies of the
fighting units. The stranger looked at the smoke still oozing
from the den and nodded approvingly. Then he came over
and looked at Ed. He clacked his tongue in concern
and bent over. Touching Ed's wrist. Ed noticed there was

(59:36):
now a cast on it, and it didn't hurt so much.
There was also a plastic binding around his ribs and shoulders,
where the claws of the first fighter had raked as
it tossed him. That was a mighty neat trick, because
the rags of his shirt were still buttoned around him,
and he was pretty sure it had not been off
at any time. The stranger smiled at Ed, patted him

(59:59):
on the shoulder, and disc appeared. He seemed to be
a busy sort of fellow, Ed thought, with not much
time for visiting. Ed felt quite a bit better now,
enough better to gather up what was left of his
gear and start home. He was glad to find Old
Tom waiting for him there. The cat had taken to

(01:00:19):
the woods when the attack on the gate first started.
He didn't like shooting, and Ed had worried that the
horn might have got him. Ed slept till noon the
next day, got up and cooked a dozen flapjacks and
a pound of bacon. After breakfast, he sat around for
an hour or so drinking coffee. Then he spent the

(01:00:40):
rest of the afternoon puttering around of a cabin. He
packed away the snakeproof pants, dissembled the flame thrower, picked
up the traps by the hole. Old Tom seemed to
have pretty well cleaned up the mice under the lean to.
Ed took his shovel and filled in the hole he
had dug for the cat to get at them. He

(01:01:00):
went to bed early tomorrow he would take a long
hike around the new world, scout out the fur and game,
plan his trap line, and pick cabin sights. The next morning,
though the hole in the other world was gone, the
posts which had marked it were sheared neatly in half.
The remains of the door still hung there, battered and sagging,

(01:01:23):
but it swung open on nothing but Alaska. When Ed
stepped through, he found himself standing beside the old leaning birch.
He tried it several times before he convinced himself. He
walked slowly back toward the cabin, feeling old and uncertain,
not quite knowing what to do with himself. Old Tom

(01:01:44):
was over by the lean to sniffing and pawing tentatively
at the fresh earth where Ed had filled in the hole.
As Ed came up, he came over to rub against
Ed's leg. They went into the cabin and Ed started
fixing breakfast and of Cat and Mouse by Ralph Williams