Free War Against the Rull by A. E. van Vogt

alive and moving and going strong—and I'll even carry you if necessary. But if we expect to kill a grasseater and live decently, we've got to have salt. I saw some salt, and we can't take a chance on passing it up. So back we go."
    They glared at each other with the wild, tempestuous anger
    of two people whose nerves are on ultimate edge. Then Barbara drew a deep breath and said, "I don't know what your plan is, but it sounds crazy to me. Have you ever seen a grasseater? Well, it looks something like a giraffe, only its bigger and faster on its feet. Maybe you've got some idea of tempting it with salt and then killing it with a knife. I tell you, you can't get near it, but I'll go back with you. It doesn't matter, because we're going to die, no matter what you think. What I'm hoping is that a gryb sees us. It'll be quick that way."
    "There is something," said Jamieson, "pitiful and horrible about a beautiful woman who is determined to die."
    "You don't think I want to die!" she flashed. Her passionate voice died abruptly, but Jamieson knew better than to let so much fierce feeling die unexplored.
    "What about your child?"
    He saw by the wretched look on her face that he had struck home. He felt no compunction. It was imperative that Barbara Whitman develop a desire to live. In the crisis that seemed all too near now, her assistance might easily be the difference between life and death.
    It was odd, the fever of talk that came upon Jamieson as they laboriously retraced their steps to the salt rock. It was as if his tongue, as if all of his body, had become intoxicated; and yet his words, though swift, were not incoherent but reasoned and calculated to convince her. He spoke of the problem of man landing on inhabited planets and of the many solutions that had been achieved by reason. Human beings often did not realize how deeply attached life was to its own planet and how desperately each race fought against intruders.
    "Here's your salt!" Barbara interrupted him finally.
    The salt rock composed a narrow ledge that protruded like a long fence which ran along in a startlingly straight line and ended abruptly at a canyon's edge, the fence rearing up, as if cringing back in frank dismay at finding itself teetering on the brink of an abyss.
    Jamieson picked up two pieces of salt rubble and slipped them into the capacious pockets of his plainsmanlike coat—and started back toward the dark wall of cliff nearly three miles away. They trudged along in silence. Jamieson's 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 dismay from the depths that fell away behind him.
    Through blurred vision he saw the woman's figure a few feet away, the tortured lines of her face a grim reminder of the hunger weakness that was corroding the very roots of their two precariously held lives.
    "Hang on!" Jamieson gasped. "It's only a few more yards."
    They made it and collapsed on the edge of that terrific 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 Barbara whispered, "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," Jamieson 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 fingers grabbed her leg and jerked her back brutally to a prone position.
    "Down for your life. There's a herd of grasseaters half a mile away. And they mean life for us."
    Barbara 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. To the left, a