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

different kinds of bait, but the principle is the same."
    He made his way cautiously to the edge of the forest. From the shelter of a tree he flung the little pieces of bent wood with all his strength. It landed in the grass a hundred and fifty feet away.
    "We'd better make some more," Jamieson said. "We can't depend on one being found."
    The eating was good; the cooked meat tough but tasty; and it was good, too, to feel the flow of strength into his body. He sighed at last and stood up, glanced at the sinking Sun, an orange-sized ball of flame in the western sky.
    "We'll have to carry sixty Earth pounds of meat apiece; that's four pounds a day for the next fifteen days. Eating meat alone is dangerous; we may go insane, though it really requires about a month for that. We've got to carry the meat because we can't waste any more time killing grasseaters."
    Jamieson began to cut into the meaty part of the animal, which lay stretched out on the tough grass, and in a few minutes had tied together two light bundles. By braiding grass together, he made himself a pack sack and lifted the long shank of meat until it was strapped to his back. There was a little adjustment necessary to keep the weight from pressing his electrically heated clothes too tightly against him; when he looked up finally, he saw that Barbara was looking at him peculiarly.
    "You realize, of course," she said, "that you're quite insane now. It's true that, with these heated suits, we may be able to live through the cold of tonight, provided we find a deep cave. But don't think for a second that, once a gryb gets on our trail, we'll be able to throw it a piece of sharpened wood and expect it to have an internal hemorrhage."
    "Why not?" Jamieson asked, and his voice was sharp.
    "Because it's the toughest creature ever spawned by a crazy evolution, the main reason I imagine why no intelligent form of life evolved on this moon. Its claws are literally diamond hard; its teeth can twist metals out of shape; its stomach wall can scarcely be cut with a knife, let alone with crudely pointed wood."
    Her voice took on a note of exasperation. "I'm glad we've had this meal; starving wasn't my idea of a pleasant death. I want the quick death that the gryb will give us. But for heaven's sake, get it out of your head that we shall live through this. I tell you, the monster will follow us into any cave, cleverly enlarge it wherever he has difficulty, and he'll get us because eventually we'll reach a dead end. They're not normal caves, you know, but meteor holes, the result of a cosmic cataclysm millions of years ago, and they're all twisted out of shape by the movement of the planet's crust. As for tonight, we'd better get busy and find a deep cave with plenty of twists in it, and perhaps a place where we can block the air currents from coming in. The winds will be arriving about a half an hour before the sun goes down, and our electric heaters won't be worth anything against those freezing blasts. It might pay us to gather some of the dead wood lying around, so we can build a fire at the really cold part of the night."
    Getting the wood into the cave was simple enough. They gathered great armfuls of it and tossed it down to where it formed a cluttering pile at the first twist in the tunnel. Then, having gathered all the loose wood in the vicinity, they lowered themselves down to the first level, Jamieson first in a gingerly fashion, the young woman—Jamieson noticed—with a snap and spring. A smile crinkled his lips. The spirit of youth, he reflected, would not be suppressed.
    They were just finishing throwing the wood down to the next level when suddenly a shadow darkened the cave mouth. Jamieson glanced up with a terrible start and had a fleeting glimpse of great fanged jaws and glowing eyes that glared from a hideous head; a thick red tongue licked out in unholy desire, and a spray of saliva rained down upon their transparent metal helmets and leatherlike clothes.
    And then