The Fredric Brown Megapack Read Free Page B

nationalisms, battles between champions to decide issues between races were not unknown.
    “You and your opponent are here pitted against one another, naked and unarmed, under conditions equally unfamiliar to you both, equally unpleasant to you both. There is no time limit, for here there is no time. The survivor is the champion of his race. That race survives.”
    “But—” Carson’s protest was too inarticulate for expression, but the voice answered it.
    “It is fair. The conditions are such that the accident of physical strength will not completely decide the issue. There is a barrier. You will understand. Brain-power and courage will be more important than strength. Most especially courage, which is the will to survive.”
    “But while this goes on, the fleets will—”
    “No, you are in another space, another time. For as long as you are here, time stands still in the universe you know. I see you wonder whether this place is real. It is, and it is not. As I—to your limited understanding—am and am not real. My existence is mental and not physical. You saw me as a planet; it could have been as a dust-mote or a sun.
    “But to you this place is now real. What you suffer here will be real. And if you die here, your death will be real. If you die, your failure will be the end of your race. That is enough for you to know.”
    And then the voice was gone.
    * * * *
    Again he was alone, but not alone. For as Carson looked up, he saw that the red thing, the sphere of horror that he now knew was the Outsider, was rolling towards him.
    Rolling.
    It seemed to have no legs or arms that he could see, no features. It rolled across the sand with the fluid quickness of a drop of mercury. And before it, in some manner he could not understand, came a wave of nauseating hatred.
    Carson looked about him frantically. A stone, lying in the sand a few feet away, was the nearest thing to a weapon. It wasn’t large, but it had sharp edges, like a slab of flint. It looked a bit like blue flint.
    He picked it up, and crouched to receive the attack. It was coming fast, faster than he could run.
    No time to think out how he was going to fight it; how anyway could he plan to battle a creature whose strength, whose characteristics, whose method of fighting he did not know? Rolling so fast, it looked more than ever like a perfect sphere.
    Ten yards away. Five. And then it stopped.
    Rather, it was stopped . Abruptly the near side of it flattened as though it had run up against an invisible wall. It bounced, actually bounced back.
    Then it rolled forward again, but more cautiously. It stopped again, at the same place. It tried again, a few yards to one side.
    Then it rolled forward again, but more cautiously. It stopped again, at the same place. It tried again, a few yards to one side.
    There was a barrier there of some sort. It clicked, then, in Carson’s mind, that thought projected by the Entity who had brought them there:
    “—accident of physical strength will not completely decide the issue. There is a barrier.”
    A force-field, of course. Not the Netzian Field, known to Earth science, for that glowed and emitted a crackling sound. This one was invisible, silent.
    It was a wall that ran from side to side of the inverted hemisphere; Carson didn’t have to verify that himself. The Roller was doing that, rolling sideways along the barrier, seeking a break in it that wasn’t there.
    Carson took half a dozen steps forward, his left hand groping out before him, and touched the barrier. It felt smooth, yielding, like a sheet of rubber rather than like glass, warm to his touch, but no warmer than the sand underfoot. And it was completely invisible, even at close range.
    He dropped the stone and put both hands against it, pushing. It seemed to yield, just a trifle, but no farther than that trifle, even when he pushed with all his weight. It felt like a sheet of rubber backed up by steel. Limited resiliency, and then firm strength.
    He stood