War Against the Rull Read Free

negative feeling yielded to hope. The combined height of the five trees represented a total of over a hundred feet. Definitely enough length. But— His first glow of hope faded. There was a small hatchet in his knapsack. He had a mental picture of himself felling those trees with it, trimming them and sliding them endwise into place. It would be a long and arduous task.
    Jamieson sat down, conscious for the first time of a dull ache in his shoulders, the strained tenseness of his whole body and the oppressive heat. He could barely see the sun, a white blob in the misty sky, but it was almost straight overhead. That meant, on this rather slowly rotating planet, there would be about twelve hours until dark. He sighed with the realization that he had better take advantage of the relative safety of this isolated spot and rest a while. As he selected a nook screened by overhanging bushes he was extremely mindful of the gargantuan bird of prey encountered earlier. He stretched out on the damp turf and rolled under a canopy of leaves.
    The heat was bearable here, though the shade was scattered. The sky glared whitely from all directions. It hurt his eyes and he closed them. He must have slept. When he opened his eyes, it took a moment to locate the sun. It had moved some distance toward the horizon. Two hours at least, perhaps three. Jamieson stirred, stretched and realized that he felt refreshed. His mind stopped as he came to that realization—stopped from the shock of a staggering discovery.
    A bridge of fallen trees, thicker, more solid than any on the little island stretched straight and strong across the mud to the jungle beyond. Jamieson's brain started functioning again. There could, after all, be little doubt as to who had performed that colossal feat. And yet, even though his guess had to be correct, he felt a vague, primordial panic as the blue saurianlike bulk of the ezwal reared above the bushes and three eyes of dull steel turned toward him. A thought came: "You need have no fear, Trevor Jamieson. On reconsideration, your point of view seemed to contain some merit. I will assist you for the time being, and—"
    Jamieson's harsh laugh cut off the thought. "What you mean is that you've run up against something you couldn't handle. Since you're pretending to be altruistic, I guess I'll have to wait to find out what happened." He shouldered his knapsack and started toward the bridge. "In the meantime, we have a long way to go."
    The giant snake slid heavily out of the jungle, ten feet from the mainland end of the bridge of trees and thirty feet to the left of the ezwal, which had already crossed over. Jamieson, shuffling toward the center of the bridge, had seen the first violent swaying of the long, purple-edged grass and now froze where he was as the broad, ugly head reared into sight, followed by the first twenty feet of yellowish, glistening body, fully a yard thick. For a brief moment the great head was turned directly at him. Its little pig eyes seemed to glare straight into his own.
    Shock held Jamieson—shock and utter dismay at the incredibly bad luck that had allowed this deadly creature to find him in such a helpless position. His paralysis there, under those blazing eyes, was an agonizing thing—an uncontrollable tautness that strained every muscle. But it worked. The fearsome head whipped aside, fixed in eager fascination on the ezwal, and took on a new rigidity. Jamieson relaxed somewhat; his fear became tinged with anger. He projected a scathing thought at the ezwal: "I understood that you could sense the approach of dangerous beasts by reading their minds."
    No answer came to him. The monstrous snake flowed farther into the clearing, the flat, horned head gliding smoothly above the long, undulating body. The ezwal backed slowly, yielding reluctantly to the plain fact that it was no match for this vast creature.
    Calmer now, Jamieson directed another thought at the ezwal: "It may interest you to know that