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"We won't tell him about this. But if Phemropit should cease to talk to us, we'd better run."
"Let's hope that Phemropit doesn't say anything to Fat Bull about this."
"Phemropit won't bring up the subject."
"Why don't we think about how to kill the Tsimmanbul so we can get on to the land of The Shemibob?"
Hoozisst asked. "We're wasting time with this talking rock."
"Don't you have any curiosity about Phemropit?" Sloosh buzzed disgustedly. "Here's a creature unknown to Earth until now, a being of stone and metal that has a language and hence a sentient nervous system."
The Archkerri raved on, but the Yawtl only smirked.
Though he admitted that the plant-man knew far more than he did, he also thought that Sloosh was mentally off-balance and very impractical. If Hoozisst could have profited by staying on, he would have been all for it. But this business was most aggravating and frustrating.
The Archkerri didn't get to finish his lecture. The ground began rumbling and rippling, and then with a loud crack like the snap of a giant whip, the earth separated nearby. It was only a zigzag opening about three inches wide, but they didn't know what horrible sequel to expect. There was no place to run. In any event, the earth was shaking so much they couldn't even stand up.
Trees fell right and left, and one rolled toward them, its branches breaking off. It stopped short of crushing them, but the ends of some snapped-off branches lay only a few inches away. A huge boulder smashed into the tree and bounced over it, narrowly missing a Tsimmanbul.
After the temblors had faded away, everybody got up and ran toward the top of the hill. Deyy, Vana,
Hoozisst, Feersh, and her daughter had their hands tied in front of them. They fell, but they managed to get up and struggle upward.
Another shock, as intense as the first one, rocked the top of the hill just as they reached it. The boulders there fell on either side of the slopes. One roared by the god, almost striking it, and stopped some feet past the shoreline.
A long time later a tsunami smashed into the hill, reaching halfway up. Wave after wave made the hill shudder, covering Phemropit, washing the ground from under him, snatching the uprooted trees away, and moving the boulders back and forth.
In the midst of this terror, only Sloosh was able to talk. Watching the ocean battle for the stone-metal creature, he said, "Too bad! Too bad! I would have found out so much about its kind!"
When the ocean finally subsided, Phemropit was not in sight.
Fortunately, though the cube had been yanked savagely many times and once struck by a boulder, it had not been carried away. The rope-chain, the other end of which was fastened to a tree at the bottom of the opposite slope, had held.
"My god is gone!" the shaman cried.
"Some god," the Yawtl said. "Here we are, safe, but the god of the sea has proven mightier than the god from outer space. I think—"
"What you think is wrong," Sloosh said. He pointed down to the riven beach.
Out of the' sea rose the shiny dark-gray back of Phemropit. In a short time, its whole body was in sight, its endless tracks with their treads rotating. It came up the beach, then began climbing the hill. Though it slipped back in the soft earth three times, it kept on, and presently it was resting on the top. Its "nose"
pointed slightly downward.
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OTHER shocks followed at widely separated intervals, but these were much weaker. Three sleep-times after the big ones, a Tsimmanbul warrior ran panting into the camp and threw himself onto the ground.
After he'd recovered his wind, he piped, "Hear me, my tribespeople! The gods have turned away from us! When they shook the earth so fiercely, they cracked open the cliff on which our village was! All our people fell into the sea and were killed! All except me! I alone was spared so that I might give you the terrible news!"
Wailing and screaming, the Tsimmanbul rolled on the ground and gashed themselves with stone knives.
After a while the bleeding shaman picked up a spear and ran it through the messenger, who did not defend himself. He had expected such a reward for bringing bad news.
Sloosh, the only one of the captives unbound at the time, took advantage of the mourning. He untied the others, and they grabbed weapons wherever handy. Deyv struck the shaman on the head with a tomahawk and took his sword back. Sloosh recovered his axe. When Fat Bull had recovered his senses, he sat on the ground and wailed.
"You shouldn't have messed around with Phemropit," the Yawtl said. "It has taken its revenge."
"Nonsense," Sloosh said. "It doesn't even know what's going on. It expended its little reserve energy getting out of the sea and has only enough left to communicate with us. But even that will be gone if we don't find food for it."
The Tsimmanbul rose then and formed a ring around the shaman. They began chanting in words so ancient that only the shaman knew their meaning. One by one, Fat Bull pierced them with a spear and cut their throats. When this was done, he asked Sloosh to make sure that he died. The Archkerri .said that it was the least he could do. Fat Bull put the butt end of his spear at an angle into the dirt, and he fell upon it, driving it deep into his belly. The plant-man came up behind him and slashed through the fat to sever the jugular.
"Very curious," he said. "Definitely nonsurvival."
Since the Tsimmanbul were not human-appearing enough to make it ca
By then Phemropit was able to tell them in what direction to go to look for its food. It was also able to describe it in its raw state and to warn them about the dangers in preparing it. From the middle of its back a small section of stone-metal sank down, and then a tall thin rod of the same substance rose from the hole.
Thi
The Dark Beast had half-passed over; the open sky behind it gave plenty of illumination. In the direction in which the rod pointed was a dark area shaped like a scythe. This would line them up with their goal while they went through the jungle.
Hoozisst complained about the work and its dangers, but he went with the others. He didn't want to be left alone with the god.
"How does Phemropit detect its food?" Deyv said.
"I've explained the principles of radioactivity to you. The ore which contains his food lies some distance from here, probably on a mountainside. It will be near the shore of this lake and will be material broken off and cast out by the impact of the meteorite. Which was so large it should be called a planetoid.
Which I've also described to you.
"You see, Earth itself long ago lost all its radioactivity. But the planetoid must have been of younger stuff and so still was rich in radioactive minerals. I know that because, otherwise, Phemropif s people would have run out of their food and become, if not dead, inanimate.
"Phemropit's ante
And when we've gotten enough to it to charge its energy bank, it will travel there on its own power."
They found the ore, a dark, large, irregularly shaped patch embedded in the red and gray of a mountainside, near the base. The radioactive ore, Sloosh explained, had been buried so deep that