And now he was resting beside the fourth. The Beller lay near him, its arms spread out, its face upturned to the hot sun, its eyes open, its mouth open, and a faint odor of corruption rising like invisible flies from it. At least, there were no real flies in this world.
Time passed. He did not feel much stronger. He had to get up and throw the body through both sides. Just rolling it through was out of the question because he did not want to stand in the path of any explosion. It was necessary to stand by the edge of the hoop, lift the body up and throw it through and then leap to one side.
For the seventh time, he did so. The body went through the hoop and sprawled on the ground. He had one last chance, and this time, instead of resting, he picked up the corpse and lifted it up before him until it was chest-high and heaved.
When he raised his head up from his position on the rock, he saw that the body was still visible.
So much for that theory. And so much for him. He was done for. He sat up instead of just lying there with his eyes closed. This move, made for no motive of which he was aware, saved his life.
Even so, he almost lost it. The tigerish beast that was charging silently over the hard rock roared when it saw him sit up and increased the lengths of its bounds and its speed. Kickaha was so surprised that he froze for a second and thus gave the annual an edge. But he did not give enough. The beamer fired just as the animal rose for its final arc, and the ray bored through its head, sliced it, cut through the neck and chest, took off part of a leg, and drilled into the rock beyond. The body struck the ground and slid into him and knocked him off his feet and rolled him over and over. He hurt in his legs and his back and chest and hands and nose when he arose. Much skin had been burned off by his scraping against the rock, and where the body of the beast had slammed into his legs was a dull pain that was to get sharper.
Nevertheless, the animal looked edible. And he thought he knew where it had come from. After he had cut off several steaks and cooked and eaten them, he would return to the northwest gate and investigate again.
The beast was about a quarter larger than a Siberian tiger, had a cat-like build, thick long fur with a tawny undercoat and pale red zigzag stripes on head and body and black stocking-like fur on the lower part of the legs and the paws. Its eyes were lemonade-yellow, and its teeth were more those of a shark than those of a cat.
The steaks tasted rank, but they filled him with strength. He took the Beller by the arm and dragged him the two miles to the gate. The corpse, by this time, was in a badly damaged condition. It stank even stronger when he lifted it up and threw it through the gate.
This time, it disappeared, and it was followed by a spurt of oil from the gate that would have covered him if he had been standing directly before it within a range of ten yards. Immediately after, the oily substance caught fire and burned for fifteen minutes.
Kickaha waited until long after the fire was out and then he jumped through with his beamer ready. He did not know what to expect. There might be another of the tigers waiting for him. It was evident that the first time he had thrown the Beller through it, he had set off a delaying activation which had released the beast through it some time after he had given up on it. It was a very clever and sadistic device and just the sort of thing he could expect from Red Orc. It seemed to him, however, that Red Orc might have given up setting any more machines. He would believe that it was very unlikely that anybody could have gotten this far. For a second, he was in a small bare room with a large cage, its door open, and a black dome on three short legs. Then, he was in another room. This one was larger and was made of some hard gray metal or plastic and lacked any decoration and had no furniture except a seatless commode, a washbowl and a single faucet, and a small metal table fastened to the floor with chains.