“Elephants,” explained the counterfeit voice of the Coran. “Being hunted in the valleys nearby for use, I regret to say, in blood sports much like those for which the phile itself must have been intended. The recently captured elephants are shackled to pairs of domesticated beasts. The same technique appears to be sufficient to control the phile, for now.”
The procession of handlers, beasts, and—no, only handlers and beasts: for all its cunning the phile was no more than a beast—drew away in the distance. The elephants became dark humps against the soft yellow dust that drifted downwind from their feet. The phile was not even that, only a memory. But it had been there; that could not be in doubt.
Uneasy, RyRelee asked: “Was a lifeboat released after all, then? Surely, the phile could not have been landed at an earlier time—could it?”
“We presume,” replied the Coran, “that it was caged near the bow. As the stardrive envelope shrank and the smuggler’s vessel disintegrated from the stern forward, one of the cage walls must have been destroyed a moment before the final impact. If the phile’s timing were precise, it might have been launching itself toward that opening at the instant the stardrive itself was destroyed.”
“Nothing could survive such a landfall,” RyRelee whispered.
“Nothing but a phile,” said the Coran.
Again RyRelee saw the phile as it stared at the aborigine through whose eyes the procession had been recorded. Yes, a phile was intelligent enough to seize a split-second chance of escape, quick enough to succeed in it. They were difficult to kill even with energy weapons, and their recuperative powers were uncanny. The limp with which it walked was probably the result of injury, rather than from the weight of its chains as RyRelee had first thought.
As the phile returned the aborigine’s stare, its gaze was flat and black and as coldly lethal as the glitter of a falling axe.
“Precisely how it escaped destruction is unimportant,” said the Coran. “The matter that concerns us is that Class 6 natives have captured a phile. They must have discovered it before it had recovered from the crash, and even then only luck could have permitted them to take it captive. How will they ever avoid the mistake that releases it? They are not wholly without intelligence, you know, these philes.”
Besides its eyes, there was only one fleck of brightness in the dusty image of the phile. It held in its forelimbs the chain tethering it to the leading elephant. The aborigine had seen, although below his awareness, that one thumb-thick link of that chain was scarred by the ceaseless abrasion of the phile’s claws as it staggered forward in the solitude of its own red thoughts.
“In certain aspects,” the Coran continued, “the philes are perhaps more intelligent than the natives of this planet. While the philes have never developed any sort of technology, they are quick to comprehend its applications when confronted with such. They understand the threat of a stone-tipped projectile or of an energy weapon, for example, and they recognize surface vehicles or planetary shuttlecraft as transport vessels. Moreover, there is substantial evidence of low-level telepathy. It has been suggested that while they comprehend basic mechanical principles, the philes consciously disdain their application. There was once some consideration over upgrading Zuyle to Class 6 status, but it was decided that although the philes are the dominant lifeform on their planet, their environment is too savagely violent ever to permit the development of any organized social culture.”
“Perhaps that’s just as well,” RyRelee commented, remembering that planet. Zuyle, the homeworld of the philes, was a nightmarish cauldron of ceaseless volcanic activity and violent storms, of brief blinding-hot days and long frigid nights. The flora and fauna had evolved appropriately to so murderous an environment—poisonous flesh-eating vegetation, venomous crawling things, mammoth armored beasts. Everything that walked or swam or flew or crept or burrowed on Zuyle was adapted to survival under the deadliest of conditions, and the philes were the dominant species of that world. The focus of their evolution had been survival from one second to the next, and their intellect had developed accordingly. RyRelee thought it fortunate that their savage fight for existence had never given the philes leisure to begin the climb toward technological society.