He moved straight out into the clearing, pushing his friends aside as he went. He shoved himself right into the center of the herd and sat down on the ground.
Three of the babies promptly climbed into his lap. He let them stay. Adults and half-grown bucks crowded around him bleating and snuffling and trying to nuzzle the top of his head. He let them—he was now surrounded by a wall of flesh. From time to time one of the inner circle would be shouldered out of the way and would go back to grazing but there were always enough around him to block out his view of his surroundings. He waited.
After a considerable time he heard more excited bleating from the fringe of the herd. For a moment be thought his personal guard would be seduced away by this new excitement, but the inner circle preferred to keep their privileged positions the wall held. Again he heard voices.
“For Pete’s sake—it’s a whole flock of those silly billies!” Then—”Hey! Get down! Quit licking my face!”
Carly’s voice replied, “I think he’s fallen in love with you, Joe. Say—Soapy said to arrest anything that walks: shall we take this one back to him?”
“Stow it!” There were sounds of scuffling, then the high bleating of a move-over both surprised and hurt.
“Maybe we ought to burn one and take it back anyway,'” Curly went on. “I hear they are mighty tasty eating.”
“You turn this into a hunting party and Soapy will haul you up before the Old Man. Come on—we got work to do.”
Don could follow their progress around the edge of the herd. He could even tell by the sounds when the two soldiers managed to cuff and kick the most persistent of the creatures off their trail. He continued to sit there long after they were gone, tickling the chin of a baby which had gone to sleep in his lap, and resting himself.
Presently it began to grow dark. The herd started to bed down for the night. By the time it was fully dark they were all lying down except the sentries around the edge. Because he was dead tired and completely lacking in any plan of action Don bedded down with them, his head cradled on a soft and velvety back and himself in turn half supporting a couple of youngsters.
For a while he thought about his predicament, then he thought about nothing.
The herd stirred and he awakened. There was much snorting and stomping mixed with the whimpering complaints of the young, still not fully awake. Don got his bearings and got to his own feet; he knew vaguely what to expect—the herd was about to migrate. Gregarians rarely grazed the same island two days in a row. They slept the first part of the night, then moved out before dawn when their natural enemies were least active. They forded from one island to another, using paths through the water known—possibly by instinct—to the herd leaders. For that matter, gregarians could swim, but they rarely did so.
Don thought: well, I’ll soon be rid of them. Nice people, but too much is too much. Then he thought better of it—if the move-overs were moving to another island it was sure that it would not be Main Island and it would certainly have to be farther away from Main Island than was this one. What could he lose?
He felt a bit light-headed but the logic seemed right; when the herd moved out he worked his way up near the van. The leader took them down the island about a quarter of a mile, then stepped off into the water. It was still so nearly pitch dark that Don was not aware of it until he too stepped into it. It was only up to his ankles and did not get much deeper. Don splashed along almost at a dogtrot, trying to stay inside the body of the herd so that he would run no chances of blundering into deeper water in the darkness. He hoped that this was not one of the migrations involving swimming.
It began to grow truly light and the pace quickened; Don was hard put to keep up. At one point the old buck in the lead stopped, snorted, and made a sharp turn; Don could not guess why he had turned, for the morning mist was very thick and one piece of water looked exactly like another. Yet the way chosen turned out to be shallow. They followed it for another kilometer or more, twisting and turning at times, then at last the leader clambered up a bank with Don on his heels.