He grabbed the thing stuck in his skin and pulled it out. Rubbing the blood from its surface, he looked at it. It was a six-pointed crystalline star.
“Craziest shrapnel I ever saw,” he said. No one heard him.
The plants, which he had at once named cannonlabra, had observed that their shelling had failed to get the passersby. They were now heading away, traveling slowly on their hundred or so pairs of thin big-footed legs. Fifteen minutes later he was to see several lay their explosive eggs near enough to an elephant calf to kill it. Some of the things then climbed over the carcass and began tearing at it with claws which appeared from within the feet. The foremost limbs dropped pieces of meat into an aperture on the side.
Apparently McKay’s dead animal was too far away to be observed.
Anana and McKay spent the next ten minutes painfully pulling the “shrapnel” from their skins. Pieces of grass were applied to the wounds to stop the bleeding.
“I’d sure like to stuff Urthona down the muzzle of one of those,” Kickaha said. “It’d be a pleasure to see him riding its shell. He must have had a lot of sadistic pleasure out of designing those things.”
He didn’t know how the creature could covert its food into black gunpowder. It took charcoal, sodium or potassium nitrate, and sulfur to make the explosive. That was one mystery. Another was how the things “grew” shell-casings. A third was how they ignited the charge that propelled the shells.
There was no time to investigate. A half-hour had been lost in the chase, and McKay had no steed.
“Now, you two, don’t argue with me,” he said. He got off the hikwu. “Anana, you ride like hell after the palace. You can go faster if I’m not on it, and you’re the lightest one so you’ll be the least burden for the hikwu. I was thinking for a minute that maybe McKay and I could run alongside you, hanging onto the saddle. But we’d start bleeding again, so that’s out.
“You take off now. If you catch up with the palace, you might be able to get inside and stop it. It’s a slim chance, but it’s all we got.
“We’ll be moseying along.”
Anana said, “That makes sense. Wish me luck.”
She said, “Heekhyul”, the Wendow word for “Giddap!”, and the moosoid trotted off. Presently, under Anana’s lashings, it was galloping.
McKay and Kickaha started walking. The flies settled on their wounds. Behind them explosions sounded as the cannonlabra laid down an artillery barrage in the midst of an antelope herd.
An hour passed. They were trotting now, but their leaden legs and heavy breathing had convinced them they couldn’t keep up the pace. Still, the palace was bigger. They were gaining on it. The tiny figures of Anana and her beast had merged into the rusty grass of what seemed a never-ending plain.
They stopped to drink bad-tasting water from the bag McKay had taken off of his dead hikwu. McKay said, “Man, if she don’t catch that palace, we’ll be stranded here for the rest of our life.”
“Maybe it’ll reverse its course,” Kickaha said. He didn’t sound very optimistic.
Just as he was lifting the bag to pour water into his open mouth, he felt the earth shaking. Refusing to be interrupted, he quenched his thirst. But as he put the bag down he realized that this was no ordinary tremor caused by shape-shifting. It was a genuine earthquake. The ground was lifting up and down, and he felt as if he were standing on a plate in an enormous bowl of jelly being shaken by a giant. The effect was scarey and nauseating.
McKay had thrown himself down on the earth. Kickaha decided he might as well do so, too. There was no use wasting energy trying to stand up. He faced toward the palace, however, so he could see what was happening in that direction. This was really rotten luck. While this big temblor was going on, Anana would not be able to ride after the palace.
The shaking up-and-down movement continued. The animals had fled for the mountains, the worst place for them if the quake continued. The birds were taking off, millions salt-and-peppering the sky, then coalescing to form one great cloud. They were all heading toward the direction of the palace.