A long time later, some small animal poked an inquisitive snout from the hole; instantly, Kennard jerked the noose tight and the small creature kicked, writhing in the air.
Larry winced then reflected that, after all, he had been eating meat all his life and this was no time to get squeamish. He watched, feeling vaguely useless and superfluous, as Kennard wrung the creature’s neck, skinned and gutted it, and gathered dead twigs for a fire.
“It would be safer not to,” he said, with a wry smile, “but I haven’t any taste for raw meat—and if they’re still on our trail after this long, we’re out of luck anyhow.”
The small furred thing was not much bigger than a rabbit; they finished every scrap of the meat and gnawed the bones. Kennard insisted on himself covering the fire and scraping leaves over the place where it had been, so that no sign of their camp remained.
When they slept that night, Larry lay long awake, feeling somehow ill at ease; half envying Kennard’s woodcraft—he was lost and helpless in these woods without the other boy’s knowledge—yet possessed by a nagging disquiet that had nothing to do with that. The woods were filled with strange noises, the far-away cries of night birds and the padding of strange beasts, and Larry tried to tell himself that he was simply uneasy about the strangeness of it all. The next morning when they prepared to go on, he kept glancing around until Kennard noticed and asked him, rather irritably, what was the matter.
“I keep hearing—and not quite seeing—things,” Larry said reluctantly.
“Imagination,” Kennard said, shrugging it off, but Larry’s disquiet persisted.
That day was much like the former. They struggled down exhausting slopes, forcing their way through brushwood; they scrambled through country that looked like smooth forest but was matted with dead trees and deep ravines.
At night Kennard snared a bird and was about to light a fire to cook it when he noticed Larry’s disquiet.
“Whatever is the matter with you?”
Larry could only shake his head, silently. He knew—without knowing how he knew—that Kennard must not light that fire, and it seemed so senseless that he was ready to cry with the tension of it. Kennard regarded him with a look halfway between impatience and pity.
“You’re worn out, that’s what’s the matter,” he said, “and for all I know you’re still half-poisoned by the drug they gave you. Why don’t you lie down and have a sleep? Rest and food will help you more than anything else.” He took out his tinderbox and began to strike the fire—
Larry cried out, an inarticulate sound, and leaped to grab his wrist, spilling tinder. Kennard in a rage, dropped the box and struck Larry, hard, across the face.
“Damn you, look what you’ve made me do!”
“I—” Larry’s voice failed. He could not even resent the blow. “I don’t know why I did that.”
Kennard stood over him, fury slowly giving way to puzzlement and pity. “You’re out of your head. Pick up that tinder—” When Larry had obeyed, he stood back, warily. “Am I going to have trouble with you, damn it, or do we have to eat raw meat?”
Larry dropped to the ground and buried his face in his hands. The reluctant spark caught the tinder; Kennard knelt, coaxing the tiny spark into flame, feeding it with twigs. Larry sat motionless, even the smell of the roasting meat unable to penetrate through the thick, growing fog of distress. He did not see Kennard looking at him with a frown of growing dismay. When Kennard took the roasted bird from the fire and broke it in half, Larry only shook his head. He was famished, the smell of the meat made his mouth water and his eyes sting, but the fear, like a thick miasma around him, fogged away everything else. He hardly heard Kennard speak. He took the meat the Darkovan boy put into his hands, and put it into his mouth, but he could neither chew nor swallow. At last he heard Kennard say, gently, “All right. Later, maybe, you’ll want it.” But the words sounded very far away through the thing that was thickening, growing in him. He could feel Kennard’s thoughts, like seeing the glow of sparks through half-dead ash; Kennard thought that he, Larry, was losing his grip on reality. Larry didn’t blame him. He thought so too. But the knowledge could not break through the numbing fear that grew and grew—