Kennard swallowed. His eyes blazed fire, and Larry braced himself for another outburst of that flaying, dreadful Alton rage, but it was checked before it began. Kennard clenched his fists, but he spoke grimly, through his teeth.
“I’ll kill you for that, some day—but right now, you’ll see whether a Terran can lead an Alton on his own world. Try it.”
“That’s the way to talk,” Larry said, deliberately jovial to infuriate Kennard’s despairing dignity. “If we’re going to die anyhow, we might as well do it while we’re doing something about it! To hell with dying with dignity! Make the blasted beast fight for his dinner if he wants it—kicking and scratching!”
Kennard laid his hand on his knife. He said “He’ll get a fight—”
Larry gripped his wrist, “No! Warmth and movement are what he senses! Damn you and your heroics! Common sense is what we need. Hell, I know you’re brave, but try showing some brains too!”
Kennard froze. He said through barely moving lips, “All right. I said I’d follow your lead. What do I do now?”
Larry thought fast. He had pulled Kennard out of his fit of despair, but now he had to offer something. If he was going to take the lead, he had to lead—and do if damned fast!
The banshee sensed warmth and movement.
Therefore, it must be something like the kyrri; and the only way to outwit it was with cold, and stillness. But they could freeze to death and it could outwait them. Or else—
The idea struck him.
“Listen! You run one way and I’ll run the other—”
Kennard said, “Drawing lots for death? I accept that. Whichever one of us he takes, the other goes free?”
“No, idiot!” Larry hadn’t even thought of that. It was a noble Darkovan concept and honorable, but it seemed damned unnecessary. “We both get free—or neither. No, what I’m thinking about is to confuse the damned thing. I move. He’s drawn off after me. Then I stop, burrow in a snowbank, stay still as a mouse—and while he’s trying to scent me again, you start running around. Somewhere else. He’ll start to move in that direction. Then you freeze and I start again. Maybe we can confuse him, keep him running back and forth long enough to get across the pass.”
Kennard looked at him with growing excitement. “It just might work.”
“All right, get ready—freeze!”
Larry jumped up and started running. He saw the huge lumbering bird twitch toward him as by a tropism, then come speeding. He yelled to Kennard, dived into a snowbank, scrabbled frantically in and lay still, not daring to move or hardly to breathe.
He felt, rather than seeing, the great bird stop short, clumsily twitch around, jerking in irritation. How had its prey gotten over there? Kennard dashed about twenty yards toward the pass, shouted and dived. Larry jumped up again. This time he tried to run too far; the evil creature’s foul breath was actually hot on his neck and his flesh crawled with anticipation of the swift, disemboweling clawing stroke. He fell into the snow, burrowed in and lay still. The siren wail of the confused bird rose, filling the air with screaming terror, and Larry thought, Oh, God, don’t let Kennard panic again . . . .
He raised his head cautiously, watched Kennard dive down, rose again and dashed. The bird twitched, began to lumber back, suddenly howled and began to dash madly in circles, its huge head flopping and flapping.
The banshee howl fell to terrified little yelps and the creature fell on its back, twitching.
Larry yelled to Kennard, “Come on! Run!” He was remembering psychology courses. Animals, especially very stupid animals, faced with a situation wholly frustrating and outside their experience, go completely to pieces and crack up. The banshee was lying in the snow squealing with a complete nervous breakdown.
They ran, gasping and trembling. The clouds seemed suddenly to thin and lift, and the pale Darkovan sun burst suddenly forth in morning brilliance.
Larry hauled himself up, exhausted, to the summit of the pass. He rested there, gasping, Kennard at his side.
Before them lay a trail downward, and far away, a countryside patched with quiet fields, smoke rising from small houses and hearthstones, the tree-laden slopes of low foothills and green leaves.