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قراءة كتاب Uniform of a Man

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‏اللغة: English
Uniform of a Man

Uniform of a Man

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
الصفحة رقم: 4

But finally he found a place—and the will—to make a stand.

He passed up a wide shelf, and let them tug him along a narrow ledge without much objection. He chose a near-vertical pitch about a hundred feet from the bottom—a mere crack that slanted upward to the right, offering the shallowest of hand- and foot-holds.

He could only hope that he wasn't in sight from the trail—or else that the villagers had left. He couldn't see through the treetops to make sure. But he hadn't the strength to worry.

He froze to the rock, pulling as if in fright. The two witch-doctors in single file above him jerked on the chains they held. But they needed a hand apiece to hold on with, and couldn't lift him.

The one below, standing on a six-inch ledge, tried to push. When that didn't work, he broke off a chunk of rock and beat Chet's left foot with it.

Spurred by the sudden pain, Chet kicked the witch-doctor in the face. The Agvar fell, screaming—until he crashed through the treetops and was still.


To Chet, forgetful of his hearing superiority, it seemed as if that outcry would be heard on Earth itself. Certainly he expected it to alarm the countryside. Still, unless the swift foot-thrust had been seen, no one would be sure the witch-doctor's fall was not an accident....

Chet had tasted victory for the first time in three years! He'd had a little revenge, and he wanted more. He could take the other two witch-doctors with him to death!

He put all his weight on the chains they held. But they chose not to die—let go, instead, to save themselves. The chain-ends rattled past, dislodging a small avalanche of dust and gravel and bruising stones—dislodging him when the full weights jerked at neck and waist.

Prepared, he didn't let himself be pulled away from the cliff's face. He slid down it to the ledge from which the Agvar below him had fallen. There he teetered a moment, balancing precariously on toes scraped raw in his slide. Clawing fingers found a crack to the right, a knob to the left—safety! He clung there breathless.

No time for resting! Rattling stones warned of pursuit. He looked quickly around, found a route, and after a short traverse let himself slide to a long talus-slope. Down it he ran barefoot through sharp debris into concealing mosses.

The silence alarmed him. But it freed him from the need for craft; he didn't know what to avoid nor where it might be lurking, so he set out for the spaceship by what he hoped was the shortest way.

In the village, he'd located the landing-place by sound, fixed it by sun. The sun would guide him now. Not accurately, but well enough.

The ship would have landed in a clearing. Standing on its tail, it should loom high over the woods. And its men would scatter—he ought to run into one.

Run he did, trotting under thirty pounds of hardwood chain on reserves of strength dredged from a deep pit of desperation, through a forest overgrown with menace, full of life he could always sense but seldom see—of noises whose origin he couldn't guess.

The Agvars, for all their inferior hearing, could at least interpret what they heard. Chet couldn't. Every whispered cry, wild grunt and muttered growl was completely unfamiliar. He didn't know which sound signalled danger. He feared them all.

But more than sounds he feared the silence that chinked the logs of time between each nerve-wracking noise. Often he had to stop and rest, and silence threatened him then like the ominous quiet of bated breath. When he'd force himself to go on, each tree seemed like a porchful of malicious old women, pretending to disregard him as he passed, certain to make trouble when he'd gone. The buzz of small life-forms was a deprecatory murmur, ready at any second to burst into condemnation and terror....

What was that sound? And that? Noises that seemed out of place in their familiarity pinned him to the forest floor.

It was only the village. Satisfied, he worked up courage to

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