The night came when he saw a flock of rabbits dancing in the moonlight and pounced on them. One huge, steely-taloned paw swooped down, he felt the ripping flesh and snapping bone and then he was gulping the sweet, hot blood and peeling the meat from the frail ribs. He went wild, he roared and raged all night, shouting his exultance to the pale frosty moon. At dawn he slunk back to his cave, wearied, his human mind a little ashamed of it all. But the next night he was hunting again.

  His first deer! He lay patiently on a branch overhanging a trail; only his nervous tail moved while the slow hours dragged by, and he waited. And when the doe passed underneath he was on her like a tawny lightning bolt. A great slapping paw, jaws like shears, a brief, terrible struggle, and she lay dead at his feet. He gorged himself, he ate till he could hardly crawl back to the cave, and then he slept like a drunken man until hunger woke him and he went back to the carcass. A pack of wild dogs were devouring it, he rushed on them and killed one and scattered the rest. Thereafter he continued his feast until only bones were left.

  The forest was full of game; it was an easy life for a tiger. But not too easy. He never knew whether he would go back with full or empty belly, and that was part of the pleasure.

  They had not removed all the tiger memories; fragments remained to puzzle him; sometimes he woke up whimpering with a dim wonder as to where he was and what had happened. He seemed to remember misty jungle dawns, a broad brown river shining under the sun, another cave and another striped form beside him. As time went on he grew confused, he thought vaguely that he must once have hunted sambar and seen the white rhinoceros go by like a moving mountain in the twilight. It was growing harder to keep things straight.

  That was, of course, only to be expected. His feline brain could not possibly hold all the memories and concepts of the human, and with the passage of weeks and months he lost the earlier clarity of recollection. He still identified himself with a certain sound, “Harol,” and he remembered other forms and scenes—but more and more dimly, as if they were the fading shards of a dream. And he kept firmly in mind that he had to go back to Avi and let her send—take?—him somewhere else before he forgot who he was.

  Well, there was time for that, thought the human component. He wouldn’t lose that memory all at once, he’d know well in advance that the superimposed human personality was disintegrating in its strange house and that he ought to get back. Meanwhile he grew more and deeply into the forest life, his horizons narrowed until it seemed the whole of existence.

  Now and then he wandered down to the sea and Avi’s home, to get a meal and be made much of. But the visits grew more and more infrequent, the open country made him nervous and—he couldn’t stay indoors after dark.

  Tiger, tiger—

  And summer wore on.

  He woke to a raw wet chill in the cave, rain outside and a mordant wind blowing through dripping dark trees. He shivered and growled, unsheathing his claws, but this was not an enemy he could destroy. The day and the night dragged by in misery.

  Tigers had been adaptable beasts in the old days, he recalled; they had ranged as far north as Siberia. But his original had been from the tropics. Hell! he cursed, and the thunderous roar rattled through the woods.

  But then came crisp, clear days with a wild wind hallooing through a high, pale sky, dead leaves whirling on the gusts and laughing in their thin, dry way. Geese honked in the heavens, southward bound, and the bellowing of stags filled the nights. There was a drunkenness in the air; the tiger rolled in the grass and purred like muted thunder and yowled at the huge orange moon as it rose. His fur thickened, he didn’t feel the chill except as a keen tingling in his blood. All his senses were sharpened now, he lived with a knife-edged alertness and learned how to go through the fallen leaves like another shadow.

  Indian summer, long lazy days like a resurrected springtime, enormous stars, the crisp smell of rotting vegetation, and his human mind remembered that the leaves were like gold and bronze and flame. He fished in the brooks, scooping up his prey with one hooked sweep; he ranged the woods and roared on the high ridges under the moon.

  Then the rains returned, gray and cold and sodden, the world drowned in a wet woe. At night there was frost, numbing his feet and glittering in the starlight, and through the chill silence he could hear the distant beat of the sea. It grew harder to stalk game, he was often hungry. By now he didn’t mind that too much, but his reason worried about winter. Maybe he’d better get back.

  One night the first snow fell, and in the morning the world was white and still. He plowed through it, growling his anger, and wondered about moving south. But cats aren’t given to long journeys. He remembered vaguely that Avi could give him food and shelter.

  Avi—For a moment, when he tried to think of her, he thought of a golden, dark-striped body and a harsh feline smell filling the cave above the old wide river. He shook his massive head, angry with himself and the world, and tried to call up her image. The face was dim in his mind, but the scent came back to him, and the low, lovely music of her laughter. He would go to Avi.

  He went through the bare forest with the haughty gait of its king, and presently he stood on the beach. The sea was gray and cold and enormous, roaring white-maned on the shore; flying spin-drift stung his eyes. He padded along the strand until he saw her house.

  It was oddly silent. He went in through the garden. The door stood open, but there was only desertion inside.

  Maybe she was away. He curled up on the floor and went to sleep.

  He woke much later, hunger gnawing in his guts, and still no one had come. He recalled that she had been wont to go south for the winter. But she wouldn’t have forgotten him, she’d have been back from time to time—But the house had little scent of her, she had been away for a long while. And it was disordered. Had she left hastily?

  He went over to the creator. He couldn’t remember how it worked, but he did recall the process of dialing and switching. He pulled the lever at random with a paw. Nothing happened.

  Nothing! The creator was inert.

  He roared his disappointment. Slow, puzzled fear came to him. This wasn’t as it should be.

  But he was hungry. He’d have to try to get his own food, then, and come back later in hopes of finding Avi. He went back into the woods.

  Presently he smelled life under the snow. Bear. Previously, he and the bears had been in a state of watchful neutrality. But this one was asleep, unwary, and his belly cried for food. He tore the shelter apart with a few powerful motions and flung himself on the animal.

  It is dangerous to wake a hibernating bear. This one came to with a start, his heavy paw lashed out and the tiger sprang back with blood streaming down his muzzle.

  Madness came, a berserk rage that sent him leaping forward. The bear snarled and braced himself. They closed, and suddenly the tiger was fighting for his very life.

  He never remembered that battle save as a red whirl of shock and fury, tumbling in the snow and spilling blood to steam in the cold air. Strike, bite; rip, thundering blows against his ribs and skull, the taste of blood hot in his mouth and the insanity of death shrieking and gibbering in his head!

  In the end, he staggered bloodily and collapsed on the bear’s ripped corpse. For a long time he lay there, and the wild dogs hovered near, waiting for him to die.

  After a while he stirred weakly and ate of the bear’s flesh. But he couldn’t leave. His body was one vast pain, his feet wobbled under him, one paw had been crushed by the great jaws. He lay by the dead bear under the tumbled shelter, and snow fell slowly on them.

  The battle and the agony and the nearness of death brought his old instincts to the fore. All tiger, he licked his tattered form and gulped hunks of rotting meat as the days went by and waited for a measure of health to return.

  In the end, he limped back toward his cave. Dreamlike memories nagged him; there had been a house and someone who was good but—but—

  He was cold and lame and hungry. Winter had come.

  -3-

  Dark Victory

  “We have no further use for you,” said Felgi, “but in view of the help you’ve been, you’ll be allowed to live at least till we get back to Procyon and the Council decides your case. Also, you probably have more valuable information about the Solar System than our other prisoners. They’re mostly women.”

  Ramacan looked at the hard, exultant face and answered dully, “If I’d known what you were planning, I’d never have helped.”

  “Oh, yes, you would have,” snorted Felgi. “I saw your reactions when we showed you some of our means of persuasion. You Earthlings are all alike. You’ve been hiding from death so long that the backbone has all gone out of you. That alone makes you unfit to hold your planet.”

  “You have the plans of the duplicators and the transmitters and powerbeams—all our technology. I helped you get them from the Stations. What more do you want?”

  “Earth.”

  “But why? With the creators and transmitters, you can make your planets like all the old dreams of paradise. Earth is more congenial, yes, but what does environment matter to you now?”

  “Earth is still the true home of man,” said Felgi. There was a fanaticism in his eyes such as Ramacan had never seen even in nightmare. “It should belong to the best race of man. Also—well, our culture couldn’t stand that technology. Procyonite civilization grew up in adversity, it’s been nothing but struggle and hardship, it’s become part of our nature now. With the Czernigi destroyed, we must find another enemy.”

  Oh, yes, thought Ramacan. It’s happened before, in Earth’s bloody old past. Nations that knew nothing but war and suffering, became molded by them, glorified the harsh virtues that had enabled them to survive. A militaristic state can’t afford peace and leisure and prosperity; its people might begin to think for themselves. So the government looks for conquest outside the borders—Needful or not, there must be war to maintain the control of the military.

  How human are the Procyonites now? What’s twisted them in the centuries of their terrible evolution? They’re no longer men, they’re fighting robots, beasts of prey, they have to have blood.

  “You saw us shell the Stations from space,” said Felgi. “Rebirth, Creator, Transmitter—they’re radioactive craters now. Not a machine is running on Earth, not a tube is alight—nothing! And with the creators on which their lives depended inert, Earthlings will go back to utter savagery.”

  “Now what?” asked Ramacan wearily.

  “We’re standing off Mercury, refueling,” said Felgi.

  “Then it’s back to Procyon. We’ll use our creator to record most of the crew, they can take turns being briefly recreated during the voyage to maintain the ship and correct the course. We’ll be little older when we get home.

  “Then, of course, the Council will send out a fleet with recorded crews. They’ll take over Sol, eliminate the surviving population, and recolonize Earth. After that—” The mad fires blazed high in his eyes. “The stars! A galactic empire, ultimately.”

  “Just so you can have war,” said Ramacan tonelessly. “Just so you can keep your people stupid slaves.”

  “That’s enough,” snapped Felgi. “A decadent culture can’t be expected to understand our motives.”

  Ramacan stood thinking. There would still be humans around when the Procyonites came back. There would be forty years to prepare. Men in spaceships, here and there throughout the System, would come home, would see the ruin of Earth and know who must be guilty. With creators, they could rebuild quickly, they could arm themselves, duplicate vengeance-hungry men by the millions.

  Unless Solarian man was so far gone in decay that he was only capable of blind panic. But Ramacan didn’t think so. Earth had slipped, but not that far.

  Felgi seemed to read his mind. There was cruel satisfaction in his tones: “Earth will have no chance to rearm. We’re using the power from Mercury Station to run our own large duplicator, turning rock into osmium fuel for our engines. But when we’re finished, we’ll blow up the Station too. Spaceships will drift powerless, the colonists on the planets will die as their environmental regulators stop functioning, no wheel will turn in all the Solar System. That, I should think, will be the final touch!”

  Indeed, indeed. Without power, without tools, without food or shelter, the final collapse would come. Nothing but a few starveling savages would be left when the Procyonites returned. Ramacan felt an emptiness within himself.

  Life had become madness and nightmare. The end…

  “You’ll stay here till we get around to recording you,” said Felgi. He turned on his heel and walked out.

  Ramacan slumped back into a seat. His desperate eyes traveled around and around the bare little cabin that was his prison, around and around like the crazy whirl of his thoughts. He looked at the guard who stood in the doorway, leaning on his blaster, contemptuously bored with the captive. If—if—O almighty gods, if that was to inherit green Earth!

  What to do, what to do? There must be some answer, some way, no problem was altogether without solution. Or was it? What guarantee did he have of cosmic justice? He buried his face in his hands.

  I was a coward, he thought. I was afraid of pain. So I rationalized, I told myself they probably didn’t want much, I used my influence to help them get duplicators and plans. And the others were cowards too, they yielded, they were cravenly eager to help the conquerors—and this is our pay!

  What to do, what to do? If somehow the ship were lost, if it never came back—The Procyonites would wonder. They’d send another ship or two—no more—to investigate. And in forty years Sol could be ready to meet those ships—ready to carry the war to an unprepared enemy—if in the meantime they’d had a chance to rebuild, if Mercury Power Station were spared—

  But the ship would blow the Station out of existence, and the ship would return with news of Sol’s ruin, and the invaders would come swarming in—would go ravening out through an unsuspecting galaxy like a spreading plague—

  How to stop the ship—now?

  Ramacan grew aware of the thudding of his heart; it seemed to shake his whole body with its violence. And his hands were cold and clumsy, his mouth was parched, he was afraid.

  He got up and walked over toward the guard. The Procyonite hefted his blaster, but there was no alertness in him, he had no fear of an unarmed member of the conquered race.

  He’ll shoot me down, thought Ramacan. The death I’ve been running from all my life is on me now. But it’s been a long life and a good one, and better to finish it now than drag out a few miserable years as their despised prisoner, and—and—I hate their guts!

  “What do you want?” asked the Procyonite.

  “I feel sick,” said Ramacan. His voice was almost a whisper in the dryness of his throat. “Let me out.”

  “Get back.”

  “It’ll be messy. Let me go to the lavatory.”

  He stumbled, nearly falling. “Go ahead,” said the guard curtly. “I’ll be along, remember.”

  Ramacan swayed on his feet as he approached the man. His shaking hands closed on the blaster barrel and yanked the weapon loose. Before the guard could yell, Ramacan drove the butt into his face. A remote corner of his mind was shocked at the savagery that welled up in him when the bones crunched.

  The guard toppled. Ramacan eased him to the floor, slugged him again to make sure he would lie quiet, and stripped him of his long outer coat, his boots, and helmet. His hands were really trembling now; he could hardly get the simple garments on.

  If he was caught—well, it only made a few minutes’ difference. But he was still afraid. Fear screamed inside him.

  He forced himself to walk with nightmare slowness down the long corridor. Once he passed another man, but there was no discovery. When he had rounded the corner, he was violently sick.

  He went down a ladder to the engine room. Thank the gods he’d been interested enough to inquire about the layout of the ship when they first arrived! The door stood open and he went in.

  A couple of engineers were watching the giant creator at work. It pulsed and hummed and throbbed with power, energy from the sun and from dissolving atoms of rocks—atoms recreated as the osmium that would power the ship’s engines on the long voyage back. Tons of fuel spilling down into the bins.

  Ramacan closed the soundproof door and shot the engineers.

  Then he went over to the creator and reset the controls. It began to manufacture plutonium.

  He smiled then, with an immense relief, an incredulous realization that he had won. He sat down and cried with sheer joy.

  The ship would not get back. Mercury Station would endure. And on that basis, a few determined men in the Solar System could rebuild. There would be horror on Earth, howling chaos, most of its population would plunge into savagery and death. But enough would live, and remain civilized, and get ready for revenge.

  Maybe it was for the best, he thought. Maybe Earth really had gone into a twilight of purposeless ease. True it was that there had been none of the old striving and hoping and gallantry which had made man what he was. No art, no science, no adventure—a smug self-satisfaction, an unreal immortality in a synthetic paradise. Maybe this shock and challenge was what Earth needed, to show the starward way again.

  As for him, he had had many centuries of life, and he realized now what a deep inward weariness there had been in him. Death, he thought, death is the longest voyage of all. Without death there is no evolution, no real meaning to life, the ultimate adventure has been snatched away.

  There had been a girl once, he remembered, and she had died before the rebirth machines became available. Odd—after all these centuries he could still remember how her hair had rippled in the wind, one day on a high summery hill. He wondered if he would see her.

  He never felt the explosion as the plutonium reached critical mass.

  Avi’s feet were bleeding. Her shoes had finally given out, and rocks and twigs tore at her feet. The snow was dappled with blood.