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the leadership, and Hoom would have to follow.
They forged up the slope. Abruptly the ground leveled, then angled down. They had crested the ridge!
They had been virtually at the brink. What irony if they had given up when the flatfloater did!
There was a lesson in this, Heem thought. One must not give up an effort prematurely; success might
be incipient, though it seemed otherwise.
What a relief to roll downhill! The slope was steep, forcing them to brakejet firmly, but progress was
excellent.
"We made it!" Hoom sprayed jubilantly. "We conquered!" He seemed to have forgotten his prior
reticence. But that was the way Hoom was; his attention span was brief. He never brooded on the
ultimate meaninglessness of things the way Heem did.
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For example, Hoom was now happy to be rolling downhill. Heem was concerned what they might
encounter at the base of this slope. The valley of Highfalls had its perils, enough to eliminate all but
two of possibly two hundred original HydrOs who had started there. Could this nameless new valley
be any safer? Probably it was worse, for them, because they would not be familiar with its perils.
Yet this venture had to be made. Whatever the meaning of life might be, this exploration would help
him to discover it.
The slope leveled, but the ground was too high yet for this to be the base. A variance in the mountain,
after which the descent should resume.
Suddenly both of them blasted water violently forward, coming to a halt. There was something
strange, alien, and horrible ahead. Both of them knew instantly it was an enemy. It exuded a taste of
sheerest menace. They also knew they could not fight it; the thing was too horrible to oppose. Their
only choice was to flee.
They tried. But progress up the steep slope was agonizingly slow. The thing rolled up behind them-
no, even more horrible, it did not roll, its locomotion was part of its alien quality. It did not jet, it-it
slithered. Heem had never imagined such a means of transport, but the faint, awful taste of this thing's
presence evoked memories buried in his evolution. This creature-it had been the implacable foe of
Heem's kind for an interminable time!
"Cease your struggle, HydrO prey," the jet of the alien came. Even its communication was oddly
sinister. There was a cold metallic flavor. The alien did not use jets for communication; Heem knew
this too. Therefore this command was impossible-yet it had come.
Heem ignored it, naturally. He jetted so hard he practically flatfloated up the slope. Hoom was right
beside him. Terror gave them strength.
"Cease, lest I destroy you," the alien jetted.
Hoom had enough attention left to loft a hurried spray at Heem. "How can it jet? It has no jets!"
"With my machine, HydrO prey!" the alien jetted. "Last warning: desist or die."
But Heem knew with the certainty of thousands of generations of his kind-it was amazing how self-
realization came at a moment like this!-that there was no way to trust this alien. "Divide!" he sprayed,
warned by that instinct. He jetted at right angles to his former course and rolled to the side, separating
from Hoom.
Even as he did so, there was an explosive spray from Hoom. "Oh, it burns!" Then nothing-and Heem
knew his friend was dead.
Heem dodged again, changing his angle of escape with his strongest jet. Then the alien's machine-jet
grazed him, just touching a small patch of his skin.
"Oh, it burns!" Heem sprayed and collapsed. It did burn, but his exclamation was more cunning than
pain, a ploy of desperation. Let the alien assume he was dead; perhaps the killing shot would be
withheld. It was his only chance.
He felt the slight vibration of the ground as the alien approached. It came to Heem first, its body
emitting its faint but awful taste. It was difficult to fathom the nature of this dread creature, but as it
came near the separate small indications of its mechanism evoked the instinctive memories in Heem's
mind. The thing was long and slender, an undulating rope of flesh tapering into a rough point at either
extreme. There was armor on it, mail formed from bone: the hardened tissue employed by some
animals to stiffen and shield their anatomies. It moved by shoving its smooth, hard torso against
irregularities in the ground, and sliding its dry scales past these irregularities. It was, Heem realized, a
bit like rolling; instead of employing sensible jets of water to push its body around and forward, it
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employed natural objects. But it remained a horrifyingly alien mode of propulsion.
The thing slithered up to Heem, who dared not squirt even the tiniest jet. He knew, again by instinct,
that he would only remain alive if this monster thought him already dead. He had to stay dead to stay
alive!
The thing lurked beside him, a ghastly alien presence. Heem no longer had volition; even his
hydrogen absorption was suspended. The monster unfolded three gross limbs, their nature shaped in
Heem's mind by sound, ambient taste, and instinct memory. Pincers extended, three sturdy metallic
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