We Run From The Hunted!

I dabbed at the nick on my jaw with a towel and said, "Ouch! Do you always have to read to me when I'm shaving?"

"Shaving," Harry Conger scoffed. "That's just it, shaving. Why can't you use dipilator, like ordinary people? What do you expect when you use an archaic razor?"

"I happen to like the feel of a razor."

"Well, it's the same with .30-.30 rifles instead of blasters," Harry said, still riding me. "The best the twenty-first century has to offer isn't good enough for you. Oh, no." He shoved the accumulation of unpaid bills in front of my face while I put the razor away and asked me, "What do you expect to pay these with—twentieth century coin of the realm?"

"O.K.," I said. "Lay off. So we happen to be a little behind in a few payments."

"A few payments. We haven't had a customer yet, Gil. Not even one single, slightly jaded Earthman. No one."

"I still think 'Venus on the Half Shell' is a good idea," I said stubbornly.

Harry shook his head. "Good for the bill collectors. Good for the native bearers, who we've been feeding ever since we opened this joint. Good for the washed up big-game hunter living off what little fat there is in our land, but not good for us. If we only had one customer—just one...."

"Look out the window," I said, trying to be cheerful. "Venus. Raw. Primitive. Wild. Thirty million miles from civilization. A hunter's paradise. And we're the guys who can serve Venus up to our customers on the half shell. Hunting. Nature-watching. Just loafing. They can name it—we've got it."

"You mean we've had it," Harry said gloomily, shaking the fistful of bills. "Hell, Gil. It isn't only that. We haven't paid the bearers yet—not that they've had to bear anything. We haven't even paid what's-his-name, the hunter. All he does is drink our whiskey. Why don't you admit it, Gil? Venus on the Half Shell is all washed up and we might as well go back to Earth while we still have the fare."

I grinned. "Do we still have the fare?"

"Well, if we sell some of your antique firearms—"

"Sell them?" I cried. "But they're the only way to hunt, Harry. You know that. They're the real way to hunt. It's no contest with a blaster—the local fauna don't have a chance."

"If we just had one customer."

"A little while longer, Harry," I pleaded. "You're right. All we need is one customer, just to spread the word. We've got a virgin paradise for hunters here and—"

"I've heard that song before."

"Well," I said stubbornly, "it's the truth."

Just then someone knocked at the door. Harry and I shared a small cabin in the Venus on the Half Shell stockade. It wasn't much of a cabin and it doubled as office and sleeping quarters. A knock on the door meant either the leader of the Venusians or Talbot Kramer, our has-been hunter who so far had been content to sit around drinking our whiskey.

I opened the door. It was Talbot Kramer, complete with week's growth of beard, red-rimmed eyes, mouldly, swamp-smelling clothing and a man-sized scowl.

"Natives are through," he said, and laughed. It may have meant a lot to me and Harry, but it meant nothing to him.

"Through?" I said. "What the hell did they quit for?"

"Wompan," Kramer said.

"Which?" Harry asked him.

"Wompan," I repeated. I was excited. "Don't you know what a Wompan is?"

"Not me," Harry said. "Guess I was too busy studying unpaid bills. What's a Wompan?"

"I quit too," Talbot Kramer said suddenly. "You can't expect a hunter to hang around when the bearers have quit on you. Not anyways, with a Wompan around camp."

"Will somebody please tell me," Harry begged, "what a Wompan is?"

"I'll take the swamp-buggy," Kramer said, getting ready to go outside.

"The hell you will," Harry and I both said together.

"Listen. You guys owe me some wages. I know you don't have the cash, but I'm not complaining. I'll take the swamp-buggy. Hell, its the only way out of here anyways."

"Some friend," said Harry. "We won't have any way out ourselves. We'll be trapped in this damn swamp."

"Trapped?" Kramer said incredulously. "Did you say trapped? It's your place of business. There's all the food you need—in the swamp. What's your hurry to leave? Besides, Mr. Gil Roberts here told himself: one of these days you're going to get a lot of rich customers coming in with their own spaceships. Well, got to be going now."

We went outside with him and over to the squat, ugly shape of the swamp-buggy. The treads were a foot deep in mud, a normal state of affairs for the swamp-buggy. It would run, though. It would take Talbot Kramer, ex big-game hunter with a reputation and not much else, back to an outpost of civilization. And leave us without a guide if we ever got any customers.

"If you give us a little time," I said as Kramer climbed into the buggy through the roof hatch.

"Sorry, boys," he said, smelling of our liquor. "There was a letter for me on this week's mail rocket. A job in Kenya."

"Kenya, Africa, Earth?" I said, as if I were addressing a letter.

"That's right," Kramer said, lowering himself through the hatch. In a moment the swamp-buggy shuddered and made growling noises and shook itself clear of the mud. Out of habit, Harry and I waved as the buggy churned across a hundred feet of thick mud and moved ponderously toward the stockade gate. We stood there and watched the buggy fade into the green twilight swamps of Venus. It was very hot out there in the open and Harry and I were drenched with sweat before the sound of the buggy's motor faded entirely.

"A hunter's paradise," Harry said.

"Aw, lay off," I told him.

Nearby, the buggy suddenly roared again, its motor racing.

"Is he coming back?" Harry asked hopefully.

"It wasn't the buggy," I said.

"Are you kidding. I'd know that motor anywhere. She needs a valve job like we need customers."

"That," I said without smiling, "was the Wompan."

"You're joking."

"I wish I was," I said, closing the gate.

"It sounded just like the swamp-buggy."

"I know. Probably looks like it too—for now."

"Are you nuts?"

"Why do you think the natives ran away—and Kramer too. Wompan's deadly dangerous game."

"So stop smiling about it."

"I think it's funny," I said, "being left alone like this. You know what Wompan means in the Ringin dialect?"

Harry said he did not.

"It means, mimic."

"Oh," Harry said. He seemed relieved. "You mean it can imitate sounds—like the swamp-buggy's motor?"

"Yeah," I said. "It can imitate sounds. And other things. It can look like a swamp-buggy or the video star Laura Laurene or maybe Talbot Kramer or even you. It's a mimic."

"What does it look like in real life?"

"No one ever saw one in real life. Only in real death."

"Very funny."

"No. I mean it, Harry. The Wompan assumes its own shape when its killed. If it's killed because that's rare. Then it looks like a shapeless, jelly-like mass of protoplasm."

"Then what's so dangerous about it?"

"It can mime anything. A swamp-buggy. A man. A blaster."

"A blaster?"

"It can make like a blaster and blast the hell out of you," I said. "It can make like a beautiful woman and then strangle you when you're at your weakest. It can—"

"Did you lock the gate?" Harry asked. I felt a little sorry for him. Maybe I'm no Frank Buck, but Harry wasn't cut out for the frontier at all.

I told him I locked it. We went back to the cabin and had lunch out of cans. When we were working on a dessert of canned peaches, the spaceship came down.

I beat Harry outside by three steps. The spaceship, a small sportster, sank, on its keel tubes in the mud. It would be a devil of a job getting her airborne again, but we would worry about that later.

I looked at Harry. Harry looked at me. "Customers?" I said in a small voice.

Harry said, "I don't believe it."

We stood with our backs to the Venus on the Half Shell sign running across the upper part of the cabin wall and waited. After a little while the small sportster's hatch swung out. We squinted at it through Venus' dazzling white sunless daylight and waited.

A head popped up. Big head with a mane of white hair and pink cheeks and some loose extra chins and a strong jaw and a small red flower of a mouth. Below the head was expensive sports clothing. Very expensive. All suede and linen and the latest hunting styles you see in the catalogues. He looked like a million bucks worth of something out of a Spaceman's magazine. He snapped his fingers and said, "Boy! Our bags."

Harry looked at me again. I looked at Harry. I placed the flat of my hand against the small of his back and pushed. He went stumbling across the mud toward the sportster spaceship. When he got there he managed to say, "I'll take your bags, sir."

"I'll set up your tent, sir," I said.

"Tent?" the man in the sportster repeated. "Your classified ad in Spaceman's didn't say anything about a tent."

"That's Venus on the Half Shell," I said. "Outdoor living. Venus as Venus is to the natives. But it's perfectly safe, sir.

"We have a stockade, as you can see."

"I don't know about any tent or roughing it," the sportsman boomed.

"Well," I said.

"Game running good?" he asked.

"The best," I said. "A blind man could bag the legal limit of roupas and konees and jukets and ferzes in an afternoon."

"Better hope it takes longer'n that, son," the sportsman boomed again. "Didn't come all the way to Venus for an afternoon's walk in the woods."

"Walk in the woods," I said, nudging Harry who had come back staggering under the weight of several suitcases. "Walk in the woods."

"Yes?" the sportsman said.

"What I mean is, there's man-sized hunting around here. Really man-sized, sir."

"Daughter's with me," he said, wet-blanketing whatever sales pitch I might have made. "Hope we haven't made a mistake. Could have gone on to Venus Joe's. I know Venus Joe's. But I liked your ad in Spaceman's. I always go by ads in Spaceman's. Know why?"

"No," I said, shaking my head.

"I'm Jason Woods Stevenson," he said, swinging his two-hundred pounds of hard sportsman muscle down the hatch and walking athletically across the swamp toward me.

"Jason Woods Stevenson," I said, then suddenly ran forward to pump his hand vigorously. Jason Woods Stevenson! If he liked it here at Venus on the Half Shell, Harry and I had it made. Because Jason Woods Stevenson was the outdoor editor of Spaceman's magazine—and Sportsmen all over the solar system waited breathlessly each month for him to pontificate on some new out-of-the-way sportsman's paradise. If he passed on Venus on the Half Shell, we'd be swamped with business.

"Don't see any native trackers around," Jason W. Stevenson said after shaking my hand with a grip that almost broke the finger bones. "Have them outside?"

"Well, the truth is—" I said.

"Is what?"

"The trackers went back to their tribe."

"Went back? What about your hunters? Are you boys the hunters too?"

I couldn't tell him about Talbot Kramer walking out on us. If I told him that, I knew he would climb right back into his sportster and head on to Venus Joe's. Venus Joe's which had started with fifty times the capital Harry and I had had, was doing well enough. But if Spaceman's magazine gave them a plug and said nothing about us, we really were through. I knew it and Harry coming back from the tent platform knew it and we didn't have to say it out loud.

"Yes," I told Mr. Stevenson. "We're the guides too."

"Experienced?"

"We know Venus as well as anyone," I said, which wasn't exactly a lie since no one, not even the Extra-terrestrial geographic Survey, had been able to draw an accurate map of Venus yet.

Mr. Stevenson seemed very doubtful. "Well, boys, I don't know. No hard feelings, you understand. If I was alone it might be different. But my daughter's here. She's not exactly a delicate item now, boys, but she's no big-game hunter, either. If it was a cabin instead of a tent and if you had bearers and trackers—"

"You can have our cabin!" Harry cried desperately.

"Well, I don't know, boys."

I gave Harry one of those desperate stares. Harry returned it to me, saying without words that he had no further ideas either. I could see our last chance—a favorable write-up in Spaceman's magazine—going up in smoke. Mr. Stevenson started back toward his sportster and said,

"I'll say I stopped here on the way to Venus Joe's, boys. I'll say the place looked—ah, primitive. How's that? Primitive, I'll say. For real outdoorsmen."

"Damning with faint praise," Harry whispered to me fiercely. "Gil, you've got to do something."

I nodded. My head was suddenly as empty of ideas as the space between galaxies is empty of stars. I followed Mr. Stevenson back to the sportster and watched him boost himself up toward the hatch athletically and lower his two-hundred pounds in with the grace of a cat. When his head had disappeared but before the hatch banged shut I said:

"Wompan."

The head re-appeared. "What did you say, boy?"

"I said, Wompan."

"Here? Wompan here?"

"Yes, sir. Positively."

"I never caught a Wompan," Mr. Stevenson said. "Only three men ever have."

"That's right," I said.

"If I could write it up for Spaceman's magazine—assuming I catch one—we'd increase our circulation half a million copies."

"You'll catch one," I promised.

Jason Woods Stevenson beamed on me. "Oh, to hell with Spaceman's. I want to catch one because I never have. I've caught everything on Earth that the law lets you catch, boys. I was up at Venus Joe's last year and took the legal limit of everything but Wompan. Never even saw a Wompan. Boys," he said, "you've got yourself a customer."

He came down again and strode quickly across the quadrangle toward the wood platform which would serve as the foundation of his tent, keeping it above the ooze and mud. He was whistling cheerfully and he smiled again, the grin bisecting his face from ear to ear. If he had anything on his mind besides Wompan—it was Wompan skin. Whatever Wompan skin looked like.

"Aren't you forgetting something, sir?" Harry said.

"I don't think so, boys. Am I?"

Harry nodded. "Your daughter?" he said.

Mr. Stevenson's jaw dropped a foot. "The girl!" he cried. "I almost forgot about her." He wasn't smiling now. "If her mother ever learned I took her to a place like this, with absolutely no civilized conveniences...."

"But with Wompan," I said.

He sighed. "Ginger!" he called. "You can come on out now, Ginger honey."

Harry and I waited for Ginger to make her appearance. After a decent interval she came gracefully out of the hatch. She was young and red-haired and pretty. She was built the way a girl ought to be built and she had a million dollar smile. The smile was for Harry Conger. Right away she liked Harry. She was nice enough to me in a spoiled little rich girl way, but Harry, was, as they say, her cup of tea. She went walking off with him toward the stockade to get her first lesson in Venusian fauna while Mr. Stevenson and I pitched their tent.

I was just as glad Ginger had decided Harry was for her, if either of us had to be. I had too much to think about. Such as Jason Woods Stevenson and Spaceman's magazine. Such as what a Wompan could or could not be expected to do when hunted. Such as our last chance to make good here on Venus. Let Harry have the lovelife, I'd try to keep Venus on the Half Shell solvent.

That night after supper Mr. Stevenson and Ginger turned in early in preparation for our first sally the next day. Harry gaped and gazed and wandered around the stockade, moonstruck.

"Hey, snap out it," I said.

"Lovely girl," he said.

"Lovely old man in charge of the outdoor section of Spaceman's magazine," I said.

"Got a smile could melt the night side of Pluto."

"Wompan," I said. "Remember?"

"You can handle it, Gil old boy."

"I don't know if both of us, working together as hard as we ever worked in our lives, can handle it. But we have to try. We have to be on our toes, Harry. Are you with me?"

"Did you see how Ginger's whole face lights up when she smiles?"

"Harry," I pleaded. "We have a book inside. It isn't much, but it tells everything anybody knows about a Wompan. What they do. How they kill people. How to capture them, if they can be captured. Harry, we're no hunters. Since Wompan is the solar system's most dangerous game, wouldn't you say that puts us at a slight disadvantage? Wouldn't you, Harry old boy?"

"She's really got a sense of humor too, Gil. For a rich kid, she's simple and unaffected and—"

"Let's go inside and look at that Wompan book."

"I'll be along in a while." He waved at air. He wasn't looking at me. He wasn't thinking about Wompans or even Venus on the Half Shell. He was six thousand parsecs away and still running. I sighed and went inside. I burned the midnight oil learning what there was to learn about Wompans.

In the morning it was raining. Harry didn't seem to care. He had that moonstruck grin on his face and I was sure the Stevensons, father and daughter, noticed it. They were too polite to say anything about it, though, and Ginger Stevenson did seem friendly toward Harry.

"Do we try it in the rain?" Jason Woods Stevenson asked me. He wore a poncho which covered him .30-.30 rifle and all. He looked like a small tent with a head on top, but it was practical. Ginger wore a transparent raincoat which showed her nice sports clothing and nicer figure. It wasn't practical, but Ginger was a girl.

"Yes, sir," I said. "We try it in the rain."

And off we marched to find ourselves a Wompan.

We tried it in the rain. We tried it in the dazzling white Venusian daylight. We tried at dawn and we tried at dusk. We tried every way it said to try in the book, but we didn't find any Wompan.

Twelve days went by that way. Mr. Stevenson had already told us his limit was fourteen days. I got glummer and glummer, but not Harry. If I asked Harry what a Wompan was, he probably would have shrugged and said it wasn't important. Harry was still moonstruck and the nicest part of it from Harry's point of view was this: Ginger was moonstruck too.

Mr. Stevenson, though, grew desperate. Not about Ginger and Harry—he didn't seem to mind. About the Wompan. He wanted one. If you have ever known a sportsman after particular game, you will understand. He had to get a Wompan. I knew how he felt: we had to stay in business. No other animal would do and—although it wasn't our fault—I knew that if Mr. Stevenson didn't get himself a Wompan, Venus on the Half Shell would not be saved by a big, many-paged spread in Spaceman's magazine.

On the thirteenth day, Mr. Stevenson said, "Going tomorrow. Early in the morning. This is our last try, Gil."

"I know that, sir," I said.

"Before we start, thought I'd kick over the sportster's engine. Don't want last minute trouble, you know."

"Yes, sir," I said. He climbed inside the small spaceship and kicked her over. He climbed down, satisfied. The rocket engine had purred like a kitten.

And purred again—outside the stockade!

I jumped about a mile and came down feeling light as a feather. There couldn't be another sportster in the vicinity. Certainly not. I knew it and so did Mr. Stevenson, who had studied our little book about the Wompan.

"Wompan," he said, looking at me.

I nodded and we went for the rifles.

Ginger had a short-barreled light-kicking Mannlicher, Harry and I carried Springfields and Mr. Stevenson had a big Marlin Magnum .375. We had enough firepower to stop anything the Venusian swamps offered unless something—such as a Wompan—stopped us first.

"Let's go out there," Mr. Stevenson said, loading a clip of ammo into the Marlin's magazine and ramming a single shell into the breech.

I led the way, followed single file by Mr. Stevenson, Ginger and Harry in that order. We went less than a hundred yards and could no longer see the stockade behind us. Venusian swamp jungle was like that. It was strangely quiet, though. We noticed that at once—the usual small jungle noises were still, as if waiting, watching....

"The Wompan," I whispered. "He's here, sir."

"How can you be sure?"

"Listen...."

"You mean the quiet?"

"The animals know he's here. Instinctively, they fear him. They won't make a sound because if they do, he'll have them. He can mime the sound of any life form and when he does that, he has them."

"He has them how?" Mr. Stevenson asked in a tight, anxious whisper.

"By pretending to be one of them and killing them when they don't expect it."

"I see. And we—"

"Keep on the lookout," I said. "And don't separate. As long as we stay together, sir, all four of us, we're safe."

We had come a couple of hundred yards from the stockade. Unless you knew the way back, though, it could have been a couple of hundred miles. Some of the bogs could be treacherous, too.

I went knee-deep in the muck and pulled my feet out. The mud made sucking sounds against the rubber of my boots. Something touched my shoulder and I whirled—but it was only Mr. Stevenson.

"Where are they?" he said.

Ginger and Harry were gone.

I swore. I called Harry every name in the book, but it didn't help. Hell, he had had ample time to be alone with Ginger. Of all the fool stunts—

"You'd better find them, Roberts, and find them now," Mr. Stevenson said, his voice flat and cold. "That's my little girl he has out there."

I nodded grimly and we went back along the trail a slow step at a time, trying to pierce the green twilight gloom on either side. The jungle was very quiet—deadly quiet. Wompan quiet. The animals told us soundlessly. The Wompan was nearby.

"Harry?" I called.

"Can you chance it?" Mr. Stevenson whispered.

"I've got to."

We went back slowly, at a crawl. We covered twenty yards. Thirty. There was nothing.

"Harry," I called. "Harry?"

Mr. Stevenson's hand gripped my shoulder. He pointed. "What's that out there?"

I looked where he had pointed. Creepers and lianas and thick fern-brakes obscured my view. I couldn't see a thing.

"Out there," he said again.

I could see perhaps five yards, no more. It was utterly silent. It was also hot and humid as it always is in the Venusian swamps. My khakis clung to me with sweat.

"I still can't see a thing," I said. He pointed a third time. I stared and saw nothing and was about to say so when something struck the side of my head just above the ear.

I staggered off into the fern-brake and sat down. I was groggy and I didn't know what had hit me. There still wasn't a sound in the jungle. When I brought my hand up to my ear and brought it away again, it was red and wet and glistening with blood. I turned around slowly, stiffly—

Jason Woods Stevenson stood there in the fern-brake. He looked gigantic. He lifted the big Marlin Magnum .375 over his head and brought it down, butt-first. I rolled over and away and the big rifle struck half a foot from my head. Several inches of the rifle were buried in the mud and I had time to stagger to my feet while Mr. Stevenson pulled it clear.

"What's the matter with you?" I roared. "What's the—"

He stood five feet from me. He swung the rifle around and pointed it at my chest.

There wasn't a sound—not a sound. It was like a nightmare....

I used my own rifle to knock his aside as it went off. The Marlin Magnum packs a kick and he stumbled back a step. I went after him and when he pointed his rifle at me again and looked as if he would squeeze the trigger I had no choice. I swung my own rifle like a club and brought it down with savage force on his shoulder.

There was a sound and the sound said his shoulder was broken. He merely scowled and brought his rifle up again, broken shoulder and all, and then I knew.

I shot him. I poured the whole clip into him and the rifle kept kicking back against my shoulder, the stock slapping my cheek, and I didn't want to think. It was not until the last bullet went whonking home that he fell. It was a sound that only a hunter or a killer knows—the whonk of lead into flesh at close range. It is a horrible sound when what you're shooting at is a man.

Was a man.

Or looked like a man.

Because, as he fell, Jason Woods Stevenson changed. The features melted, became indistinct. The limbs fell in on themselves. The body grew big and round—bloated and somehow obscene. In seconds what had been a man was a shapeless, quivering, dying mass of protoplasm. A Wompan.

Then Harry Conger screamed.

It was a scream of sudden awareness and fear. It was worse for Harry than it was for me. Harry was falling in love with Ginger, and now—

I went crashing through the fern-brake, seeking them. I shouted at the top of my lungs now. "Harry! Harry!"

I found them when it was almost too late. Harry was down on his back, a dazed look on his face. There was a smear of blood across his face from ear to mouth. There was a strange look in his eyes.

Ginger Stevenson stood over him with the short-barrelled Mannlicher. I shot six times with a new clip before she fell. Harry climbed to his feet and stormed at me, raging like a mad-man. "You killed her!" he cried. "You—"

Then I made him turn around. He saw what was there and what was there was not and had never been Ginger. He sobbed once and I led him back to the stockade.

"But I don't get it," he said later. I had given him three stiff drinks and they had helped some, but only a little. Harry needed time to think and time to forget. "What happened to the Stevensons? To Ginger?"

"There weren't any Stevensons. No Ginger. Don't you remember they came right after we heard the Wompan make like a swamp-buggy?"

"Yeah—"

"And when we got back there was no spaceship in the stockade, right?"

"Yeah—"

"It was the Wompan all along. There never was a Mr. Stevenson or his daughter."

"Yeah, but—"

"You're thinking the Wompan needs a model?"

"I guess so."

"It probably had one. The Stevensons last year at Venus Joe's. Isn't that what it said—as Mr. Stevenson?"

Harry agreed, but he didn't really care. He had fallen in love—with a girl who didn't exist.

"Buck up," I said.

"It's all right for you to say."

"No. Buck up, will you?"

"What for? What the hell for?"

"Because Venus on the Half Shell has a chance now. Because we killed a Wompan. It's only the fourth one ever and we're going to get a lot of free publicity—which ought to make this place."

"Yeah, that's true," Harry said. But his heart wasn't in it.

"We'll take pictures," I said. "We'll write it up and send in into Spaceman's magazine and we'll have it made. Sportsmen will be flocking here for a crack at Wompans. No wait. I have a better idea. We'll take pictures and write it up and you'll deliver our story in person to Spaceman's magazine on Earth."

"Me? I just want to be alone, Gil. I don't feel like going anywhere."

I smiled. "Yes, you do. You'll deliver the pictures and the story in person—to Spaceman's outdoor editor, who the Wompan saw at Venus Joe's last year. To Jason Woods Stevenson."

"Yeah," Harry said.

"And maybe you'll get to meet his daughter, Ginger."

"Yeah," Harry said again. But this time he was smiling.