World of the Hunter — Key Ideas to Explore

Mulveen had come to Earth for a big-game thrill; it was up to Gilbert to provide it for him--even if he had to let himself be stalked!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy October 1956 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

"Gun, boy!" Mulveen cried.

The big saurian--a thirty-tonner, at least--came splashing and bellowing out of the swamp. Gilbert quickly brought up the archaic Earth rifle, ramming a shell into the breech with the bolt-action loader. With almost the same motion he thrust the big, capable weapon into Mulveen's waiting hands and the hunter brought it to his shoulder without a moment to spare.

Actually, it was an adapted old big-game rifle: the shells it fired were atomic. Standing his ground weaponless, Gilbert saw Mulveen's finger whiten on the trigger, saw the scale-hided saurian grow immensely before them, heard its surprisingly high piping challenge, then saw and heard in one quick flash of suspended time the roar and smoke of the big rifle and the sudden life-ending, sleek-scaled, column-legged death-rearing of the big saurian as it came upright, the piping a high death scream now, the small forelimbs tearing at air, the head with the very tiny hole between the eyes swaying as if drunk from side to side, the long, muscular, five-ton tail still thrashing in the swamp waters.

Then the saurian came down, crashing through the brakes. There was only a trickle of blood, but the bullet, like a Dum-Dum of three hundred years before, had exploded inside the monster's head, the minute atomic charge destroying everything within the thick bone walls of the skull but leaving skull and metal-tough skin intact.

Time flowed again. Mulveen returned the rifle to Gilbert and waded forward through the brackish water, his hipboots glistening.

"Beauty, isn't it?" Gilbert said with feigned professional enthusiasm Mulveen needed the enthusiasm: the big humanoid from the Sirian system had been a grumpy, fussy, dissatisfied hunter throughout the safari.

"Don't try and dun me for a tip," Mulveen snapped. "You get paid whatever the Earth company pays you." He was a big, bald man with a florid face, an amazing girth of shoulders, a barrel chest and almost pipe-stem legs which seemed barely able to support his weight.

He reached the saurian's five-foot-long head and walked around it, muttering to himself. It was a prize specimen: a faudi reptile from Epsilon Aurigae III, bred here on Earth in the huge, planet-wide game-farm. It was the sort of specimen a big-game hunter would give his proverbial eyeteeth to own, but Mulveen did not look happy. He merely said:

"So this is a faudi."

"Want me to prepare the skull, sir?" Gilbert asked. Gilbert was eighteen, one of the youngest guides in the game area known as Lewsanna. His father had been a guide for the hunters from the outworlds, and his father's father. His father had died tracking: it was a good, clean death and Gilbert's father had never known poverty. That was the most an Earthman could expect, Gilbert thought without bitterness. For civilization had left Earth behind. Earth was in the backwaters of galactic trade. Earth was a game-preserve, with the great beasts of five dozen worlds brought to it and bred here for the hunters. It figured, naturally: you couldn't deny it. The outworlds were new; they were built as twenty-fourth century worlds should be built. Earth had been a world of ancient cities and meaningless ancient traditions. Earth was the logical place for the game-farm. Earth, once the parent of all the galactic planets, reduced to a vacation spot for the very rich and the foolhardy....

"No," Mulveen said shortly. "Don't prepare the skull. I don't want the skull."

"Forget it, kid! I've hunted everywhere, wherever there's hunting left on the outworlds. When I grew jaded, they said come to Earth. Earth will be different, a hunter's paradise. You know what? It isn't different. It's the same."

"You wouldn't understand kid. Well, let's go back to camp."

"The trophy--" Gilbert began.

"Forget about the trophy, damnit!"

Gilbert followed Mulveen in silence to camp. The beaters and camp-boys had the evening meal prepared. The sun went down over the swamplands. Gilbert ate alone. He was a cut above the beaters and camp-boys, who had willingly surrendered their civilized birthright, but he was several cuts above the hunter from the Sirian System.

Mulveen drank heavily after dinner. Gilbert watched, not caring. Of course, that might make it dangerous when they hunted tomorrow: Mulveen's reflexes might be slower. Well, it had happened before.

"Boy!" Mulveen shouted, his voice thick with alcohol.

Gilbert trotted up obediently. "Sir?"

Mulveen smiled at him. "How would you like to earn five thousand credits?"