Hell's Gate

him up and divide him for supper, he wished to hell they would get on with it. But they continued to stare where he dangled from the first beast's mitt. When he could take it no longer, he released a horrendous scream and began flailing at the same time, remembering from his judo combat knowledge that a good scream will often frighten the opponent bad enough to throw him off balance, as well as having a therapeutic effect on the screamer.
        The gorilla holding him was not impressed by such tactics, however. Perhaps it knew judo too, he thought. It only snorted and batted at him with its free paw. The blow rattled his brains back and forth from side to side of his skull, left his teeth trembling in their sockets. He decided to just hang there and be an exhibit no matter how nerve-wracking that might be. It was safer.
        A few minutes later, tired of examining him, the gorilla dropped him. The ground came up hard, but it was a welcome relief from the scrutiny he had just undergone. He came to his knees, spat out a little blood that was leaking from the gums around half the teeth in his mouth, grabbed handfuls of rocks to pull himself erect. While he was going through that tedious process, the two heavies stood and watched, blinking huge eyelids and showing fat, wet tongues now and again. They looked like two boys watching a housefly crawl about after they had torn off its wings.
        Vic called them a string of foul names.
        They didn't react.
        As the world settled down and ceased the slightly nauseating wobble that had made the trees and rocks move around him in jerky circles, Salsbury looked for a way out of there. To his right, the path led down into the new valley. But he had a strong suspicion his brute friends had come that way, and he did not relish the opportunity to meet more of their kind. That left the path he had taken to get here. He could double back on it, perhaps leave it and pass the vacii search party coming up. He started back that way, walking backwards, smiling, trying to look nonchalant but not knowing what expression these creatures would take nonchalance for. The gorillas watched him stupidly, blinking their lids and yawning. When he was thirty feet away, he turned and ran.
        It looked good. They might have brute strength, but he was the one with the brains, the cleverness. He could outwit them every time now that he had gotten a head start. He was thinking all sorts of glorious thoughts like that when one of the monsters went leaping past him, covering three times the ground Salsbury could manage in a single stride. Fifty feet along the path, it stopped and turned to face him, grinning so that its broad yellow teeth gleamed in the thin moonlight.
        Salsbury turned and started back, came face to face with the second beast. It was grinning too.
        He turned, jumped from the path into the ferns and rocks, ran a short distance and stopped to look back. The first gorilla was loping easily after him.
        He felt like a mouse in cats' territory.
        Desperately, he looked around for something to use as a weapon, wishing he had managed to recover his gun from the clearing before making his break. The bombs in the rucksack were useless, because he couldn't detonate them, and because a nuclear explosion would mean his death as well as theirs. A fist fight was out of the question. One blow to the jaw or chest of those monstrosities, and he would shatter every bone in his hand. He bent over and found some two and three pound rocks. He hefted one in each hand, threw them. One bounced off the beast's chest, the other off its shoulder.
        It came on, oblivious of his attack.
        He tossed six other stones before it was on top of him. It batted his last missile out of his hands, struck a blow alongside his head that sent him sprawling.
        Victor started to get up, doggedly plotting more resistance, clutching at rocks to throw even as he used his hands to support himself. But before he was even properly on his feet, the jumbo slapped him again with a back of the hand blow across the seat of his pants and sent him crashing forward onto the ground again.
        He laid still for a while, then got his feet under him, stood, feeling like a man three hundred and ten years old, turned in time to collect another paw in the chest that sent him down hard. Furious, he grabbed a rock, rolled, and threw it with all his strength. It bounced off