Hell's Gate

bowl of the slop except Salsbury who only wished they would remove his first uneaten portion. Some of the women smiled toothy yellow smiles, and he suspected they were being complimented on their culinary finesse. “The firm-breasted half-woman who had gingerly offered him a bowl of gruel took it away, looking at him strangely, as if she could not fathom why an inferior creature like him would not go for civilized food.
        When everyone was finished, and when Salsbury had become a rather accepted phenomena, the other half-man who had been with Keeper produced the gas pellet pistol and held it aloft for the assembly to inspect. There were a number of startled grunts, and Victor received several stares of re-evaluation. The only place they would have seen something that well machined would have been down the mountainside in the vacii settlement. Surely the vacii had come among them-though perhaps the aliens would not have bothered experimenting on such a raggedy, moronic group as this-and would have left reminders of their superiority by demonstrating their weaponry a few times.
        “Put that down!” Salsbury shouted.
        They looked at him stupidly.
        “You'll kill each other!” That was not really such a bad prospect, but they might also kill him in the process.
        The white-haired half-man took the gun from the other's paw and turned it over and over, fascinated with the knobs, lines of design. He was intelligent enough to see just how it was meant to be held, though his own fingers were too large to grasp it as delicately as was intended. His fingers brushed the trigger, fired a pellet into the chest of the half-man who had brought the gun into the caves in the first place.
        The creature's chest seemed to expand as if it were a balloon being blown up by a giant with fantastic lung capacity. Then it burst outward, showering gore on those seated nearby. The half-man looked down curiously at its ruined body, grunted something the others of its kind didn't even seem to understand, turned and stared at Salsbury with swiftly glazing eyes, then slumped forward- dead.
        The chief dropped the gun, hooting insanely, and danced to his feet, much more agile than he appeared. He was in a fury, waving his arms about, chanting over the fallen body. When he was finished, the corpse had not moved even a fraction of an inch as all of them seemed to expect it might. Keeper reached out and rolled his friend over. Together the half-men inspected the gaping hole that revealed their ex-comrade's innards. Then, almost as one organism, they turned to stare at Salsbury where he sat on the ledge.
        Salsbury felt like stone.
        He knew they were thinking of breaking him down into gravel any moment now.
        He stood, nervously watching them.
        They were a tableau, frozen on different ends of the room. In their eyes, Salsbury was the bad guy, they were the good guys. After all, he was the odd fellow. He was the one who had brought evil magic into their snug little haven when they had been asleep dreaming half-men dreams of half-women. His gun, his evil magic, had killed their buddy. It made no difference to them that their own stupidity was involved.
        Before any of them could move, Salsbury jumped from the ledge, hit the cave floor running, and burst through the archway into the room from which the half-women had brought the soup earlier.
        The women were still there, squatted about the room chittering to one another, their fingers messy with gruel, the hair around their mouths matted with revolting streaks of wet food. When Salsbury broke in on them, the four of them screamed and darted into a corner, huddling together, their eyes wide under the deep shelves of their heavy foreheads. He spotted another tunnel leading away from this chamber and started across the room toward it. He would have to pass within a few feet of the women, and he didn't like to think what would happen if one of them built up enough courage to swat at him. Baring his teeth and building his voice into a stentorian roar, he shouted: “Aarrrggghhh!” at the top of his lungs.
        The half-women screamed and tried to crawl on top of one another. While they were thus engaged, trying to press farther into the corner, he went through the archway into the new tunnel and ran as fast as his weary legs would carry him. It would not be fast enough, he knew, for he could remember with what ease