he walked, rested, walked again. now and then he was troubled by a burst of violent sweating, followed by shivering fits until his clothes began to dry again. the big moon edged presently over the ridge above him, and in the first flood of its light the opposite slope of the valley took on the appearance of a fanciful sub-oceanic reef. the activity of the animal life about barney increased promptly. it was no darker now than an evening hour on earth, and his fellow occupants of the ecological base seemed well-adjusted to the strange shifts of day and night to which they had been consigned.
he pushed through a final thicket of shrubbery, and found himself at the edge of the lake. beyond the almost circular body of water, a towering wall of cliffs sealed the upper end of the valley. he had come almost a mile, and while a mile—a city mile, at least—wouldn't have meant much to barney chard at one time, he felt quite exhausted now. he sat down at the edge of the water, and, after a minute or two, bent forward and drank from it. it had the same cold, clear flavor as the water in the cabin.
the surface of the water was unquiet. soft-flying large insects of some kind were swarming about, stippling the nearby stretch of the lake with their touch, and there were frequent swift swirls as fish rose from beneath to take down the flyers. presently one of them broke clear into the air—a big fish, thick-bodied and shining, looking as long as barney's arm in the moonlight—and dropped back with a splash. barney grinned twistedly. the notes indicated dr. mcallen had taken some part in stocking the valley, and one could trust mcallen to see to it that the presence of his beloved game fish wasn't overlooked even in so outlandish a project.
he shifted position, became aware of the revolver in his pocket and brought it out. a wave of dull anger surged slowly through him again. what they did with trees and animals was their own business. but what they had done to a human being....
he scrambled suddenly to his feet, drew his arm back, and sent the gun flying far out over the lake. it spun through the moonlight, dipped, struck the surface with less of a splash than the fish had made, and was gone.
now why, barney asked himself in amazement, did i do that? he considered it a moment, and then, for the first time in over a year, felt a brief touch of something not far from elation.
he wasn't going to die here. no matter how politely the various invitations to do himself in had been extended by mcallen or the association, he was going to embarrass them by being alive and healthy when they came back to the valley four years from now. they wouldn't kill him then; they'd already shown they didn't have the guts to commit murder directly. they would have to take him back to earth.
and once he was there, it was going to be too bad for them. it didn't matter how closely they watched him; in the end he would find or make the opportunity to expose them, pull down the whole lousy, conceited crew, see them buried under the shambles an outraged world would make of the secret association....
