The Lovers   ::   Фармер Филип Хосе

Pornsen, mumbling with burned lips, took a few steps forward, his hands held out at chest level and rotating as he felt for Hal. Hal stepped to one side. He was thinking furiously. There was only one course of action. That was to get Jeannette and make a run for it. His first thought to get a wog to take Pornsen to the ship was discarded. Pornsen would have to be in agony for a while. Hal needed every second of time he could get, and to try to ease the gapt's pain quickly would be treachery to Jeannette – not to mention himself.

Pornsen had been walking slowly forward, exploring the air with his hands, shuffling his feet across the grass so he wouldn't stumble over an obstacle. Presently, his foot came into contact with the bones of the native. He halted, and he stopped to feel. When he closed his hands around the ribs and pelvis, he froze. For several seconds, he kept his stance, then he began feeling the length of the skeleton. His fingers touched the skull, moved around it, tested the fragments of flesh clinging to it.

Abruptly, seemingly terrified, perhaps realizing that whatever had stripped the wog of flesh might be close and that he was helpless, he straightened up and ran headlong. A choking scream came from him as he sped across the glade. The high-pitched ululation ended abruptly. He had rammed into a tree trunk and fallen on his back.

Before he could rise, he was overwhelmed by a wheezing and clicking horde of mushroom-white bodies.

Hal did not think of the fact that he was not behaving rationally. Instead, giving a cry, he ran toward the ants. Halfway across the glade, Hal saw them disappear into the shadows, but not so far that he could not discern their massed whiteness.

Reaching Pornsen, Hal sank down to one knee and examined him.

In those few moments, the man's clothing had been torn to shreds and his flesh bitten in many places.

His eyes stared straight upward; his jugular vein had been severed.

Hal, moaning, rose and walked swiftly from the grove. Behind him was a rustling and wheezing as the ants surged forward from the protection of the trees. Hal did not look back.

And, when he stepped under the light of the street-lamp, the pressure inside him found vent. Tears ran down his cheeks. His shoulders shook with sobs. He staggered like a drunk. His intestines felt as if they were being pulled apart.

He did not know if it was grief or if it was hate at last finding expression because the cause of his hate could no longer retaliate against him. Perhaps, it was both grief and hate. Whatever it was, it was working out of his body like a poison; his body was expelling it.