Sure enough, the Roller was lifting a sizable rock into the cup-shape. One of his tentacles moved the other lever up and down for a while, and then he turned the machine slightly, aiming it, and the lever with the stone flew up and forward.
The stone curved several yards over Carson’s head, so far away that he didn’t have to duck, but he judged the distance it had travelled, and whistled softly. He couldn’t throw a rock that weight more than half that distance. And even retreating to the rear of his domain wouldn’t put him out of range of that machine if the Roller pushed it forward to the barrier.
Another rock whizzed over, not quite so far away this time.
Moving from side to side along the barrier, so the catapult couldn’t bracket him, he hurled a dozen rocks at it. But that wasn’t going to be any good, he saw. They had to be light rocks, or he couldn’t throw them that far. If they hit the framework, they bounced off harmlessly. The Roller had no difficulty, at that distance, in moving aside from those that came near it.
Besides, his arm was tiring badly. He ached all over.
He stumbled to the rear of the arena. Even that wasn’t any good; the rocks reached back there, too, only there were longer intervals between them, as though it took longer to wind up the mechanism, whatever it was, of the catapult.
Wearily he dragged himself back to the barrier again. Several times he fell and could barely rise to his feet to go on. He was, he knew, near the limit of his endurance. Yet he didn’t dare stop moving now, until and unless he could put that catapult out of action. If he fell asleep, he’d never wake up.
One of the stones from it gave him the glimmer of an idea. It hit one of the piles of stones he’d gathered near the barrier to use as ammunition and struck sparks.
Sparks! Fire! Primitive man had made fire by striking sparks, and with some of those dry crumbly bushes as tinder…
A bush of that type grew near him. He uprooted it, took it over to the pile of stones, then patiently hit one stone against another until a spark touched the punklike wood of the bush. It went up in flames so fast that it singed his eyebrows and was burned to an ash within seconds.