"Remember, you idiot," Jerry snapped at himself, "this is a species. It is no beast rational mind you are dealing with, but an animal mind. That means that the cub's apparent protocol is instinctive, and not a matter of etiquette. And an instinct has a reason behind it, doesn't it? Only man can skip over protocol. You have to do something before the cub feels that it can do it—and whatever it is you're not doing, it's driving the cub to distraction. You'd better go for a second helping of squirrel, and fast, or you're going to have your kid in a mental institution!"
Not exactly relishing completing the meal, Jerry stepped back to the furry little corpse on the rock, and only as he came near enough to bite into it was he suddenly aware of another odor mingling with that of the sulphur fumes. Unbelieving, he stared at the spreading pool of putrescence that ringed the remains of his cub's prey. He stared, silent and amazed, as flesh and bone crumbled and dissolved there on the ground, until there was nothing there but the noisome liquid and a few tiny teeth.
"Incredible!" thought Jerry. "To decompose so damned fast! But it certainly explains why Junior brought me that thing still alive and kicking. It didn't last more than a few minutes after it died—Ugh!"
The sickly retch boiled out from his stomach with a painful expansion, and he scented the same foul odor on his breath as arose from the liquid that now lay drying in the burning sunlight.
"The damn thing's going rotten inside me!" he said to himself, feeling the first wave of illness shake him from horn to tail-tip.
His flesh, beneath its bronze-colored fur, felt suddenly cold and greasy. Jerry knew that feeling well, from one summer when he'd eaten a sandwich with mayonnaise that had lain too long outside the refrigerator. It was the onset of ptomaine. He and the cub could be dead, in a very ugly manner, within less time than he had to await his next Contact. Or was it less time? It was subjective, wasn't it? Maybe this period would be over more quickly than the last one. Or maybe more slowly....
Jerry turned to look at the cub. Its eyes were glazing. It was breathing in gasps through its open mouth, staggering as it tried to remain on its feet.
"We're poisoned," Jerry groaned. "And it's not on purpose. That cub didn't trot here with that squirrel just to knock off its old man! There's something else has to be done, something I've overlooked. And my stupidity is killing us."
Weakly, almost automatically, Jerry's conscious mind did the only thing possible under the circumstances. Cliche of old Peters or not, "When in doubt, black out" was the only solution. Jerry swiftly relinquished his grip on the controls, and let the lion-thing take over its own destiny.