"No, I don't."
"Well, you do it, anyhow."
There seemed a line of shadow to the left of us, a shadow which extended well out into the gully. The ground dropped down in that area—a slope strewn with crags, broken with little crevices. Crouching low, I crept to the bow of the ship, to the left away from Jan; sank down, waited. There was no sound; evidently I had not been seen. I started again, picking my way down the slope.
A minute. I was well out into the gully now, ten feet or so down, so that I could not see the wrecked ship where Jan was crouching. From here the opposite cliff-wall showed dark and ragged. Occasionally it yawned with openings, like little cave-mouths. The place where the figures had been crouching should be visible from here. The broken, lower side of the little ridge behind which they had dropped was in view to me now. It was dark with shadow, but there seemed nothing there.
Slowly, cautiously, I crossed the gully. Two minutes since I had left Jan? I melted down beside a rock, almost at the edge of the cliff-wall. And then, out in the gully, far to the right, I heard the stone clatter as Jan threw it.
There was no answering arrow-shot this time.... One can be very incautious, usually at just the wrong moment. I recall that I stood up to see better, though I flattened myself against a boulder. And suddenly, close behind me, I was aware of a padding, thudding rhythmic sound on the rocks. I whirled. I had only a second's vision of a dark bounding animal shape coming at me. My sizzling little flash went under it as it rose in one of its bounding leaps.
I had no time to fire another shot. Frantically I pulled the trigger-lever, but the gun's voltage had not yet rebuilt to firing pressure. Futilely I flung the gun into the creature's face as it bore down upon me.
The impact of the dark oblong body knocked me backward so that I fell with it sprawling, snarling upon me. In the chaos of my mind there was only the dim realization of a heavy body as big as my own; spindly legs, like the legs of a huge dog. There seemed six or eight legs, scrambling on me.
Wildly I fought to heave it off. There was a face—a ring of glaring green eyes; fang-like jaws of a long pointed snout which opened, snarling with a gibbering, gruesome cry. I shoved my left forearm into the jaws as they came at my face. They closed upon my arm, ripping, tearing.