Near noon, four miles from their former grazing-ground, there were
mountain-peaks all around them. Some were snow-capped, and there were
vistas of illimitable distance everywhere. It was very beautiful
indeed, but Antonio did not notice; Salazar came upon buzzards again.
He chased them with loud barkings from the meal they reluctantly
shared with blow-flies and ants. This time it wasn't a rabbit; it
was a coyote. It had been killed and most painstakingly taken apart
to provide at a glance all significant information about the genus
_canis_, species _latrans_, in the person of an adult male coyote. It
was a most enlightening exhibit; it proved conclusively that there was
a third type of animal, structurally different from both mountain-lions
and rabbits, which had the same general type of nervous system, with a
mass of nerve-tissue in one large mass in a skull, which nerve-tissue
contained the same high percentage of the desired hormone as the
previous specimens. Had it been recorded by a tiny colored flame in the
hidden ship--the flame was now being much admired by small red bugs
and tiny spiders--it would have been proof that the Qul-En would find
ample supplies on Earth of the complex hormone on which the welfare of
their race now depended. Some members of the Qul-En race, indeed, would
have looked no farther. But sampling which involved only three separate
species and gave no proof of their frequency was not quite enough;
the being in the synthetic mountain-lion was off in search of further
evidence.
Antonio was hardly equipped to guess at anything of this sort. Salazar
led him to the coyote carcass; it had been neatly halved down the
breast-bone. One-half the carcass had been left intact; the other half
was completely anatomized, and the brain had been beautifully dissected
and spread out for measurement. Antonio realized that intelligence had
been at work. But--again--he saw only the pad-tracks of a mountain
lion, and he was literally paralyzed by horror.
Antonio was scared enough to be galvanized into unbelievable energy. He
would have fled gibbering to Ensenada Springs, some forty miles as the
crow flies, but to flee would be doom itself. The devils who did this
sort of work liked--he knew--to spring upon a man alone. But they can
be fooled.
The Qul-En in the artificial mountain-lion was elated. To the last
quivering appendage on the least small tentacle of its body, the pilot
of the facsimile animal was satisfied. It had found good evidence that
the desired nervous system and concentration of the desired hormone
in a single mass of nerve-tissue was normal on this planet! The vast
majority of animals should have it. Even the local civilized race might
have skulls with brains in them, and, from the cities observed from the
stratosphere, that race might be the most numerous fair-sized animal on
the planet!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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