ROUGH BEAST
The most dangerous, utterly vicious carnivorous animal theGalactics knew had escaped ... to Earth! Because contactwith Earth was forbidden, they knew little of Earth ... whichled to certain false conclusions. BY ROGER DEE
Illustrated by Barbereis
■ The field of the experimental Telethinkstation in the Florida Keyscaught the fleeing Morid’s attentionjust as its stolen Federation lifeboatplunged into the outer reaches ofnightside atmosphere.
The Morid reacted with the instantdecision of a harried wolfstumbling upon a dark cave that offersnot only sanctuary but a lostlamb for supper as well. With thepursuing Federation ship hot on itstaloned heels, the Morid zeroed onthe Telethink signals—fuzzy and incomprehensiblyalien to its viciouslydirect mentality, but indicating lifeand therefore food—and aimedstraight for their source.
The lifeboat crashed headlong inthe mangroves fringing Dutchman’sKey, perhaps ten miles west of theOversea Highway and less than twofrom the Telethink station. TheMorid emerged in snarling haste,anticipating the powerplant’s explosionby a matter of seconds, andvanished like a magenta-furred juggernautinto the moonlit riot of vegetationthat crowded back from themangroved strip of beach. The Moridconsidered it a success.
The lifeboat went up in a cataclysmicroar and flare of bluish lightthat brought Vann, the Telethinkoperator on duty, out of his goldberghelmet with a prickly conviction ofrunaway range missiles. It all butblinded and deafened Ellis, his partner,who was cruising with a portableTelethink in the station launchthrough a low-lying maze of islandsa quarter of a mile from Dutchman’sKey.
Their joint consternation was loston the Morid because both at themoment were outside its avid reach.The teeming welter of life onDutchman’s Key was not. The Moridheaded inland, sensing abundantquarry to satisfy the ravening hungerthat drove it and, that cravingsatisfied, to offer ample scope to itsjoy of killing.
The Morid’s escape left Xaxtol,Federation ship’s commander, in adilemma bordering upon the insoluble.
It would have been bad enough tolose so rare a specimen even on abarren world, but to have one sovoracious at large upon one soteeming—as the primitive Telethinksignals demonstrated—with previouslyunsuspected intelligence wasunthinkable.
This, at the outset, was Xaxtol’sproblem:
Forbidden by strictest Galactic injunction,he could not make planetfalland interfere with a previouslyunscouted primitive culture. Contrariwise,neither could civilizedethic condone his abandoning suchan unsuspecting culture to thebloody mercies of a Morid withoutevery effort to correct his blunder.
Hanging in stationary orbit in orderto keep a fixed relation to theMorid’s landing site, the Federationcommander debated earnestly withhis staff until a sudden quickening ofthe barbarous Telethink net madeaction imperative.
Two of the autochthons were isolatedon a small island with theMorid. Unwarned, they weredoomed.
So he grouped his staff about him—sitting,crouching, coiling or hovering,as individual necessity dema