Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction January 1958. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
The World That Couldn't Be
By CLIFFORD D. SIMAK
Illustrated by GAUGHAN
Like every farmer on every planet, Duncan had to hunt downanything that damaged his crops—even though he was awarethis was—
he tracks went up one row and down another, and in those rows thevua plants had been sheared off an inch or two above the ground. Theraider had been methodical; it had not wandered about haphazardly, buthad done an efficient job of harvesting the first ten rows on the westside of the field. Then, having eaten its fill, it had angled off intothe bush—and that had not been long ago, for the soil still trickleddown into the great pug marks, sunk deep into the finely cultivatedloam.
Somewhere a sawmill bird was whirring through a log, and down in oneof the thorn-choked ravines, a choir of chatterers was clickingthrough a ghastly morning song. It was going to be a scorcher of aday. Already the smell of desiccated dust was rising from the groundand the glare of the newly risen sun was dancing off the bright leavesof the hula-trees, making it appear as if the bush were filled with amillion flashing mirrors.
Gavin Duncan hauled a red bandanna from his pocket and mopped hisface.
"No, mister," pleaded Zikkara, the native foreman of the farm. "Youcannot do it, mister. You do not hunt a Cytha."
"The hell I don't," said Duncan, but he spoke in English and not thenative tongue.
He stared out across the bush, a flat expanse of sun-cured grassinterspersed with thickets of hula-scrub and thorn and occasionalgroves of trees, criss-crossed by treacherous ravines and spotted withinfrequent waterholes.
It would be murderous out there, he told himself, but it shouldn'ttake too long. The beast probably would lay up shortly after itspre-dawn feeding and he'd overhaul it in an hour or two. But if hefailed to overhaul it, then he must keep on.
"Dangerous," Zikkara pointed out. "No one hunts the Cytha."
"I do," Duncan said, speaking now in the native language. "I huntanything that damages my crop. A few nights more of this and therewould be nothing left."
amming the bandanna back into his pocket, he tilted his hat loweracross his eyes against the sun.
"It might be a long chase, mister. It is the skun season now. If youwere caught out there...."
"Now listen," Duncan told it sharply. "Before I came, you'd feast oneday, then starve for days on end; but now you eat each day. And youlike the doctoring. Before, when you got sick, you died. Now you getsick, I doctor you, and you live. You like staying in one place,instead of wandering all around."
"Mister, we like all this," said Zikkara, "but we do not hu