It Hardly Seems Fair — Gordon R. Dickson

"Sunset." said Creighar, thickly, tossing the knife on the table between them. "You cut him loose."


Excerpt

He did, on a higher note. "You heard me? Cut him loose!"

Face calm above his triumph pounding heart, Frank rose; still without words, he picked up the knife and went out of the little camping shell. Outside, beyond the shell's own glow of yellow glow-tube illumination, the sun Alpha Celana was dropping under the horizon. Her orange rays struck full on the squat black forms of the forest's native trees ; and flooded through with a halloween color upon the table before him, the two camping shells behind, the clearing and the bluey huddled shapes of the natives. The 'Daddy' of the native group -- now a mottled shadow -- still lay where he had been tied, spread-eagled and belly-up in the clearing. He said nothing now, as Frank approached him with the knife, but looked up at the young human with his wide mouth half-open and the pointed teeth inside skinned free of the lips. But for all the exposure of his fangs, there was no impression of belligerence or fierceness to begot from him. He only looked stranded -- tied down there -- like a shark half-dead and helpless on some storm wrung beach.

Frank cut the ropes that bound his legs and arms to the pegs driven into the soft, grey earth.

"You can go now," he said. He hesitated, then held out a hand to the native. "Let me help you. How do you feel?"

"Sick, sick -- " moaned the Daddy, in his own tongue -- but he did not avail himself of the thin, human hand outstretched ; but rolled over, and over again, half-tumbling half-crawling toward the huddle of other natives, until he reached and was absorbed in the mass of their mutual shadow.