Rork! by Avram Davidson Page B

larger than large hares, and in shape were not very much unlike them, save for the batlike ears and stiff, erect tails. One of the leapers alone managed to make its escape, its great, terrified bounds covering at least five meters at a time. While other rips ravaged and worried their prey, another set off in pursuit, teeth bared, clods of earth flying from the sharp and non-retractable claws capable of the dreadful damage which gave the beast its name.
    “Hold control,” the SO said, abruptly, pressing the release toggle. Lomar hastily activated the instrument set on his side. Scarcely had he time to notice Harb seizing the weapon, when it snapped, releasing the tiny but telltale little burst of mist, and the rip — already dead — stumbled, whirled, and fell.
    “Not bad,” said the SO. “Return control.”
    Lomar looked back to see the rip pack tearing the body of its mate to bloody pieces. One of them raised a reddened snout and seemed to gaze back toward him with milky eyes. He shuddered.
    “Lemmings,” said Harb, his voice reflecting satisfaction.
    “Sir?”
    “Don’t you know the natural history of your own world, Lomar?
Lemmings.
An extinct mammal that lived in Iceland or Greenland … was it Scotland? … never mind, doesn’t matter. Lemmings; I’ve been trying to think of that name ever since I stepped into the skimmer. I thought that you’d be able to tell me something about them. Too bad. Well. The lemmings used to swarm now and then, just as the rips do. Something about their metabolism, or am I thinking of something else? Suddenly they’d increase in numbers, incredible, tremendous increase. And then they’d pour out, over-running the country until, according to the quaint old legends, they would reach the sea — ”
    “I bet that stopped them.”
    “If so, Lomar, you would lose your money. No, as a matter of fact — or fancy, as it may be — that did
not
stop them. They had swum across ponds and lakes and rivers and so they assumed — one would suppose — that the ocean was just another of the same. So, in they’d plunge, millions and millions of them,” Harb said, enthusiastically, “and swim until they drowned…. Oh, I suppose some of them must have gotten back to shore or else never went in the water at all, otherwise there would’ve been no more to carry on the species. But the rips, on the other hand — see them? Look. See? See? In-cred-ible.”
    Pack after pack passed beneath them as they skimmed southward. They ate the crybabies taking their diurnal sleep, they devoured the leapers as they fled, they consumed the slow and the harmless and they lapped up the ordinary carnivores of the North country with little more difficulty. The rips crunched nestlings and fledgings and jumped, again and again, after birds and daybats on the wing. Several times several of them lunged and tore at the shadow of the skimmer on the ground, and sprang toward the craft itself.
    A grunt of alarm escaped Lomar as the rips hurtled aloft, bared muzzles exposing bloody tushes, glazed and seemingly sightless eyes staring insanely. Harb gave a quick burble of amusement. “We’re ten feet up,” he said, “although it may not seem so. They can’t jump more than half that distance. Oho — Last Ridge up ahead. We’ll skim down and take a look at Upper Rorkland a bit. You’ll see something there!
    “And don’t let the fact that your testicles have probably retreated bother you … If I didn’t know that Starchy Manton watches over every gear, sprocket, diode and transducer in these vessels as if they were parts of his own tender flesh I wouldn’t risk my ass flying two feet over the nursery; certainly not over all the swarming rips in Creation;
hold
on!”
    The skimmer slid down the angle of the air. Ran Lomar held on tightly, opened his eyes wide. Scarlet-crimson and huge were the redwing leaves in the great valley of the rorks, but what held his attention — gripped it, would not let it go —