The Survivors by Tom Godwin

lungs labor painfully. Hard and prolonged exertion would be impossible.
    It seemed unlikely that men could hunt and dare unicorn attacks at such an elevation but two hunting parties were ahead of him; one under the grim Craig and one under the reckless Schroeder, both parties stripped down to the youngest, strongest men among all the Rejects. He found Schroeder early one morning, leading his hunters toward a small band of woods goats. Two unicorns were grazing in between and the hunters were swinging downwind from them. Schroeder saw him coming and walked back a little way to meet him.
    “Welcome to our breathtaking land,” Schroeder greeted him. “How are things going with the rest of the hunting parties?”
    Schroeder was gaunt and there was weariness beneath his still lithe movements. His whiskers were an untamed sorrel bristling and across his cheekbone was the ugly scar of a half healed wound. Another gash was ripped in his arm and something had battered one ear. He reminded Lake of a battle-scarred, indomitable tomcat who would never, for as long as he lived, want to relinquish the joy of conflict and danger.
    “So far,” he answered, “you and Craig are the only parties to manage to tackle the plateau.”
    He asked about Schroeder’s luck and learned it had been much better than that of the others due to killing three unicorns by a method Schroeder had thought of.
    “Since the bowmen have to be to one side of the unicorns to kill them,” Schroeder said, “it only calls for a man to be the decoy and let the unicorns chase him between the hidden bowmen. If there’s no more than one or two unicorns and if the decoy doesn’t have to run very far and if the bowmen don’t miss it works well.”
    “Judging from your beat-up condition,” Lake said, “you must have been the decoy every time.”
    “Well—” Schroeder shrugged his shoulders. “It was my idea.”
    “I’ve been wondering about another way to get in shots at close range,” Lake said. “Take the skin of a woods goat, give it the original shape as near as possible, and a bowman inside it might be able to fake a grazing woods goat until he got the shot he wanted.
    “The unicorns might never suspect where the arrows came from,” he concluded. “And then, of course, they might.”
    “I’ll try it before the day is over, on those two unicorns over there,” Schroeder said. “At this elevation and in this gravity my own method is just a little bit rough on a man.”
    *
    *
    *
    Lake found Craig and his men several miles to the west, all of them gaunt and bearded as Schroeder had been.
    “We’ve had hell,” Craig said. “It seems that every time we spot a few woods goats there will be a dozen unicorns in between. If only we had rifles for the unicorns … ”
    Lake told him of the plan to hide under woods goats’ skins and of the decoy system used by Schroeder.
    “Maybe we won’t have to use Schroeder’s method,” he said. “We’ll see if the other works—I’ll give it the first try.”
    This he was not to do. Less than an hour later one of the men who helped dry the meat and carry it to the caves returned to report the camp stricken by a strange, sudden malady that was killing a hundred a day. Dr. Chiara, who had collapsed while driving himself on to care for the sick, was sure it was a deficiency disease. Anders was down with it, helpless, and Bemmon had assumed command; setting up daily work quotas for those still on their feet and refusing to heed Chiara’s requests concerning treatment of the disease.
    Lake made the trip back to the caves in a fraction of the length of time it had taken him to reach the plateau, walking until he was ready to drop and then pausing only for an hour or two of rest. He spotted Barber’s camp when coming down off the plateau and he swung to one side, to tell Barber to have a supply of the herbs sent to the caves at once. He reached the caves, to find half the camp in bed and the other half dragging