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the other end
about his right wrist. At least, if he threw his harpoon across the barrier,
he’d be able to pull it back if he missed.
    He tried to stand up, to see what the Roller was doing, and
found he couldn’t get to his feet. On the third try, he got as far as his knees
and then fell flat again.
    ‘I’ve got to sleep,’ he thought. ‘If a showdown came now,
I’d be helpless. He could come up here and kill me, if he knew. I’ve got to
regain some strength.’
    Slowly, painfully, he crawled back from the barrier.
    The jar of something thudding against the sand near him
wakened him from a confused and horrible dream to a more confused and horrible
reality, and he opened his eyes again to blue radiance over blue sand.
    How long had he slept? A minute? A day?
    Another stone thudded nearer and threw sand on him. He got
his arms under him and sat up. He turned round and saw the Roller twenty yards
away, at the barrier.
    It rolled off hastily as he sat up, not stopping until it
was as far away as it could get.
    He’d fallen asleep too soon, he realized, while he was still
in range of the Roller’s throwing. Seeing him lying motionless, it had dared
come up to the barrier. Luckily, it didn’t realize how weak he was, or it could
have stayed there and kept on throwing stones.
    He started crawling again, this time forcing himself to keep
going until he was as far as he could go, until the opaque wall of the arena’s
outer shell was only a yard away.
    Then things slipped away again....
    When he awoke, nothing about him was changed, but this time
he knew that he had slept a long while. The first thing he became aware of was the
inside of his mouth; it was dry, caked. His tongue was swollen.
    Something was wrong, he knew, as he returned slowly to full
awareness. He felt less tired, the stage of utter exhaustion had passed. But
there was pain, agonizing pain. It wasn’t until he tried to move that he knew
that it came from his leg.
    He raised his head and looked down at it. It was swollen
below the knee, and the swelling showed even half-way up his thigh. The plant
tendrils he had tied round the protective pad of leaves now cut deeply into his
flesh.
    To get his knife under that imbedded lashing would have been
impossible. Fortunately, the final knot was over the shin bone where the vine
cut in less deeply than elsewhere. He was able, after an effort, to untie the
knot.
    A look under the pad of leaves showed him the worst:
infection and blood poisoning. Without drugs, without even water, there wasn’t
a thing he could do about it, except die when the poison spread through
his system.
    He knew it was hopeless, then, and that he’d lost, and with
him, humanity. When he died here, out there in the universe he knew, all his
friends, everybody, would die too. Earth and the colonized planets would become
the home of the red, rolling, alien Outsiders.
    It was that thought which gave him courage to start
crawling, almost blindly, towards the barrier again, pulling himself along by
his arms and hands.
    There was a chance in a million that he’d have strength left
when he got there to throw his harpoon-spear just once, and with deadly
effect, if the Roller would come up to the barrier, or if the barrier was gone.
    It took him years, it seemed, to get there. The barrier
wasn’t gone. It was as impassable as when he’d first felt it.
    The Roller wasn’t at the barrier. By raising himself up on
his elbows, he could see it at the back of its part of the arena, working on a
wooden framework that was a half-completed duplicate of the catapult he’d
destroyed.
    It was moving slowly now. Undoubtedly it had weakened, too.
    Carson doubted that it would ever need that second catapult.
He’d be dead, he thought, before it was finished.
     
     
    ***
     
    His mind must have slipped for a moment, for he found
himself beating his fists against the barrier in futile rage, and made himself
stop. He closed his eyes, tried to make himself