Perhaps he needed a
vacation, a trip to the mountains, a change of scenery. He continued to reason with himself, meanwhile occupying himself with
various tasks about the house. At length, after a careful scrutiny of
every dark corner, he retreated to his room, bolted the door, looked
under the bed and made a detailed inspection of the mesh screen on his
window. It appeared quite substantial--certainly no cat could ever
penetrate it. Soothed by weariness and the elaborate precautions which he had
observed, he at last slid into bed and switched off the light. He was asleep within a half hour and for some time slept soundly. Then
he began to dream. It appeared that he was hiding somewhere when a
shadowy shape of evil, an indefinable manifestation of overpowering
hate, appeared suddenly on the scene and immediately sought out his
hiding place, glaring down at him with baleful yellow eyes. He awoke
with a scream, sat up in bed, half turned toward the window--and found
himself staring straight into the luminous yellow eyes of the cat. The beast did not offer to move. It squatted on the window ledge and
fixed its eyes on his own with unmoving intensity. For a long moment he
sat paralyzed with horror. The beast hated him; it had waited until
he was asleep, helpless, and only the wire screen had kept it from the
room. He shuddered when he thought what might have happened. At length he managed to switch on the light, but the cat did not move
an inch. It crouched motionless on the sill outside, watching him with
cold hate in its tawny eyes. He began to dress, slowly, keeping one eye on the cat. Further sleep
would be impossible. When he had dressed, slipped on a warm jacket and regained full
possession of his faculties, his courage began to assert itself. He
searched the room for a weapon, finally selecting a knotty laurel-wood
cane. The cat remained on the window ledge, watching his every move. Taking a firm grip on the cane, he slid the bolt and stepped into the
outer hall. It did not appear at all fantastic to him that he should
dress in the middle of the night, arm himself, and creep outside to
destroy a cat. He unlatched the rear door, slipped quickly outside, and made a run for
his bedroom window. The cat leaped off the sill an instant ahead of his arrival, dodged the
downward sweep of the cane and ran toward the open field in the rear of
the house. He cursed, regained his balance and whirled after it. A low mist had risen over the meadow; it was like a curtain of
grey-white shadow in the moonlight. Momentarily he lost sight of the
beast; then he glimpsed it again, bellying its way slowly through the
wet grass. It crawled with a queer dragging of its hindquarters, as if
it had been injured, and frequently it looked back. He took a firmer grip on the cane and rushed forward with a feeling of
exultation. His first swing of the cane must have struck it after all! He would catch it now! He would be upon it in an instant! The sneaking,
murderous black devil--he'd pound it to a pulp! Ah, now he had it! He swung the heavy cane with all his strength. The cat leaped nimbly
aside, ran a few yards, then stopped and turned its head, fixing its
eerie yellow eyes on him. The sweep of his arm had caused him to lose his balance and now as he
lunged in pursuit again he lost his footing entirely; his feet shot
sideways on the slippery grass and he crashed to the ground. He was up in an instant, cursing, frantic with rage, and sprang toward
the motionless cat. The animal waited until he was almost upon it, then quickly dodged
aside and ran in another direction. He was out of breath now, but it never occurred to him to abandon the
chase. He rushed after the hated black beast which ran ever ahead of
him in the swirling mist, now scarcely crawling, now darting out of
reach with the suddenness of a whiplash, now pausing and turning its
flat head to make sure he was following behind. He leaped forward like a madman, striking out savagely with the
cane, sliding to his hands and knees, a wild frenzied figure in the
moonlight. He was possessed by the one idea; he had lost all sense of
proportion, of direction; he did not even know into which part of the
meadow he had ventured. Suddenly the cat made a long leap. It landed heavily and appeared to go
limp. It looked back but did not move as he lunged forward. Without warning the ground vanished beneath his feet and he plunged
downward like a stone. Even as he fell he understood the trap to which
he had been led. With demoniac cunning, the cat had caused him to run
directly over the shaft of a deep abandoned well which was located in
the rear unused portion of the meadow. He screamed once before the black water closed over his head, sending
him straight down a pool of freezing darkness. He kicked and clawed and
at last came to the surface, but already the icy water was working its
paralysis in him. He stared up and screamed again, but the steep walls of the well
smothered his cry; it was little more than a weak moan above the
surface of the ground. As his wildly clutching fingers scraped in vain against the smooth
moss-slick sides of the well, he looked up with a last desperate hope
and there silhouetted above him, like a fiend from hell, was the
remorseless shape of the cat, gazing steadily downward with a glow of
triumph in its yellow eyes. He started to scream again, but his fingers lost their frail grip on
the mossy stones and he sank out of sight beneath the surface of green
scum. THE DUMP


Pulling aside the dingy kitchen curtain, she looked out. "It's starting
again," she said tensely. To the north, a scant mile from the house, a great greasy billow of
black smoke rolled skyward. Squealing sea gulls flapped over huge
mounds of smouldering trash. Although she couldn't see them from the
window, the woman knew that the reeking wasteland literally crawled
with an army of voracious rats. Somehow, the omniscient, all-encompassing State had overlooked the
dump. In its dynamic zeal to provide prefabs, food capsules and
carefully edited newstapes for all citizens, the State may have
bypassed the dump temporarily. There was a rumor to the effect, however, that the wasteland had
been deliberately preserved as a sort of monstrous museum area, a
"See-how-things-used-to-be" tourist attraction. In any event, in the very midst of marvels of efficiency, exactitude
and unending impersonal energy, there it remained, a sour, rat-sluiced
tract carefully shunned by the average State citizen. If people still existed in the dump itself, or even in its immediate
environs, it was generally conceded that it was their own fault. The
State always stood ready to house and feed the indigent. Broken springs groaned as the man arose from a cot. He shook his head. "Wish you'd relax, Lucy. Little smoke ain't hurtin' you none." She turned, eyes bright with anger. "_Little smoke!_" she repeated. "Smoke that seeps right through the shingles into the house!