Part 3

I remember now that I forced myself to stand. I remember that I walked for endless hours, searching but not finding the least sign of a crew, a ship, a life in which I was Executive Officer Philip Rogers. I remember I spoke one word over and over again as I walked, the word vanity, and I cried aloud to myself until I could think and walk and speak and cry no more. Then I fell to the ground and dug my way into a sleep of unconsciousness for I don't know how long. When I wakened, it was night, a night this time with the cool light of two moons casting a double shadow of my hand as I raised it for something that my eyes could see. I stood and walked again. I walked until the night began to fade and I was in a land of greens and warm forest shadows.

* * * * *

I have grown to recognize every sign of the animals. When they come, a desert remains in their path. I must find another oasis. But things grow rapidly here. A desert is replaced by a pasture for their grazing in not too many weeks, or it may be months. I no longer count. Kingsford was wrong, of course. This was not his personification of evil. Nor had his monster grown in his absence. They are the sole specie of this place. After a time you grow to recognize the difference, and I have never seen two the same size, or looking exactly alike. I learned to hide as I have learned to live on this planet. I live, but I wonder whether it can be called a life. I write about what happened, and I tell it to myself aloud. But I prepare no warning for others, for my every waking hour is devoted to the hope that no others will ever come. This is a planet which was never meant for man to discover. Of that, Captain Kingsford was indisputably right.

(_Here, the telling of the tale was interrupted. The time of hiding had come again. Philip Rogers retired to the place he had chosen in this forest and bound the clasps he had fashioned and listened for the wind to rise and the sounds that grew louder, and he thought, "This time. Perhaps this time. Yes, perhaps this time."_)

THE END