XIV: SEVENDAY EVENING
Long shadows fell across a device on a hill two kilometers from the river. The thing was a large firearm with a heavy barrel about three meters long. The barrel rested on wooden supporting and trailing pieces and projected from between two high wheels. Rasmussen lay with his fat right leg crushed and twisted under a wheel.
The old hunter shook an optical instrument at Betty Toal and me. We were wet from the usual daily thunderstorm, which had delayed our search for the killer of the Hog. "Blasted him!" Rasmussen groaned. "Take this cannon off me! Have waited hours. Why did you not come?"
I grasped two spokes and pushed with what little energy remained in my depleted body, but I could not tilt the ponderous firearm. I said, "Can you drive his tractor over here, Toal? You can tow the canner off."
"Not enough pain for you?" Rasmussen gasped. "Use a lever. Lift the wheel."
"Cut a pole," Toal said and drew a knife.
Rasmussen continued to rave. "Where is gratitude? I saved you! Could not kill him by spraying his head."
I said, "You almost blasted me. Yesterday, you left us out here."
"Did as the old books instruct," Rasmussen said. "Bracketed the Hog with two shells. Third round killed him! Forgot the recoil that time. Cannon broke my leg." The old man's brown face had turned a sickly, greenish white.
"Where did you get this canner, uh, cannon?" I said.
Rasmussen moaned, tried to sit up, and sank back on his elbows. "Is what you saw when grounding in the shuttle."
Toal brought a stout pole, and we piled rocks for a fulcrum. I pushed one end of the pole through the wheel spokes and under the axle.
Rasmussen said, "Maximum Eijkman had it built in secret. Could have shot the Hog weeks ago. Eijkman had dreams of changing our government into something strange. Himself as head."
Toal and I threw our weight on the lever. The wheel lifted. Rasmussen crawled sideways. We eased the cannon to the ground.
I said, "Galactic Government forbids private planets to make such weapons."
Rasmussen gasped, "Nonsense. Was required to protect us from native life.”