Lost and found_ a novel - Alan Dean Foster [8]
Should’ve hung on to the flashlight, he railed at himself.
The creature did, however, respond to this show of physical resistance. The other arm flap swung around and landed hard against the side of Walker’s head. It felt as if he’d been hit with a fifty-pound sack of wet oatmeal. A literal sucker punch, it dropped him immediately. Dazed and stunned, he sensed himself being picked up and carried.
The other pair of aliens, including the one he had initially strobed, were waiting by the side of their craft. It was not all that big, Walker reflected through the dull, pounding haze that had fogged his mind. No bigger than an eighteen-wheeler. On the way in, the individual into whose longwise eyes Walker had aimed his flashlight reached out to whack him solidly on the back of his skull, setting his head ringing. So much for the theoretical ethical superiority of star-spanning alien civilizations, he thought weakly.
Then he passed out.
When he regained consciousness, the first thing Walker saw was his tent sitting where he had set it up, on a slight rise beside the lake. He was lying on the gravel scree between tent and water. It was midmorning; the mountain air cool and fresh, the pollution-free alpine glow casting every gray boulder and contemplative cloud in sharp relief. The air smelled of pine, spruce, and water clear and clean enough to bottle. In a dark, stunted tree, a raucous Steller’s jay was arguing over a nut with a single-minded chipmunk. The rush of white water was a siren call in the distance, where the main feeder stream entered the lake on its far side.
Recollecting aliens, he sat up fast.
It was not a good idea. The action should have been preceded by reasoned thought and a preliminary check of his physical condition. Wincing, he felt gingerly of the side of his face where he had been smacked. It was still sore and probably bruised. Of aliens and alien craft there was no sign, not even depressions in the ground where their vehicle had rested.
Fruit juice would do nothing for his soreness, but it would slake his thirst. Making his way back to the tent, he fumbled with his supplies until he found one of the plastic bottles with the bright label. It was half full of orange liquid. He drained the contents, set the empty neatly aside for transporting down to a recycle bin in Bug Jump, and considered whether or not he had been dreaming. The tenderness in his face and head aside, it was hard to believe that he had imagined everything that had happened to him. It had gone on too long, involved too many elements, was remembered in too much detail to be nothing more than a figment of his imagination. Without straining, he was able to replay the entire encounter in his mind: everything from the initial sounds he had detected outside his tent, to the first alien sticking its god-awful face practically into his own, to his ultimately futile attempts at flight.
What might they have done to him while he had been unconscious? Suddenly frightened, he began checking his body underneath the jeans and shirt, looking for signs of disturbance, entry, exploration. Probing. Isn’t that what aliens were supposed to do? He’d never given the slightest credence to such stories when they had been reported in the media. Like the rest of his sensible, sophisticated friends, he’d laughed them off as fit for no more than the front pages of the shock rags that populated the checkout stands at local supermarkets.
Amazing, he thought,