The Man on the Meteor by Ray Cummings

Within the cave the air seemed warmer than before, perhaps because I was flushed and tired from my exertion. The radiant light from the rocks was soft. Here all was quiet and peace.

At once I threw myself upon Nona's couch, stretching my limbs, head pillowed upon my crooked arm. For a time, as before she stood regarding me. There was in her gaze now no fear, but a curious softness. I sensed it. With sudden thought she smiled, and swam across the cave. She got a stone, hollowed out like a cup. She filled it at the stream and offered it to me. I drank gratefully.

Again I was conscious of hunger. The fungus-like food was unsatisfying. I made Nona understand, and she seemed distressed. I could see she wanted to feed me but had no other food.

Finally she motioned me to lie quiet. I watched her as she stretched herself prone on the ground near me. Her head was raised; she was looking keenly, carefully about the cave. Then she began swimming, slowly, stealthily, no more than a foot or two above the cave floor, circling about, up along the walls, back overhead following the line of the ceiling.

Once, when she was hovering over by the side wall, I saw her grow suddenly alert. I followed her steady gaze; and on a rock fifty feet from her I made out the outlines of something lying motionless. It looked like a lizard some three feet long, with white eyes standing out from its forehead. It was because of the eyes that I first saw it.

Nona was in midair. Then, like a wasp she darted at that thing on the rock.

The lizard-I shall call it that-saw her coming. It leaped, and sailed across the cave. I saw it that it had webbed membranes connecting its six outstretched legs.

Nona turned in the air after it, her slim body as sinuous as her waving hair itself. She was faster than the lizard, but again, on the opposite side of the cave, it eluded her.

Back and forth across the cave they went. Often the reptile would dash for one of the passageways but Nona with her greater intelligence, always anticipated it and was there to bar its way.

The lizard seemed jointed all over, and it could turn in the air with extraordinary swiftness. But not so swift as Nona. Once the reptile whirled back and forth on a sustained flight. Nona followed its every twist and turn as one bird follows another.

At last she had it in her arms, in midair at the center of the cave. Calling to me in triumph, she struggled with it, fighting her way down to the ground.

I started toward her, but her voice and gesture waved me away. The lizard was screaming-a shrill, hideous scream. But she had its back bent across her knee. Its spine broke with a crack. It lay still.

By one foreleg she held its quivering body up to me; she was laughing with happiness as she sought my applause.

We ate the meat of its tail and legs; and satiated, I lay somnolent on the robes and watched Nona moving about the cave. She extinguished the fire, and at last approached me timidly. I did not notice her. My eyes were half closed. I was vaguely planning my own hunting for food-wondering if there would be other reptiles larger, for me to capture.

A twitch at the coverings on which I was lying aroused me. Nona was pulling a robe out from under me for herself. I pushed it toward her.

I did not move. It was very soundless in the cave with only the murmuring of the stream. Nona curled up on her robe near me. Thus we lay silent; but I felt her shy gaze always upon me and suddenly I came back to complete wakefulness.

We stared wordlessly at each other until her gaze timidly dropped. With heart racing, I moved myself slowly toward her. I was afraid to frighten her; but she moved, not away, but to me. Abruptly my arms were around her.

Thus I found my habitable world and my mate-beyond which the legitimate needs of man do not go.

The days that followed were happy ones for us both. We lived in our cave and seldom left it. The securing of food, preparing it, eating it, and sleeping until we were hungry again-this was our life.

Animals, yet both of us with the latent intelligence of civilized human beings! Our spoken language came very fast. We seemed to be pent up with words, which once spoken were remembered almost without conscious effort. So it is with your Earth-children who are the despair of their parents because sometimes they do not talk until they are almost two years old. They have it stored up-and when they do give voice, their fluency is amazing.