BIG GAME

by Isaac Asimov

“I see by the papers,” I said, over my beer, “where the new time machine at Stanford has been sent forward in time two days with a white mouse inside. No ill effects.”

Jack Trent nodded gravely and said, “What they ought to do with one of those things is to go back a few million years and find out what happened to the dinosaurs.”

I had been watching Hornby at the next table for the last few minutes in a casual fashion, and the fellow looked up and caught my eye at that point. He was alone, and had a bottle—quarter empty—to himself. Maybe that’s why he spoke then.

Anyway, he grinned and said to Jack, “Too late, old fellow. I did that myself ten years ago and found out. The bigwigs say it was climatic changes. It wasn’t.” He raised his glass to us in a silent toast and tossed it off.

We looked at each other. Neither of us knew Hornby, except by sight, but Jack’s right eyelid flickered and his head motioned slightly. I grinned, and we moved over to that next table and ordered two more beers.

Jack looked at Hornby solemnly. “You invented a time machine, did you?”

“Long ago.” Hornby smiled amiably and filled his glass again. “Better than the ones those amateurs at Stanford rigged up. I’ve destroyed it, though. Lost interest.”

“Tell us about it. You say it wasn’t climate that knocked off the big lizards?”

“Why should it be?” He glanced quickly out of eye corners. “Climate didn’t annoy them for millions of years. Why should a sudden dry spell wipe them out so completely and finally, while other creatures lived on comfortably?” He tried to snap his fingers derisively, but didn’t succeed, and ended by muttering, “Not logical!”

“What did?” I asked.

Hornby hesitated doubtfully, and teetered his bottle. Then he said, “Same thing that knocked off the bison. Intelligent life!”

“Men from Mars?” I suggested. “It was a little too early for the inhabitants of Atlantis.”

Hornby grew truculent quite suddenly. He was more than half gone, I imagine. “I saw them, I tell you,” he said violently. “They were reptiles, and not large, either. They were four feet tall and bipeds. Why not? Those dinosaurs had millions of years to evolve. They crawled and climbed and flew and swam. They were all shapes, sizes, and varieties. Why shouldn’t one develop a brain—and kill off all the rest?”

I said, “No reason, except that no fossil saurian has ever been discovered with a brain-case capable of holding the gray matter of anything more than a kitten.” Jack nudged me—he wanted Hornby to rattle on—but I hate bull.

Hornby merely gave me a look of contempt. “You don’t find many fossils of intelligent animals. They don’t fall into mudholes, you know, as a general rule. Besides, it so happens they were pinheads, and what of it? How much of your brain do you use? Not a fifth, if that, and the rest is waste, or God knows what. Those reptiles had kitten brains, but they used it all.” Then he fired up, “And don’t ask why we don’t find traces of their cities or machines. I don’t think they built any. Their intelligence was of an entirely different order from ours. They tried to tell me what their life was like, but I couldn’t understand—except that their great amusement was the hunting of big game.”

“How did they try to tell you?” asked Jack. “Telepathy?”

“I think so. They had brains, I tell you. I just looked at them, and they looked at me, and then I knew. I knew lots of things. I didn’t hear or feel anything; I just knew. I can’t explain, really. Try it someday.” His eyes were brooding, fixed on his glass. “I wish I could have stayed longer. Might have learned more.” He shrugged.

“Why didn’t you?” I asked.

“It wasn’t safe,” he said. “I could tell that. I was a freak to them, remember, and they were curious about me. Not about my body, of course; that didn’t bother them. It was my brain.” He smiled crookedly at us. “It was so big, you know. They wondered what I could use it all for. They were going to dissect me to find out, so I didn’t stay.”

“How did you get away?”

“I wouldn’t have, if they hadn’t sighted a triceratops at that moment. They dropped everything and ran off with their little metal rods in their hands. Those were their weapons, you see. There’s your answer. Those brainy little reptiles killed saurians with all the enthusiasm of a big-game hunter bagging lions. They would rather knock off a tyrannosaurus than eat. Why not? Those huge beasts must have been magnificent prizes. All the rest, too, from the pterodactyl to the ichthyosaurus” (he couldn’t pronounce them very well, but we got his meaning), “none of them could stand up against the midget beasts that killed them for fun or glory. And they went fast, too. We killed off hundreds of millions of bison in thirty years, didn’t we?”

He tried to snap his fingers again. Then, with bitterness, “Climatic changes, hell! But who’d believe the truth?”

He fell silent, and Jack nudged him. “But say, old fellow, what killed off those little lizards? Why aren’t they still around, running things?”

Hornby looked up, and gazed at Jack fixedly, “I never went back to find out, but I know what happened. The only fun they got out of life was this big-game hunting. I told you I found that out when I looked in their eyes. So when they ran out of brontosauri and diplodoci, they turned to the very biggest: themselves! And they did just as good a job at that.” Truculently he added, “Why not? Aren’t men doing the same thing?”