The second time Jong hears the horn, he is running to help one of his companions on the beach. The sound is louder than before so it seems that it is real. On the other hand, Jong remembers where he has heard it before. On a frontier planet, mounted huntsmen pursued a wounded, weeping animal and their leader blew just such a call from a bugle so how can Jong be hearing it again on another planet? The islands have no large animals to be hunted. Four male natives have come ashore to check that the breeding ground is in order but they are in front of Jong killing Mons Rainart, not beyond the cliffs where the sound seems to come from. Is the hearing of the horn how Jong's prescience operates, warning him of danger? It sounded faint when the natives were approaching the island and louder when their scouts were killing Mons.
Finally, as the spaceboat leaves the planet:
"I wonder what that sound was, [Jong] thought vaguely. A wind noise, no doubt, as Mons said. But I'll never be sure. For a moment it seemed to him that he heard it again, in the thrum of energy and metal, in the beat of his own blood, the horn of a hunter pursuing a quarry that wept as it ran." (p. 26)
OK. A sound heard in energy, metal and blood in a spaceboat is not a horn blown on the planet. Only the story's title connects the horn with time but that is sufficient explanation. The horn is time and we are its weeping quarry.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And Entropy is the huntsman pursuing all of us thru time. Against time's arrow all our striving is ultimately in vain? I hope not!
Ad astra! Sean
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