The Project Gutenberg EBook of What Rough Beast?, by Jefferson Highe

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: What Rough Beast?

Author: Jefferson Highe

Illustrator: Dick Francis

Release Date: April 13, 2010 [EBook #31975]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT ROUGH BEAST? ***

Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

What Rough Beast?

By JEFFERSON HIGHE

Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction
July 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.]

[Sidenote: _When you are a teacher, you expect kids to play pranks. But
with tigers--and worse?_]

Standing braced--or, as it seemed to him, crucified--against the length
of the blackboard, John Ward tried to calculate his chances of heading
off the impending riot. It didn't seem likely that anything he could do
would stop it.

"Say something," he told himself. "Continue the lecture, _talk_!" But
against the background of hysterical voices from the school yard,
against the brass fear in his mouth, he was dumb. He looked at the bank
of boys' faces in front of him. They seemed to him now as identical as
metal stampings, each one completely deadpan, each pair of jaws moving
in a single rhythm, like a mechanical herd. He could feel the tension in
them, and he knew that, in a moment, they would begin to move. He felt
shame and humiliation that he had failed.

"Shakespeare," he said clearly, holding his voice steady, "for those of
you who have never heard of him, was the greatest of all dramatists.
Greater even," he went on doggedly, knowing that they might take it as a
provocation, "than the writers for the Spellcasts." He stopped talking
abruptly.

Three tigers stepped out of the ceiling. Their eyes were glassy,
absolutely rigid, as if, like the last of the hairy mammoths, they had
been frozen a long age in some glacial crevasse. They hung there a
moment and then fell into the room like a furry wate