The third day she was weaker, more a huge-eyed, painful what-ever-it-was than the fierce, stinking animal he found in the snare. She would not eat. He considered loosing her, but he knew under best conditions her margin of survival must be slight. She would crawl away and die. She was his fault.
With considerable imagination, he rummaged in his kit until he found some rubber gloves. After tying her against the bars, he forced a sleeping pill between her jaws and held them shut between his knee and arm while he dammed her mouth with his hand. When she began to relax, he pried loose three of the bars, quickly poured a solution of nutrient tablets into the rubber glove, pricked a hole in the thumb and wriggled into the cage, almost filling it. While he held her head so she would not see him if she opened her eyes, very gently he began her training.
Sometimes he would sing to her, and she would smile. Gradually he saw himself transformed in her eyes from the horrible thing that gives fear and pain to something that gives food.
By the time her limp was gone, he could take her into the garden without a leash. Smiling, for she rarely made a sound unless hungry or angry, she would stand where he wanted to spade and watch his eyes. So the garden did not go so well as he had planned, although he reassured himself that when the _Doric_ had taken her to Earth where she could be properly trained there would be plenty of time to fill the freezers and grow rich; he was young yet.
While she watched everything he did with intense interest, she seemed discouragingly stupid. She learned to speak only a few words, although she understood a good many of the simple commands he gave her and went through a stage when she was quick to obey them. Her own chirps, he discovered had a certain internal logic. And before he realized it she had imposed her language system on him. They got along quite well this way, since they did not bother to hold symposiums on art or science, but he began to worry about what she would do when she came into the uncompromising atmosphere of an institution.
Probably throw a tantrum the way she did when I slapped her for eating baby chicks, he thought. He could understand her feeling, for to her they must have seemed as intended for eating as the mice she sometimes caught and crunched with delight.