DANE REGARDED his throbbing feet morosely.
Nymani’s operations with burning splinters had been hard to
take, but he had endured them without disgracing himself before the
Khatkans, who appeared to regard such a mishap as just another
travel incident. Now, with Tau’s salve soothing the worst of
the aftereffects, the Terran was given time to reflect upon his
own stupidity and the fact that he might now prove a drag on the
whole party the next morning.
“That’s queer . . . ”
Dane was startled out of the contemplation of his misery to see
the medic on his knees before their row of canteens, the vial of
water purifier held to the firelight for a closer inspection.
“What’s the matter?”
“We must have hit with a pretty hard thump back there.
Some of these pills are powder! Have to guess about the portion to
add.” With the tip of his knife blade Tau scraped a tiny
amount of pill fragments into each waiting canteen. “That
should do it. But if the water tastes a little bitter, don’t
let it bother you.”
Bitter water, Dane thought, trying to flex his still swollen
toes, was going to be the least of his worries in the morning. But
he determined that his boots should go on at daybreak, and he would
keep on his feet as long as the others did, no matter how much it
cost him.
And when they set out shortly after daybreak, wanting to move as
far as they could before the heat hours when they must rest, the
going was not too bad. Dane’s feet were tender to the touch,
but he could shuffle along at the tail of the procession with only
Nymani playing rear guard behind him.
Jungle lay before them and bush knives began to swing, clearing their path. Dane took his turn with the rest at that
chore, thankful that the business of cutting their way through that
mass of greenery slowed them to a pace he could match—if not
in comfort, then by willpower.
But the sand worms were not the only troubles one could
encounter on Khatka. Within an hour Captain Jellico stood sweating
and speaking his mind freely in the native tongues of five
different planets while Tau and Nymani worked as a team with
skinning knives. They were not flaying the spaceman, but they came
near to that in places as they worried a choice selection of tree
thorns out of his arm and shoulder. The captain had been
unfortunate enough to trip and fall into the embrace of a very
unfriendly bush.
Dane inspected a fallen tree for evidence of inimical wild life,
and then rested his blanket between him and it as a protecting
cushion before he sat down. These trees were not the towering
giants of the true forests, but rather oversized bushes which had
been made into walls by twined vines. Brilliant bursts of flowers
were splotches of vivid color, and the attendant insect life was
altogether too abundant. Dane tried to tally his immunity shots and
hoped for the best. At the moment he wondered why anyone would want
to visit Khatka, let alone pay some astronomical sum for the
privilege. Though he could also guess that the plush safari
arranged for a paying client might be run on quite different lines
from their own present trek.
How could a tracker find his way through this? With the
compasses playing crazy tricks into the bargain! Jellico knew that
the compasses were off, yet the captain had followed Asaki’s
lead without question, so he must trust the Ranger’s forestcraft. But Dane wished they were clear on the mountain side
again.
Time had little meaning in that green gloom. But when they
worked through to meet rock walls again, the sun said it was well
into the after part of the day. They sheltered for a breather under
the drooping limbs of one of the last trees.
“Amazing!” Jellico, his torn arm in a sling across
his chest, came down-slope from the higher point where he had been using
the distance lenses. “We struck straight across and cut off
about ten miles by that jungle jog. Now I believe all that
I’ve heard of your people’s ability to cross wilderness
and not lose their built in ‘riding beams,’ sir. With
the compasses out, I’ll admit I’ve been nourishing a
healthy set of doubts.”
Asaki laughed. “Captain, I do not question your ability to
flit from world to world, or how you have learned to set up trade
with strange humans and non-humans alike. To each his own mystery.
On Khatka every boy before he becomes a man must learn to navigate
the jungle, and with no instruments to help him, only what lies in
here.” He touched his thumb to his forehead. “So
through generations we have developed our homing instincts. Those
who did not, also did not live to father others who might have had
the same lack. We are hounds who can run on a scent, and we are
migrators who have better than a compass within our own
bodies.”
“Now we take to climbing again?” Tau surveyed the
way before them critically.
“Not at this hour. That sun on the upward slopes can cook
a man’s skin were he to touch any rock. We wait . . .
.”
Waiting for the Khatkans was a chance to sleep. They curled up
on their light blankets. But the three spacemen were restless. Dane
would have liked to have taken off his boots, but feared he could
not replace them; and he could tell from the way the captain
shifted his position that Jellico was in pain too. Tau sat quietly,
staring at nothing Dane could see, unless it was a tall rock thrust
out of the slope like a finger pointing skyward.
“What color is that rock?”
Surprised, Dane gave the stony finger closer attention. To him
it was the same color as most of the other rocks, a weathered black
which in certain lights appeared to carry a brownish film.
“Black, or maybe dark brown.”
Tau looked past him to Jellico. The captain nodded.
“I’d agree with that.”
Tau cupped his hands over his eyes for a moment and his lips
moved as if he were counting. Then he took his hands away and
stared up-slope. Dane watched the medic’s eyelids blink
slowly. “Nothing but black or brown?” Tau pressed.
“No.” Jellico supported his injured arm upon his
knees, leaning forward, as intent upon the designated rock as if he
expected it to assume some far more startling appearance.
“Queer,” Tau said to himself, and then added
briskly, “You’re right, of course. That sun can play
tricks with one’s eyes.”
Dane continued to watch the finger rock. Maybe strong sunlight
could play tricks, but he could see nothing odd about that rough
lump. And since the captain asked no questions of Tau, he did not
quite want to either.
It was perhaps a half-hour later, and the medic and Jellico had
both succumbed to the quiet, the heat, and their own fatigue, when
Dane did sight a movement up-slope. The throbbing in his feet was
worse now that he had nothing to occupy his mind but his own
troubles, and he was sitting facing the finger rock.
Was that what Tau had seen earlier? That quick movement around
the side of the rough pillar? But if so, why the question of color?
There it was again! And now, centering all his attention on that
one point, the Terran picked out the outline of a head—a head
grotesque enough to be something conjured out of Lumbrilo’s
sorcerer’s imagination. Had Dane not seen its like among the
tri-dee prints in Captain Jellico’s collection, he would have
believed that his eyes were playing tricks.
It was a bullet-shaped head, embellished by two out-sized prick
ears, the hair-tufted pointed tips of which projected well above
the top of the skull. Round eyes were set deeply in sunken pits.
The mouth was a swinish snout from which lolled a purple tongue,
though the rest of that gargoyle head was very close in color to
the rock against which it half rested.
Dane had no doubts that the rock ape was spying upon the small camp. Having heard tales of those semi-intelligent
animals—the most intelligent native creatures of
Khatka—most of which were concerned with their more malignant
characteristics, Dane was alarmed. That lurker could be an advance
scout of some pack. And a pack of rock apes, if able to surprise
their prey, were formidable opponents.
Asaki stirred, sat up. And that round head above turned to
follow the Chief Ranger’s every move.
“Above . . . by the finger rock . . . to the right . . “
Dane kept his voice close to a whisper. When he saw the sudden
constriction of muscle across the Khatkan’s bare shoulders,
he knew that the other had heard and understood.
Only, if Asaki had spotted the rock ape, he did not betray his
knowledge. The Khatkan got lithely to his feet. Then one of those
feet stirred Nymani into the instant wakefulness of the
wilderness-trained man.
Dane slid his hand about the bole of the tree and touched
Jellico, watched the captain’s gray eyes open with a similar
awareness. Asaki picked up his needler. Weapon in hand, he whirled
and fired almost in one connected movement. It was the fastest shot
Dane had ever seen.
The gargoyle head lifted away from the rock, and then turned to
one side as its body, somehow vaguely obscene in its resemblance to
the human form, fell away, to sprawl limply down-slope.
Though the dead rock ape had not had a chance to give tongue,
there came a cry from above, a coughing, deep-throated hawking.
Down the steep incline bumped a round white ball, bouncing past the
tumbled carcass of the ape, sailing up into the air, to strike and
burst open a few feet away.
“Back!” With one arm Asaki sent Jellico, his nearest
neighbor, tumbling back into the jungle. Then the Chief Ranger
pumped a stream of needle rays into the remains of the ball. A
shrill, sweet humming arose as red motes, vivid as molten copper in
the sunlight, climbed on wings beating too fast to be seen.
The debris of the nest smoked into nothing. But no needle ray
could hope to stop all the poisonous army issuing forth from it,
fighting mad, to seek any warm-blooded creature within scenting
distance. The men threw themselves into the brush, rolling in the
thick mold of the vegetable decay on the ground, rubbing its moist
plaster over their bodies in frantic haste.
Red-hot fire, far worse than any of the splinter torment Dane
had undergone the night before, pierced between his shoulders. He
rolled on his back, shoving himself along, both to kill the
fire-wasp and coat the sting with cooling mold. Cries of pain told
him that he was not the only sufferer, as all dug hands into the
slimy stuff under them and slapped it over their faces and
heads.
“Apes. . . . ” That half shout got through to alert
the men on the jungle floor. True to their nature, the rock apes,
now streaming downhill, were coughing their challenges, advertising
their attack. And it was only that peculiarity of their species
which saved their intended victims.
The apes came forward, partially erect, at a shambling run. The
first two, bulls close to six feet, went down under fire from
Asaki’s needler. A third somehow escaped, swerving to the
left, and came bounding at an angle toward Dane. The Terran jerked
free his force blade as that swine snout split wide to show
greenish tusks and the horrible stench of the creature’s body
made him gasp.
A taloned paw clawed at him eagerly, slipped from his
slime-covered body just as he brought the force blade up. Foul
breath coughed in his face and he stumbled back as the heavy body
of the ape crashed against him, cut in half by the weapon. To
Dane’s sickened horror the paws still clawed for him, the
fangs still gnashed as he rolled free of the mangled body and
somehow got to his feet.
The roar of a blaster, of two blasters, drowned out the clamor
of the apes as Dane drew his fire ray, set his shoulders against a
tree bole and prepared to fight it out. He fired, saw a smaller and
more nimble enemy go down screeching. Then there were none left on their shaggy feet, though some on the
ground dragged themselves forward, still striving to reach the
men.
Dane slapped a fire-wasp from his leg. He was glad of the
support of the tree at his back as the smell of the ape’s
blood drenching him from chest level down, and the mess on the
ground, made his stomach churn.
‘When he could control his retching, he straightened. To
his relief he saw that all the others were on their feet,
apparently unharmed. But Tau, catching sight of the younger
spaceman, gasped and started for him.
“Dane! What did they do?”
His junior laughed a little hysterically. “Not mine . . . ” He swabbed with a handful of grass at his bloodied
breeches and blundered on into the sunlight.
Nymani found them a foam-flecked stream below a miniature falls
where the swift current prevented the lurking of sand worms. They
stripped eagerly, cleaning first themselves and then their fouled
clothing while Tau tended the wealth of fire-wasp stings. There was
little he could do to relieve the swelling and pain, until Asaki
produced a reed-like plant which, chopped in sections, yielded a
sticky purple liquid that dried on the skin as a tar gum—the
native remedy. So, glued and plastered, they climbed away from the
water and prepared to spend the night in a hollow between two
leaning rocks, certainly not as snug as the cave but a fortress of
sorts.
“And credit-happy space hoppers pay a fortune for an
outing like this!” Tau commented bitterly, hunching well
forward so that a certain stung portion of his anatomy would not
come in contact with the rock beneath him.
“Hardly for this,” Jellico replied, and Dane saw
Nymani grin one-sidedly, his other cheek puffed and painted sticky
purple.
“We do not always encounter apes and fire-wasps in the
same day,” supplied the Chief Ranger. “Also, guests at
the preserves wear stass belts.”
Jellico snorted. “I don’t think you’d get any
repeats from your clients otherwise! What do we meet tomorrow? A herd of graz
on stampede, or something even more subtle and deadly?”
Nymani got up and walked a little way from their rock shelter.
He turned down-slope and Dane saw his nostrils expand as they had
when he had investigated the cave.
“Something is dead,” he said slowly. “A very
large something. Or else—”
Asaki strode down to join his men. He gave a curt nod and Nymani
skidded on down the mountain side.
“What is it?” Jellico asked.
“It might be many things. There is one I hope it is
not,” was the Chief Ranger’s somewhat evasive reply.
“I will hunt a labbla—there was fresh spoor at the
stream.” He set off along their back trail to return a half
hour later, the body of his kill slung across one shoulder. He was
skinning it when Nymani trotted back.
“Well?”
“Death pit,” supplied the Hunter.
“Poachers?” Jellico inquired.
Nymani nodded. Asaki continued his task, but there was a glint
in his dark eyes as he butchered with sure and expert strokes. Then
he glanced at the shadow extending beyond the rocks.
“I, too, would see,” he told Nymani.
Jellico arose, and Dane, interested, followed. Some five minutes
later none of them needed the native keenness of smell to detect
the presence of some foulness ahead. The odor of corruption was
almost tangible in the sultry air. And it grew worse until they
stood on the edge of a pit. Dane retreated hurriedly. This was as
bad as the battlefield of the rock apes. But the captain and the
two Khatkans stood calmly assessing the slaughter left by the hide
poachers.
“Glam, graz, hoodra,” Jellico commented.
“Tusks and hides—the full line of trade
stuff.”
Asaki, his expression bleak, stepped back from the pit. ”Day old calves, old ones, females—all together.
They kill wantonly and leave those they do not choose to
pelt.”
“Trail—” Nymani pointed eastward. “Leads
to Mygra swamp.”
“The swamps!” Asaki was shaken. “They must be
mad!”
“Or know more about this country than your men
do,” Jellico corrected.
“If poachers can enter Mygra, then we can follow!”
But not now, Dane protested silently. Certainly Asaki did not mean
that they were to track outlaws into swamps the Khatkan
had already labeled unexplored death traps!
DANE REGARDED his throbbing feet morosely.
Nymani’s operations with burning splinters had been hard to
take, but he had endured them without disgracing himself before the
Khatkans, who appeared to regard such a mishap as just another
travel incident. Now, with Tau’s salve soothing the worst of
the aftereffects, the Terran was given time to reflect upon his
own stupidity and the fact that he might now prove a drag on the
whole party the next morning.
“That’s queer . . . ”
Dane was startled out of the contemplation of his misery to see
the medic on his knees before their row of canteens, the vial of
water purifier held to the firelight for a closer inspection.
“What’s the matter?”
“We must have hit with a pretty hard thump back there.
Some of these pills are powder! Have to guess about the portion to
add.” With the tip of his knife blade Tau scraped a tiny
amount of pill fragments into each waiting canteen. “That
should do it. But if the water tastes a little bitter, don’t
let it bother you.”
Bitter water, Dane thought, trying to flex his still swollen
toes, was going to be the least of his worries in the morning. But
he determined that his boots should go on at daybreak, and he would
keep on his feet as long as the others did, no matter how much it
cost him.
And when they set out shortly after daybreak, wanting to move as
far as they could before the heat hours when they must rest, the
going was not too bad. Dane’s feet were tender to the touch,
but he could shuffle along at the tail of the procession with only
Nymani playing rear guard behind him.
Jungle lay before them and bush knives began to swing, clearing their path. Dane took his turn with the rest at that
chore, thankful that the business of cutting their way through that
mass of greenery slowed them to a pace he could match—if not
in comfort, then by willpower.
But the sand worms were not the only troubles one could
encounter on Khatka. Within an hour Captain Jellico stood sweating
and speaking his mind freely in the native tongues of five
different planets while Tau and Nymani worked as a team with
skinning knives. They were not flaying the spaceman, but they came
near to that in places as they worried a choice selection of tree
thorns out of his arm and shoulder. The captain had been
unfortunate enough to trip and fall into the embrace of a very
unfriendly bush.
Dane inspected a fallen tree for evidence of inimical wild life,
and then rested his blanket between him and it as a protecting
cushion before he sat down. These trees were not the towering
giants of the true forests, but rather oversized bushes which had
been made into walls by twined vines. Brilliant bursts of flowers
were splotches of vivid color, and the attendant insect life was
altogether too abundant. Dane tried to tally his immunity shots and
hoped for the best. At the moment he wondered why anyone would want
to visit Khatka, let alone pay some astronomical sum for the
privilege. Though he could also guess that the plush safari
arranged for a paying client might be run on quite different lines
from their own present trek.
How could a tracker find his way through this? With the
compasses playing crazy tricks into the bargain! Jellico knew that
the compasses were off, yet the captain had followed Asaki’s
lead without question, so he must trust the Ranger’s forestcraft. But Dane wished they were clear on the mountain side
again.
Time had little meaning in that green gloom. But when they
worked through to meet rock walls again, the sun said it was well
into the after part of the day. They sheltered for a breather under
the drooping limbs of one of the last trees.
“Amazing!” Jellico, his torn arm in a sling across
his chest, came down-slope from the higher point where he had been using
the distance lenses. “We struck straight across and cut off
about ten miles by that jungle jog. Now I believe all that
I’ve heard of your people’s ability to cross wilderness
and not lose their built in ‘riding beams,’ sir. With
the compasses out, I’ll admit I’ve been nourishing a
healthy set of doubts.”
Asaki laughed. “Captain, I do not question your ability to
flit from world to world, or how you have learned to set up trade
with strange humans and non-humans alike. To each his own mystery.
On Khatka every boy before he becomes a man must learn to navigate
the jungle, and with no instruments to help him, only what lies in
here.” He touched his thumb to his forehead. “So
through generations we have developed our homing instincts. Those
who did not, also did not live to father others who might have had
the same lack. We are hounds who can run on a scent, and we are
migrators who have better than a compass within our own
bodies.”
“Now we take to climbing again?” Tau surveyed the
way before them critically.
“Not at this hour. That sun on the upward slopes can cook
a man’s skin were he to touch any rock. We wait . . .
.”
Waiting for the Khatkans was a chance to sleep. They curled up
on their light blankets. But the three spacemen were restless. Dane
would have liked to have taken off his boots, but feared he could
not replace them; and he could tell from the way the captain
shifted his position that Jellico was in pain too. Tau sat quietly,
staring at nothing Dane could see, unless it was a tall rock thrust
out of the slope like a finger pointing skyward.
“What color is that rock?”
Surprised, Dane gave the stony finger closer attention. To him
it was the same color as most of the other rocks, a weathered black
which in certain lights appeared to carry a brownish film.
“Black, or maybe dark brown.”
Tau looked past him to Jellico. The captain nodded.
“I’d agree with that.”
Tau cupped his hands over his eyes for a moment and his lips
moved as if he were counting. Then he took his hands away and
stared up-slope. Dane watched the medic’s eyelids blink
slowly. “Nothing but black or brown?” Tau pressed.
“No.” Jellico supported his injured arm upon his
knees, leaning forward, as intent upon the designated rock as if he
expected it to assume some far more startling appearance.
“Queer,” Tau said to himself, and then added
briskly, “You’re right, of course. That sun can play
tricks with one’s eyes.”
Dane continued to watch the finger rock. Maybe strong sunlight
could play tricks, but he could see nothing odd about that rough
lump. And since the captain asked no questions of Tau, he did not
quite want to either.
It was perhaps a half-hour later, and the medic and Jellico had
both succumbed to the quiet, the heat, and their own fatigue, when
Dane did sight a movement up-slope. The throbbing in his feet was
worse now that he had nothing to occupy his mind but his own
troubles, and he was sitting facing the finger rock.
Was that what Tau had seen earlier? That quick movement around
the side of the rough pillar? But if so, why the question of color?
There it was again! And now, centering all his attention on that
one point, the Terran picked out the outline of a head—a head
grotesque enough to be something conjured out of Lumbrilo’s
sorcerer’s imagination. Had Dane not seen its like among the
tri-dee prints in Captain Jellico’s collection, he would have
believed that his eyes were playing tricks.
It was a bullet-shaped head, embellished by two out-sized prick
ears, the hair-tufted pointed tips of which projected well above
the top of the skull. Round eyes were set deeply in sunken pits.
The mouth was a swinish snout from which lolled a purple tongue,
though the rest of that gargoyle head was very close in color to
the rock against which it half rested.
Dane had no doubts that the rock ape was spying upon the small camp. Having heard tales of those semi-intelligent
animals—the most intelligent native creatures of
Khatka—most of which were concerned with their more malignant
characteristics, Dane was alarmed. That lurker could be an advance
scout of some pack. And a pack of rock apes, if able to surprise
their prey, were formidable opponents.
Asaki stirred, sat up. And that round head above turned to
follow the Chief Ranger’s every move.
“Above . . . by the finger rock . . . to the right . . “
Dane kept his voice close to a whisper. When he saw the sudden
constriction of muscle across the Khatkan’s bare shoulders,
he knew that the other had heard and understood.
Only, if Asaki had spotted the rock ape, he did not betray his
knowledge. The Khatkan got lithely to his feet. Then one of those
feet stirred Nymani into the instant wakefulness of the
wilderness-trained man.
Dane slid his hand about the bole of the tree and touched
Jellico, watched the captain’s gray eyes open with a similar
awareness. Asaki picked up his needler. Weapon in hand, he whirled
and fired almost in one connected movement. It was the fastest shot
Dane had ever seen.
The gargoyle head lifted away from the rock, and then turned to
one side as its body, somehow vaguely obscene in its resemblance to
the human form, fell away, to sprawl limply down-slope.
Though the dead rock ape had not had a chance to give tongue,
there came a cry from above, a coughing, deep-throated hawking.
Down the steep incline bumped a round white ball, bouncing past the
tumbled carcass of the ape, sailing up into the air, to strike and
burst open a few feet away.
“Back!” With one arm Asaki sent Jellico, his nearest
neighbor, tumbling back into the jungle. Then the Chief Ranger
pumped a stream of needle rays into the remains of the ball. A
shrill, sweet humming arose as red motes, vivid as molten copper in
the sunlight, climbed on wings beating too fast to be seen.
The debris of the nest smoked into nothing. But no needle ray
could hope to stop all the poisonous army issuing forth from it,
fighting mad, to seek any warm-blooded creature within scenting
distance. The men threw themselves into the brush, rolling in the
thick mold of the vegetable decay on the ground, rubbing its moist
plaster over their bodies in frantic haste.
Red-hot fire, far worse than any of the splinter torment Dane
had undergone the night before, pierced between his shoulders. He
rolled on his back, shoving himself along, both to kill the
fire-wasp and coat the sting with cooling mold. Cries of pain told
him that he was not the only sufferer, as all dug hands into the
slimy stuff under them and slapped it over their faces and
heads.
“Apes. . . . ” That half shout got through to alert
the men on the jungle floor. True to their nature, the rock apes,
now streaming downhill, were coughing their challenges, advertising
their attack. And it was only that peculiarity of their species
which saved their intended victims.
The apes came forward, partially erect, at a shambling run. The
first two, bulls close to six feet, went down under fire from
Asaki’s needler. A third somehow escaped, swerving to the
left, and came bounding at an angle toward Dane. The Terran jerked
free his force blade as that swine snout split wide to show
greenish tusks and the horrible stench of the creature’s body
made him gasp.
A taloned paw clawed at him eagerly, slipped from his
slime-covered body just as he brought the force blade up. Foul
breath coughed in his face and he stumbled back as the heavy body
of the ape crashed against him, cut in half by the weapon. To
Dane’s sickened horror the paws still clawed for him, the
fangs still gnashed as he rolled free of the mangled body and
somehow got to his feet.
The roar of a blaster, of two blasters, drowned out the clamor
of the apes as Dane drew his fire ray, set his shoulders against a
tree bole and prepared to fight it out. He fired, saw a smaller and
more nimble enemy go down screeching. Then there were none left on their shaggy feet, though some on the
ground dragged themselves forward, still striving to reach the
men.
Dane slapped a fire-wasp from his leg. He was glad of the
support of the tree at his back as the smell of the ape’s
blood drenching him from chest level down, and the mess on the
ground, made his stomach churn.
‘When he could control his retching, he straightened. To
his relief he saw that all the others were on their feet,
apparently unharmed. But Tau, catching sight of the younger
spaceman, gasped and started for him.
“Dane! What did they do?”
His junior laughed a little hysterically. “Not mine . . . ” He swabbed with a handful of grass at his bloodied
breeches and blundered on into the sunlight.
Nymani found them a foam-flecked stream below a miniature falls
where the swift current prevented the lurking of sand worms. They
stripped eagerly, cleaning first themselves and then their fouled
clothing while Tau tended the wealth of fire-wasp stings. There was
little he could do to relieve the swelling and pain, until Asaki
produced a reed-like plant which, chopped in sections, yielded a
sticky purple liquid that dried on the skin as a tar gum—the
native remedy. So, glued and plastered, they climbed away from the
water and prepared to spend the night in a hollow between two
leaning rocks, certainly not as snug as the cave but a fortress of
sorts.
“And credit-happy space hoppers pay a fortune for an
outing like this!” Tau commented bitterly, hunching well
forward so that a certain stung portion of his anatomy would not
come in contact with the rock beneath him.
“Hardly for this,” Jellico replied, and Dane saw
Nymani grin one-sidedly, his other cheek puffed and painted sticky
purple.
“We do not always encounter apes and fire-wasps in the
same day,” supplied the Chief Ranger. “Also, guests at
the preserves wear stass belts.”
Jellico snorted. “I don’t think you’d get any
repeats from your clients otherwise! What do we meet tomorrow? A herd of graz
on stampede, or something even more subtle and deadly?”
Nymani got up and walked a little way from their rock shelter.
He turned down-slope and Dane saw his nostrils expand as they had
when he had investigated the cave.
“Something is dead,” he said slowly. “A very
large something. Or else—”
Asaki strode down to join his men. He gave a curt nod and Nymani
skidded on down the mountain side.
“What is it?” Jellico asked.
“It might be many things. There is one I hope it is
not,” was the Chief Ranger’s somewhat evasive reply.
“I will hunt a labbla—there was fresh spoor at the
stream.” He set off along their back trail to return a half
hour later, the body of his kill slung across one shoulder. He was
skinning it when Nymani trotted back.
“Well?”
“Death pit,” supplied the Hunter.
“Poachers?” Jellico inquired.
Nymani nodded. Asaki continued his task, but there was a glint
in his dark eyes as he butchered with sure and expert strokes. Then
he glanced at the shadow extending beyond the rocks.
“I, too, would see,” he told Nymani.
Jellico arose, and Dane, interested, followed. Some five minutes
later none of them needed the native keenness of smell to detect
the presence of some foulness ahead. The odor of corruption was
almost tangible in the sultry air. And it grew worse until they
stood on the edge of a pit. Dane retreated hurriedly. This was as
bad as the battlefield of the rock apes. But the captain and the
two Khatkans stood calmly assessing the slaughter left by the hide
poachers.
“Glam, graz, hoodra,” Jellico commented.
“Tusks and hides—the full line of trade
stuff.”
Asaki, his expression bleak, stepped back from the pit. ”Day old calves, old ones, females—all together.
They kill wantonly and leave those they do not choose to
pelt.”
“Trail—” Nymani pointed eastward. “Leads
to Mygra swamp.”
“The swamps!” Asaki was shaken. “They must be
mad!”
“Or know more about this country than your men
do,” Jellico corrected.
“If poachers can enter Mygra, then we can follow!”
But not now, Dane protested silently. Certainly Asaki did not mean
that they were to track outlaws into swamps the Khatkan
had already labeled unexplored death traps!