THEY WITHDREW to a spot hacked from the edge of
the jungle, leaving a screen of green between them and the
traitorous up-slope. But within the few hours of daylight left
them, it was proven that Asaki had been overly optimistic in his
hopes of discovering a water tree. They were now in a narrow tongue
of land between the range and the swamps, and this territory was
limited. Nymani, still shaken, was of little help, and the spacemen
did not dare to strike out into unexplored land alone.
So they mouthed dry concentrates and dared not drink. Dane was
tempted to pour out the liquid in his canteen. Water so close to
hand was a continual torment. And, now that they were away from the
heights and the possibility of more finger-shaped rocks, surely the
threat in that moisture was small in comparison to the needs of his
body. Only that caution which was drilled into every Free Trader
supplied a brake to his thirst.
Jellico drew the back of his hand across cracked lips.
“Suppose we should draw lots—some of us drink, one or
two not. Could we manage that way until we were over the
mountains?”
“I wouldn’t want to chance it, unless we are left
with no other choice. There is no way of telling how long the drug
works. Frankly, right now I’m not even sure I could detect a
hallucination for very long under these conditions,” was
Tau’s discouraging verdict.
If any of them slept that night, they did so only in snatches.
The apprehension which had come with the previous night was back,
intensified, and that lurking, indefinable fear rode them hard.
They were shaken out of their private terrors shortly after dawn. There were always sounds to be heard in the jungle: the
cries of unseen birds, the crash of some tree eaten alive by
parasitic sapping. But what broke now was no bird call, no isolated
tree falling. A trumpeting roar, the crackling smash of vegetation,
heralded a real menace. Asaki spun to face northward, though there
was nothing to be seen there except the unshaken wall of the
jungle.
“Graz! Graz on stampede!” Nymani joined his
superior.
Jellico arose swiftly and Dane read on the captain’s face
the seriousness of this. The off-worlder turned to his own men with
a sharp order. “On your feet! We may have to move on the
double. Up-mountain?” he demanded of the Chief Ranger.
The other was still listening, not only with his ears but with
the whole of his tense body. Three of the deer-like creatures they
had hunted for food broke out of the green wall, fled past the men
as if the latter were invisible. And behind them, the hunted now and
not the hunter, came a lion, its strikingly marked black-and-white
hide dramatic in the light of the morning. It showed fangs in a
snarl and then was gone in one huge bound. More deer things,
scurrying of other small creatures, moving too fast for clear
identification, and behind them the fury of destruction which
marked the headlong advance of Khatka’s largest mammals
slamming through the jungle.
They had started up-slope when Nymani cried out. A white bulk,
hard to distinguish in that light against the gray of the earth,
headed after them. Dane had a fleeting glimpse of curled tusks, of
an open mouth, raw-red and wide enough to engulf his whole head, of
shaggy legs driving at an unbelievable pace. Asaki snapped a beam
from the needler. The white monster roared and came on. They dived
for the scant cover offered as the graz bull died, not two yards
away from the Chief Ranger, its heavy body skidding along the earth
with the force of its speed as it went down
“That did it!” Jellico sighted coolly with his
blaster as a second bull, fighting mad, tore from the jungle and
pounded at them. Behind it a third tusked head thrust out of the brush,
large eyes searched for an enemy. Dane studied the dead bull, but
the animal did not come to life this time. These were not
hallucinations. And the malignancy of the rock apes, the cunning of
the native Khatkan lion, were pallid things compared to a graz herd
on the rampage.
The second bull yelped with an almost canine complaint as
Jellico’s blaster caught it head-on. Blinded, the beast
blundered ahead, climbing the mountain side. The third met a ray
from Nymani’s needler. But the Chief Ranger leaped from
behind his sheltering rock to the one where the captain had taken
refuge and pulled him into the open.
“They must not corner us here!”
Jellico agreed to that. “Come on!” he barked to Tau
and Dane.
They fled along a rough way, trying to gain altitude, but
finding a rising cliff wall which could not be easily climbed. Two
more graz went down, one badly wounded, one safely dead. Behind
them more white heads came from the brush. What original cause had
started the stampede the fugitives could not guess, but now the
fear and anger of the animals were centering upon them.
And, in spite of their efforts, the party was being herded into
a pocket between the jungle below, where the main body of graz
crashed along, and a steep wall. Given time to find the necessary
finger and toe holds, a man might climb that wall, but they could
not attempt it now. The portion of ledge on which they ran, stopped
to fire, and then ran on again, angled to the southeast. And so they
came to its end quickly, a drop ending in a plain of yellow-gray
mud studded with clumps of bleached vegetation which led, like
steppingstones, toward a tangle of matted, sickly looking plants
and reeds.
“All right,” Tau faced around, “what do we do
now? Space lift? And using what for wings or jets?”
As if the graz could sense that they now had their victims
safely cornered, what must have been a goodly segment of the herd
hooked their way from the jungle and started up. Puffing, digging in those sturdy legs which had to take the
massive weight of their barrel-shaped bodies, they made their way
determinedly up-grade. One might almost believe that they had
intelligently planned this end for their drive.
“We go down!” Asaki yelled, and used his needler on
the leader of that climbing platoon.
“The brush islands,” Nymani amended. “I show
you!” He thrust his needler at Jellico and was over the edge
of the ledge, hanging by his hands and swinging his weight back and
forth like a pendulum. At the up-swing of his body to the right, he
let go and plunged out, landing half across one of the reed islets.
The Khatkan clawed his way to his knees, gained his feet, and
leaped for the next bit of solid ground.
“You, Thorson!” Jellico jerked his head at Dane and
the younger spaceman holstered his fire ray, slipped gingerly over
the drop and prepared to repeat Nymani’s feat as best he
could.
He was not quite as successful with his sidewise swing, landing
with only his forearms across the islet, the rest of his body being
swiftly embedded in what was ooze covered only with a thin crust of
dried matter. The stench of the stuff was sickening, but the fear
of being entrapped in it gave him the necessary impetus to push
forward, though what was meant to be a swift half-dive was more of
a worm’s progress. He grabbed frantically at brittle stems,
at coarse grass which cut like knives at his hands. But some of the
material held and he lay face down on a lump which did not give
under his weight.
There was no time to linger; he had to get to the next patch, to
free this dubious landing place for the men embattled on the rise
above. Stumbling up, Dane judged the distance with a space-trained
eye and jumped to a knob Nymani had already quitted. The Khatkan
was more than halfway along toward that promise of solid ground
which the tangled mass of leprous vegetation led to, zigzagging
expertly from islet to islet.
There was a crash and a roar behind. Dane balanced on the third
of the minute islands to look back. He saw the lash of blaster fire on the top of the cliff, Tau on
his knees on the first of their chain of steppingstones, and a graz
sprawled head and forequarters in the sucking muck where it had
dived past the two defenders above. Needler and blaster fired
together again, and then Jellico swung over the cliff rim. Tau
waved vigorously and Dane took off for the next islet, just making
it by lucky chance.
The rest of the journey he took in a rush, trying not to think
of anything but the necessity of landing on some spot of firm
ground. His last leap of all was too short, so that he went knee
deep in a particularly evil-smelling pool where yellow scum
spattered his breeches and he experienced the insidious pull of the
bottomless stuff. A stout branch whipped across his shoulder and he
caught it. With Nymani’s wiry strength on the other end, Dane
worked free and sat, white-faced and shivering, on a mat of brush,
while the Khatkan hunter turned his attention to the safety of Tau,
the next arrival.
More fortunate, or more skilful than Dane, the medic made the
hop from the last tuft without mishap. But he was blowing heavily
as he collapsed beside the other spaceman. Together they watched
the progress of their captain.
Safe on the second tussock from the shore, Jellico halted, edged
carefully around and used the needler Nymani had left with him. A
shaggy head tossed and the bull fronting Asaki on the cliff went
down. The Chief Ranger dodged quickly to the right and a second
beast rushed out and over, to join its mired comrade in the swamp
below. As Jellico shot again, the Khatkan slung his needler and
went over to gain the first islet.
One more graz was wounded but luckily it hunched about, turning
its formidable tusks on those that followed, thus keeping the path
clear for its enemies. Jellico was making the journey,
sure-footedly, with the Chief Ranger only one hillock behind. Tau
sighed.
“Someday maybe this will be just another tall tale and
well all be thought liars when we spout it,” he observed. “That is if we survive to tell it. So now which way do we
go? If I had my choice it would be up!”
When Dane pulled himself to his feet and surveyed their small
refuge, he was ready to agree to that. For the space, packed with
dead and dying vegetable matter until one sank calf deep, was a
triangle with a narrow point running east into the swamp.
“They don’t give up easily, do they?” Jellico
looked back to the shore and the cliff. Though the wounded graz
bull still held the heights against its fellows, there were others
breaking from the jungle on the lower level, wandering back and
forth to paw the earth, rip up soil with their tusks, and otherwise
threaten anyone who would try to return to the strip they
patrolled.
“They will not,” Asaki answered bleakly.
“Arouse a graz and it will trail you for days; kill any of
the herd and you have little hope of escaping them on
foot.”
It would seem now that the swamp was a deterrent to pursuit. The
two beasts that had fallen in the mire moaned in a pitiful rising
note. They had ceased to struggle and several of their kind
clustered on the shore near them, calling entreatingly. Asaki took
careful aim with the needler and put one animal after another out
of its misery. But the flash of those shots angered those on shore
to a higher pitch of rage.
“No going back,” he said. “At least not for
several days.”
Tau slapped a black, four-winged insect which had settled on his
arm, its jaws wide open for a sampling bite. “We can’t
very well perch here until they forget all about us,” he
pointed out. “Not without water we can trust, and with the
local wildlife ready to test us for tasty eating.”
Nymani had prowled along the swampward point of their island,
and now he made his report.
“There is more high land to the east. Perhaps it will give
us a bridge across.”
At that moment Dane doubted his ability to make any more leaps from island to island. And it would seem Tau shared his discouragement.
“I don’t suppose you could discourage our friends on
shore there with a few more shots?”
Asaki shook his head. “We do not have clips enough to
settle a whole herd. These might retreat from sight but they would
be waiting for us in the bush, and that would mean certain death.
We shall have to take the swamp road.”
If Dane had considered their earlier march misery, this was
sheer torture. Since footing was never secure, falls were frequent,
and within a quarter-hour they were all plastered with
evil-smelling slime and mud which hardened to rock consistency when
exposed to the air. Painful as this was, it did protect a portion
of their bodies from the insects with which the swamp was well
stocked.
And, in spite of their efforts to find a way out, the only
possible paths led them deeper into the center of the unexplored
morass. At last Asaki called a halt and a council to consider
retreat. To locate an island from which they could at least watch
the shore appealed very strongly indeed.
“We have to have water.” Tau’s voice was a
harsh croak, issuing out of a mask of green mud festooned with
trailing weeds.
“This ground is rising.” Asaki smacked the stock of
his needler against the surface on which he crouched. “I
think perhaps there may be clean land soon to come.”
Jellico hitched his way up a sapling, now bending under his
weight. Through the vision lenses he studied the route ahead.
“You’re right about that,” he called to the
Chief Ranger. “There’s a showing of the right sort of
green to the left, about half a mile on. And,” he glanced
about at the westering sun, “we have about an hour yet of
good light in which to make it. I wouldn’t try such a run
after dark.”
That promise of green bolstered their weary spirits for a last
exhausting effort. Once again they were faced with a series of islet leaps, and now they carried with them brush
culled from the bigger tussocks to aid in times of need.
When Dane scrambled up the last pull, staggered, and went down
to his knees again, he knew he was done. He did not even move at an
excited cry from Nymani, echoed a moment later by Asaki. It was not
until the latter leaned over him, a canteen open in his hand, that
Dane aroused a little.
“Drink!” the Khatkan urged. “We have found a
water tree. This is fresh.”
The liquid might have been fresh, but it also had a peculiar
taste, which Dane did not note until he had gulped down a generous
swallow. At that moment he was past caring about anything but the
fact that he did have a portion of drinkable stuff in hand.
Here the stunted, unnatural growth of the swamplands had given
away to the more normal vegetation of the jungle-clad lowlands. Had
they come clear across the swamp, Dane wondered dully, or was this
only a large island in the midst of the stinking boglands?
He drank again and regained strength enough to crawl to where
his shipmates lay. It was some time before he was interested in
much besides the fact that he could drink when he wished. Then he
watched Jellico waver to his feet, his head turned eastward. Tau,
too, sat up as if alerted by the Queen’s alarm
buzzer.
The Khatkans were gone, perhaps back to the water tree. But all
three of the spacemen heard that sound, a far off throbbing rhythm
which was a vibration as well. Jellico looked to Tau.
“Drums?”
“Could be.” The medic screwed the cap back on his
canteen. “I’d say we have company—only I’d
like to know what kind!”
They might have been mistaken about the drums, but none of them
could have been mistaken about the bolt which came out of nowhere
to slice through a tree trunk as a knife might slash wet clay. Blaster—and a particular type of
blaster!
“Patrol issue!” Tau lay flat, squeezing himself
against the earth as if he wished he could ooze into it.
Jellico wriggled toward the bush in answer to a low call from
Asaki, and the others made a worm’s progress in his wake.
Under cover they found the Chief Ranger reading his needler.
“Poacher camp here,” he explained bleakly.
“And they know about us.”
“A perfect end to a stinking day,” remarked Tau
dispassionately. “We might have guessed something of this
sort was waiting.” He tried to rub away some of the dried
clay coating his chin. “But do poachers use drums?”
The Chief Ranger scowled. “That is what Nymani has gone to
find out.”
THEY WITHDREW to a spot hacked from the edge of
the jungle, leaving a screen of green between them and the
traitorous up-slope. But within the few hours of daylight left
them, it was proven that Asaki had been overly optimistic in his
hopes of discovering a water tree. They were now in a narrow tongue
of land between the range and the swamps, and this territory was
limited. Nymani, still shaken, was of little help, and the spacemen
did not dare to strike out into unexplored land alone.
So they mouthed dry concentrates and dared not drink. Dane was
tempted to pour out the liquid in his canteen. Water so close to
hand was a continual torment. And, now that they were away from the
heights and the possibility of more finger-shaped rocks, surely the
threat in that moisture was small in comparison to the needs of his
body. Only that caution which was drilled into every Free Trader
supplied a brake to his thirst.
Jellico drew the back of his hand across cracked lips.
“Suppose we should draw lots—some of us drink, one or
two not. Could we manage that way until we were over the
mountains?”
“I wouldn’t want to chance it, unless we are left
with no other choice. There is no way of telling how long the drug
works. Frankly, right now I’m not even sure I could detect a
hallucination for very long under these conditions,” was
Tau’s discouraging verdict.
If any of them slept that night, they did so only in snatches.
The apprehension which had come with the previous night was back,
intensified, and that lurking, indefinable fear rode them hard.
They were shaken out of their private terrors shortly after dawn. There were always sounds to be heard in the jungle: the
cries of unseen birds, the crash of some tree eaten alive by
parasitic sapping. But what broke now was no bird call, no isolated
tree falling. A trumpeting roar, the crackling smash of vegetation,
heralded a real menace. Asaki spun to face northward, though there
was nothing to be seen there except the unshaken wall of the
jungle.
“Graz! Graz on stampede!” Nymani joined his
superior.
Jellico arose swiftly and Dane read on the captain’s face
the seriousness of this. The off-worlder turned to his own men with
a sharp order. “On your feet! We may have to move on the
double. Up-mountain?” he demanded of the Chief Ranger.
The other was still listening, not only with his ears but with
the whole of his tense body. Three of the deer-like creatures they
had hunted for food broke out of the green wall, fled past the men
as if the latter were invisible. And behind them, the hunted now and
not the hunter, came a lion, its strikingly marked black-and-white
hide dramatic in the light of the morning. It showed fangs in a
snarl and then was gone in one huge bound. More deer things,
scurrying of other small creatures, moving too fast for clear
identification, and behind them the fury of destruction which
marked the headlong advance of Khatka’s largest mammals
slamming through the jungle.
They had started up-slope when Nymani cried out. A white bulk,
hard to distinguish in that light against the gray of the earth,
headed after them. Dane had a fleeting glimpse of curled tusks, of
an open mouth, raw-red and wide enough to engulf his whole head, of
shaggy legs driving at an unbelievable pace. Asaki snapped a beam
from the needler. The white monster roared and came on. They dived
for the scant cover offered as the graz bull died, not two yards
away from the Chief Ranger, its heavy body skidding along the earth
with the force of its speed as it went down
“That did it!” Jellico sighted coolly with his
blaster as a second bull, fighting mad, tore from the jungle and
pounded at them. Behind it a third tusked head thrust out of the brush,
large eyes searched for an enemy. Dane studied the dead bull, but
the animal did not come to life this time. These were not
hallucinations. And the malignancy of the rock apes, the cunning of
the native Khatkan lion, were pallid things compared to a graz herd
on the rampage.
The second bull yelped with an almost canine complaint as
Jellico’s blaster caught it head-on. Blinded, the beast
blundered ahead, climbing the mountain side. The third met a ray
from Nymani’s needler. But the Chief Ranger leaped from
behind his sheltering rock to the one where the captain had taken
refuge and pulled him into the open.
“They must not corner us here!”
Jellico agreed to that. “Come on!” he barked to Tau
and Dane.
They fled along a rough way, trying to gain altitude, but
finding a rising cliff wall which could not be easily climbed. Two
more graz went down, one badly wounded, one safely dead. Behind
them more white heads came from the brush. What original cause had
started the stampede the fugitives could not guess, but now the
fear and anger of the animals were centering upon them.
And, in spite of their efforts, the party was being herded into
a pocket between the jungle below, where the main body of graz
crashed along, and a steep wall. Given time to find the necessary
finger and toe holds, a man might climb that wall, but they could
not attempt it now. The portion of ledge on which they ran, stopped
to fire, and then ran on again, angled to the southeast. And so they
came to its end quickly, a drop ending in a plain of yellow-gray
mud studded with clumps of bleached vegetation which led, like
steppingstones, toward a tangle of matted, sickly looking plants
and reeds.
“All right,” Tau faced around, “what do we do
now? Space lift? And using what for wings or jets?”
As if the graz could sense that they now had their victims
safely cornered, what must have been a goodly segment of the herd
hooked their way from the jungle and started up. Puffing, digging in those sturdy legs which had to take the
massive weight of their barrel-shaped bodies, they made their way
determinedly up-grade. One might almost believe that they had
intelligently planned this end for their drive.
“We go down!” Asaki yelled, and used his needler on
the leader of that climbing platoon.
“The brush islands,” Nymani amended. “I show
you!” He thrust his needler at Jellico and was over the edge
of the ledge, hanging by his hands and swinging his weight back and
forth like a pendulum. At the up-swing of his body to the right, he
let go and plunged out, landing half across one of the reed islets.
The Khatkan clawed his way to his knees, gained his feet, and
leaped for the next bit of solid ground.
“You, Thorson!” Jellico jerked his head at Dane and
the younger spaceman holstered his fire ray, slipped gingerly over
the drop and prepared to repeat Nymani’s feat as best he
could.
He was not quite as successful with his sidewise swing, landing
with only his forearms across the islet, the rest of his body being
swiftly embedded in what was ooze covered only with a thin crust of
dried matter. The stench of the stuff was sickening, but the fear
of being entrapped in it gave him the necessary impetus to push
forward, though what was meant to be a swift half-dive was more of
a worm’s progress. He grabbed frantically at brittle stems,
at coarse grass which cut like knives at his hands. But some of the
material held and he lay face down on a lump which did not give
under his weight.
There was no time to linger; he had to get to the next patch, to
free this dubious landing place for the men embattled on the rise
above. Stumbling up, Dane judged the distance with a space-trained
eye and jumped to a knob Nymani had already quitted. The Khatkan
was more than halfway along toward that promise of solid ground
which the tangled mass of leprous vegetation led to, zigzagging
expertly from islet to islet.
There was a crash and a roar behind. Dane balanced on the third
of the minute islands to look back. He saw the lash of blaster fire on the top of the cliff, Tau on
his knees on the first of their chain of steppingstones, and a graz
sprawled head and forequarters in the sucking muck where it had
dived past the two defenders above. Needler and blaster fired
together again, and then Jellico swung over the cliff rim. Tau
waved vigorously and Dane took off for the next islet, just making
it by lucky chance.
The rest of the journey he took in a rush, trying not to think
of anything but the necessity of landing on some spot of firm
ground. His last leap of all was too short, so that he went knee
deep in a particularly evil-smelling pool where yellow scum
spattered his breeches and he experienced the insidious pull of the
bottomless stuff. A stout branch whipped across his shoulder and he
caught it. With Nymani’s wiry strength on the other end, Dane
worked free and sat, white-faced and shivering, on a mat of brush,
while the Khatkan hunter turned his attention to the safety of Tau,
the next arrival.
More fortunate, or more skilful than Dane, the medic made the
hop from the last tuft without mishap. But he was blowing heavily
as he collapsed beside the other spaceman. Together they watched
the progress of their captain.
Safe on the second tussock from the shore, Jellico halted, edged
carefully around and used the needler Nymani had left with him. A
shaggy head tossed and the bull fronting Asaki on the cliff went
down. The Chief Ranger dodged quickly to the right and a second
beast rushed out and over, to join its mired comrade in the swamp
below. As Jellico shot again, the Khatkan slung his needler and
went over to gain the first islet.
One more graz was wounded but luckily it hunched about, turning
its formidable tusks on those that followed, thus keeping the path
clear for its enemies. Jellico was making the journey,
sure-footedly, with the Chief Ranger only one hillock behind. Tau
sighed.
“Someday maybe this will be just another tall tale and
well all be thought liars when we spout it,” he observed. “That is if we survive to tell it. So now which way do we
go? If I had my choice it would be up!”
When Dane pulled himself to his feet and surveyed their small
refuge, he was ready to agree to that. For the space, packed with
dead and dying vegetable matter until one sank calf deep, was a
triangle with a narrow point running east into the swamp.
“They don’t give up easily, do they?” Jellico
looked back to the shore and the cliff. Though the wounded graz
bull still held the heights against its fellows, there were others
breaking from the jungle on the lower level, wandering back and
forth to paw the earth, rip up soil with their tusks, and otherwise
threaten anyone who would try to return to the strip they
patrolled.
“They will not,” Asaki answered bleakly.
“Arouse a graz and it will trail you for days; kill any of
the herd and you have little hope of escaping them on
foot.”
It would seem now that the swamp was a deterrent to pursuit. The
two beasts that had fallen in the mire moaned in a pitiful rising
note. They had ceased to struggle and several of their kind
clustered on the shore near them, calling entreatingly. Asaki took
careful aim with the needler and put one animal after another out
of its misery. But the flash of those shots angered those on shore
to a higher pitch of rage.
“No going back,” he said. “At least not for
several days.”
Tau slapped a black, four-winged insect which had settled on his
arm, its jaws wide open for a sampling bite. “We can’t
very well perch here until they forget all about us,” he
pointed out. “Not without water we can trust, and with the
local wildlife ready to test us for tasty eating.”
Nymani had prowled along the swampward point of their island,
and now he made his report.
“There is more high land to the east. Perhaps it will give
us a bridge across.”
At that moment Dane doubted his ability to make any more leaps from island to island. And it would seem Tau shared his discouragement.
“I don’t suppose you could discourage our friends on
shore there with a few more shots?”
Asaki shook his head. “We do not have clips enough to
settle a whole herd. These might retreat from sight but they would
be waiting for us in the bush, and that would mean certain death.
We shall have to take the swamp road.”
If Dane had considered their earlier march misery, this was
sheer torture. Since footing was never secure, falls were frequent,
and within a quarter-hour they were all plastered with
evil-smelling slime and mud which hardened to rock consistency when
exposed to the air. Painful as this was, it did protect a portion
of their bodies from the insects with which the swamp was well
stocked.
And, in spite of their efforts to find a way out, the only
possible paths led them deeper into the center of the unexplored
morass. At last Asaki called a halt and a council to consider
retreat. To locate an island from which they could at least watch
the shore appealed very strongly indeed.
“We have to have water.” Tau’s voice was a
harsh croak, issuing out of a mask of green mud festooned with
trailing weeds.
“This ground is rising.” Asaki smacked the stock of
his needler against the surface on which he crouched. “I
think perhaps there may be clean land soon to come.”
Jellico hitched his way up a sapling, now bending under his
weight. Through the vision lenses he studied the route ahead.
“You’re right about that,” he called to the
Chief Ranger. “There’s a showing of the right sort of
green to the left, about half a mile on. And,” he glanced
about at the westering sun, “we have about an hour yet of
good light in which to make it. I wouldn’t try such a run
after dark.”
That promise of green bolstered their weary spirits for a last
exhausting effort. Once again they were faced with a series of islet leaps, and now they carried with them brush
culled from the bigger tussocks to aid in times of need.
When Dane scrambled up the last pull, staggered, and went down
to his knees again, he knew he was done. He did not even move at an
excited cry from Nymani, echoed a moment later by Asaki. It was not
until the latter leaned over him, a canteen open in his hand, that
Dane aroused a little.
“Drink!” the Khatkan urged. “We have found a
water tree. This is fresh.”
The liquid might have been fresh, but it also had a peculiar
taste, which Dane did not note until he had gulped down a generous
swallow. At that moment he was past caring about anything but the
fact that he did have a portion of drinkable stuff in hand.
Here the stunted, unnatural growth of the swamplands had given
away to the more normal vegetation of the jungle-clad lowlands. Had
they come clear across the swamp, Dane wondered dully, or was this
only a large island in the midst of the stinking boglands?
He drank again and regained strength enough to crawl to where
his shipmates lay. It was some time before he was interested in
much besides the fact that he could drink when he wished. Then he
watched Jellico waver to his feet, his head turned eastward. Tau,
too, sat up as if alerted by the Queen’s alarm
buzzer.
The Khatkans were gone, perhaps back to the water tree. But all
three of the spacemen heard that sound, a far off throbbing rhythm
which was a vibration as well. Jellico looked to Tau.
“Drums?”
“Could be.” The medic screwed the cap back on his
canteen. “I’d say we have company—only I’d
like to know what kind!”
They might have been mistaken about the drums, but none of them
could have been mistaken about the bolt which came out of nowhere
to slice through a tree trunk as a knife might slash wet clay. Blaster—and a particular type of
blaster!
“Patrol issue!” Tau lay flat, squeezing himself
against the earth as if he wished he could ooze into it.
Jellico wriggled toward the bush in answer to a low call from
Asaki, and the others made a worm’s progress in his wake.
Under cover they found the Chief Ranger reading his needler.
“Poacher camp here,” he explained bleakly.
“And they know about us.”
“A perfect end to a stinking day,” remarked Tau
dispassionately. “We might have guessed something of this
sort was waiting.” He tried to rub away some of the dried
clay coating his chin. “But do poachers use drums?”
The Chief Ranger scowled. “That is what Nymani has gone to
find out.”