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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.
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.
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.
Yet the beast advanced, its head lolling on its hunched shoulders so that the eyes were turned blindly up to the full glare of the sun, while it crawled to reach the man it could not see. "Demon!" Nymani dropped his needler, shrank back against the rocks. As the thing advanced, before their eyes the impossible happened.
That was Nymani; and over his sudden quaver, robbed of all the confidence which had been there only moments earlier, came Asaki's demand: "What stands there, Medic? Tell us that!" "A whip to drive us out of hiding, sir. As you know as well as I. If Nymani spied upon them, then they have spied upon us in turn. And this, I think, also answers another question.
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.
Suppose we do stampede after Nymani has removed any sentries stampede so well we sweep right over them? I want to get at that com unit." "You don't think they'll just mow us down as we come in?" "You delivered a blow to Lumbrilo's pride; he won't be satisfied with just your burning," the captain answered Tau, "not if I'm any judge of character.
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.
"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.
The cleaning was easy for the brittle bedding of dried bracken and grass the beast had left burned quickly, cleansing with both fire and smoke. When they raked the ashes out with branches, Asaki and Nymani brought in handfuls of leaves which they crumpled and threw on the floor, spreading an aromatic odor which banished most of the foulness.
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