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Updated: June 14, 2025
Then the cat butted that dark palm, batted at it playfully with claw-sheathed paw. "A Terran cat! It is of the lion family?" "Far removed," Jellico supplied. "You'd have to add a lot of bulk to Sindbad to promote him to the lion class." "We have only the old tales." Asaki sounded almost wistful as the cat jumped to his knee and clawed for a hold on his chest belts.
"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."
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!
Beside Dane, Jellico stiffened, moved his blaster, as someone wriggled through the brush, trilling softly. "Off-worlders," Nymani reported in gasps to Asaki, "and outlaws, too. They make a hunting sing tomorrow they march for a killing." Asaki rested his chin on his broad forearm. "Outlaws?" "They show no lord's badge. But each I saw wears a bracelet of three, five, or ten tails.
Though to deliberately smash up a flitter and set them all afoot in this wilderness was a pretty drastic move. Asaki had started to unload emergency supplies from the flitter. They each had a trail bag for a pack. But when the pilot staggered over to pull out a set of stass belts and Jellico began to uncoil them, the Chief Ranger shook his head.
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.
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."
A rock ape, its hideous body clearly seen here, capered, coughed, spat. Asaki fired from the hip and the thing screeched, clawed at its chest where the dark blood spewed out, and raced for them. Nymani cut the beast down and they waited tensely for the attack of the thing's tribe, which should have followed the abortive lunge on the part of their scout.
There was a grim note in the Medic's reply. "And to do that I want to look at their camp." "Well enough!" Asaki crept back in the brush. The ghost of that which was not a man had reached the shore of the island, stood there, its blank head turned toward them.
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.
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