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"You are thinking of an intelligent native race, Hunter?" Chambriss, the most demanding of the civ party, strode up to join them. Hume shook his head. "No native intelligence on a hunting world, Gentlehomo. That is assured before the planet is listed for a safari.
The castaway's identity would be challenged by a half dozen distant and unloving relatives, and there would be an intense inquiry. These civs must be the impartial witnesses. "No, I hardly believe in a mirror in an uninhabited forest, Gentlehomo," he chuckled. "But we are on a hunting planet and not all its life forms have yet been classified."
Hume forced a quick smile. "Just what did you sight, Gentlehomo Starns? There is no large game in the woodlands." "This was not an animal, Hunter. Rather a flash of light, just about there." Again he pointed.
"Ready and waiting for you to move in, Gentlehomo," he reported to the small man who stood gazing about him with a child's wondering interest in the new and strange. "Very ingenious, Hunter. Ah now just what might that be?" His voice was also eager as he pointed a finger to the east. Hume glanced up alertly.
He had realized the folly of his outburst the moment Wass had looked at him. "This becomes more interesting," the Veep had remarked with that deceptive gentleness. "You are Rynch Brodie, castaway from the Largo Drift, are you not? I trust that Out-Hunter Hume has made plain to you our concern with your welfare, Gentlehomo Brodie." "I'm not Brodie."
If they've been gone long enough to hit the foothills we may be able to sight them climbing. Otherwise, we'll go all the way up to the valley, wait for them there." "You don't believe that they will be released after they have been processed?" Hume shook his head. "I don't think we would have been free, Gentlehomo, if it hadn't been for a series of fortunate accidents."
"But, Gentlehomo," Starns showed no signs of any emotion but eager curiosity, "to be here at this time is a privilege we could not hope to equal except by good fortune! The T-Casts will be avid for our stories." What had that to do with the matter, puzzled Vye. But he saw Starns' reminder produce a quick change in Chambriss. "The T-Casts," he repeated, his expression of anger smoothing away.
"I came here for a water-cat, and a water-cat I'm going to have. You don't find those in wooded areas." "There will be a schedule," Hume announced. "Each of you has signed up, according to contract, for a different trophy. You for a water-cat, Gentlehomo. And you, Gentlehomo Starns, want to make tri-dees of the pit-dragons. While Gentlehomo Yactisi wishes to try electo fishing in the deep holes.
A flicker of light winked below the name, the wall to the right shimmered, and produced a doorway. Steering Vye to it, Hume nodded to the man waiting there. He was a flat-faced Eucorian of the servant caste, and now he reached out to draw Lansor over the threshold. "I have him, gentlehomo." His voice was as expressionless as his face. There was another shimmer and the door disappeared.
Sun, Hume thought, could have been reflected from some portion of the L-B. He had believed that small spacer so covered with vines and ringed in by trees that it could not have been so sighted. But a storm might have disposed of some of nature's cloaking. If so Starns' interest must be fed, he would make an ideal discoverer. "Odd." Hume produced his distance glasses. "Just where, Gentlehomo?"
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