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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.
He watched Captain Jellico's hand slide across his knee, his fingers drop in touching distance of knife hilt. And the hand of the Chief Ranger, hanging lax at his side, suddenly balled into a fist. "So!" Tau expelled the word as a hiss. He moved with sure-footed speed. Now he passed between the stools to confront the dancing cat-dog. Yet he did not look at that weird creature and its attendants.
Jellico's mouth was a straight line, his eyes very hard. By instinct Dane's hand went to the grip of the sleep rod slung at his belt. When the Old Man put on his fighting face look out! Here we go again, he told himself, speculating as to just what type of action lay before them now. "Oh, they do, do they!"
"You'd better work out a good list of such fighters." Jellico's grim humor showed again. "I can supply a few if you need them. Not that I don't share your hope we won't see any more trigger rocks. Here comes Asaki with his wandering boy." The Chief Ranger was half-leading, half-supporting his hunter, and Nymani seemed only half-conscious. Tau got to his feet and hurried to meet them.
Dane noticed that after that discouraging statement Rip made straight for Jellico's record tapes and routed out the one which dealt with Terraport and the landing instructions for that metropolis of the star ships. To land unbidden there would certainly bring them publicity and to get the Video broadcast and tell their story would grant them not only world wide, but system wide hearing.
He had seen the almost transparent globe "bogies" of Limbo, had been fascinated by the weird and ugly pictures in Captain Jellico's collection of tri-dee prints. But this creature was as impossible in its way as the horrific blue thing dragging it out of concealment. It walked erect on two threads of legs, with four knobby joints easily detected.
Since Queex would not be howling in that fashion if its master was present, Dane kept on to the control cabin where he blundered in upon an executive level conference of Captain, Cargo-master and Astrogator. "Well?" Jellico's blaster scarred left cheek twitched as he snapped that impatient inquiry at the messenger. "Eysie Captain below, sir. With his Cargo-master. They want to see you "
As Thorson reached forward to steady the other, one of those hands tore at tunic collar, ripping loose the sealing There was no need for explanation the red splotch signaled from Jellico's sweating throat. He kept his feet, holding out against the waves of pain by sheer will power.
"Yes?" the Queen's Cargo-master prompted politely. But Kallee had taken his Captain's arm and was urging Grange away from the spacer. "You have until noon to lift," was Jellico's parting shot as the three in Company livery started toward the road. "I don't think that they will," he added to Van Rycke. The Cargo-master nodded. "You wouldn't in their place," he pointed out reasonably.
Lumbrilo and the evil behind him must be rooted out. There was no trickery in my invitation!" They stood eye to eye, equal in height, in authority of person, and that indefinable something which made them both masters in their own different worlds. Then Jellico's hand went out, his fingertip flicked the hilt of the bared blade. "There was no trickery," he conceded.
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