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Updated: September 2, 2025
Did each man, Khatkan and off-worlder, see only what his particular set of emotions and memories dictated? Something swept in from the east, something which was not as tangible as the creature born of swamp mist. Rather it came as an unseen menace to the fire, and all that fire signifies to human kind security, comradeship, a weapon against the age-old forces of the dangerous night.
The Khatkan did not have time to rise from his knees as the barrel of the fire rod struck his head, sending him spinning. Then the drum was cradled in the spaceman's arm, close to his chest, his weapon aimed across it at the startled natives. The crackle of blaster fire, the shrill whine of needlers in action, raised a bedlam from the other end of the camp.
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.
"I don't understand," Dane began and then swallowed the rest of his protest, knowing that Tau was not going to explain why he needed to have the hackneyed popular song of the spaceways played in a Khatkan swamp. As a Free Trader he had had quite a few odd jobs handed him during the past couple of years, but this was the first time he had been ordered to serve as a musician.
"In the first place, that blasted tune has haunted us all for so long that I knew its rhythm was probably the one you could keep to without hardly knowing that you were beating it out. And, in the second place, its alien pattern was a part of our particular background, to counteract Lumbrilo's native Khatkan music, which was certainly a big factor in his stage setting.
"I wonder...." Tau gazed beyond the Khatkan to the barren ground where leopard and rock ape had ceased to be. "This magic is a tricky thing, sir. It builds and feeds upon a man's own imagination and inner fears. Lumbrilo, having triggered ours, need not strive at all, but let us ourselves raise that which will attack us." "Drugs?" demanded Jellico.
The Khatkan was turning the machine north to avoid what lay below, for here a long arm of the Mygra swamp clasped about the foot of the mountain. The Chief Ranger spoke into the mike of the com unit while the pilot continued to fight against the pull which was bringing them down.
Dane found that shedding the other boot was a minor torture in itself. Nymani was cutting tiny splinters, hardly thicker than a needle, from a stick. "Sand worm lays eggs in flesh. We burn them out or you have bad foot." "Burn them out!" Dane echoed, and then swallowed as he watched Nymani advance a splinter to the fire. "Burn them," the Khatkan repeated firmly.
"Thorson our acting-cargo-master." "Thorson," the Khatkan acknowledged with a grave nod of his head, and then glanced down to floor level with a look of surprise. Weaving a pattern about his legs, purring loudly, Sindbad was offering an unusually fervent welcome of his own. The Ranger went down on one knee, his hand out for Sindbad's inquiring sniff.
The Chief Ranger stood up and put Sindbad down though the cat protested with several sharp meows. "Small lion," the tall Khatkan spoke to the cat as to an equal, "this is your jungle, and mine lies elsewhere. But should you ever grow tired of traveling the stars, there is always a home for you in my courts."
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