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Updated: June 27, 2025
There was no time to linger; he had to get to the next patch, to free this dubious landing place for the men embattled on the rise above. Stumbling up, Dane judged the distance with a space-trained eye and jumped to a knob Nymani had already quitted.
"We can't very well perch here until they forget all about us," he pointed out. "Not without water we can trust, and with the local wild life ready to test us for tasty eating." Nymani had prowled along the swampward point of their island, and now he made his report. "There is more high land to the east. Perhaps it will give us a bridge across."
Yet Dane, stopping to drink sparingly from his canteen, could not lose that sense of eyes upon him, of being tracked. Rock apes? Cunning as those beasts were, it was against their nature to trail in utter silence, to be able to carry through a long-term project. Lion, perhaps? He noted that Nymani and Asaki took turns at rear guard today, and that each was alert.
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.
If there is a canker of trouble on Khatka, then Lumbrilo is close to its root." "Nymani!" The Chief Ranger's voice was the crack of a lash. "Will you forget again that you are a man, and run crying for shelter against a shaft of light? As this off-world Medic says, Lumbrilo fashions such as that to drive us into our enemies' hands!"
He set off along their back trail to return a half hour later, the body of his kill slung across one shoulder. He was skinning it when Nymani trotted back. "Well?" "Death pit," supplied the Hunter. "Poachers?" Jellico inquired. Nymani nodded. Asaki continued his task, but there was a glint in his dark eyes as he butchered with sure and expert strokes.
One foot closer to the heat began to tingle and he eased off his boot; his cramped toes suddenly seeming to have doubled in size. He was staring wide-eyed at these same toes, puffed, red, and increasingly painful to the touch, when Nymani squatted beside him, inspected his foot closely, and ordered him to take off his other boot. "What is it?"
He hurled the stone, and Dane heard as well as saw the missile go home. The rock ape fell for the third time. When one of those taloned paws began to move again, Nymani broke. He ran, his screams echoing thinly in the air, as the thing lurched up, the gory mess of its head weaving about. If his feet would have obeyed him, Dane might have followed the Khatkan.
Those gaping wounds closed, the head straightened on the almost invisible neck, the eyes glared once more with life, and slaver dripped from the swine snout. Jellico caught up the needler Nymani had dropped. With a coolness Dane envied, the captain shot. And for the second time the rock ape collapsed, torn to ribbons. Nymani screamed, and Dane tried to choke back his own cry of horrified protest.
The Khatkan got lithely to his feet. Then one of those feet stirred Nymani into the instant wakefulness of the wilderness-trained man. Dane slid his hand about the bole of the tree and touched Jellico, watched the captain's gray eyes open with a similar awareness. Asaki picked up his needler. Weapon in hand, he whirled and fired almost in one connected movement.
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