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Updated: June 27, 2025
Nymani will cover us from the dark and your two men " Tau spoke up, "Give me leave to flush out our other quarry, sir. I believe I can keep him occupied. Dane, you'll take the drum." "Drum?" With his mind on blasters, it was startling to be offered a noise-maker. "It's your business to get that drum. And when you get it I want you to beat out 'Terra Bound. You certainly can play that, can't you?"
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!
Together they watched the progress of their captain. Safe on the second tussock from the shore, Jellico halted, edged carefully around and used the needler Nymani had left with him. A shaggy head tossed and the bull fronting Asaki on the cliff went down. The Chief Ranger dodged quickly to the right and a second beast rushed out and over, to join its mired comrade in the swamp below.
The other and the spaceman were prisoners, while Nymani rounded up in addition the man Dane had burned to save Tau. When the younger spaceman returned from making the medic comfortable in the shelter, he found Asaki and Jellico holding an impromptu court of inquiry.
"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.
They waited for Nymani through dragging minutes. Surely those in the camp would expect their arrival soon now? Dane's fire ray was in his hand as he measured the distance to the drummer's stand. "It is done," Nymani whispered from the darkness behind them. Jellico and the Chief Ranger moved to the left; Tau crept to the right and Dane pushed level with the medic.
He tried to rub away some of the dried clay coating his chin. "But do poachers use drums?" The Chief Ranger scowled. "That is what Nymani has gone to find out." Darkness closed in while they waited for Nymani's return. There had been no further attack from the blaster wielder; perhaps he was only trying to pin them down where they were.
"We shall see. If Lumbrilo is not here he shall come." And the promise in Tau's tone was sure. "Those off-worlders will have to be out of action first. And with that walking thing sent to drive us in, they must be waiting for us." "If they have sentries out, I will silence them!" promised Nymani. "You have a plan?"
Once again they were faced with a series of islet leaps, and now they carried with them brush culled from the bigger tussocks to aid in times of need. When Dane scrambled up the last pull, staggered, and went down to his knees again, he knew he was done. He did not even move at an excited cry from Nymani, echoed a moment later by Asaki.
They were now in a narrow tongue of land between the range and the swamps, and this territory was limited. Nymani, still shaken, was of little help, and the spacemen did not dare to strike out into unexplored land alone. So they mouthed dry concentrates and dared not drink. Dane was tempted to pour out the liquid in his canteen. Water so close to hand was a continual torment.
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