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Updated: June 26, 2025
For, although the other two which had been in the path of the ray had not moved, he now counted four climbing. "Stand by to ray " that was Rip. But it would have been interesting to see how Queex was prepared to handle the four. And, though Rip had given the order to stand by, he had not ordered the ray to be used. Was he, too, interested in that?
Dane waited, afraid to disturb the Hoobat. He had not had a good look at the thing which had run from Queex but he knew it was something which had no business aboard the Queen. And it might be the disturbing factor they were searching for. If the Hoobat would only lead him to it The Hoobat moved, rearing up on the tips of its six legs, its neckless head slowly revolving on its puffy shoulders.
It was very evident that the ship's cat was having none of this pest. They might have been invisible and their actions non-existent as far as Queex was concerned. For the Hoobat continued its siren concert. The lured became more reckless, mounting the logs to Queex's post in sudden darts. Dane wondered how the Hoobat proposed handling four of the creatures at once.
Queex might be lost in a happy dream, the result of its own fiddling. Nor did the rhythm of that scraping vary. The nightmare thing made the last foot in a rush of speed which reduced it to a blur, coming to a halt before the Hoobat. Its front legs whipped out to strike at its enemy. But Queex was no longer dreaming. This was the moment the Hoobat had been awaiting.
He had fled to Dane's cabin where he had taken refuge on the bunk and snarled wild eyed when anyone looked in from the corridor. "Queex has to do it," Rip said. "But will it hunt unless it is hungry?" He surveyed the now comatose creature skeptically.
Wearing gloves Ali detached the little monsters from their holds on the wood and put them for temporary safekeeping during a transfer to the deep freeze into the Hoobat's cage. Queex, they decided to leave where it was for a space, to awaken and trap any survivor which had been too wary to emerge at the first siren song.
Then, just as he was beginning to wonder if it had lost contact with its prey, once more it arose and with the same speed it had displayed in the Captain's cabin it shot along the corridor to the hydro. To Dane's knowledge the door of the garden was not only shut but sealed. And how either the stranger or Queex could get through it he did not see.
An hour later the four who now comprised the crew of the Queen gathered in the mess for a conference. Queex was in its cage on the table before them, asleep after all its untoward activity. "There must be more than just one," Weeks said. "But how are we going to hunt them down? With Sinbad?" Dane shook his head.
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 "
He gained the passage just in time to see Queex disappear down the ladder, clinging with the aid of its pincher claws, apparently grimly determined to catch up with the thing it pursued. And Dane went after them. There was no sign of the creature who fled on the next level. But Dane made no move to recapture the blue hunter who squatted at the foot of the ladder staring unblinkingly into space.
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