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Updated: May 31, 2025
Rynch caught up two handsful of stones, holding them to his chest with his left arm as he made a last cast to see one light puff out in answer. Then they both scrambled on to that small platform at the top of the islet. By the aid of the burning flame-torches the Hunter had set, they could see that most of the rocky slopes below them now squirmed with a horrible mass of water life.
Rynch had sighted the flashing out of the dark from the river bank, making a pattern of flickers which bore no relation to the infernal lights at the water's edge. Hume's ray tube pointed skyward as he answered with a series of short bursts. "Take cover!" The call came weirdly out over the water, the tone dehumanized. Hume cupped his mouth with one hand, shouted back: "We're on top no cover."
Minute particles of pale-greenish radiance were gathering about the other. The dark shadow of an arm flapped, the radiance swirled, broke again into pinpoint sparks. Rynch glanced down at his own body the same sparks were drifting in about him, edging his arms, thighs, chest.
And the Hunter must have read something of his agreement in his face for now he nodded and added briskly: "Best place now is the safari camp. We'll head back at once." Only time had run out. A noise sounded with a metallic ring. Rynch whirled, needler cocked.
Rynch Brodie was to be discovered a castaway on Jumala. Only, matters had not worked out according to Hume's plan. In the first place he was certain he had not been intended to know that he was not Rynch Brodie. For a fleeting second he wondered why that conditioning had not completely worked, then went back to the problem of his relationship with Hume.
He hoped they did not willingly venture out of the trees where the leaves were their protection. Rynch went flat on the stream bank, made a worm's progress up the slope to crouch behind a bush and survey the land immediately ahead. There stood an off-world spacer, fins down, nose skyward, and grouped not too far from its landing ramp, a collection of bubble tents.
It was hard now to think back to Nahuatl as if the Vye Lansor who had been swamper in that den of the port town was a different person altogether. In that patch of memories into which Rynch Brodie still intruded he hunted for the proper answer. "I couldn't hold the state jobs. And once you get the habit of eating, you don't starve willingly." "Why not the state jobs?"
Sluggishly, memory associated one picture with another. Last night or yesterday Rynch Brodie had been locked in here. And "here" was one of the storage compartments of a spacer belonging to a man named Wass. It had been Wass' pilot in the flitter which snaked them from the river islet where the monsters had besieged them. This was a concealed, fortified camp Wass' hideout.
Then a finger of mist drew between Rynch and the lights which were now only faint, glowing patches. He swung down from his perch, shook Hume awake. The Out-Hunter made that instant return to full consciousness which was another defense for the men who live long on the rim of wild worlds. "What ?" Rynch pulled him forward.
Now Rynch considered the problem from his own angle. The man from the spacer had made no effort to conceal his trail, in fact it would almost seem that he had deliberately gone out of his way to leave boot prints on favorable stretches of ground. Did he guess that Rynch lurked behind, was now leading him on for some purpose of his own?
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