[Pg 1]

[Pg 2]

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Dane Thorson

He wanted to spend a short vacation on Khatka, not
the rest of his life.

Medic Tau

Was he physician or magician—or a little bit of both?

Chief Ranger Asaki

Tracking the forests had taught him that mad animals—whether
real or imaginary—were to be feared.

Captain Jellico

Would his knowledge of alien life-forms help him in
his fight against alien ghosts?

Nymani

Not even this pilot's most scientific skill could overcome
a voodoo charm's ground-drag.

Lumbrilo

On his own planet he was a witch doctor; on Earth
he'd have been a master politician.

[Pg 3]

VOODOO PLANET

by

ANDRE NORTON

ACE BOOKS, INC.


23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N. Y.

[Pg 4]

VOODOO PLANET

Copyright ©, 1959, by Ace Books, Inc.

All Rights Reserved

Printed in U. S. A.

Table of Contents

[Pg 5]

I

Talk of heat—or better not—on Xecho. This water-logged
world combined all the most unattractive features of a steam
bath and one could only dream of coolness, greenness—more
land than a stingy string of islands.

The young man on the promontory above the crash of the
waves wore the winged cap of a spaceman with the insignia
of a cargo-master and not much else, save a pair of very
short shorts. He wiped one hand absently across his bare
chest and brought it away damp as he studied, through
protective sun goggles, the treacherous promise of the bright
sea. One could swim—if he wanted to lose most of his skin.
There were minute organisms in that liquid that smacked
their lips—if they had lips—every time they thought of a
Terran.

Dane Thorson licked his own lips, tasting salt, and plodded
back through the sand of the spaceport to the berth of the
Solar Queen. This had been a long day, and one with more
snarl-ups than he cared to count, keeping him on a constant,
dogged trot between the ship and the fitting yard where
riggers labored with the slowest motions possible to the
human body—or so it seemed to the exasperated acting-Cargo-Master
of the Free Trader. Captain Jellico had long
ago taken refuge in his cabin to preserve the remnants of his
temper. Dane had been allowed no such escape.

The Queen had a schedule for refitting to serve as a mail
ship, and that time allowance did not allow for humidity
playing the devil with the innards of robot fitters. She had
to be ready to lift when the Combine ship now plying that
run set down and formally signed off in her favor. Luckily,
[Pg 6]most of the work was done and Dane had given a last
searching inspection before signing the rigger's book and
reporting to his captain.

The air-conditioned interior of the Queen comforted him
as he climbed to his quarters. Ship air was flat, chemically
pure but unappetizing stuff. Today it was a relief to breathe.
Dane went on to the bather. At least there was no lack of
water—with the local skinners filtered out. It was chill but
relaxing on his gaunt young body.

He was sealing on his lightest tunic when the ramp buzzer
sounded. A visitor—oh, not the supervisor-rigger again! Dane
went to answer with dragging feet. For the crew of the Queen
at the moment numbered exactly four, with himself for
general errand boy. Captain Jellico was in his quarters two
levels above, Medic Tau was presumably overhauling his
supplies, and Sindbad, ship's cat, asleep in some empty cabin.

Dane jerked his tunic into place, very much on his guard
as he came to the head of the ramp. But it was not the
supervisor-rigger. Dane, thoroughly used to unusual-appearing
strangers, both human and alien, was impressed by this
visitor.

He was tall, this quiet man, his great height accented by
a fit leanness, a narrowness of waist and hip, a length of leg
and arm. His main article of clothing was the universal
shorts of the Xecho settler. But, being fashioned of saffron
yellow, they were the more brilliant because of his darkness
of skin. For he was not the warm brown of the Terran Negroes
Dane had served beside, though he shared their general features.
His flesh was really black, black with an almost bluish
sheen. Instead of shirt or tunic, his deep chest was crossed by
two wide straps, the big medallion marking their intersection
giving forth flashes of gem fire when he breathed. He wore
at his belt not the standard stun gun of a spaceman, but a
weapon which resembled the more deadly Patrol blaster, as
well as a long knife housed in a jeweled and fringed sheath.
[Pg 7]To the eye he was an example of barbaric force tamed and
trimmed to civilized efficiency.

He saluted, palm out, and spoke Galactic Basic with only
a suggestion of accent.

"I am Kort Asaki. I believe Captain Jellico expects me."

"Yes, sir!" Dane snapped to attention. So this was the
Chief Ranger from fabulous Khatka, Xecho's sister planet.

The other ascended the cat ladder easily, missing no detail
of the ship's interior as he passed. His expression was still one
of polite interest as his guide rapped on the panel door of
Jellico's cabin. And a horrible screech from Queex, the captain's
pet hoobat, drowned out any immediate answer. Then
followed that automatic thump on the floor of the blue-feathered,
crab-parrot-toad's cage, announcing that its master
was in residence.

Since the captain's cordial welcome extended only to his
guest, Dane regretfully descended to the mess cabin to make
unskilled preparations for supper—though there was not much
you could do to foul up concentrates in an automatic cooker.

"Company?" Tau sat beyond the cooking unit nursing a
mug of Terran coffee. "And do you have to serve music with
the meals, especially that particular selection?"

Dane flushed, stopped whistling in mid-note. "Terra
Bound" was old and pretty well worn out; he didn't know
why he always unconsciously sounded off with that.

"A Chief Ranger from Khatka just came on board," he
reported, carefully offhand, as he busied himself reading
labels. He knew better than to serve fish or any of its derivatives
in disguise again.

"Khatka!" Tau sat up straighter. "Now there's a planet
worth visiting."

"Not on a Free Trader's pay," commented Dane.

"You can always hope to make a big strike, boy. But what
I wouldn't give to lift ship for there!"

"Why? You're no hunter. How come you want to heat jets
for that port?"

[Pg 8]

"Oh, I don't care about the game preserves, though they're
worth seeing, too. It's the people themselves—"

"But they're Terran settlers, or at least from Terran stock,
aren't they?"

"Sure," Tau sipped his coffee slowly. "But there are settlers
and settlers, son. And a lot depends upon when they left
Terra and why, and who they were—also what happened to
them after they landed out here."

"And Khatkans are really special?"

"Well, they have an amazing history. The colony was
founded by escaped prisoners—and just one racial stock. They
took off from Earth close to the end of the Second Atomic
War. That was a race war, remember? Which made it
doubly ugly." Tau's mouth twisted in disgust. "As if the
color of a man's skin makes any difference in what lies under
it! One side in that line-up tried to take over Africa—herded
most of the natives into a giant concentration camp and
practiced genocide on a grand scale. Then they were cracked
themselves, hard and heavy. During the confusion some
survivors in the camp staged a revolt, helped by the enemy.
They captured an experimental station hidden in the center
of the camp and made a break into space in two ships which
had been built there. That voyage must have been a nightmare,
but they were desperate. Somehow they made it out
here to the rim and set down on Khatka without power
enough to take off again—and by then most of them were
dead.

"But we humans, no matter what our race, are a tough
breed. The refugees discovered that climatically their new
world was not too different from Africa, a lucky chance which
might happen only once in a thousand times. So they thrived,
the handful who survived. But the white technicians they
had kidnaped to run the ships didn't. For they set up a
color bar in reverse. The lighter your skin, the lower you
were in the social scale. By that kind of selective breeding
the present Khatkans are very dark indeed.

[Pg 9]

"They reverted to the primitive for survival. Then, about
two hundred years ago, long before the first Survey Scout
discovered them, something happened. Either the parent
race mutated, or, as sometimes occurs, a line of people of
superior gifts emerged—not in a few isolated births, but with
surprising regularity in five family clans. There was a short
period of power struggle until they realized the foolishness of
civil war and formed an oligarchy, heading a loose tribal
organization. With the Five Families to push and lead, a
new civilization developed, and when Survey came to call
they were no longer savages. Combine bought the trade rights
about seventy-five years ago. Then the Company and the
Five Families got together and marketed a luxury item to the
galaxy. You know how every super-jet big shot on twenty-five
planets wants to say he's hunted on Khatka. And if he
can point out a graz head on his wall, or wear a tail bracelet,
he's able to strut with the best. To holiday on Khatka is both
fabulous and fashionable—and very, very profitable for the
natives and for Combine who sells transportation to the
travelers."

"I hear they have poachers, too," Dane remarked.

"Yes, that naturally follows. You know what a glam skin
brings on the market. Wherever you have a rigidly controlled
export you're going to have poachers and smugglers. But the
Patrol doesn't go to Khatka. The natives handle their own
criminals. Personally, I'd cheerfully take a ninety-nine-year
sentence in the Lunar mines in place of what the Khatkans
dish out to a poacher they net!"

"So that rumor has spread satisfactorily!"

Coffee slopped over the brim of Tau's mug and Dane
dropped the packet of steak concentrate he was about to
feed into the cooker. Chief Ranger Asaki loomed in the doorway
of the mess as suddenly as if he had been teleported to
that point.

The medic arose to his feet and smiled politely at the
visitor.

[Pg 10]

"Do I detect in that observation, sir, the suggestion that
the tales I have heard were deliberately set to blast where
they would do the most good as deterrents?"

A fleeting grin broke the impassive somberness of the
black face.

"I was informed you are a man skilled in 'magic,' Medic.
You certainly display the traditional sorcerer's quickness of
wit. But this rumor is also truth." The quirk of good humor
had gone again, and there was an edge in the Chief Ranger's
voice which cut. "Poachers on Khatka would welcome the
Patrol in place of the attention they now receive."

He came into the mess cabin, Jellico behind him, and
Dane pulled down two of the snap seats. He was holding
a mug under the spout of the coffee dispenser as the captain
made introductions.

"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. Then the cat butted that dark
palm, batted at it playfully with claw-sheathed paw.

"A Terran cat! It is of the lion family?"

"Far removed," Jellico supplied. "You'd have to add a
lot of bulk to Sindbad to promote him to the lion class."

"We have only the old tales." Asaki sounded almost wistful
as the cat jumped to his knee and clawed for a hold on
his chest belts. "But I do not believe that lions were ever so
friendly toward my ancestors."

Dane would have removed the cat, but the Khatkan arose
with Sindbad, still purring loudly, resting in the crook of his
arm. The Ranger was smiling with a gentleness which
changed the whole arrogant cast of his countenance.

"Do not bring this one to Khatka with you, Captain, or
you will never take him away again. Those who dwell in the
[Pg 11]inner courts would not let him vanish from their sight. Ah,
so this pleases you, small lion?" He rubbed Sindbad gently
under the throat and the cat stretched his neck, his yellow
eyes half closed in bliss.

"Thorson," the Captain turned to Dane, "that arrival report
on my desk was the final one from Combine?"

"Yes, sir. There's no hope of the Rover setting down here
before that date."

Asaki sat down, still holding the cat. "So you see, Captain,
fortune has arranged it all. You have two tens of days. Four
days to go in my cruiser, four days for your return here,
and the rest to explore the preserve. We could not ask for
better luck, for I do not know when our paths may cross
again. In the normal course of events I will not have another
mission to Xecho for a year, perhaps longer. Also—" He
hesitated and then spoke to Tau. "Medic, Captain Jellico
has informed me that you have made a study of magic on
many worlds."

"That is so, sir."

"Do you then believe that it is real force, or that it is
only a superstition for child-people who set up demons to
howl petitions to when some darkness falls upon them?"

"Some of the magic I have seen is trickery, some of it
founded upon an inner knowledge of men and their ways
which a shrewd witch doctor can use to his advantage.
There always remains"—Tau put down his mug, "—there
always remains a small residue of happenings and results
for which we have not yet found any logical explanations—"

"And I believe," Asaki interrupted, "it is also true that a
race can be conditioned from birth to be sensitive to forms
of magic so that men of that blood are particularly susceptible."
That was more of a statement than a question, but
Tau answered it.

"That is very true. A Lamorian, for example, can be 'sung'
to death. I have witnessed such a case. But upon a Terran
[Pg 12]or another off-world man the same suggestion would have no
effect."

"Those who settled Khatka brought such magic with them."
The Chief Ranger's fingers still moved about Sindbad's jaw
and throat soothingly, but his tone was chill, the coldest
thing in the cramped space of the mess cabin.

"Yes, a highly developed form of it," Tau agreed.

"More highly developed perhaps than even you can believe,
Medic!" That came in a hiss of cold rage. "I think that its
present manifestation—death by a beast that is not a beast—could
be worth your detailed study."

"Why?" Tau came bluntly to the point.

"Because it is a killing magic and it is being carefully
used to rid my world of key men, men we need badly. If
there is a weak point in this cloudy attack shaping against
us, we must learn it, and soon!"

It was Jellico who added the rest. "We are invited to visit
Khatka and survey a new hunting range as Chief Ranger
Asaki's personal term guests."

Dane drew a deep breath of wonder. Guest rights on
Khatka were jealously guarded—they were too valuable to
their owners to waste. Whole families lived on the income
from the yearly rental of even half a one. But the Rangers,
by right of office, had several which they could grant to
visiting scientists or men from other worlds holding positions
similar to their own. To have such an opportunity offered to
an ordinary Trader was almost incredible.

His wonder was matched by Tau's and must have been
plain to read for the Chief Ranger smiled.

"For a long time Captain Jellico and I have exchanged
biological data on alien life-forms—his skill in photographing
such, his knowledge as an xenobiologist are widely recognized.
And so I have permission for him to visit the new Zoboru
preserve, not yet officially opened. And you, Medic Tau,
your help, or at least your diagnosis, we need in another
direction. So, one expert comes openly, another not so
[Pg 13]openly. Though, Medic, your task is approved by my superiors.
And"—he glanced at Dane—"perhaps to muddle the
trail for the suspicious, shall we not ask this young man also?"

Dane's eyes went to the captain. Jellico was always fair
and his crew would have snapped into action on his word
alone—even if they were fronting a rain of Thorkian death
darts and that order was to advance. But, on the other hand,
Dane would never have asked a favor, and the best he hoped
for was to be able to perform his duties without unfavorable
comment upon their commission. He had no reason to believe
Jellico was willing to agree to this.

"You have two weeks' planet-side leave coming, Thorson.
If you want to spend it on Khatka...." Jellico actually
grinned then. "I take it that you do. When do we up-ship,
sir?"

"You said that you must wait for the return of your other
crew members—shall we say mid-afternoon tomorrow?" 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."

When the Chief Ranger went out the door, Sindbad did not
try to follow, but he uttered one mournful little cry of protest
and loss.

"So he wants a trouble shooter, does he?" Tau asked. "All
right, I'll try to hunt out his goblins for him; it'll be worth
that to visit Khatka!"

Dane, remembering the hot glare of the Xecho spaceport,
the sea one could not swim in, contrasted that with the tri-dees
he had seen of the green hunters' paradise on the next
planet of the system. "Yes, sir!" he echoed and made a haphazard
choice for the cooker.

"Don't be too lighthearted," Tau warned. "I'll say that any
[Pg 14]stew which was too hot for that Ranger to handle might give
us burned fingers—and quick. When we land on Khatka, walk
softly and look over your shoulder, and be prepared for the
worst."

[Pg 15]

II

Lightning played along the black ridges above them, and
below was a sheer drop to a river which was only a silver
thread. Under their boots, man-made and yet dominating the
wildness of jungle and mountain, was a platform of rock
slabs, fused to support a palace of towering yellow-white
walls and curved cups of domes, a palace which was also
half fortress, half frontier post.

Dane set his hands on the parapet of the river drop, blinked
as a lightning bolt crackled in a sky-splitting glare of violet
fire. This was about as far from the steaming islands of Xecho
as a man could imagine.

"The demon graz prepare for battle." Asaki nodded toward
the distant crackling.

Captain Jellico laughed. "Supposed to be whetting their
tusks, eh? I wouldn't care to meet a graz that could produce
such a display by mere tusk whetting."

"No? But think of the reward for the tracker who discovers
where such go to die. To find the graveyard of the graz
herds would make any man wealthy beyond dreams."

"How much truth is there in that legend?" Tau asked.

The Chief Ranger shrugged. "Who can say? This much is
true: I have served my life in the forests since I could walk.
I have listened to the talk of Trackers, Hunters, Rangers in
my father's courtyards and field camps since I could understand
their words. Yet never has any man reported the
finding of a body of a graz that died a natural death. The
scavengers might well account for the bulk of flesh, but the
tusks and the bones should be visible for years. And this, too,
I have seen with my own eyes: a graz close to death, supported
by two of its kind and being urged along to the big
[Pg 16]swamps. Perhaps it is only that the suffering animal longs
for water at its end, or perhaps in the heart of that morass
there does lie the graz graveyard. But no man has found a
naturally dead graz, nor has any returned from exploring the
big swamps...."

Lightning on peaks which were like polished jet—bare
rock above, the lush overgrowth of jungle below. And
between, this fortress held by men who dared both the
heights and the depths. The wildly burgeoning life of Khatka
had surrounded the off-worlders since they had come here.
There was something untameable about Khatka; the lush
planet lured and yet repelled at the same time.

"Zoboru far from here?"

The Chief Ranger pointed north in answer to the captain's
question.

"About a hundred leagues. It is the first new preserve we
have prepared in ten years. And it is our desire to make it
the best for tri-dee hunters. That is why we are now operating
taming teams—"

"Taming teams?" Dane had to ask.

The Chief Ranger was ready enough to discuss his project.

"Zoboru is a no-kill preserve. The animals, they come to
learn that after a while. But we cannot wait several years
until they do. So we make them gifts." He laughed, evidently
recalling some incident. "Sometimes, perhaps, we are too
eager. Most of our visitors who wish to make tri-dees want
to picture big game—graz, amplet, rock apes, lions—"

"Lions?" echoed Dane.

"Not Terran lions, no. But my people, when they landed on
Khatka, found a few animals that reminded them of those
they had always known. So they gave those the same names.
A Khatkan lion is furred, it is a hunter and a great fighter,
but it is not the cat of Terra. However, it is in great demand
as a tri-dee actor. So we summon it out of lurking by providing
free meals. One shoots a poli, a water rat, or a landeer
and drags the carcass behind a low-flying flitter. The
[Pg 17]lion springs upon the moving meat, which it can also scent,
and the rope is cut, leaving a free dinner.

"The lions are not stupid. In a very short time they connect
the sound of a flitter cutting the air with food. So they
come to the banquet and those on the flitter can take their tri-dee
shots at ease. Only there must also be care taken in
such training. One forest guard on the Komog preserve became
too enterprising. He dragged his kill at first. Then, to
see if he could get the lions to forget man's presence entirely,
he hung the training carcasses on the flitter, encouraging
them to jump for their food.

"For the guard that was safe enough, but it worked too
too well. A month or so later a Hunter was escorting a client
through Komog and they swung low to get a good picture
of a water rat emerging from the river. Suddenly there was
a snarl behind them and they found themselves sharing the
flitter with a lioness annoyed at finding no meat waiting on
board.

"Luckily, they both wore stass belts; but they had to land
the flitter and leave until the lioness wandered off, and she
seriously damaged the machine in her irritation. So now our
guards play no more fancy tricks while on taming runs.
Tomorrow—no," he corrected himself, "the day after tomorrow
I will be able to show you how the process works."

"And tomorrow?" inquired the captain.

"Tomorrow my men make hunting magic." Asaki's voice
was expressionless.

"Your chief witch doctor being?" questioned Tau.

"Lumbrilo." The Chief Ranger did not appear disposed to
add to that but Tau pursued the subject.

"His office is hereditary?"

"Yes. Does that make any difference?" For the first time
there was a current of repressed eagerness in the other's
tone.

"Perhaps a vast amount of difference," Tau replied. "A
hereditary office may carry with it two forms of conditioning,
[Pg 18]one to influence its holder, one to affect the public-at-large.
Your Lumbrilo may have come to believe deeply in his own
powers; he would be a very remarkable man if he did not.
It is almost certain that your people unquestionably accept
him as a worker of wonders?"

"They do so accept." Once more Asaki's voice was drained
of life.

"And Lumbrilo does not accept something you believe
necessary?"

"Again the truth, Medic. Lumbrilo does not accept his
proper place in the scheme of things!"

"He is a member of one of your Five Families?"

"No, his clan is small, always set apart. From the beginning
here, those who spoke for gods and demons did not
also order men."

"Separation of church and state," commented Tau thoughtfully.
"Yet in our Terran past there have been times when
church and state were one. Does Lumbrilo desire that?"

Asaki raised his eyes to the mountain peaks, to the
northward where lay his beloved work.

"I do not know what Lumbrilo wants, save that it makes
mischief—or worse! This I tell you: hunting magic is part of
our lives and it has at its core some of those unexplainable
happenings which you have acknowledged do exist. I have
used powers I can neither explain nor understand as part
of my work. In the jungle and on the grasslands an off-worlder
must guard his life with a stass belt if he goes
unarmed. But I—any of my men—can walk unharmed if we
obey the rules of our magic. Only Lumbrilo does other
things which his forefathers did not. And he boasts that he
can do more. So he has a growing following of those who
believe—and those who fear."

"You want me to face him?"

The Chief Ranger's big hands closed upon the rim of the
parapet as if they could exert enough pressure to crumble
the hard stone. "I want you to see whether there is trickery
[Pg 19]in this. Trickery I can fight, for that there are weapons. But
if Lumbrilo truly controls forces for which there is no name,
then perhaps we must patch up an uneasy peace—or go
down in defeat. And, off-worlder, I come from a line of
warriors—we do not drink defeat easily!"

"That I also believe," Tau returned quietly. "Be sure, sir,
if there is trickery in this man's magic and I can detect it,
the secret shall be yours."

"Let us hope that so it shall be."

Subconsciously, Dane had always associated the practice
of magic with darkness and the night. But the next morning
the sun was high and hot when he made one of the party
coming down to a second and larger walled terrace where
the Hunters, Trackers, Guards and other followers of the
Chief Ranger were assembled in irregular rows.

There was a low sound which was more a throb in the
clear air about them, getting into a man's blood and pumping
in rhythm there. Dane tracked the sound to its source:
four large drums standing waist high before the men who
tapped them delicately with the tips of all ten fingers.

The necklaces of claws and teeth about those dusky
throats, the kilts of fringed hide, the crossed belts of brilliantly
spotted or striped fur were in contrast to the very
efficient and modern side arms each man wore, to the rest
of the equipment sheathed and strapped at their belts.

There was a carved stool for the Chief Ranger, another
for Captain Jellico. Dane and Tau settled themselves on the
less comfortable seats of the terrace steps. Those tapping
fingers increased their rate of beat, and the notes of the
drums rose from the low murmur of hived bees to the
mutter of mountain thunder still half a range away. A bird
called from those inner courts of the palace from which the
women never ventured.

Da—da—da—da.... Voices took up the thud-thud of the
drums, the heads of the squatting men moved in a slow swing
from side to side. Tau's hand closed about Dane's wrist and
[Pg 20]the younger man looked around, startled, to see that the
medic's eyes were alight, that he was watching the assembly
with the alertness of Sindbad approaching prey.

"Calculate the stowage space in Number One hold!"

That amazing order, delivered in a whisper, shocked Dane
into obeying it. Number One hold ... there were three
divisions now and the stowage was—He became aware that
for a small space of time he had escaped the net being woven
by the beat of the drum, the drone of voices, the nodding
of heads. He moistened his lips. So that was how it worked!
He had heard Tau speak often enough about self-hypnotism
under such conditions, but this was the first time the meaning
of it had been clear.

Two men were shuffling out of nowhere, wearing nothing
on their dark bodies but calf-length kilts of tails, black tails
with fluffy white tips, which swayed uniformly in time to
their pacing feet. Their heads and shoulders were masked
by beautifully cured and semi-mounted animal heads displaying
half-open jaws with double pairs of curved fangs.
The black-and-white striped fur, the sharply pointed ears,
were neither canine nor feline, but a weird combination of
the two.

Dane gabbled two trading formulas under his breath and
tried to think of the relation of Samantine rock coinage to
galactic credits. Only this time his defenses did not work.
From between the two shuffling dancers padded something
on four feet. The canine-feline creature was more than just
a head; it was a loose-limbed, graceful body fully eight feet
in length, and the red eyes in the prick-eared head were
those of a confident killer. It walked without restraint,
lazily, with arrogance, its white-tufted tail swinging. And
when it reached the mid-point of the terrace, it flung up its
head as if to challenge. But words issued from between
those curved fangs, words which Dane might not understand
but which undoubtedly held meaning for the men nodding
[Pg 21]in time to the hypnotic cadence of that da—da—da....

"Beautiful!" Tau spoke in honest admiration, his own eyes
almost as feral as those of the talking beast as he leaned
forward, his fists on his knees.

Now the animal was dancing also, its paws following
the pace set by the masked attendants. It must be a man in
an animal skin. But Dane could hardly believe that. The
illusion was too perfect. His own hands went to the knife
sheath at his belt. Out of deference to local custom they
had left their stun rods in the palace, but a belt knife was an
accepted article of apparel. Dane slid the blade out surreptitiously,
setting its point against the palm of his hand and
jabbing painfully. This was another of Tau's answers for
breaking a spell. But the white and black creature continued
to dance; there was no blurring of its body lines into those
of a human being.

It sang on in a high-pitched voice, and Dane noted that
those of the audience nearest the stools where Asaki and the
captain were seated now watched the Chief Ranger and the
space officer. He felt Tau tense beside him.

"Trouble coming...." The warning from Tau was the
merest thread of sound. Dane forced himself to look away
from the swaying cat-dog, to watch instead the singers who
were now furtively eying their lord and his guest. The
Terran knew that there were feudal bonds between the
Ranger and his men. But suppose this was a showdown
between Lumbrilo and Asaki—whose side would these men
take?

He watched Captain Jellico's hand slide across his knee,
his fingers drop in touching distance of knife hilt. And the
hand of the Chief Ranger, hanging lax at his side, suddenly
balled into a fist.

"So!" Tau expelled the word as a hiss. He moved with sure-footed
speed. Now he passed between the stools to confront
the dancing cat-dog. Yet he did not look at that weird creature
and its attendants. Instead his arms were flung high as
[Pg 22]if to ward off—or perhaps welcome—something on the mountain
side as he shouted:

"Hodi, eldama! Hodi!"

As one, those on the terrace turned, looked up toward the
slope. Dane was on his feet, holding his knife as he might a
sword. Though of what use its puny length would be against
that huge bulk moving in slow majesty toward them, he did
not try to think.

Gray-dark trunk curled upward between great ivory tusks,
ears went wide as ponderous feet crunched volcanic soil. Tau
moved forward, his hands still upraised, clearly in greeting.
That trunk touched skyward as if in salute to the man who
could be crushed under one foot.

"Hodi, eldama!" For the second time Tau hailed the monster
elephant and the trunk raised in silent greeting from one
lord of an earth to another he recognized as an equal. Perhaps
it had been a thousand years since man and elephant had
stood so, and then there had been only war and death between
them. Now there was peace and a current of power flowing
from one to the other. Dane sensed this, saw the men on the
terrace likewise drawing back from the unseen tie between
the medic and the bull he had so clearly summoned.

Then Tau's upheld hands came together in a sharp clap
and men held their breath in wonder. Where the great bull
had stood there was nothing—except rocks in the sun.

As Tau swung around to face the cat-dog, that creature
had no substance either. For he fronted no animal but a man,
a small, lean man whose lips wrinkled back from his teeth in
a snarl. His attendant priests fell back, leaving the spaceman
and the witch doctor alone.

"Lumbrilo's magic is great," Tau said evenly. "I hail Lumbrilo
of Khatka." His hand made the open-palmed salute of
peace.

The snarl faded as the man brought his face under control.
He stood naked, but he was clothed in inherit dignity. And
there was power with that dignity, power and a pride before
[Pg 23]which even the more physically impressive Chief Ranger
might have to give place.

"You have magic also, outlander," he replied. "Where
walks this long-toothed shadow of yours now?"

"Where once the men of Khatka walked, Lumbrilo. For
it was men of your blood who long, long past hunted this
shadow of mine and made its body their prey."

"So that it now might have a blood debt to settle with us,
outlander?"

"That you said, not I, man of power. You have shown us
one beast, I have shown another. Who can say which of them
is stronger when it issues forth from the shadows?"

Lumbrilo pattered forward, his bare feet making little
sound on the stones of the terrace. Now he was only an
arm's-length away from the medic.

"You have challenged me, off-world man." Was that a
question or a statement? Dane wondered.

"Why should I challenge you, Lumbrilo? To each race its
own magic. I come not to offer battle." His eyes held steady
with the Khatkan's.

"You have challenged me." Lumbrilo turned away and
then looked back over his shoulder. "The strength you depend
upon may become a broken staff, off-worlder. Remember my
words in the time when shadows become substance, and substance
the thinnest of shadows!"

[Pg 24]

III

"You are truly a man of power!"

Tau shook his head in answer to that outburst from Asaki.

"Not so, sir. Your Lumbrilo is a man of power. I drew upon
his power and you saw the results."

"Deny it not! What we saw never walked this world."

Tau slung the strap of a trail bag over his shoulder. "Sir,
once men of your blood, men who bred your race, hunted
the elephant. They took his tusks for their treasure, feasted
upon his flesh—yes, and died beneath the trampling of his
feet when they were unlucky or unwary. So there is that
within you which can even now be awakened to remember
eldama in his might when he was king of the herd and need
fear nothing save the spears and cunning of small, weak men.
Lumbrilo had already awakened your minds to see what he
willed you to see."

"How does he do this?" asked the other simply. "Is it
magic that we see not Lumbrilo but a lion before us?"

"He weaves his spell with the drums, with the chant, by
the suggestion his mind imposes upon yours. And, having
woven his spell, he cannot limit it to just the picture he suggests
if ancient racial memories raise another. I merely used
the tools of Lumbrilo to show you yet another picture your
people once knew well."

"And in so doing made an enemy." Asaki stood before a
rack of very modern weapons. Now he made his selection, a
silver tube with a stock curved to fit a man's shoulder. "Lumbrilo
will not forget."

Tau laughed shortly. "No, but then I have merely done as
you wished, have I not, sir? I have focused on myself the
enmity of a dangerous man, and now you hope I shall be
forced, in self-defense, to remove him from your path."

[Pg 25]

The Khatkan turned slowly, resting the weapon across his
forearm. "I do not deny that, spaceman."

"Then matters here are indeed serious—"

"They are so serious," Asaki interrupted, speaking not only
to Tau but to the other off-worlders as well, "that what happens
now may mean the end of the Khatka that I know.
Lumbrilo is the most dangerous game I have faced in a lifetime
as a hunter. He goes, or we draw his fangs—or else all
that I am, all I have labored here to build, will be swept
away. To preserve this I will use any weapon."

"And I am now your weapon, which you hope will be as
successful as that needler you are carrying." Tau laughed
again, without much humor. "Let us hope I shall prove as
effective."

Jellico moved out of the shadows. It was just after dawn,
and the grayness of the vanishing night still held in the corners
of the armory. Deliberately he took his own stand before
the arms racks and chose a short-barreled blaster. Only when
its butt was cupped in his hand did he glance at his host.

"We came guesting, Asaki. We have eaten salt and bread
under this roof."

"On my body and my blood it is," returned the Khatkan
grimly. "I shall go down to the blackness of Sabra before you
do, if the flames of death are against us." From his belt he
flipped loose his knife and offered the hilt to Jellico. "My
body for a wall between you and the dark, Captain. But also
understand this: to me, what I do now is greater than the
life of any one man. Lumbrilo and the evil behind him must
be rooted out. There was no trickery in my invitation!"

They stood eye to eye, equal in height, in authority of person,
and that indefinable something which made them both
masters in their own different worlds. Then Jellico's hand
went out, his fingertip flicked the hilt of the bared blade.

"There was no trickery," he conceded. "I knew that your
need was great when you came to the Queen."

Since both the captain and Tau appeared to accept the
situation, Dane, not quite understanding it all, was prepared
[Pg 26]to follow their lead. And for the moment they had nothing
more in plan than to visit the Zoboru preserve.

They went by flitter—Asaki, one of his Hunter pilots, and
the three from the Queen—lifting over the rim of mountains
behind the fortress-palace and speeding north with the rising
sun a flaming ball to the east. Below, the country was stark—rocks
and peaks, deep purple shadows marking the veins of
crevices. But that was swiftly behind and they were over a
sea of greens, many shades of green, with yellow, blue, even
red cutting into the general verdant carpet of treetops.
Another chain of heights and then open land, swales of tall
grass already burnt yellow by the steady sun. There was a
river here, a crazy, twisted stream coiling nearly back upon
itself at times.

Once more broken land, land so ravished by prehistoric
volcanic action that it was a grotesque nightmare of erosion-whittled
outcrops and mesas. Asaki pointed to the east.
There was a dark patch widening out into a vast wedge.

"The swamp of Mygra. It has not yet been explored."

"You could air map it," Tau began.

The Chief Ranger was frowning. "Four flitters have been
lost trying that. Com reports fail when they cross that last
mountain ridge eastward. There is some sort of interference
which we do not yet understand. Mygra is a place of death;
later we may be able to travel along its fringe and then you
shall see. Now—" He spoke to the pilot in his own tongue
and the flitter pointed up-nose at an angle as they climbed
over the highest peak they had yet seen in this mountainous
land, to reach at last a country of open grass dotted with
small forest stands. Jellico nodded approvingly.

"Zoboru?"

"Zoboru," Asaki assented. "We shall go up to the northern
end of the preserve. I wish to show you the roosts of the
fastals. This is their nesting season and the sight is one you
will long remember. But we shall take an eastern course; I
have two Ranger stations to check on the way."

It was after they left the second station that the flitter
[Pg 27]swung farther out eastward, again climbing over the chain
of heights to sight one of the newly discovered wonders the
staff at the last station had reported—a crater lake.

And the flitter skimmed down across water which was a
rich emerald in hue, filling the crater from one rock wall to
the other with no beach at the foot of those precipitant cliffs.
As the machine arose to clear the far wall, Dane tensed. One
of his duties aboard the Queen was flitter pilot for planetwise
trips. And ever since they had taken off that morning
he had unconsciously flown with the Khatkan pilot, anticipating
each change or adjustment of the controls. Now he felt
that sluggish response to the other's lift signal, and instinctively
his own hand went out to adjust a power feed lever.

They made the rise, were well above the danger of the
cliff wall. But the machine was not responding properly.
Dane did not need to watch the pilot's swiftly moving hands
to guess that they were in trouble. And his slight concern
deepened into something else as the flitter began to drop nose
again. In front of him, Captain Jellico shifted uneasily, and
Dane knew that he, too, was alerted.

Now the pilot had plunged the power adjuster to the head
against the control board. But the nose of the flitter acted as
if it were overweighted or magnetically attracted by the rocks
below. The best efforts of the man flying it could not keep it
level. They were being drawn earthward, and all the pilot
could do only delayed the inevitable crack-up. 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. Now the small machine was below the
level of the volcanic peak which cradled the lake, and the
mountain lay between them and the preserve.

Asaki gave a muffled exclamation, slapped the com box,
spoke more sharply into the mike. It was apparent he was
[Pg 28]not getting the results he wanted. Then with a quick glance
about he snapped an order:

"Strap in!"

His Terran companions had already buckled the wide webbing
belts intended to save them from crash shock. Dane saw
the pilot push the button to release fend cushions. In spite
of his pounding heart, a small fraction of his brain recognized
the other's skill as the Khatkan took a course to bring them
down on a relatively level patch of sand and gravel.

Dane raised his head from the shelter of his folded arms.
The Chief Ranger was busy with the pilot, who lay limply
against the controls. Captain Jellico and Tau were already
pulling at the buckles of their protective crash belts. But one
look at the front of the flitter told Dane that it would not
take to the air again without extensive repairs. Its nose was
bent up and back, obscuring the forward view completely.
However, the pilot had made a miraculously safe landing
considering the terrain.

Ten minutes later, the pilot restored to consciousness and
the gash in his head bandaged, they held a council of war.

"The com was off, too. I did not have a chance to report
before the crash," Asaki put the situation straightly. "And
our exploring parties have not yet mapped this side of the
range; it has a bad reputation because of the swamp."

Jellico measured the heights now to their west with resigned
eyes. "Looks as if we climb."

"Not here," the Chief Ranger corrected him. "There is no
passing through the crater lake region on foot. We must
travel south along the edge of the mountain area until we
do find a scalable way into the preserve region."

"You seem very certain we are not going to be rescued if
we stay right here," Tau observed. "Why?"

"Because I'm inclined to believe that any flitter that tries
to reach us may run into the same trouble. Also, they have
no com fix on us. It will be at least a day or more before
they will even begin to count us missing, and then they will
have the whole northern portion of the preserve to comb;
[Pg 29]there are not enough men here—I can give you a multitude
of reasons, Medic."

"One of which might be sabotage?" demanded Jellico.

Asaki shrugged. "Perhaps. I am not loved in some quarters.
But there may also be something fatal to flitters here as
there is over Mygra. We thought the crater lake district safely
beyond the swamp influence, but it may not be so."

But you took the chance of traveling over it, Dane
thought, though he did not comment aloud. Was this another
of the Chief Ranger's attempts to involve them in some private
trouble of his own? Though to deliberately smash up a
flitter and set them all afoot in this wilderness was a pretty
drastic move.

Asaki had started to unload emergency supplies from the
flitter. They each had a trail bag for a pack. But when the
pilot staggered over to pull out a set of stass belts and Jellico
began to uncoil them, the Chief Ranger shook his head.

"With the feeder beam shut off by the mountains, I fear
those will no longer work."

Jellico tossed one on the crumpled nose of the flitter and
punched its button with the tip of the needler barrel. Then
he threw a rock at the dangling belt. The stone landed, taking
the wide protective band with it to the ground. That
force field which should have warded off the missile was not
working.

"Oh, fine!" Tau opened his trail bag to pack concentrates.
Then he smiled crookedly. "We aren't signed in for killing
licenses, sir. Do you pay our fines if we are forced to shoot a
hole through something that disputes the right of way?"

To Dane's surprise, the Chief Ranger laughed. "You are
off preserve now, Medic Tau. The rules do not cover wild
land. But I would suggest we now hunt a cave before nightfall."

"Lions?" asked Jellico.

Dane, remembering the black and white beast Lumbrilo
had presented, did not enjoy that thought. They had—his
gaze went from man to man checking weapons—the needler
[Pg 30]Asaki carried, and another the pilot had slung by its carrying
strap over his shoulder. Tau and the captain both were armed
with blasters and he had a fire ray and a force blade, both
considered small arms but deadly enough perhaps even to
dampen a lion's enthusiasm for the chase.

"Lions, graz, rock apes," Asaki fastened the mouth of his
trail bag. "All are hunters or killers. The graz send out
scouts, and they are big and formidable enough to have no
enemies. Lions hunt with intelligence and skill. Rock apes
are dangerous, but luckily they cannot keep silent when they
scent their prey and so give one warning."

As they climbed up-slope from the flitter, Dane, looking
back, saw that perhaps Asaki was right in his belief that
they had better try to help themselves rather than wait for
rescue. Putting aside the excuse of fearing another crack-up,
the wrecked flitter made no outstanding mark on the ground.
The higher they climbed, the less it could be distinguished
from the tumble of rocks about it.

He had lagged a little behind and, when he hurried to
catch up, found Jellico standing with his distance vision
lenses to his eyes, directing them toward that shadow marking
the swamp. As the younger spaceman reached him, the
captain lowered the glasses and spoke:

"Take your knife, Thorson, and hold it close to that rock—over
there." He pointed to a rounded black knob protruding
from the soil a little off their path.

Dane obeyed, only to have the blade jerk in his hand. And
when he loosened his hold in amazement, the steel slapped
tight against the stone.

"Magnetic!"

"Yes. Which might explain our crash. Also this." Jellico
held out a field compass to demonstrate that its needle had
gone completely mad.

"We can use the mountain range itself for a guide," Dane
said with more confidence than he felt.

"True enough. But we may have trouble when we head
west again." Jellico let the lenses swing free on their cord
[Pg 31]about his neck. "If we were wrecked on purpose"—his mouth
tightened and the old blaster burn on his cheek stretched as
did his jaw set—"then someone is going to answer a lot of
questions—and fast!"

"The Chief Ranger, sir?"

"I don't know. I just don't know!" The captain grunted as
he adjusted his pack and started on.

If fortune had failed them earlier, she smiled on them
now. Asaki discovered a cave before sundown, located not
too far from a mountain stream. The Ranger sniffed the air
before that dark opening as the Hunter pilot shed his equipment
and crept forward on his hands and knees, his head up
and his nostrils expanding as he, too, tested the scent from
the cave mouth.

Scent? It was closer to a stench, and one ripe enough to
turn the stomach of an off-worlder. But the Hunter glanced
back over his shoulder and nodded reassuringly.

"Lion. But old. Not here within five days at least."

"Well enough. And even old lion scent will keep away rock
apes. We'll clean some and then we can rest undisturbed,"
was his superior's comment.

The cleaning was easy for the brittle bedding of dried
bracken and grass the beast had left burned quickly, cleansing
with both fire and smoke. When they raked the ashes
out with branches, Asaki and Nymani brought in handfuls
of leaves which they crumpled and threw on the floor, spreading
an aromatic odor which banished most of the foulness.

Dane, at the stream with the canteens to fill, chanced upon
a small pool where there was a spread of smooth yellow sand.
Knowing well the many weird booby traps one might stumble
into on a strange world, the Terran prospected carefully,
stirring up the stand with a stick. Sighting not so much as a
water insect or a curious fish, he pulled off his boots, rolled
up his breeches and waded in. The water was cool and
refreshing, though he dared not drink it until the purifier
was added. Then, with the filled canteens knotted together
[Pg 32]by their straps, he put on his boots and climbed to the cave
where Tau waited with water tablets.

Half an hour later Dane sat cross-legged by the fire, turning
a spit strung with three small birds Asaki had brought
in. 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?" 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. "Burn tonight,
hurt some tomorrow; all well soon. No burn—very bad."

Dane ruefully prepared to pay the consequences of his
first brush with the unpleasant surprises Khatka had to offer.

[Pg 33]

IV

Dane regarded his throbbing feet morosely. Nymani's operations
with burning splinters had been hard to take, but he
had endured them without disgracing himself before the
Khatkans, who appeared to regard such a mishap as just
another travel incident. Now, with Tau's salve soothing the
worst of the after affects, the Terran was given time to reflect
upon his own stupidity and the fact that he might now prove
a drag on the whole party the next morning.

"That's queer...."

Dane was startled out of the contemplation of his misery
to see the medic on his knees before their row of canteens,
the vial of water purifier held to the firelight for a closer
inspection.

"What's the matter?"

"We must have hit with a pretty hard thump back there.
Some of these pills are powder! Have to guess about the
portion to add." With the tip of his knife blade Tau scraped
a tiny amount of pill fragments into each waiting canteen.
"That should do it. But if the water tastes a little bitter, don't
let it bother you."

Bitter water, Dane thought, trying to flex his still swollen
toes, was going to be the least of his worries in the morning.
But he determined that his boots should go on at daybreak,
and he would keep on his feet as long as the others did, no
matter how much it cost him.

And when they set out shortly after daybreak, wanting to
move as far as they could before the heat hours when they
must rest, the going was not too bad. Dane's feet were tender
to the touch, but he could shuffle along at the tail of the
procession with only Nymani playing rear guard behind him.

Jungle lay before them and bush knives began to swing,
[Pg 34]clearing their path. Dane took his turn with the rest at that
chore, thankful that the business of cutting their way through
that mass of greenery slowed them to a pace he could match—if
not in comfort, then by willpower.

But the sand worms were not the only troubles one could
encounter on Khatka. Within an hour Captain Jellico stood
sweating and speaking his mind freely in the native tongues
of five different planets while Tau and Nymani worked as a
team with skinning knives. They were not flaying the spaceman,
but they came near to that in places as they worried a
choice selection of tree thorns out of his arm and shoulder.
The captain had been unfortunate enough to trip and fall
into the embrace of a very unfriendly bush.

Dane inspected a fallen tree for evidence of inimical wild
life, and then rested his blanket between him and it as a
protecting cushion before he sat down. These trees were not
the towering giants of the true forests, but rather oversized
bushes which had been made into walls by twined vines.
Brilliant bursts of flowers were splotches of vivid color, and
the attendant insect life was altogether too abundant. Dane
tried to tally his immunity shots and hoped for the best. At
the moment he wondered why anyone would want to visit
Khatka, let alone pay some astronomical sum for the privilege.
Though he could also guess that the plush safari arranged
for a paying client might be run on quite different
lines from their own present trek.

How could a tracker find his way through this? With the
compasses playing crazy tricks into the bargain! Jellico knew
that the compasses were off, yet the captain had followed
Asaki's lead without question, so he must trust the Ranger's
forest craft. But Dane wished they were clear on the mountain
side again.

Time had little meaning in that green gloom. But when
they worked through to meet rock walls again, the sun said it
was well into the after part of the day. They sheltered for a
breather under the drooping limbs of one of the last trees.

"Amazing!" Jellico, his torn arm in a sling across his chest,
[Pg 35]came down-slope from the higher point where he had been
using the distance lenses. "We struck straight across and cut
off about ten miles by that jungle jog. Now I believe all that
I've heard of your people's ability to cross wilderness and not
lose their built in 'riding beams,' sir. With the compasses out,
I'll admit I've been nourishing a healthy set of doubts."

Asaki laughed. "Captain, I do not question your ability to
flit from world to world, or how you have learned to set up
trade with strange humans and non-humans alike. To each
his own mystery. On Khatka every boy before he becomes a
man must learn to navigate the jungle, and with no instruments
to help him, only what lies in here." He touched his
thumb to his forehead. "So through generations we have
developed our homing instincts. Those who did not, also did
not live to father others who might have had the same lack.
We are hounds who can run on a scent, and we are migrators
who have better than a compass within our own bodies."

"Now we take to climbing again?" Tau surveyed the way
before them critically.

"Not at this hour. That sun on the upward slopes can cook
a man's skin were he to touch any rock. We wait...."

Waiting for the Khatkans was a chance to sleep. They
curled up on their light blankets. But the three spacemen
were restless. Dane would have liked to have taken off his
boots, but feared he could not replace them; and he could
tell from the way the captain shifted his position that Jellico
was in pain too. Tau sat quietly, staring at nothing Dane
could see, unless it was a tall rock thrust out of the slope like
a finger pointing skyward.

"What color is that rock?"

Surprised, Dane gave the stony finger closer attention. To
him it was the same color as most of the other rocks, a weathered
black which in certain lights appeared to carry a brownish
film.

"Black, or maybe dark brown?"

Tau looked past him to Jellico. The captain nodded.

"I'd agree with that."

[Pg 36]

Tau cupped his hands over his eyes for a moment and his
lips moved as if he were counting. Then he took his hands
away and stared up-slope. Dane watched the medic's eyelids
blink slowly. "Nothing but black or brown?" Tau pressed.

"No." Jellico supported his injured arm upon his knees,
leaning forward, as intent upon the designated rock as if he
expected it to assume some far more startling appearance.

"Queer," Tau said to himself, and then added briskly,
"You're right, of course. That sun can play tricks with one's
eyes."

Dane continued to watch the finger rock. Maybe strong
sunlight could play tricks, but he could see nothing odd about
that rough lump. And since the captain asked no questions
of Tau, he did not quite want to either.

It was perhaps a half-hour later, and the medic and Jellico
had both succumbed to the quiet, the heat, and their own
fatigue, when Dane did sight a movement up-slope. The
throbbing in his feet was worse now that he had nothing to
occupy his mind but his own troubles, and he was sitting
facing the finger rock.

Was that what Tau had seen earlier? That quick movement
around the side of the rough pillar? But if so, why the
question of color? There it was again! And now, centering
all his attention on that one point, the Terran picked out the
outline of a head—a head grotesque enough to be something
conjured out of Lumbrilo's sorcerer's imagination. Had Dane
not seen its like among the tri-dee prints in Captain Jellico's
collection, he would have believed that his eyes were playing
tricks.

It was a bullet-shaped head, embellished by two out-sized
prick ears, the hair-tufted pointed tips of which projected
well above the top of the skull. Round eyes were set deeply
in sunken pits. The mouth was a swinish snout from which
lolled a purple tongue, though the rest of that gargoyle head
was very close in color to the rock against which it half
rested.

Dane had no doubts that the rock ape was spying upon the
[Pg 37]small camp. Having heard tales of those semi-intelligent animals—the
most intelligent native creatures of Khatka—most
of which were concerned with their more malignant characteristics,
Dane was alarmed. That lurker could be an advance
scout of some pack. And a pack of rock apes, if able to surprise
their prey, were formidable opponents.

Asaki stirred, sat up. And that round head above turned to
follow the Chief Ranger's every move.

"Above ... by the finger rock ... to the right...." Dane
kept his voice close to a whisper. When he saw the sudden
constriction of muscle across the Khatkan's bare shoulders, he
knew that the other had heard and understood.

Only, if Asaki had spotted the rock ape, he did not betray
his knowledge. 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. It was
the fastest shot Dane had ever seen.

The gargoyle head lifted away from the rock, and then
turned to one side as its body, somehow vaguely obscene in
its resemblance to the human form, fell away, to sprawl limply
down-slope.

Though the dead rock ape had not had a chance to give
tongue, there came a cry from above, a coughing, deep-throated
hawking. Down the steep incline bumped a round
white ball, bouncing past the tumbled carcass of the ape,
sailing up into the air, to strike and burst open a few feet
away.

"Back!" With one arm Asaki sent Jellico, his nearest neighbor,
tumbling back into the jungle. Then the Chief Ranger
pumped a stream of needle rays into the remains of the ball.
A shrill, sweet humming arose as red motes, vivid as molten
copper in the sunlight, climbed on wings beating too fast to
be seen.

[Pg 38]

The debris of the nest smoked into nothing. But no needle
ray could hope to stop all the poisonous army issuing forth
from it, fighting mad, to seek any warm-blooded creature
within scenting distance. The men threw themselves into the
brush, rolling in the thick mold of the vegetable decay on the
ground, rubbing its moist plaster over their bodies in frantic
haste.

Red-hot fire, far worse than any of the splinter torment
Dane had undergone the night before, pierced between his
shoulders. He rolled on his back, shoving himself along, both
to kill the fire-wasp and coat the sting with cooling mold.
Cries of pain told him that he was not the only sufferer, as
all dug hands into the slimy stuff under them and slapped it
over their faces and heads.

"Apes...." That half shout got through to alert the men
on the jungle floor. True to their nature, the rock apes, now
streaming downhill, were coughing their challenges, advertising
their attack. And it was only that peculiarity of their
species which saved their intended victims.

The apes came forward, partially erect, at a shambling
run. The first two, bulls close to six feet, went down under
fire from Asaki's needler. A third somehow escaped, swerving
to the left, and came bounding at an angle toward Dane. The
Terran jerked free his force blade as that swine snout split
wide to show greenish tusks and the horrible stench of the
creature's body made him gasp.

A taloned paw clawed at him eagerly, slipped from his
slime-covered body just as he brought the force blade up.
Foul breath coughed in his face and he stumbled back as the
heavy body of the ape crashed against him, cut in half by the
weapon. To Dane's sickened horror the paws still clawed for
him, the fangs still gnashed as he rolled free of the mangled
body and somehow got to his feet.

The roar of a blaster, of two blasters, drowned out the
clamor of the apes as Dane drew his fire ray, set his shoulders
against a tree bole and prepared to fight it out. He fired, saw
a smaller and more nimble enemy go down screeching. Then
[Pg 39]there were none left on their shaggy feet, though some on the
ground dragged themselves forward, still striving to reach the
men.

Dane slapped a fire-wasp from his leg. He was glad of the
support of the tree at his back as the smell of the ape's blood
drenching him from chest level down, and the mess on the
ground, made his stomach churn.

When he could control his retching, he straightened. To
his relief he saw that all the others were on their feet, apparently
unharmed. But Tau, catching sight of the younger
spaceman, gasped and started for him.

"Dane! What did they do?"

His junior laughed a little hysterically. "Not mine...." He
swabbed with a handful of grass at his bloodied breeches and
blundered on into the sunlight.

Nymani found them a foam-flecked stream below a miniature
falls where the swift current prevented the lurking of
sand worms. They stripped eagerly, cleaning first themselves
and then their fouled clothing while Tau tended the wealth
of fire-wasp stings. There was little he could do to relieve the
swelling and pain, until Asaki produced a reed-like plant
which, chopped in sections, yielded a sticky purple liquid
that dried on the skin as a tar gum—the native remedy. So,
glued and plastered, they climbed away from the water and
prepared to spend the night in a hollow between two leaning
rocks, certainly not as snug as the cave but a fortress of sorts.

"And credit-happy space hoppers pay a fortune for an
outing like this!" Tau commented bitterly, hunching well forward
so that a certain stung portion of his anatomy would
not come in contact with the rock beneath him.

"Hardly for this," Jellico replied, and Dane saw Nymani
grin one-sidedly, his other cheek puffed and painted sticky
purple.

"We do not always encounter apes and fire-wasps in the
same day," supplied the Chief Ranger. "Also, guests at the
preserves wear stass belts."

Jellico snorted. "I don't think you'd get any repeats from
[Pg 40]your clients otherwise! What do we meet tomorrow? A herd
of graz on stampede, or something even more subtle and
deadly?"

Nymani got up and walked a little way from their rock
shelter. He turned down-slope and Dane saw his nostrils
expand as they had when he had investigated the cave.

"Something is dead," he said slowly. "A very large something.
Or else—"

Asaki strode down to join his men. He gave a curt nod and
Nymani skidded on down the mountain side.

"What is it?" Jellico asked.

"It might be many things. There is one I hope it is not,"
was the Chief Ranger's somewhat evasive reply. "I will hunt
a labbla—there was fresh spoor at the stream." 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. Then he glanced at the shadow extending beyond
the rocks.

"I, too, would see," he told Nymani.

Jellico arose, and Dane, interested, followed. Some five
minutes later none of them needed the native keenness of
smell to detect the presence of some foulness ahead. The odor
of corruption was almost tangible in the sultry air. And it grew
worse until they stood on the edge of a pit. Dane retreated
hurriedly. This was as bad as the battlefield of the rock apes.
But the captain and the two Khatkans stood calmly assessing
the slaughter left by the hide poachers.

"Glam, graz, hoodra," Jellico commented. "Tusks and hides—the
full line of trade stuff."

Asaki, his expression bleak, stepped back from the pit.
[Pg 41]"Day old calves, old ones, females—all together. They kill
wantonly and leave those they do not choose to pelt."

"Trail—" Nymani pointed eastward. "Leads to Mygra
swamp."

"The swamps!" Asaki was shaken. "They must be mad!"

"Or know more about this country than your men do,"
Jellico corrected.

"If poachers can enter Mygra, then we can follow!"

But not now, Dane protested silently. Certainly Asaki did
not mean that they were to track outlaws into swamps the
Khatkan had already labeled unexplored death traps!

[Pg 42]

V

Sitting up, Dane stared wide-eyed into the dark. A handful
of glowing coals, guarded by rocks, was the center of their
camp. He hunched up to that hardly knowing why he moved.
His hands were shaking, his skin damp with sweat no heat
produced. Yet, now that he was conscious of the night, the
Terran could not remember the nightmare from which he
had just awakened, though he was left with a growing apprehension
which he could not define. What prowled out there
in that dark? Walked the mountain side? Listened, spied and
waited?

Dane half started to his feet as a form did move into the
dim light of the fire. Tau stood there, regarding him with
sober intensity.

"Bad dream?"

The younger man admitted to that with a nod, partly
against his will.

"Well, you aren't the only one. Remember any of it?"

With an effort, Dane looked away from the encircling dark.
It was as if the fear which had shaken him awake, now embodied,
lurked right there.

"No." He rubbed sleep-smarting eyes.

"Neither did I," Tau remarked. "But both of 'em must have
been jet-powered."

"I suppose one could expect to have nightmares after yesterday."
Dane advanced the logical explanation, yet at the
same time something deep inside him denied every word of
it. He had known nightmares before; none of them had left
this aftertaste. And he wanted no return of sleep tonight.
Reaching to the pile of wood he fed the fire as Tau settled
down beside him.

[Pg 43]

"There is something else...." the medic began, and then
fell silent. Dane did not press him. The younger man was too
busy fighting a growing desire to whirl and aim the fire ray
into that darkness, to catch in its withering blast that lurking
thing he could feel padded there, biding its time.

Despite his efforts Dane did drowse again before morning,
waking unrefreshed, and, to his secret dismay, with no lessening
of his odd dislike for the country about them.

Asaki did not suggest that they trail the poachers into the
morass of Mygra. Instead the Chief Ranger was eager to
press on in the opposite direction, find a way over the range
to the preserve where he could assemble a punitive force to
deal with the outlaws. So they began an upward climb which
took them away from the dank heat of the lowlands, into the
parched blaze of the sunbaked ledges above.

The sun was bright, far too bright, and there were few
shadows left. 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. Yet, oddly enough, none of
them mentioned the uneasiness they must all share.

They had a dry climb, finding no mountain stream to renew
their water supply. All being experienced in wilderness travel,
they made a mouthful of liquid go a long way. When the
party halted slightly before midday, canteens were still half
full.

"Haugh!"

They jerked up, hands on weapons. A rock ape, its hideous
body clearly seen here, capered, coughed, spat. Asaki fired
from the hip and the thing screeched, clawed at its chest
where the dark blood spewed out, and raced for them.
Nymani cut the beast down and they waited tensely for the
attack of the thing's tribe, which should have followed the
abortive lunge on the part of their scout. But there was nothing—neither
sound nor movement.

[Pg 44]

What did follow froze them all momentarily. That mangled
body began to move again, drew itself together, crawled
toward them. Dane knew that it was impossible that the
creature could live with such wounds. Yet the beast advanced,
its head lolling on its hunched shoulders so that the eyes were
turned blindly up to the full glare of the sun, while it crawled
to reach the man it could not see.

"Demon!" Nymani dropped his needler, shrank back against
the rocks.

As the thing advanced, before their eyes the impossible
happened. 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 dead thing put on life for the
second time, crawled, got somehow to its feet, healed itself,
and came on. Asaki, his face greenish-pale, stepped out stiffly
as if each step he took was forced by torture. He had
dropped his needler. Now he caught up a rock as large as his
own head, raised it high with arms on which the muscles
stood out like ropes. 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. As it was, he drew his ray and aimed
it at that shambling thing. Tau struck up the barrel.

The medic's face was livid; there was the same horror in
his eyes. But he moved out to front that monster.

A spot of shadow coalesced on the ground, deepened in
hue, took on substance. Crouched low facing the rock ape, its
[Pg 45]haunches quivering for a deadly spring, narrowed green eyes
holding on its prey, was a black leopard.

The tiny forward and backward movements of its body
steadied, and it arched through the air, brought down the
ape. A pitting, snarling tangle rolled across the slope—and
was gone!

Asaki's hands shook as he drew them down his sweating
face. Jellico readied a second clip in the needler mechanically.
But Tau was swaying so that Dane leaped to take the
shock of the other's weight as he collapsed. Only for a
moment did the medic hang so, then he struggled to stand
erect.

"Magic?" Jellico's voice, as controlled as ever, broke the
silence.

"Mass hallucination," Tau corrected him. "Very strong."

"How!" Asaki swallowed and began again. "How was it
done?"

The medic shook his head. "Not by the usual methods,
that is certain. And it worked on us—on me—when we
weren't conditioned. I don't understand that!"

Dane could hardly believe it yet. He watched Jellico stride
to where the tangle of struggling beasts had rolled, saw him
examine bare ground on which no trace of the fight remained.
They must accept Tau's explanation; it was the only sane one.

Asaki's features were suddenly convulsed with a rage so
stark that Dane realized how much a veneer was the painfully
built civilization of Khatka.

"Lumbrilo!" The Chief Ranger made of that name a curse.
Then with a visible effort he controlled his emotions and
came to Tau, looming over the slighter medic almost menacingly.

"How?" he demanded for the second time.

"I don't know."

"He will try again?"

"Not the same perhaps—"

But Asaki had already grasped the situation, was looking
ahead.

[Pg 46]

"We shall not know," he breathed, "what is real, what is
not."

"There is also this," Tau warned. "The unreal can kill the
believer just as quickly as the real!"

"That I know also. It has happened too many times lately.
If we could only find out how! Here are no drums, no singing—none
of the tricks to tangle a man's mind that he usually
uses to summon his demons. So without Lumbrilo, without
his witch tools, how does he make us see what is not?"

"That we must discover and speedily, sir. Or else we shall
be lost among the unreal and the real."

"You also have the power. You can save us!" Asaki
protested.

Tau drew his arm across his face. Very little of the normal
color had returned to his thin, mobile features. He still
leaned against Dane's supporting arm.

"A man can do only so much, sir. To battle Lumbrilo on
his own ground is exhausting and I can not fight so very
often."

"But will he not also be exhausted?"

"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.

Tau gave a start sufficient to take him out of Dane's loose
hold. His hand went to the packet of aid supplies which was
his own care, his eyes round with wonder and then shrewdly
alert.

"Captain, we disinfected those thorn punctures of yours.
Thorson, your foot salve.... But, no, I didn't use anything—"

"You forget, Craig, we all had scratches after that fight
with the apes."

Tau sat down on the ground. With feverish haste he
unsealed his medical supplies, laid out some containers. Then
[Pg 47]delicately he opened each, examined its contents closely by
eye, by smell, and two by taste. When he was done he shook
his head.

"If these have been in any way meddled with, I would
need laboratory analysis to detect it. And I don't believe that
Lumbrilo could hide traces of his work so cleverly. Or has he
been off-planet? Had much to do with off-worlders?" he
asked the Chief Ranger.

"By the nature of his position he is forbidden to space voyage,
to have any close relationship with any off-worlder. I do
not think, medic, he would choose your healing substances
for his mischief. There would only be chance to aid him then
in producing the effects he wants. Though there is often call
for first aid in travel, he could not be certain you would use
any of your drugs on this trip to the preserve."

"And Lumbrilo was certain. He threatened something such
as this," Jellico reminded them.

"So it would be something which we would all use, which
we had to depend upon...."

"The water!" Dane had been holding his own canteen
ready to drink. But as that possible explanation dawned in
his mind, he smelled instead of tasted the liquid sloshing
inside. There was no odor he could detect. But he remembered
Tau commenting on the powdered purifier pills at
their first camp.

"That's it!" Tau dug further into his kit, brought out the
vial of white powder with its grainy lumps. Pouring a little
into the palm of his hand he smelled it, touched it with the
tip of his tongue. "Purifier and something else," he reported.
"It could be one of half a dozen drugs, or some native stuff
from here which we've never classified."

"True. There are drugs we have found here." Asaki scowled
down at the green mat of jungle. "So our water is poisoned?"

"Do you always purify it?" Tau asked the Chief Ranger.
"Surely during the centuries since your ancestors landed on
Khatka you must have adapted to native water. You couldn't
[Pg 48]have lived otherwise. We must use the purifier, but must
you?"

"There is water and water." Asaki shook his own canteen,
his scowl growing fiercer as the gurgle from its depths was
heard. "From springs on the other side of the mountains we
drink—yes. But over here, this close to the Mygra swamps,
we have not done so. We may have to chance it."

"Do you think we are literally poisoned?" Jellico bored
directly to the heart of their private fears.

"None of us have been drinking too heavily," Tau observed
thoughtfully. "And I don't believe Lumbrilo had outright
killing in mind. How long the effect will last I have no way
of telling."

"If we saw one rock ape," Dane wondered, "why didn't
we see others? And why here and now?"

"That!" Tau pointed ahead on the trail Asaki had picked
for their ascent. For a long moment Dane could see nothing
of any interest there and then he located it—a finger of rock.
It did not point directly skyward this time, in fact it slanted
so that its tip indicated their back trail. Yet in outline the
spire was very similar to that outcrop from which the real
rock ape had charged them the day before.

Asaki exclaimed in his own tongue and slapped his hand
hard against the stock of the needler.

"We saw that and so again we saw an ape also! Had earlier
we been charged by graz or jumped by a lion in such a
place, then again we would have been faced by graz or lion
here!"

Captain Jellico gave a bark of laughter colored only by the
most sardonic humor. "Clever enough. He merely leaves it to
us to select our own ghost and then repeat the performance
in the next proper setting. I wonder how many rocks shaped
like that one there are in these mountains? And how long
will a rock ape continue to pop out from behind each one we
do find?"

"Who knows? But as long as we drink this water we're
going to continue to have trouble; I feel safe in promising
[Pg 49]that," Tau replied. He put the vial of doctored purifier into a
separate pocket of his medical kit. "It may be a problem of
how long we can go without water."

"Perhaps," Asaki said softly. "Only not all the water on
Khatka comes running in streams."

"Fruit?" Tau asked.

"No, trees. Lumbrilo is not a hunter, nor could he be certain
when and where his magic would go to work. Unless the
flitter was deliberately sabotaged, he was planning for us to
use our canteens in the preserve. That is lion country and
there are long distances between springs. This is jungle below
us and there is a source there I think we can safely tap. But
first I must find Nymani and prove to him that this is truly
deviltry of a sort, but not demon inspired."

He was gone, running lightly down-slope in the direction
his hunter had taken, and Dane spoke to Captain Jellico.

"What's this about water in trees, sir?"

"There is a species of tree here, not too common, with a
thickened trunk. It stores water during the rainy season to
live on in the hot months. Since we are in the transition
period between rains, we could tap it—if we locate one of
the trees. How about that, Tau? Dare we drink that without
a purifier?"

"Probably a choice of two evils, sir. But we have had our
preventive shots. Personally, I'd rather battle disease than
take a chance on a mind-twisting drug. You can go without
water just so long...."

"I'd like to have a little talk with Lumbrilo," remarked Jellico,
the mildness in his voice very deceptive.

"I'm going to have a little talk with Lumbrilo, if and when
we see him again!" promised Tau.

"What are our chances, sir?" Dane asked. He screwed the
cap back on his canteen, his mouth feeling twice as dry since
he knew he dared not drink.

"Well, we've faced gambles before." Tau sealed the medical
kit. "I'd like to see one of those trees before sundown.
And I don't want to face another pointed rock today!"

[Pg 50]

"Why the leopard?" asked Jellico reflectively. "Another
case of using flame to fight fire? But Lumbrilo wasn't among
those present to be impressed."

Tau rubbed his hand across his forehead. "I don't really
know, sir. Maybe I could have made the ape vanish without
a counter projection, but I don't think so. With these hallucinations
it is better to battle one vision against another for
the benefit of those involved. And I can't even tell you why I
selected a leopard—it just flashed into mind as about the
fastest and most deadly animal fighter I could recall at that
moment."

"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. It would appear that their
search for the water tree would be delayed.

[Pg 51]

VI

They withdrew to a spot hacked from the edge of the jungle,
leaving a screen of green between them and the traitorous
up-slope. But within the few hours of daylight left them, it
was proven that Asaki had been overly optimistic in his hopes
of discovering a water tree. 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. And, now
that they were away from the heights and the possibility of
more finger-shaped rocks, surely the threat in that moisture
was small in comparison to the needs of his body. Only that
caution which was drilled into every Free Trader supplied a
brake to his thirst.

Jellico drew the back of his hand across cracked lips.
"Suppose we should draw lots—some of us drink, one or two
not. Could we manage that way until we were over the
mountains?"

"I wouldn't want to chance it, unless we are left with no
other choice. There is no way of telling how long the drug
works. Frankly, right now I'm not even sure I could detect a
hallucination for very long under these conditions," was Tau's
discouraging verdict.

If any of them slept that night, they did so only in snatches.
The apprehension which had come with the previous night
was back, intensified, and that lurking, indefinable fear rode
them hard.

They were shaken out of their private terrors shortly after
[Pg 52]dawn. There were always sounds to be heard in the jungle:
the cries of unseen birds, the crash of some tree eaten alive
by parasitic sapping. But what broke now was no bird call,
no isolated tree falling. 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! We may have to move on
the double. Up-mountain?" he demanded of the Chief
Ranger.

The other was still listening, not only with his ears but
with the whole of his tense body. Three of the deer-like
creatures they had hunted for food broke out of the green
wall, fled past the men as if the latter was invisible. And
behind them, the hunted now and not the hunter, came a
lion, its strikingly marked black-and-white hide dramatic in
the light of the morning. It showed fangs in a snarl and then
was gone in one huge bound. More deer things, scurrying of
other small creatures, moving too fast for clear identification,
and behind them the fury of destruction which marked the
headlong advance of Khatka's largest mammals slamming
through the jungle.

They had started up-slope when Nymani cried out. A white
bulk, hard to distinguish in that light against the gray of the
earth, headed after them. Dane had a fleeting glimpse of
curled tusks, of an open mouth, raw-red and wide enough to
engulf his whole head, of shaggy legs driving at an unbelievable
pace. Asaki snapped a beam from the needler. The white
monster roared and came on. They dived for the scant cover
offered as the graz bull died, not two yards away from the
Chief Ranger, its heavy body skidding along the earth with
the force of its speed as it went down.

"That did it!" Jellico sighted coolly with his blaster as a
second bull, fighting mad, tore from the jungle and pounded
[Pg 53]at them. Behind it a third tusked head thrust out of the
brush, large eyes searched for an enemy. Dane studied the
dead bull, but the animal did not come to life this time.
These were not hallucinations. And the malignancy of the
rock apes, the cunning of the native Khatkan lion, were pallid
things compared to a graz herd on the rampage.

The second bull yelped with an almost canine complaint as
Jellico's blaster caught it head-on. Blinded, the beast blundered
ahead, climbing the mountain side. The third met a ray
from Nymani's needler. But the Chief Ranger leaped from
behind his sheltering rock to the one where the captain had
taken refuge and pulled him into the open.

"They must not corner us here!"

Jellico agreed to that. "Come on!" he barked to Tau and
Dane.

They fled along a rough way, trying to gain altitude, but
finding a rising cliff wall which could not be easily climbed.
Two more graz went down, one badly wounded, one safely
dead. Behind them more white heads came from the brush.
What original cause had started the stampede the fugitives
could not guess, but now the fear and anger of the animals
were centering upon them.

And, in spite of their efforts, the party was being herded
into a pocket between the jungle below, where the main body
of graz crashed along, and a steep wall. Given time to find
the necessary finger and toe holds, a man might climb that
wall, but they could not attempt it now. The portion of ledge
on which they ran, stopped to fire, and then ran on again,
angled to the southeast. And so they came to its end quickly,
a drop ending in a plain of yellow-gray mud studded with
clumps of bleached vegetation which led, like steppingstones,
toward a tangle of matted, sickly looking plants and reeds.

"All right," Tau faced around, "what do we do now?
Space lift? And using what for wings or jets?"

As if the graz could sense that they now had their victims
safely cornered, what must have been a goodly segment of
the herd hooked their way from the jungle and started up.
[Pg 54]Puffing, digging in those sturdy legs which had to take the
massive weight of their barrel-shaped bodies, they made their
way determinedly up-grade. One might almost believe that
they had intelligently planned this end for their drive.

"We go down!" Asaki yelled, and used his needler on the
leader of that climbing platoon.

"The brush islands," Nymani amended. "I show you!" He
thrust his needler at Jellico and was over the edge of the
ledge, hanging by his hands and swinging his weight back
and forth like a pendulum. At the up-swing of his body to the
right, he let go and plunged out, landing half across one of
the reed islets. The Khatkan clawed his way to his knees,
gained his feet, and leaped for the next bit of solid ground.

"You, Thorson!" Jellico jerked his head at Dane and the
younger spaceman holstered his fire ray, slipped gingerly
over the drop and prepared to repeat Nymani's feat as best
he could.

He was not quite as successful with his sidewise swing,
landing with only his forearms across the islet, the rest of his
body being swiftly embedded in what was ooze covered only
with a thin crust of dried matter. The stench of the stuff was
sickening, but the fear of being entrapped in it gave him the
necessary impetus to push forward, though what was meant
to be a swift half-dive was more of a worm's progress. He
grabbed frantically at brittle stems, at coarse grass which cut
like knives at his hands. But some of the material held and he
lay face down on a lump which did not give under his weight.

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. The Khatkan was more than
halfway along toward that promise of solid ground which the
tangled mass of leprous vegetation led to, zigzagging expertly
from islet to islet.

There was a crash and a roar behind. Dane balanced on
the third of the minute islands to look back. He saw the lash
[Pg 55]of blaster fire on the top of the cliff, Tau on his knees on the
first of their chain of steppingstones, and a graz sprawled head
and forequarters in the sucking muck where it had dived
past the two defenders above. Needler and blaster fired
together again, and then Jellico swung over the cliff rim. Tau
waved vigorously and Dane took off for the next islet, just
making it by lucky chance.

The rest of the journey he took in a rush, trying not to
think of anything but the necessity of landing on some spot
of firm ground. His last leap of all was too short, so that he
went knee deep in a particularly evil-smelling pool where
yellow scum spattered his breeches and he experienced the
insidious pull of the bottomless stuff. A stout branch whipped
across his shoulder and he caught it. With Nymani's wiry
strength on the other end, Dane worked free and sat, white-faced
and shivering, on a mat of brush, while the Khatkan
hunter turned his attention to the safety of Tau, the next
arrival.

More fortunate, or more skillful than Dane, the medic
made the hop from the last tuft without mishap. But he was
blowing heavily as he collapsed beside the other spaceman.
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. As Jellico
shot again, the Khatkan slung his needler and went over to
gain the first islet.

One more graz was wounded but luckily it hunched about,
turning its formidable tusks on those that followed, thus
keeping the path clear for its enemies. Jellico was making
the journey, sure-footedly, with the Chief Ranger only one
hillock behind. Tau sighed.

"Someday maybe this will be just another tall tale and
we'll all be thought liars when we spout it," he observed.
[Pg 56]"That is if we survive to tell it. So now which way do we go?
If I had my choice it would be up!"

When Dane pulled himself to his feet and surveyed their
small refuge, he was ready to agree to that. For the space,
packed with dead and dying vegetable matter until one sank
calf deep, was a triangle with a narrow point running east
into the swamp.

"They don't give up easily, do they?" Jellico looked back
to the shore and the cliff. Though the wounded graz bull still
held the heights against its fellows, there were others breaking
from the jungle on the lower level, wandering back and
forth to paw the earth, rip up soil with their tusks, and otherwise
threaten anyone who would try to return to the strip
they patrolled.

"They will not," Asaki answered bleakly. "Arouse a graz
and it will trail you for days; kill any of the herd and you
have little hope of escaping them on foot."

It would seem now that the swamp was a deterrent to
pursuit. The two beasts that had fallen in the mire moaned
in a pitiful rising note. They had ceased to struggle and
several of their kind clustered on the shore near them, calling
entreatingly. Asaki took careful aim with the needler and
put one animal after another out of its misery. But the flash
of those shots angered those on shore to a higher pitch of
rage.

"No going back," he said. "At least not for several days."

Tau slapped a black, four-winged insect which had settled
on his arm, its jaws wide open for a sampling bite. "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."

At that moment Dane doubted his ability to make any
[Pg 57]more leaps from island to island. And it would seem Tau
shared his discouragement.

"I don't suppose you could discourage our friends on shore
there with a few more shots?"

Asaki shook his head. "We do not have clips enough to
settle a whole herd. These might retreat from sight but they
would be waiting for us in the bush, and that would mean
certain death. We shall have to take the swamp road."

If Dane had considered their earlier march misery, this
was sheer torture. Since footing was never secure, falls were
frequent, and within a quarter-hour they were all plastered
with evil-smelling slime and mud which hardened to rock
consistency when exposed to the air. Painful as this was, it
did protect a portion of their bodies from the insects with
which the swamp was well stocked.

And, in spite of their efforts to find a way out, the only
possible paths led them deeper into the center of the unexplored
morass. At last Asaki called a halt and a council to
consider retreat. To locate an island from which they could
at least watch the shore appealed very strongly indeed.

"We have to have water." Tau's voice was a harsh croak,
issuing out of a mask of green mud festooned with trailing
weeds.

"This ground is rising." Asaki smacked the stock of his
needler against the surface on which he crouched. "I think
perhaps there may be clean land soon to come."

Jellico hitched his way up a sapling, now bending under
his weight. Through the vision lenses he studied the route
ahead.

"You're right about that," he called to the Chief Ranger.
"There's a showing of the right sort of green to the left, about
half a mile on. And," he glanced about at the westering sun,
"we have about an hour yet of good light in which to make
it. I wouldn't try such a run after dark."

That promise of green bolstered their weary spirits for a
last exhausting effort. Once again they were faced with a
[Pg 58]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. 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. At that moment he was past caring about
anything but the fact that he did have a portion of drinkable
stuff in hand.

Here the stunted, unnatural growth of the swamplands
had given away to the more normal vegetation of the jungle-clad
lowlands. Had they come clear across the swamp, Dane
wondered dully, or was this only a large island in the midst
of the stinking boglands?

He drank again and regained strength enough to crawl to
where his shipmates lay. It was some time before he was
interested in much besides the fact that he could drink when
he wished. Then he watched Jellico waver to his feet, his
head turned eastward. Tau, too, sat up as if alerted by the
Queen's alarm buzzer.

The Khatkans were gone, perhaps back to the water tree.
But all three of the spacemen heard that sound, a far off
throbbing rhythm which was a vibration as well. Jellico
looked to Tau.

"Drums?"

"Could be." The medic screwed the cap back on his canteen.
"I'd say we have company—only I'd like to know what
kind!"

They might have been mistaken about the drums, but none
of them could have been mistaken about the bolt which came
out of nowhere to slice through a tree trunk as a knife might
[Pg 59]slash wet clay. Blaster—and a particular type of blaster!

"Patrol issue!" Tau lay flat, squeezing himself against the
earth as if he wished he could ooze into it.

Jellico wriggled toward the bush in answer to a low call
from Asaki, and the others made a worm's progress in his
wake. Under cover they found the Chief Ranger readying his
needler.

"Poacher camp here," he explained bleakly. "And they
know about us."

"A perfect end to a stinking day," remarked Tau dispassionately.
"We might have guessed something of this sort
was waiting." 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."

[Pg 60]

VII

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. Out over the swamp, weird patches of phosphorescence
moved in small ghostly clouds, and bright dots of insects
with their own built-in lighting systems flashed spark-fashion
or sailed serenely on regular flight plans. At night the wonder
of the place was far removed from the squalid reality of the
day. They chewed on their rations, drank sparingly of the
water, and tried to keep alert to any sight or sound.

That monotonous undertone, which might or might not be
drums, continued as a basic hum to the noises of the night,
drowned out at intervals by a splash, a mutter or cry from
some swamp creature. Beside Dane, Jellico stiffened, moved
his blaster, as someone wriggled through the brush, trilling
softly.

"Off-worlders," Nymani reported in gasps to Asaki, "and
outlaws, too. They make a hunting sing—tomorrow they
march for a killing."

Asaki rested his chin on his broad forearm. "Outlaws?"

"They show no lord's badge. But each I saw wears a
bracelet of three, five, or ten tails. They are Trackers indeed,
and Hunters of the best!"

"They have huts?"

"Not so. There are no dwellers in the inners courts here."
Out of habit Nymani used the polite term for the women of
his race. "I would say they tarry only for the space of a hunt.
And on the boots of one I saw salt crust."

"Salt crust!" Asaki snapped and half arose. "So that is the
type of lure they use. There must be a saline mire near here
to pull game—"

[Pg 61]

"How many off-worlders?" Jellico broke in.

"Three who are Hunters, one who is different."

"How different?" questioned Asaki.

"He wears upon his body garments which are strange; on
his head a round covering such as we see upon the off-worlders
of the ships—"

"A spaceman!"

Asaki laughed harshly. "Why not? They must have some
method of transporting their hides."

"You can't tell me," Jellico returned, "that anyone is able
to set a ship down in this muck. It would simply be buried
for all time."

"But, Captain, what type of a spaceport does a Free Trader
need? Do you not planet your own ship on worlds where
there are no waiting cradles, no fitter shops, none of the
conveniences such as mark the field Combine maintains on
Xecho?"

"Of course I do. But one does need a reasonably smooth
stretch of territory, open enough so the tail flames won't start
a forest fire. You don't ever ride a tail push down in a
swamp!"

"Which testifies to a trail out of here, fairly well-traveled,
and some kind of a usable landing space not too far away,"
Asaki replied. "And that could very well serve us."

"But they know we are here," Tau pointed out.

It was Nymani's turn to laugh. "Man from the stars, there
is no trail so well-hidden that a Ranger of the preserves
cannot nose it out, nor any Hunter—be he a two or five
bracelet veteran—who can keep pinned down a determined
man of the forest service!"

Dane lost interest in the argument at that moment. He was
at the edge of their line, the nearest to the swamp, and he
had been watching patches of ghostly light flitting above the
rank water-weeds. For the past few moments those wisps of
faded radiance had been gathering into a growing anthropomorphic
blot hanging over the morass several yards away.
And the misty outlines were now assuming more concrete
[Pg 62]shape. He watched, unable to believe in what he was seeing.
At first the general outline, non-defined as it was, made him
think of a rock ape. But there were no pointed ears above
the round skull, no snout on the visage turned in profile
toward him.

More and more patches of swamp luminescence were
drawn to that glowing figure. What balanced there now, as
if walking the treacherous surface of the swampland, was no
animal. It was a man, or the semblance of one, a small, thin
man—a man he had seen once before, on the terrace of
Asaki's mountain fortress.

The thing stood almost complete, its head cocked in what
was an attitude of listening.

"Lumbrilo!" Dane identified it, still knowing that the witch
doctor could not be standing there listening for them. But,
to shake him still farther, the head turned at his cry. Only
there were no eyes, no features on the white expanse which
should have been a face. And somehow that made the monster
more menacing, convincing Dane against sane logic that
the thing was spying on them.

"Demon!" That was Nymani; and over his sudden quaver,
robbed of all the confidence which had been there only
moments earlier, came Asaki's demand:

"What stands there, Medic? Tell us that!"

"A whip to drive us out of hiding, sir. As you know as well
as I. If Nymani spied upon them, then they have spied upon
us in turn. And this, I think, also answers another question.
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!"

The shadow thing in the swamp moved, putting its foot
forward on surface which would not bear the weight of a
human body, taking a deliberate step and then another,
[Pg 63]heading for the concealing brush where the fugitives lay.

"Can you get rid of it, Tau?" Jellico asked in his usual
crisp voice. He might have been inquiring about some problem
aboard the Queen.

"I'd rather get at the source." There was a grim note in
the Medic's reply. "And to do that I want to look at their
camp."

"Well enough!" Asaki crept back in the brush.

The ghost of that which was not a man had reached the
shore of the island, stood there, its blank head turned toward
them. Weird as it was, now that the first shock of sighting it
was over, the spacemen could accept and dismiss it as they
had not been so able to dismiss the phantom rock ape.

"If that thing was sent to drive us," Dane ventured,
"wouldn't we be playing their game by going inland now?"

The Chief Ranger did not pause in his crawl to the left.
"I think not. They do not expect us to arrive with our wits
about us. Panic-stricken men are easy to pull down. This time
Lumbrilo has overreached himself. Had he not played that
game with the rock ape, he might have been able to stampede
us now."

Though the white thing continued to move inland, it did
not change course to fall in behind them on the new route.
Whatever it was, it did not possess a mind.

There was a rustling, faint but distinguishable. Then Dane
caught Nymani's whisper.

"The one left to watch the inland trail does so no longer.
We need not fear an alarm from him. Also, here is another
blaster for our use."

Away from the open by the swamp, the gloom was deeper.
Dane was guided only by the noises of the less-experienced
Jellico and Tau made in their progress.

They edged down into a small cut, floored with reeds and
mud, where some of the moisture from the soggy land about
them gathered into a half pool. Straight through this swale
the Khatkans set course.

The drum beat grew louder. Now there was a glow against
[Pg 64]the dark—fire ahead? Dane squirmed forward and at last
gained a vantage point from which to survey the poachers'
camp.

There were shelters erected there, three of them, but they
were mainly roofs of leaves and branches. In two of them
were stored bales of hides sewn into plastic cloth, ready to
ship. Before the third hut lounged four off-worlders. And
Nymani was very right; one of them wore ship's uniform.

To the right of the fire was a ring of natives and another
man, slightly apart, who beat the drum. But of the witch
doctor there was no sign. And Dane, thinking of that mist-born
thing at the swamp's edge, shivered. He could believe
Tau's explanation of the drug which produced hallucinations
back on the mountain side. But how that likeness fashioned
of phosphorescence had been sent by an absent man to hunt
his enemies was a eerie puzzle.

"Lumbrilo is not here." Nymani's thoughts must have
been moving along the same path.

Dane could hear movements in the dark beside him.

"There's a long-distance com unit in that third hut," Tau
observed.

"So I see," Jellico snapped. "Could you reach your men
over the mountain with that, sir?"

"I do not know. But if Lumbrilo is not here, how can he
make his image walk the night?" the Chief Ranger demanded
impatiently.

"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?" Asaki's wide shoulders and upheld
head showed for an instant against the light from the camp.

"You want Lumbrilo," Tau replied. "Very well, sir, I
believe I can give him to you, and in the doing discredit him
[Pg 65]with your Khatkans. But not with the off-worlders free to
move."

The program was not going to be easy, Dane decided.
Every one of the poachers was armed with a Patrol blaster
of the latest type, and a small part of his mind speculated as
to what would be the result of that information conveyed to
official quarters. Free Traders and Patrolmen did not always
see eye-to-eye over the proper action to be taken on the
galactic frontier. The Queen's crew had had one such brush
with authority in the immediate past. But each realized that
the other had an important role in the general scheme of
things, and if it came to a clash between the law and outlaws,
Free Traders fought beside the Patrol.

"Why not give them what they expect—with reservations?"
inquired Jellico. "They've set us up to be stampeded into
camp, flying ahead of that tame ghost of theirs. Suppose we
do stampede—after Nymani has removed any sentries—stampede
so well we sweep right over them? I want to get at that
com unit."

"You don't think they'll just mow us down as we come in?"

"You delivered a blow to Lumbrilo's pride; he won't be
satisfied with just your burning," the captain answered Tau,
"not if I'm any judge of character. And we'd furnish hostages
of a sort—especially the Chief Ranger. No, if they had wanted
to kill us they would have shot us off those islands when we
came here. There would have been no playing around with
ghosts and goblins."

"There is reason in your words. And it is true they would
like to have me, those outlaws down there," Asaki commented.
"I am of the Magawaya and we have pressed always
for stronger security methods to be used against such as they.
But I do not see how we can take the camp."

"We won't go in from the front—as they expect us to do.
But a try from the north, getting at the off-worlders first....
Three men causing enough disturbance to cover operations
of the other two...."

"So?" There was a moment of silence as the Chief Ranger
[Pg 66]evaluated that. Then he added a few comments of his own.

"That off-worlder who wears spaceman's clothing, his
weapon is not drawn, though the others are ready. But I
believe that you are right in thinking they expect to be
warned by sentries. Those we can see to. Suppose then,
Captain, you and I play the fear-crazed men running from
demons. 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?"

"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.

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.

"When they move," Tau's lips were beside his ear, "jump
for that drum. I don't care how you get it, but get it and keep
it!"

"Yes, sir!"

There was a wailing cry from the north, a howl of witless
fear. The singers stopped in mid-note, the drummer paused,
his hand uplifted. Dane darted forward in a plunge which
[Pg 67]carried him to that man. 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.
Backing up a little, Dane went down on one knee, his weapon
ready to sweep over the bewildered natives, the drum resting
on the earth against his body. Keeping the fire rod steady,
his left hand went to work, not in the muted cadence the
Khatkan drummer had chosen, but in hard and vigorous
thumps which rolled across the clamor of the fight. There
was no forgetting the beat of "Terra Bound" and he delivered
it with force, so that the familiar da-dah-da-da droned loud
enough to awaken the whole camp.

Dane's move appeared to completely baffle the Khatkan
outlaws. They stared at him, the whites of their eyes doubly
noticeable in their dark faces, their mouths a little agape. As
usual the unexpected had driven them off guard. He dared
not look away from that gathering to see how the fight at
the other end of the camp was progressing. But he did see
Tau's advance.

The medic came into the light of the fire, not with his
ordinary loose-limbed spaceman's stride, but mincingly, with
a dancing step, and he was singing to the drum beat of
"Terra Bound." Dane could not understand the words, but he
knew that they patterned in and out of the drum beats,
weaving a net between singer and listeners as Lumbrilo had
woven his net on the mountain terrace.

Tau had them! Had every one of the native outlaws
ensnared, so that Dane rested his weapon across his knee
and took up the lower beat with the fingers of his right hand
as well.

Da-dah-da-da.... The innocuous repetitive refrain of the
original song which had been repeating itself in his mind
[Pg 68]faded, and somehow he caught the menace in the new words
Tau was mouthing.

Twice the medic shuffled about a circle of his own making.
Then he stooped, took a hunting knife from the belt of the
nearest Khatkan and held it point out toward the dark east.
Dane would not have believed the medic knew the drill he
now displayed, for with no opponent save the dancing firelight
he fought a knife duel, feinting, striking, twisting,
retreating, attacking, all in time to the beat of the drum Dane
was no longer conscious of playing. And as he strove it was
very easy to picture another fighting against him. So that
when the knife came up in a vicious thrust which was the
finish of his last attack, Dane stared stupidly at the ground,
half expecting to see a body lying there.

Once more Tau ceremoniously saluted with his blade to
the east. Then he laid it on the ground and stood astride its
gleaming length.

"Lumbrilo!" His confident voice arose above the call of the
drum. "Lumbrilo—I am waiting."

[Pg 69]

VIII

Vaguely aware that the clamor at the other end of the
camp had died away, Dane muted the sound of his drum.
Over its round top he could watch the Khatkan outlaws;
their heads bobbed and swayed in time to the beat of his
fingers. He, too, could feel the pull of Tau's voice. But what
would come in answer? That shadowy thing which had been
loosed to drive them here? Or the man himself?

To Dane, the ruddy light of the fire dimmed, yet there was
no actual dying of those flames which coiled and thrust
around the wood. And the acrid scent of burning was thick.
How much of what followed was real, how much the product
of his tense nerves, Dane was never afterwards able to
tell. In fact, whether all the witnesses there saw the same
sights could be questioned. 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. Was that threat,
too, only in their minds? Or had Lumbrilo some power to so
shape his hatred?

The unseen was cold; it sapped a man's strength, bit at his
brain, weighted his hands and feet, weakened him. It strove
to soften him into clay another could remold. Nothingness,
darkness, all that was opposed to life and warmth and reality,
arose in the night, gathered together against them.

Yet still Tau fronted that invisible wave, his head high.
[Pg 70]And between his sturdily planted feet the knife gleamed
bright with a radiance of its own.

"Ahhh—" Tau's voice curled out, to pierce that creeping
menace. Then he was singing again, the cadence of his
unknown words rising a little above the pattern wrought by
the drum.

Dane forced his heavy hands to continue the beat, his
wrists to rise and fall in defiance of that which crept to eat
their strength and make them less then men.

"Lumbrilo! I, Tau, of another star, another sky, another
world, bid you come forth and range your power against
mine!" Now there was a sharper note in that demand, the
snap of an order.

He was answered by another wave of the black negation—stronger,
rolling up to smash them down, as a wave in the
heavy surf of a wild ocean pounds its force against the beach.
This time Dane thought he could see that dark mass. He tore
his eyes away before it took on substance, concentrating on
the movements of his hands against the drum head, refusing
to believe that hammer of power was rising to flatten them
all. He had heard Tau describe such things in the past. But
told in familiar quarters on board the Queen, such experiences
were only stories. Here was danger unleashed. Yet the
medic stood unbowed as the wave broke upon him in full.

And, advancing under the crest of that lick of destruction,
came its controller. This was no ghost drawn from the materials
of the swamp; this was a man, walking quietly, his hands
as empty as Tau's, yet grasping weapons none of them could
see.

In the firelight, as the wave receded sullenly, men moaned,
lay face down upon the ground, beat their hands feebly
against the earth. But, as Lumbrilo came on from the shadows,
one of them got to his hands and knees, moving with
small tortured jerks. He crawled toward Tau, his head lolling
on his shoulders as the head of the dead rock ape had done.
Dane patted the drum with one hand while, with the other,
[Pg 71]he groped for his fire ray. He tried to shout in warning and
found that he could not utter a sound.

Tau's arm moved, raised from his side, made a circling
motion.

The creeping man, his eyes rolled up in his head until only
the whites gleamed blindly in the limited light, followed that
gesture. He drew level with the medic, passed beyond toward
Lumbrilo, whining as a hound prevented from obeying his
master might lament.

"So be it, Lumbrilo," Tau said. "This is between you and
me. Or do you not dare to risk your power against mine? Is
Lumbrilo so weak a one that he must send another to do his
will?"

Raising both hands again the medic brought them down,
curling inward, until he stooped and touched them to the
ground. When he straightened once again the knife was in
his grasp and he tossed it behind him.

The smoke from the fire swirled out in a long tongue,
coiled about Lumbrilo and was gone. A black and white beast
stood where the man had been, its tufted tail lashing, its
muzzle a mask of snarling hate and blood lust.

But Tau met that transformation with laughter which was
like the lash of a whip.

"We both be men, you and I, Lumbrilo. Meet me as a
man and keep those trickeries for those who have not the
clear sight. A child plays as a child, so—" Tau's voice came in
a rumble, but Tau was gone. The huge, hairy thing which
swayed in his place turned a gorilla's beast visage to his
enemy. For a breathless moment Terran ape confronted
Khatkan lion. Then the spaceman was himself again. "The
time for games is over, man of Khatka. You have tried to hunt
us to our deaths, have you not? Therefore death shall be the
portion of the loser now."

Lion vanished, man stood watching, alertly, as swordsman
might face swordsman with a blood feud lying on their blades.
To Dane's eyes the Khatkan made no move. Yet the fire
leaped high, as if freshly fed, and flames burst from the wood,
[Pg 72]flew into the air, red and perilous birds, darting at Tau until
they outlined him from the ground under his boots to an
arch over his head. They united and spun faster until Dane,
watching with dazzled eyes, saw the wheel become a blur of
light, hiding Tau within its fiery core. His own wrists ached
with the strain of his drumming as he lifted one hand and
tried to shield his sight from the glare of that pillar of fire.

Lumbrilo was chanting—a heavy blast of words. Dane
stiffened; his traitorous hands were falling into the rhythm
of that other song! Straightaway he raised both from the
drum head, brought them down in a discordinate series of
thumps which bore no relation to either the song Tau wanted
or that which Lumbrilo was now crooning. Thump—thump—thump—Dane
beat it out frantically, belaboring the drum
head as he wanted to sink his fists home on the body of the
Khatkan witch doctor.

The pillar of fire swayed, fluttered as if a wind drove it—and
was gone. Tau, unmarked, smiled.

"Fire!" He pointed his fingers at Lumbrilo. "Would you
try earth, and water, and air also, wizard? Call hither your
whirlwind, up your flood, summon the land to quake. None
of those shall bring me down!"

Shapes came flooding out of the night, some monstrous,
some human, streaming past Lumbrilo to crowd into the circle
of firelight. Some Dane thought he knew, some were
strangers. Men wearing space uniforms, or the dress of other
worlds, women—they strode, wept, mingled with the monsters
to laugh, curse, threaten.

Dane guessed that Lumbrilo sent now against the Terran
the harvest of the medic's own memories. He shut his eyes
against this enforced intrusion upon another's past, but not
before he saw Tau's face, strained, fined to the well-shaped
bones beneath the thin flesh, holding still a twisted smile as
he met each memory, accepted the pain it held for him, and
set it aside unshaken.

"This, too, has no power any longer, man who walks in
the dark."

[Pg 73]

Dane opened his eyes. Those crowding wraiths were fading,
losing substance. Lumbrilo crouched, his lips drawn back
from his teeth, his hatred plain to read.

"I am not clay to be molded by your hands, Lumbrilo.
And now I say that the time has come to call an end—"

Tau raised his hands slowly once again, holding them away
from his body, palms pointing earthward. And beneath them,
on either side of the spaceman, two black shadows gathered
on the surface of the ground.

"You have fettered yourself with your own bounds. As you
have been the hunter, so shall you now be the hunted."

Those shadows were growing as plants might issue from
the packed soil of the camping ground. When his hands were
shoulder high, Tau held them steady. Now on either side of
his tautly held body crouched one of the black-and-white
lions with which Lumbrilo had identified his own brand of
magic throughout the year.

Lumbrilo's "lion" had been larger than life, more intelligent,
more dangerous, subtly different from the normal animal
it counterfeited. So now were these. And both of them
raised their heads to gaze intently into the medic's face.

"Hunt well, brothers in fur," he said slowly, almost caressingly.
"Him whom you hunt shall grant you sport in the
going."

"Stop it!" A man leaped from the shadows behind the
witch doctor. Firelight made plain his off-world dress, and he
swung up a blaster, aiming at the nearest of the waiting
beasts. That flash struck true, but it neither killed nor even
singed the fine fur of the animal's pelt.

As the blaster's aim was swung from beast to man, Dane
fired first. His ray brought a scream from the other, who
dropped his weapon from a badly seared hand to reel back,
cursing.

Tau waved his hands gently. The great animal heads
turned obediently, until the red eyes were set on Lumbrilo.
Facing them, the witch doctor straightened, spat out his
hate at the medic:

[Pg 74]

"I do not run to be hunted, devil man!"

"I think you do, Lumbrilo. For you must taste fear now as
you have made other men drink of it, so that it fills your
blood and races through your body, clouds your mind to make
of you less than a man. You have hunted out those who
doubted your power, who stood in your chosen path, whom
you wanted removed from the earth of Khatka. Do you doubt
that they wait in the last dark for you now, ready to greet
you, witch doctor? What they have known, you shall also
know. This night you have shown me all that lies in my past
that is weak, that was evil, that I may regret or find sorrow
for. So shall you also remember through the few hours left
you. Aye, you shall run, Lumbrilo!"

As he spoke, Tau approached the other, the two black-and-white
hunters pacing beside him. Now he stooped and
caught up a pinch of soil and spat upon it three times. Then
he threw the tiny clod of earth at the witch doctor. It struck
Lumbrilo just above the heart and the man reeled under
what might have been a murderous blow.

The Khatkan broke then, completely. With a wailing cry
he whirled and ran, crashing into the brush as one who runs
blindly and without hope. Behind him the two beasts leaped
noiselessly together and all three were gone.

Tau swayed, put his hand to his head. Dane kicked away
the drum, arose from his cramped position stiffly to go to
him. But the medic was not yet done. He returned to stand
over the prostrate native hunters and he clapped his hands
sharply.

"You are men, and you shall act as men henceforth. That
which was, is no longer. Stand free, for the dark power follows
him who misused it, and fear no longer eats from your
basins, drinks from your cups, or lies beside you on the sleep
mats."

"Tau!" Jellico's shout reached them over the cries of the
rousing Khatkans. But Dane was there first, catching the
medic before he slumped to the ground; but he was dragged
[Pg 75]with that dead weight until he sat with the medic's head on
his shoulder, the other's body resting heavily against him.
For one horror-filled moment Dane feared that he did indeed
hold a dead man, that one of the outlaw Hunters must have
struck a last blow for his discredited leader. Then Tau sighed
and began to breathe deeply. Dane glanced up, amazed, at
the captain.

"He's asleep!"

Jellico knelt and his hand went to test heart beat, then to
touch the medic's worn and dirty face. "Best thing for him,"
he said briskly. "He's had it."

It took some time to get the facts of their triumph sorted
out. Two of the off-worlder poachers were dead. 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.

The dazed native Hunters had been expertly looped
together by Nymani and, a little apart from them, the off-worlders
were under examination.

"An I-C man, eh?" Jellico, smoothing a mud-spattered
chin with a grimed hand, regarded the latest arrival measuringly.
"Trying to run in and break a Combine charter, were
you? You'd better spill the facts; your own head office will
disown you, you ought to know that. They never back any
failures in these undercover deals."

"I want medical attention," snapped the other, cradling
his seared hand to his chest. "Or do you plan to turn me over
to these savages?"

"Seeing as how you tried to blast our medic," replied the
captain with a grin which was close to shark-like, "he may
not feel much like patching up those fingers of yours. Stick
'em in where they have no business, and they're apt to get
burned. At any rate he's not going to look at 'em until he's
had a chance to rest. I'll give you first aid. And while I'm
[Pg 76]working we'll talk. I-C going into the poaching trade now?
That news is going to please Combine; they have no use for
you boys anyway."

His answer was lurid and uninformative. But the uniform
tunic the other wore could not be so easily explained away.
Dane, worn out, stretched his aching length on a pile of
mats and lost all interest in the argument.

Two days later they stood once more on the same terrace
where Lumbrilo had wrought his magic and met his first
defeat. This time no lightning played along the mountain
ridges and the blaze of the sun was so bright and clear that
one could hardly believe in the fantastic happenings of that
swamp clearing where men had fought with weapons not
made by hands. The three from the Queen moved away from
the parapet to meet the Chief Ranger as he came down the
stairs.

"A messenger has just arrived. The hunter was hunted
indeed, and his going was witnessed by many—though they
did not see those which hunted him. Lumbrilo is dead; he
came to his end by the Great River."

Jellico started. "But that is almost fifty miles from the
swamp, on this side of the mountain!"

"He was hunted and he fled—as you promised," Asaki said
to Tau. "You made strong magic, off-world man."

The medic shook his head slowly. "I but turned his own
methods against him. Because he believed in his power, that
same power, reflected back, broke him. Had I been facing
one who did not believe...." He shrugged. "Our first meeting
set the pattern. From that moment he feared a little that I
could match him, and his uncertainty pierced a hole in his
armor."

"Why on earth did you want 'Terra Bound?'" burst out
Dane, still seeking an explanation for that one small mystery
among the others.

Tau chuckled. "In the first place, that blasted tune has
haunted us all for so long that I knew its rhythm was probably
[Pg 77]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. He must have believed that we
would not find out about the drugged water and so would be
prepared for any fantasy he cared to produce. When they
saw us coming out over the swamp they counted us easy
takings. His practice had always been with Khatkans, and
he judged us by their reactions to stimuli he knew well how
to use. So he failed...."

Asaki smiled. "Which was good for Khatka but ill for
Lumbrilo and those using him to make mischief here. The
poacher and the outlaw Hunters will meet with our justice,
which I do not believe they will relish. But the other two,
the spaceman and the company agent, are to be sent to
Xecho to face Combine authorities. It is my thought that
those will not accept kindly the meddling of another company
in their territory."

Jellico grunted. "Kindness and Combine are widely separated
in such matters. But we can now take passage on the
same ship as your prisoners—"

"But, my friend, you have not yet seen the preserve. I
assure you that this time there shall be no trouble. We have
several days yet before you must return to your ship—"

The captain of the Queen held up his hand. "Nothing
would give me greater pleasure than to inspect the Zoboru
preserve, sir—next year. As it is, my holiday is over and the
Queen is waiting for us on Xecho. Also, permit me to send
you some tapes dealing with the newest types of flitters—guaranteed
against flight failures."

"Yes, guaranteed," Tau added guilelessly, "not to break
down, lose course, or otherwise disrupt a pleasant excursion."

The Chief Ranger threw back his head and his deep-chested
laughter was echoed from the heights above them.
"Very well, Captain. Your mail run will bring you back to
Xecho at intervals. Meanwhile I shall study your sales tapes
[Pg 78]concerning the non-expendable flitters. But you shall visit
Zoboru—and pleasantly, very pleasantly, I assure you, Medic
Tau!"

"I wonder," Tau muttered and Dane heard. "Just now the
quiet of deep space is a far, far more entrancing proposition!"

Transcriber's Notes

A table of contents with hyperlinks to the chapters has been added. The repetition "too too" and the writing of the word "steppingstones" without hyphen is as in the original.

The following typos have been corrected.

"Andrew North" was one of the pseudonyms used by "Andre Norton".