Troy dodged and licked out with his belt lash
for the wrist of Zul’s knife hand. The buckle-loaded tip
found its mark, and the smaller man yelped and swung around so that
his outflung, balancing arm brushed against the tube Kyger’s
dead fingers steadied. The cylinder fell and the body of the
merchant followed it, wilting bonelessly to the floor. Zul
screeched, a cry as high and unhuman as any the animals or birds
could have uttered.
At the same time Troy felt a cessation of that thrumming throb.
The tube rolled toward him, and Zul, seeming to forget his rage of
only seconds earlier, made a grab for it.
Troy kicked, sending the tube spinning. Then he brought the edge
of his hand down across Zul’s neck, dropping the little man
to lie on the floor gasping. Troy had leisure to collect both knife
and cylinder before Zul sat up, still breathing in hoarse
rasps.
With the knife and tube laid on top of a cabinet, Troy advanced
on Zul. It was like trying to master by force a frenzied animal,
one that scratched and bit. In spite of his repugnance, Troy was
forced to knock the smaller man out in order to fasten his hands
behind him with his own belt.
Troy was rebuckling his rider’s broad cincture when he saw
Zul’s eyes open and take in the limp body of Kyger. The small
man’s face twisted in a grimace Troy could not read. Then he
strained to raise his head from the floor, looked about eagerly, as
if he wanted something more important for the moment than Troy. His
attention centered on the tube where it lay with one end projecting
over the edge of the cabinet, and he actually began to wriggle his
body across the floor toward it.
Troy stepped between. Zul’s grimace was now an open snarl.
He spat, struggled to lever himself from the floor.
Troy picked up the tube and took it with him as he moved to the
red alarm button on the wall. The quicker he summoned the
authorities, the less trouble he would have in telling his own
tale.
“No!” For the first time Zul spoke intelligibly.
“Not the patrollers!”
“Why not? I have nothing to hide. Have you?”
Zul’s frantic squirming across the room had brought him to
the row of cabinets. Now he wriggled his shoulders up against that
support so that he was sitting, not lying.
“No patrollers!” he repeated, and his words now held
the tone of an order rather than a plea. “Not
yet—”
“Why?”
Zul’s dark eyes were again focused on the tube Troy held.
He was plainly a man torn between the need for secrecy and the
necessity of having help.
Troy pressed. “Because of the animals—the Terran
animals?”
Zul froze, his small body suddenly rigid, his face the
personified mask of surprise—and perhaps some other emotions
Troy could not read.
“What do you know?” His words were harsh, rasping,
as if he had to fight for the breath to expel them.
“Enough.” Troy hoped that ambiguity would force some
revelation out of his captive.
Zul’s tongue tip wet his lips. He hitched his shoulders
along the cabinets as if to reach Troy.
“They must be killed—quickly—before the
patrollers are called.”
Troy was startled. Death for those who had met him in this room
was the last thing he would have expected from Zul. And certainly
he had no intention of yielding to that.
“Why?”
Zul’s eyes changed, became sly and suspicious once again.
“If you do not know, Dippleman, then you know nothing. They
are a danger—to all of us under this roof they are a great
danger, now that their master is dead. You will kill, or you will
wish that you had died also.”
Troy covered the space between them in one long-legged stride. He
stooped, caught Zul by the collar of his tunic, and pulled him to
his feet, holding him pinned against a cabinet.
“You will tell me why these animals are a danger,”
he said softly, trying to put into that speech all the force and
menace he could muster.
“Because”—Zul’s eyes were lifted to
Troy’s; apparently he was making a last throw, which might or
might not contain the truth—“they are more than
animals. They think, they take orders, they
report—”
“What orders do they take, and to whom do they
report?”
Zul swallowed visibly. There were small beads of oily moisture
forming on his forehead just below the tight knots of his hair. Yet
Troy sensed that he was not afraid of his captor, but of something
else. “They take their orders from him who summons
them.” Zul’s eyes flicked to the tube and back again to
Troy’s face. “And they report to him—”
“What?”
“Information.”
Puzzle pieces clicked together in Troy’s mind. Pets—with the ability to understand their masters’ or
mistresses’ actions, to collect information—planted in
households where information worth a high price could be
gathered!
“And Kyger did this?” That was a statement as well
as a question.
“Yes. Now the animals must be summoned and killed before
the patrollers arrive. Give me the caller.”
“I think not.” So Zul did not know that the animals
had already arrived to answer the call of a dead or dying man. And
as Troy made a decision of his own, he was answered by a thrust of
emotion from the seemingly empty spaces of the room—fear,
such as had moved the kinkajou to his arms in the garden, a
determination to fight, perhaps, too, a vague plea. And he knew
that he was again tuned in on the hidden five. If the animals had
been used by Kyger in some scheme, certainly they had only been
tools.
“Let the patrollers get them,” Zul continued,
“and they will have them under probes to learn what they
can—and kill them afterwards. Is it not better to kill them
cleanly before that is done?”
Troy stiffened, felt his own reaction intensified as the others
picked it up. What Zul said made such good sense it presented a new
form of danger, and a very big one. But his own thoughts were
racing ahead.
So far only those in this room knew that Kyger was dead, with
the exception of his killer—which gave Troy a small measure
of time. He knew that he could not let Zul kill the animals, and he
would fight to keep them from falling into the hands of those who
would wring secrets out of them via the probes.
Flight—But where? Memory painted for him a picture of
that plateau high in the clean wind. Not perhaps there—but
the Wild that stretched over half of this continent. To shake one
man and five small animals out of that would be a long and arduous
task, and before it was done perhaps he could find a solution to
their problem in another way.
“You’ll have to let me call them—and kill them
quickly!” Zul was losing control, his voice rasping louder as
he watched Troy with narrowed eyes.
“Be quiet!” Troy enforced that order by planting his
hand over the other’s mouth. Holding Zul so in spite of his
renewed writhings, Horan tried to contact the animals.
“Go together—away from here.” He thought those
words with all the emphasis he could, not trying to analyze why he
must champion the five, only knowing that it was very important to
do so—not only for them but for him.
If Zul understood what he was doing, he gave no sign of it. As
he fought to be free of Troy’s hold, his eyes were now wild
above the temporary gag of the other’s palm.
There was again a flicker of movement, which Troy caught only
from the corners of his eyes. The black cat materialized as if from
the flooring, came stealthily, with its belly fur brushing the
carpet, skirting Kyger’s outflung arm. And Zul, sighting it
over Troy’s hand, was still. Troy waited as the cat reached
them, to front Zul with a silent, menacing snarl, hatred expressed
in every fluid line of its body.
“They do not need to be called, Zul,” Troy said
softly, “for they are here. And from here they shall go
safely.”
So they came—the other cat in a swift spring, the foxes
side by side, and last of all the kinkajou in a rush that brought
it to Troy, to climb up his body as if it were a tree.
“We shall all go together for a little, Zul.” Troy
swung the smaller man about, held him before him with one hand as
he transferred Zul’s knife to his own belt. He dropped the
tube to the floor, and the black cat went into instant action,
setting it rolling with small paw taps until the cylinder
disappeared under one of the cabinets. Now all the animals, save
the kinkajou which rode on Troy’s shoulder, its tail loosely
coiled about the man’s neck, slipped out the door.
Zul might have been shocked speechless by the appearance of that
furred company and their cooperation with Troy. He obeyed the
other’s push like a controlled robot, and all his struggles
ceased as they went down the stairs, heading toward the
courtyard.
One part of Troy’s mind considered the matter of
supplies—and the flitter. So much depended now on chance and
luck, and he would have to hope for help from both.
Still holding Zul, he paused just within the passage door and
looked out into the courtyard. The flitter was just where he had
seen it last. From the pens and cages came the usual night sounds.
And there was no sign of the yardman who should have been on
duty.
Troy caught a stir at the side of the flitter, knew that the
animals had picked that much of his intention from his mind. At
this hour the air lanes would be crowded with villa dwellers
returning home from night spots in Tikil. He would have that
traffic for cover from the patrollers.
Now that he had made his decision, Troy had to throttle down the
excitement bubbling in him. For the first time in years he was
going to sample freedom. He had had a very small taste of that on
the expedition with Rerne, but this time the choice was his
alone.
Zul remained the immediate problem. Troy continued to propel the
other before him until they reached the storeroom. Since they had
left the room in which Kyger lay, the other had not struggled. It
might have been that he had no more desire than Troy to draw
attention to their activities.
Inside, Troy shoved his captive into a corner and worked fast. He
knew that Kyger had made a point of supplying the Terran animals
with special imported food, and he tossed into a sack such
containers of that as he could find. Zul’s knife was in his
belt and in addition the flitter would have a stunner in its arms
locker. He drew the cord of the sack tight, with Zul watching him.
The latter spoke and Troy knew he meant every word he said.
“We shall hunt and we shall kill. And the patrollers will
hunt also. There is no place you can hide that one or the other of
us will not find. And for you also there will be death
now.”
“Because I know too much?” Troy suggested.
“Because of that—and because of this. We cannot
allow knowledge of this thing.”
“And you will set the patrollers on me—”
Zul grinned. “There will be no need to tell them of the
animals. They will come and find a dead man where one of his
hirelings has fled. That is a story that needs no telling, even to
the most stupid.”
“Suppose they find that two have fled?” Troy asked.
He had no wish to take Zul along; that would be like fitting a
triggered egg bomb into the flitter. But the disappearance of two
of Kyger’s employees at the same time, and one of them an old
associate of the ex-spacer, might muddy the trail as far as the law
was concerned.
Slinging the bag over his shoulder, he closed on Zul again,
herding him out of the storeroom in the direction of the flitter.
But that plan was to go awry. There was a sudden shout from the
passage leading to Kyger’s quarters. Zul relaxed, made
himself a dead weight that Troy could not hope to manhandle into
the flyer without a loss of precious time. He leaped over the prone
man and scrambled into the flitter, hoping the animals were already
on board.
“Here!” Out of nowhere came that reassurance as Troy
took the lift control and raised the machine out of the well of the
courtyard. Lights showed in the forepart of Kyger’s rooms.
Perhaps one of the yardmen had discovered the body. Troy must make
the best use of the small head start that he had.
The main stream of the late traffic went north, not east, and he
would have to weave into that, not making the necessary turn until
he was well over the villa section. Also the flitter must keep
within the lawful speed of the passenger lanes.
Troy triggered the com on the control panel and listened
intently for any hint that the alarm had been raised behind him.
Zul’s words had not been an idle threat. However, once in the
Wild, he did not fear the patrollers too much.
What did concern him was the Clan rangers, organized to track
down just such unauthorized invasions as his own. They knew the
wilderness intimately. This realization made future prospects
suddenly far more bleak for Troy, and they grew grimmer the farther
he flew. Yet he had made his choice and there was no turning
back.
Rerne! If cornered, dare he appeal to the Hunter? Once more he
experienced the odd duality he had known that morning on the
plateau. Part of him was untrusting, wary, disillusioned, and
another segment pulled toward confidence in the ranger, a longing
for the freedom in which he and his kind walked under an open
sky.
A patroller cruised above his flitter, and Troy sat stiff and
tense, waiting for the order to land. Then the official flyer
darted away, and he drew a really deep breath once more. The
traffic about him was thinning. Soon he would have to make his dash
out of the regular lanes into what he hoped would be the
concealment of the night. He saw the twinkle of villa lights, two
of them among the rising heights. Snapping off his lawful lights,
he banked to the right, coming around to head eastward in a burst
of speed that should tear him well away from the city lanes before
he was noticed.
But it was several very long moments before he could be sure of
that escape. So far there had been no warning broadcast on the com.
Certainly if the men in the shop had been aroused, they would have
called in the patrollers and there would be a blanket alarm out for
the stolen flitter. Zul—was Zul still determined to hold off
the law as long as he could to serve his own purposes?
And in the last warning the little man had said
“we”—not “I”. Who were
“we”? If Kyger was not the master of the
animals—and Zul was certainly a subordinate—then who
was? Someone in Tikil with power enough to delay the official hunt
so that a private and deadly one could be put into motion? Zul had
warned Troy that he would be the quarry of two chases. And in the
Wild perhaps tailed by the Clans as well.
Troy’s lips shaped a mirthless smile. Too many hunting
parties might just foul each other. He would not speculate on
chances that might not exist. One move at a time was all anyone
could make.
The flitter sped on into the night, northeast. Before daylight
caught them and he would have to set down, they should be well into
the wilderness. And, remembering the mountain chains Rerne had
lifted them above, he set the flyer to climbing, though the
automatic alarm system was on and the autopilot would avoid any
crash against an unseen peak.
He became conscious of warmth against his thigh and side, the
soft touch of a small paw on his nervously rigid arm. The kinkajou
was pressed against him, and the rest of that odd crew had climbed
into the other half of the driver’s seat. Troy began to talk,
not knowing how much of what he said reached their minds, but
driven by the impulse to put his nebulous plans into words.
“There is the Wild ahead—and only the rangers and
the native animals in it. Such a place should hold many hiding
places for such as we—”
“And good hunting.” From one of them had come that
quick reply. He sensed a rising excitement that was born not of
fear or the need for defense but of anticipation—an emotion
that all five of them shared.
“Good hunting.” He confirmed that. “Trees, and
plains, mountains, rivers, rocks—”
“It is good to run free.” Out of the general aura of
satisfaction those definite words arose.
“It is good to run free!” Troy echoed. Free of the
Dipple, of Tikil—of the ways of men, which he had endured
only because of his own stubborn determination not to be
broken.
Overhead the stars made a clear, cold pattern, and the green
round of the moon, rising above the mountains, showed snow caps
like clear jade. The fugitives were across the first rim of the
Larsh—into the Wild—and still no hint that the chase
was up behind. Troy knew again the heady exultation of one who is
pulling off an odds-against mission. He had no map, no points of
reference, but he was certain that to simply continue northeast
would bring him out along the fringe of the plains.
He set the controls on complete autopilot, stretched his arms
wide. His shoulders ached from the rigid tension that had held him
during the first hours of flight.
“By dawn,” he told his companions, “we shall
be down—in a big country where there are no
trails.”
The kinkajou had crowded into his lap, was curling up against
him. And now the black cat was at his side, sitting upright,
watching the night sky outside the bubble of the flitter, as if it
had now accepted Troy as one of its own kind.
He must have drowsed, for the red snap of light on the control
panel brought him awake with the stupid dullness of a too quickly
aroused sleeper.
“Warn off! Warn off!”
Troy had heard just that same metallic voice before, but he
could not remember when or why.
His hands went to the controls. He thumbed the autopilot
release, but it did not give. As he hammered at it with his fist,
that blink of light became steady and he
remembered—Ruhkarv!
“Warn off!”
Troy reached for the mike, to say the words that would end their
escape attempt. But that move came too late. The red light was now
a beam. Out of the night blossomed a huge burst of eye-searing
white. The flitter lurched, lost speed, started down.
Troy dodged and licked out with his belt lash
for the wrist of Zul’s knife hand. The buckle-loaded tip
found its mark, and the smaller man yelped and swung around so that
his outflung, balancing arm brushed against the tube Kyger’s
dead fingers steadied. The cylinder fell and the body of the
merchant followed it, wilting bonelessly to the floor. Zul
screeched, a cry as high and unhuman as any the animals or birds
could have uttered.
At the same time Troy felt a cessation of that thrumming throb.
The tube rolled toward him, and Zul, seeming to forget his rage of
only seconds earlier, made a grab for it.
Troy kicked, sending the tube spinning. Then he brought the edge
of his hand down across Zul’s neck, dropping the little man
to lie on the floor gasping. Troy had leisure to collect both knife
and cylinder before Zul sat up, still breathing in hoarse
rasps.
With the knife and tube laid on top of a cabinet, Troy advanced
on Zul. It was like trying to master by force a frenzied animal,
one that scratched and bit. In spite of his repugnance, Troy was
forced to knock the smaller man out in order to fasten his hands
behind him with his own belt.
Troy was rebuckling his rider’s broad cincture when he saw
Zul’s eyes open and take in the limp body of Kyger. The small
man’s face twisted in a grimace Troy could not read. Then he
strained to raise his head from the floor, looked about eagerly, as
if he wanted something more important for the moment than Troy. His
attention centered on the tube where it lay with one end projecting
over the edge of the cabinet, and he actually began to wriggle his
body across the floor toward it.
Troy stepped between. Zul’s grimace was now an open snarl.
He spat, struggled to lever himself from the floor.
Troy picked up the tube and took it with him as he moved to the
red alarm button on the wall. The quicker he summoned the
authorities, the less trouble he would have in telling his own
tale.
“No!” For the first time Zul spoke intelligibly.
“Not the patrollers!”
“Why not? I have nothing to hide. Have you?”
Zul’s frantic squirming across the room had brought him to
the row of cabinets. Now he wriggled his shoulders up against that
support so that he was sitting, not lying.
“No patrollers!” he repeated, and his words now held
the tone of an order rather than a plea. “Not
yet—”
“Why?”
Zul’s dark eyes were again focused on the tube Troy held.
He was plainly a man torn between the need for secrecy and the
necessity of having help.
Troy pressed. “Because of the animals—the Terran
animals?”
Zul froze, his small body suddenly rigid, his face the
personified mask of surprise—and perhaps some other emotions
Troy could not read.
“What do you know?” His words were harsh, rasping,
as if he had to fight for the breath to expel them.
“Enough.” Troy hoped that ambiguity would force some
revelation out of his captive.
Zul’s tongue tip wet his lips. He hitched his shoulders
along the cabinets as if to reach Troy.
“They must be killed—quickly—before the
patrollers are called.”
Troy was startled. Death for those who had met him in this room
was the last thing he would have expected from Zul. And certainly
he had no intention of yielding to that.
“Why?”
Zul’s eyes changed, became sly and suspicious once again.
“If you do not know, Dippleman, then you know nothing. They
are a danger—to all of us under this roof they are a great
danger, now that their master is dead. You will kill, or you will
wish that you had died also.”
Troy covered the space between them in one long-legged stride. He
stooped, caught Zul by the collar of his tunic, and pulled him to
his feet, holding him pinned against a cabinet.
“You will tell me why these animals are a danger,”
he said softly, trying to put into that speech all the force and
menace he could muster.
“Because”—Zul’s eyes were lifted to
Troy’s; apparently he was making a last throw, which might or
might not contain the truth—“they are more than
animals. They think, they take orders, they
report—”
“What orders do they take, and to whom do they
report?”
Zul swallowed visibly. There were small beads of oily moisture
forming on his forehead just below the tight knots of his hair. Yet
Troy sensed that he was not afraid of his captor, but of something
else. “They take their orders from him who summons
them.” Zul’s eyes flicked to the tube and back again to
Troy’s face. “And they report to him—”
“What?”
“Information.”
Puzzle pieces clicked together in Troy’s mind. Pets—with the ability to understand their masters’ or
mistresses’ actions, to collect information—planted in
households where information worth a high price could be
gathered!
“And Kyger did this?” That was a statement as well
as a question.
“Yes. Now the animals must be summoned and killed before
the patrollers arrive. Give me the caller.”
“I think not.” So Zul did not know that the animals
had already arrived to answer the call of a dead or dying man. And
as Troy made a decision of his own, he was answered by a thrust of
emotion from the seemingly empty spaces of the room—fear,
such as had moved the kinkajou to his arms in the garden, a
determination to fight, perhaps, too, a vague plea. And he knew
that he was again tuned in on the hidden five. If the animals had
been used by Kyger in some scheme, certainly they had only been
tools.
“Let the patrollers get them,” Zul continued,
“and they will have them under probes to learn what they
can—and kill them afterwards. Is it not better to kill them
cleanly before that is done?”
Troy stiffened, felt his own reaction intensified as the others
picked it up. What Zul said made such good sense it presented a new
form of danger, and a very big one. But his own thoughts were
racing ahead.
So far only those in this room knew that Kyger was dead, with
the exception of his killer—which gave Troy a small measure
of time. He knew that he could not let Zul kill the animals, and he
would fight to keep them from falling into the hands of those who
would wring secrets out of them via the probes.
Flight—But where? Memory painted for him a picture of
that plateau high in the clean wind. Not perhaps there—but
the Wild that stretched over half of this continent. To shake one
man and five small animals out of that would be a long and arduous
task, and before it was done perhaps he could find a solution to
their problem in another way.
“You’ll have to let me call them—and kill them
quickly!” Zul was losing control, his voice rasping louder as
he watched Troy with narrowed eyes.
“Be quiet!” Troy enforced that order by planting his
hand over the other’s mouth. Holding Zul so in spite of his
renewed writhings, Horan tried to contact the animals.
“Go together—away from here.” He thought those
words with all the emphasis he could, not trying to analyze why he
must champion the five, only knowing that it was very important to
do so—not only for them but for him.
If Zul understood what he was doing, he gave no sign of it. As
he fought to be free of Troy’s hold, his eyes were now wild
above the temporary gag of the other’s palm.
There was again a flicker of movement, which Troy caught only
from the corners of his eyes. The black cat materialized as if from
the flooring, came stealthily, with its belly fur brushing the
carpet, skirting Kyger’s outflung arm. And Zul, sighting it
over Troy’s hand, was still. Troy waited as the cat reached
them, to front Zul with a silent, menacing snarl, hatred expressed
in every fluid line of its body.
“They do not need to be called, Zul,” Troy said
softly, “for they are here. And from here they shall go
safely.”
So they came—the other cat in a swift spring, the foxes
side by side, and last of all the kinkajou in a rush that brought
it to Troy, to climb up his body as if it were a tree.
“We shall all go together for a little, Zul.” Troy
swung the smaller man about, held him before him with one hand as
he transferred Zul’s knife to his own belt. He dropped the
tube to the floor, and the black cat went into instant action,
setting it rolling with small paw taps until the cylinder
disappeared under one of the cabinets. Now all the animals, save
the kinkajou which rode on Troy’s shoulder, its tail loosely
coiled about the man’s neck, slipped out the door.
Zul might have been shocked speechless by the appearance of that
furred company and their cooperation with Troy. He obeyed the
other’s push like a controlled robot, and all his struggles
ceased as they went down the stairs, heading toward the
courtyard.
One part of Troy’s mind considered the matter of
supplies—and the flitter. So much depended now on chance and
luck, and he would have to hope for help from both.
Still holding Zul, he paused just within the passage door and
looked out into the courtyard. The flitter was just where he had
seen it last. From the pens and cages came the usual night sounds.
And there was no sign of the yardman who should have been on
duty.
Troy caught a stir at the side of the flitter, knew that the
animals had picked that much of his intention from his mind. At
this hour the air lanes would be crowded with villa dwellers
returning home from night spots in Tikil. He would have that
traffic for cover from the patrollers.
Now that he had made his decision, Troy had to throttle down the
excitement bubbling in him. For the first time in years he was
going to sample freedom. He had had a very small taste of that on
the expedition with Rerne, but this time the choice was his
alone.
Zul remained the immediate problem. Troy continued to propel the
other before him until they reached the storeroom. Since they had
left the room in which Kyger lay, the other had not struggled. It
might have been that he had no more desire than Troy to draw
attention to their activities.
Inside, Troy shoved his captive into a corner and worked fast. He
knew that Kyger had made a point of supplying the Terran animals
with special imported food, and he tossed into a sack such
containers of that as he could find. Zul’s knife was in his
belt and in addition the flitter would have a stunner in its arms
locker. He drew the cord of the sack tight, with Zul watching him.
The latter spoke and Troy knew he meant every word he said.
“We shall hunt and we shall kill. And the patrollers will
hunt also. There is no place you can hide that one or the other of
us will not find. And for you also there will be death
now.”
“Because I know too much?” Troy suggested.
“Because of that—and because of this. We cannot
allow knowledge of this thing.”
“And you will set the patrollers on me—”
Zul grinned. “There will be no need to tell them of the
animals. They will come and find a dead man where one of his
hirelings has fled. That is a story that needs no telling, even to
the most stupid.”
“Suppose they find that two have fled?” Troy asked.
He had no wish to take Zul along; that would be like fitting a
triggered egg bomb into the flitter. But the disappearance of two
of Kyger’s employees at the same time, and one of them an old
associate of the ex-spacer, might muddy the trail as far as the law
was concerned.
Slinging the bag over his shoulder, he closed on Zul again,
herding him out of the storeroom in the direction of the flitter.
But that plan was to go awry. There was a sudden shout from the
passage leading to Kyger’s quarters. Zul relaxed, made
himself a dead weight that Troy could not hope to manhandle into
the flyer without a loss of precious time. He leaped over the prone
man and scrambled into the flitter, hoping the animals were already
on board.
“Here!” Out of nowhere came that reassurance as Troy
took the lift control and raised the machine out of the well of the
courtyard. Lights showed in the forepart of Kyger’s rooms.
Perhaps one of the yardmen had discovered the body. Troy must make
the best use of the small head start that he had.
The main stream of the late traffic went north, not east, and he
would have to weave into that, not making the necessary turn until
he was well over the villa section. Also the flitter must keep
within the lawful speed of the passenger lanes.
Troy triggered the com on the control panel and listened
intently for any hint that the alarm had been raised behind him.
Zul’s words had not been an idle threat. However, once in the
Wild, he did not fear the patrollers too much.
What did concern him was the Clan rangers, organized to track
down just such unauthorized invasions as his own. They knew the
wilderness intimately. This realization made future prospects
suddenly far more bleak for Troy, and they grew grimmer the farther
he flew. Yet he had made his choice and there was no turning
back.
Rerne! If cornered, dare he appeal to the Hunter? Once more he
experienced the odd duality he had known that morning on the
plateau. Part of him was untrusting, wary, disillusioned, and
another segment pulled toward confidence in the ranger, a longing
for the freedom in which he and his kind walked under an open
sky.
A patroller cruised above his flitter, and Troy sat stiff and
tense, waiting for the order to land. Then the official flyer
darted away, and he drew a really deep breath once more. The
traffic about him was thinning. Soon he would have to make his dash
out of the regular lanes into what he hoped would be the
concealment of the night. He saw the twinkle of villa lights, two
of them among the rising heights. Snapping off his lawful lights,
he banked to the right, coming around to head eastward in a burst
of speed that should tear him well away from the city lanes before
he was noticed.
But it was several very long moments before he could be sure of
that escape. So far there had been no warning broadcast on the com.
Certainly if the men in the shop had been aroused, they would have
called in the patrollers and there would be a blanket alarm out for
the stolen flitter. Zul—was Zul still determined to hold off
the law as long as he could to serve his own purposes?
And in the last warning the little man had said
“we”—not “I”. Who were
“we”? If Kyger was not the master of the
animals—and Zul was certainly a subordinate—then who
was? Someone in Tikil with power enough to delay the official hunt
so that a private and deadly one could be put into motion? Zul had
warned Troy that he would be the quarry of two chases. And in the
Wild perhaps tailed by the Clans as well.
Troy’s lips shaped a mirthless smile. Too many hunting
parties might just foul each other. He would not speculate on
chances that might not exist. One move at a time was all anyone
could make.
The flitter sped on into the night, northeast. Before daylight
caught them and he would have to set down, they should be well into
the wilderness. And, remembering the mountain chains Rerne had
lifted them above, he set the flyer to climbing, though the
automatic alarm system was on and the autopilot would avoid any
crash against an unseen peak.
He became conscious of warmth against his thigh and side, the
soft touch of a small paw on his nervously rigid arm. The kinkajou
was pressed against him, and the rest of that odd crew had climbed
into the other half of the driver’s seat. Troy began to talk,
not knowing how much of what he said reached their minds, but
driven by the impulse to put his nebulous plans into words.
“There is the Wild ahead—and only the rangers and
the native animals in it. Such a place should hold many hiding
places for such as we—”
“And good hunting.” From one of them had come that
quick reply. He sensed a rising excitement that was born not of
fear or the need for defense but of anticipation—an emotion
that all five of them shared.
“Good hunting.” He confirmed that. “Trees, and
plains, mountains, rivers, rocks—”
“It is good to run free.” Out of the general aura of
satisfaction those definite words arose.
“It is good to run free!” Troy echoed. Free of the
Dipple, of Tikil—of the ways of men, which he had endured
only because of his own stubborn determination not to be
broken.
Overhead the stars made a clear, cold pattern, and the green
round of the moon, rising above the mountains, showed snow caps
like clear jade. The fugitives were across the first rim of the
Larsh—into the Wild—and still no hint that the chase
was up behind. Troy knew again the heady exultation of one who is
pulling off an odds-against mission. He had no map, no points of
reference, but he was certain that to simply continue northeast
would bring him out along the fringe of the plains.
He set the controls on complete autopilot, stretched his arms
wide. His shoulders ached from the rigid tension that had held him
during the first hours of flight.
“By dawn,” he told his companions, “we shall
be down—in a big country where there are no
trails.”
The kinkajou had crowded into his lap, was curling up against
him. And now the black cat was at his side, sitting upright,
watching the night sky outside the bubble of the flitter, as if it
had now accepted Troy as one of its own kind.
He must have drowsed, for the red snap of light on the control
panel brought him awake with the stupid dullness of a too quickly
aroused sleeper.
“Warn off! Warn off!”
Troy had heard just that same metallic voice before, but he
could not remember when or why.
His hands went to the controls. He thumbed the autopilot
release, but it did not give. As he hammered at it with his fist,
that blink of light became steady and he
remembered—Ruhkarv!
“Warn off!”
Troy reached for the mike, to say the words that would end their
escape attempt. But that move came too late. The red light was now
a beam. Out of the night blossomed a huge burst of eye-searing
white. The flitter lurched, lost speed, started down.