Perhaps it was because his body was pressed so
tightly to the masonry of the dome that Troy caught the first
vibration, a faint tingle through blood and bone that was familiar,
bringing with it a vague memory of darkness and suspense.
That throb grew faster, and it pulled, pulled against his
intelligence, against the need for caution, making Troy want to run
toward its source.
He battled that impulse, holding to cover, but moving on with
that hardly heard beat for his goal, that thrumming which
registered on his nerves and muscles before it did on his eardrums.
And along with his involuntary answer to that call, there came now
another emotion—not his, but the animals’! A
desperation—the hopeless fear of bound and helpless
prisoners.
Tasting their fear, Troy guessed the truth. Somewhere ahead Zul
was using the cylinder that had rested in Kyger’s lifeless
hands. And the animals, conditioned to answer its summons, were
being drawn to their own end without any chance to fight for their
freedom. Just as that cord within him, which was able to serve as a
communicating link from their brains to his, was also
responding—
Only he had not been conditioned—he could fight back! And
Zul would lead him straight to where he wanted to go.
Troy ceased to resist, allowed his hidden compass to guide him.
But, though he followed the line of that infernal piping, he still
kept to cover.
Between two more domes, then into a space of open land with
straight towers of rock outcrops. As soon as Troy was sure of his
goal, he swung to the right, pulling out of the direct line of the
piping, circling to bring up to the rear of the suspected ambush.
Was Zul alone? So much depended upon that.
Troy reached the first of the rock outcrops, went in a half
stoop to round it and thread a path of his own. The piping still
continued, which meant that Zul had not yet pulled the animals out
of hiding. But, as Troy came to the tallest pillar in that broken
land, it stopped abruptly, and then he knew that he must trade
caution for speed.
His stunner ready, he whipped around the base of that tower to
find the scene he had expected. Zul was there, and between his
knees was the tube from Kyger’s chambers. He had one hand
still cupping its length. The other, with wrist steadied on the
head of the cylinder, grasped a blaster. While facing him,
crouching, snarling, betraying in their tense bodies their hatred
and their fear—and helplessness—were the animals.
Troy snapped the stunner, aiming for the difficult point of that
bony yellow wrist. A head target would have been best—but
even as he blacked out under the bolt, Zul could still have
triggered his blaster. Now the numbing beam struck the curled
fingers with better success than Troy had dared to hope for. Zul
cried out with the shock and surprise, his voice thinned by rocky
echoes. The blaster spun from his deadened fingers. Grabbing for it
with his other hand, he lost his hold on the tube.
When Troy thumbed for a second stunner shot, the release light
did not spark. Charge exhausted! He sprang into the open, running
for the blaster. Zul was down on his knees, his numbed hand folded
up against his chest, the other within fingertip reach of the
blaster grip. Troy swung a boot toe forward, kicked the blaster
away from Zul but out of his own path also.
Zul was well-versed in rough-and-tumble. The hand that had been
straining for the blaster grip struck out at Troy’s ankle,
fingers raked across his boot, sending him enough off balance to
stagger a step or two beyond the smaller man. Horan brought up
against one of the rock pillars with force enough to awaken the
pain in his old bruises, and clawed about breathlessly just in time
to face death.
Erupting from his half crouch, the blade of a knife glinting in
the sun, Zul came at him. Troy knew his attack would end in the
vicious up-cut that would finish the fight and him in one skilled
stroke if he could not counter it. He was no knife fighter and Zul
was.
But Zul’s right hand was numbed and perhaps he was awkward
with the left. There was only that one small chance. Troy swerved
and struck for Zul’s head with the barrel of the stunner. The
jar of that blow getting home was followed by a thud against his
own ribs, so sharp and painful as to bring a yelp of agony out of
him.
Zul staggered against the rock, recoiled, and slumped to the
ground. Troy, hands pressed to his side, needed the support of the
pillar or he would have joined him. He looked down, expecting to
see the hilt of the blade projecting from his flesh. But on the
ground at his feet lay the knife snapped in two pieces, and there
was a line of welling red on his arm above and below the strange
wristlet he had brought out of Ruhkarv. Dazed, he watched the blood
gather and drip, realizing tardily that a super-steel blade meeting
that red band had been broken like a stick of dead wood and that,
thanks to the bracelet, he was still alive.
Holding his arm pressed tightly to his side to slow the flow of
blood, Troy stooped over Zul. The yellow man lay limply on the
ground but he was still breathing.
“Behind you—”
Troy tried to turn, tripped on Zul’s outflung arm, and
went to his knees, so saving his life, for he lowered just beyond
the searing edge of a blaster beam. He coughed in the ozone stench
of the discharge. Then, obeying the instinct of self-preservation,
he rolled across the ground, sick with the torment of his side and
arm, gaining cover behind another rock pillar. So Zul had at least
one companion. And disarmed and wounded, Troy would now be hunted
down, with all the advantages on the side of the hunter.
In his desire to hide, Troy knew of only one place—the
depths of Ruhkarv. Its evil reputation might slow up pursuit, give
him a breathing space. If he could only have reached the blaster he
had stunned out of Zul’s hand! But there was no chance to
hunt for that now—not with a sniper ready to fry him if he
ventured into the open.
“The depths,” he thought fuzzily, trying to contact
the animals, sure that they had scattered into hiding when he had
broken Zul’s spell-binding with the tube.
The tube! With that in Zula’s or another’s hands the
fugitives had no chance at all. Troy looked about him a little
wildly. There it lay—one end projecting beyond a stone. To
leave that intact meant disaster. Horan hunted for a
weapon—any kind of weapon.
He chose a stone block detached from a nearby dome, of a size to
fit his hand. And he hurled it—to strike hard and true. Under
its impact the tube cracked, the end shattered, past any repair, he
trusted. Their luck had held—this far.
Then, his throbbing arm tight against his chest, Troy scuttled
away, expecting every moment to see the flash of another blaster
beam or feel his flesh crisp under the beam he did not see.
Somehow he made it, falling rather than running into the open
mouth of the ramp up which they had come hours before with such
hope. And that beam he had been anticipating struck as he fell and
rolled down the inside slope. He saw the brilliant, eye-searing
flash and heard the crackle as it lapped stone. Then he was beyond
its reach, only aware that somehow he was still alive, if badly
battered.
Would his tracker come boldly on? Troy tried to listen. He could
not see well; his eyes were still dazzled by the last shot. What he
did hear was the return of the flitter, or else another flyer. And
that might have provided a signal of sorts, for dark shapes flowed
over the edge of the ramp above, visible only for a second or two
against the circle of the daylight. The animals were on their way
to join him.
Together they retired to the first level of corridors and there
paused. There was no sound from above. Had the rangers’ scout
seen the activity in the ruins and landed to investigate? Troy knew
that he had left Zul partially stunned but still able to join the
chase. If he only had the blaster that the other had dropped in their first encounter—
“It is here.”
Sahiba! Troy dared for an instant to snap on the atom torch. The
gray-blue cat, her splinted leg held at an awkward angle, was half
lying, half sitting, close to him, and next to her was her mate.
And in front of Simba rested the weapon Troy had longed for. He
caught it up, feeling the dampness of the cat’s mouth-carry
on the slender barrel, checking the charge. That was less than a
third expended. Now he could defend them.
“They come.” That was Sargon.
“How many?” Troy demanded.
“One—there are others—still
above—”
One. Zul, or the unseen with the blaster? Troy eyed the
corridors issuing from the ramp, then flashed off his torch. To
venture blindly along any of those might be to lose oneself
entirely. Better the dangers he knew than a new host, especially
with the hunt behind, for Troy was certain that Zul was not going
to give up. And he tried to plan ahead. Perhaps in that tangled
jungle below he could find the means of turning tables on the
other.
There was the problem of water and food. His bag of supplies had
been abandoned in the open. But there was water below, and perhaps
food, if he was not dainty. He knew that the animals had found
edible prey in the fungoid cavern.
“Down!” He picked up Sahiba, unsealing the front of
his tunic and settling the cat into an improvised carrying bag,
which left his good arm free. The cuts on his left forearm had
stopped bleeding, but he feared to use it freely lest they begin to
ooze again.
Though no sounds save his own breathing, the faint scurrying
that marked the going of the animals, and the thin click of his
boots reached his ears, Troy’s scouts assured him that the
pursuit was still in progress as they retreated to the level of the
next set of corridors and on back to the haunted wilderness cavern.
He went without the torch, feeling his way, and now the pallid seep
of light below marked their goal.
When he dropped from the foot of the ramp, Troy discovered the
weird daylight was again in effect. Perhaps it was true sunlight
beamed through some unknown process of Ruhkarv’s builders
into this hollow. There was a line of clouds discharging their
burden of rain, and Troy dodged to a dry space beyond. He came
against the rock wall where a filament of gray-white stuff clung,
and his shoulder brushed against it—to adhere so that he had
to jerk to free himself.
That was one of the web cords—strung all the way from the
opening—which had made a fatal trap for Fauklow’s
man.
With the glimmering of an idea, Troy examined the length
carefully. He discovered that it was not plastered to the stone
surface along its entire side, as he had first feared, but attached
at intervals by thicker portions. Thrusting his blaster into his
belt, he pried between two of those buttons and, either because the
cord was old or because it had never been meant to grip too tightly
except at those points, he freed a loop.
Troy worked fast. There were other cords, some thinner, one or
two as thick, and he moved them with caution, picking the suckers
away from the wall. The outer sides were adhesive in the extreme.
Sometimes the ends he loosened flopped and became irretrievably
glued together before he could prevent their touching.
But even laboring one-handed he had a net of sorts, though very
crude and far from the perfect mesh he had seen set over two of the
cavern entrances. With infinite care he spread his trap at the foot
of the ramp before the chopped-out trail that marked their former
trip through the jungle. Why he had been allowed time enough to
finish the job he did not know. But the animals posted on the ramp
had not given the alarm.
At Troy’s signal they leaped free of the tangle now
lightly covered with dust and trampled leaves. To the man’s
eye the net was well hidden, and he hoped his pursuers would be as
blind. Then they took cover, the animals—except
Sahiba—under the fringe of vegetation, Troy and Sahiba in the
pocket between wall and ramp.
They had set the trap. But was a trap any good without bait?
There had been no sight or sound of the enemy for more than an
hour. Had the other—or others—stopped to explore the
level corridors?
Man had only a scant portion of the patience of the four-footed
hunters, as Troy was to discover. His skin itched; his side and arm
throbbed. Hunger and thirst clawed at his insides. A hundred minor
irritations of which he would not have ordinarily been conscious
arose to the point of torment. The sinister vegetation that had
repelled him earlier now beckoned with a promise of food and
water—somewhere—somehow—
And under that physical discomfort lay the malaise of spirit
that had troubled him before when night had caught him in this
place—the suggestion that there were unseen terrors here
worse than any danger he could face body to body, weapon to
weapon.
Troy battled discomfort, vague fears, held himself taut, hoping
his forlorn hope would work. But how long he could keep this watch
he did not know. A trap—but a trap needed bait.
A bush trembled. Shang sprang from its crown onto the ramp. He
stood so for a moment, his prehensile tail curled up in a question
mark, hindquarters up slope, his round head tilt as he looked down
at Troy.
“No.” The man protested. The kinkajou could move
fast, Troy would bear witness to that, but not fast enough to
escape a blaster bolt.
But the animal did not heed him. Out of reach, the kinkajou was
now out of sight as well, up the ramp. The bait had been
provided.
Sahiba shifted her weight inside his tunic, making Troy catch
his breath as one of her hind paws scraped his tender ribs.
“One comes?” he asked hopefully.
His less able sense of contact caught again the fringe of their
joint concentration, the filament that must unite them to Shang up
there in the danger of the higher levels. And Troy, impatient, knew
that he could not badger them with questions now.
Time crept. Once more dusk was growing in the jungle, patch of
shadow united with patch of shadow, and did not retreat but became
solid.
“One comes!” Sahiba dug the claws of her good
forepaw into Troy’s flesh, jerking him out of a nod. He drew
the blaster, took the cat out of his tunic, and set her in safety
behind him.
A scurry on the ramp. Shang flew through the air from the stone
to the bushes. And now—louder—the click of shod
feet—human feet.
Above, a flicker of light—gone almost as instantly as Troy
had sighted it. An atom torch snapped on and off again? He was sure
that the newcomer must have seen the thin light of the cavern and
would now proceed guided by that alone.
“Zul?” He beamed that at Shang.
“No.”
If not Zul, then it must be that unknown who had sniped with the
blaster. Troy readied his own weapon. Whether he could burn down
another human being, even when fighting for his life, he was not
sure. The struggles in the Dipple had always been man to man, fist
and foot. And a knife was an accepted combat arm anywhere on
Korwar, in fact across the stellar lanes. But this thing in his
hand—he did not know, though he was very sure no such
scruples would check the other.
The click of boots was still. Had the other halted—or
turned back?
“No!” A reply concentrated in force from the
animals.
Then it was stealth. Troy crouched, steadied his blaster hand
against the wall. Yet for all his long period of waiting he was not
quite prepared for the sudden spring from the head of the ramp.
His own slight movement might have spiked that attack and almost
spoiled his plan. But Troy had planted the net well. The man fell
short and his landing was not clean. He went to his hands and
knees, to be enmeshed in the sticky ropes, which, as he rolled and
fought, only tied the more tightly about his body.
Troy stood away from the wall. He would not be forced to fire
after all. The other was doing a good job of making himself a
prisoner.
“Another—”
The warning startled Troy out of his absorption in the struggle.
Simba advanced into the open, avoiding the flopping captive, to
stand at the foot of the ramp looking up.
Then a blaster bolt crackled—striking not for Troy, as he
had expected, but at the writhing figure on the ground, close
enough to singe some of the cords so that they flaked away from
smoldering clothing. The bound man gave a mighty heave and rolled,
as a second bolt burned the soil where he had lain and cut a
blackened slash into the jungle.
And by that flash Troy saw the hide tunic the other wore. The
trapped man was not Zul but one of the rangers. Horan snapped an
answering bolt recklessly up the ramp. There was a cry and a figure
staggered into view, slipped, rolled to the cavern floor. When it
did not stir again, Troy went to the ranger.
“I thought I might find you here, Horan.”
He was looking down at Rerne. And his first impulse to free the
other died. Once he had almost turned to this man for help. Now all
the instincts of the hunted brought back his long-seated
suspicions. He might well have as good a reason to fear Rerne as he
did Zul. Not that the ranger would blast him without warning, but
the Clans had their own laws and those laws were obeyed in the
Wild. Troy did not sheathe the blaster, but over its barrel he
regarded the Hunter narrowly.
“Do not be a fool.” Rerne had stopped struggling,
but he was trying to raise his head and shoulders from the ground.
“You are being hunted.”
“I know,” Troy interrupted. “You are
here—”
Rerne frowned. “You have more after you than Clan rangers,
boy. Including some who want you dead, not alive.
Ha—”
His gaze swept from Troy to a point nearer ground level. Troy
follow the path of his eyes. Shang, Simba, Sargon, and Sheba had
materialized in their usual noiseless fashion, were seated at their
ease inspecting Rerne with that measuring stare Troy could still
find disconcerting when it was turned in his direction. Sahiba came
limping from the place where he had left her for safety.
“So—” Rerne returned the steady-eyed regard of
the animals, his expression eager. “These are the present
most-wanted criminals of Korwar.”
Perhaps it was because his body was pressed so
tightly to the masonry of the dome that Troy caught the first
vibration, a faint tingle through blood and bone that was familiar,
bringing with it a vague memory of darkness and suspense.
That throb grew faster, and it pulled, pulled against his
intelligence, against the need for caution, making Troy want to run
toward its source.
He battled that impulse, holding to cover, but moving on with
that hardly heard beat for his goal, that thrumming which
registered on his nerves and muscles before it did on his eardrums.
And along with his involuntary answer to that call, there came now
another emotion—not his, but the animals’! A
desperation—the hopeless fear of bound and helpless
prisoners.
Tasting their fear, Troy guessed the truth. Somewhere ahead Zul
was using the cylinder that had rested in Kyger’s lifeless
hands. And the animals, conditioned to answer its summons, were
being drawn to their own end without any chance to fight for their
freedom. Just as that cord within him, which was able to serve as a
communicating link from their brains to his, was also
responding—
Only he had not been conditioned—he could fight back! And
Zul would lead him straight to where he wanted to go.
Troy ceased to resist, allowed his hidden compass to guide him.
But, though he followed the line of that infernal piping, he still
kept to cover.
Between two more domes, then into a space of open land with
straight towers of rock outcrops. As soon as Troy was sure of his
goal, he swung to the right, pulling out of the direct line of the
piping, circling to bring up to the rear of the suspected ambush.
Was Zul alone? So much depended upon that.
Troy reached the first of the rock outcrops, went in a half
stoop to round it and thread a path of his own. The piping still
continued, which meant that Zul had not yet pulled the animals out
of hiding. But, as Troy came to the tallest pillar in that broken
land, it stopped abruptly, and then he knew that he must trade
caution for speed.
His stunner ready, he whipped around the base of that tower to
find the scene he had expected. Zul was there, and between his
knees was the tube from Kyger’s chambers. He had one hand
still cupping its length. The other, with wrist steadied on the
head of the cylinder, grasped a blaster. While facing him,
crouching, snarling, betraying in their tense bodies their hatred
and their fear—and helplessness—were the animals.
Troy snapped the stunner, aiming for the difficult point of that
bony yellow wrist. A head target would have been best—but
even as he blacked out under the bolt, Zul could still have
triggered his blaster. Now the numbing beam struck the curled
fingers with better success than Troy had dared to hope for. Zul
cried out with the shock and surprise, his voice thinned by rocky
echoes. The blaster spun from his deadened fingers. Grabbing for it
with his other hand, he lost his hold on the tube.
When Troy thumbed for a second stunner shot, the release light
did not spark. Charge exhausted! He sprang into the open, running
for the blaster. Zul was down on his knees, his numbed hand folded
up against his chest, the other within fingertip reach of the
blaster grip. Troy swung a boot toe forward, kicked the blaster
away from Zul but out of his own path also.
Zul was well-versed in rough-and-tumble. The hand that had been
straining for the blaster grip struck out at Troy’s ankle,
fingers raked across his boot, sending him enough off balance to
stagger a step or two beyond the smaller man. Horan brought up
against one of the rock pillars with force enough to awaken the
pain in his old bruises, and clawed about breathlessly just in time
to face death.
Erupting from his half crouch, the blade of a knife glinting in
the sun, Zul came at him. Troy knew his attack would end in the
vicious up-cut that would finish the fight and him in one skilled
stroke if he could not counter it. He was no knife fighter and Zul
was.
But Zul’s right hand was numbed and perhaps he was awkward
with the left. There was only that one small chance. Troy swerved
and struck for Zul’s head with the barrel of the stunner. The
jar of that blow getting home was followed by a thud against his
own ribs, so sharp and painful as to bring a yelp of agony out of
him.
Zul staggered against the rock, recoiled, and slumped to the
ground. Troy, hands pressed to his side, needed the support of the
pillar or he would have joined him. He looked down, expecting to
see the hilt of the blade projecting from his flesh. But on the
ground at his feet lay the knife snapped in two pieces, and there
was a line of welling red on his arm above and below the strange
wristlet he had brought out of Ruhkarv. Dazed, he watched the blood
gather and drip, realizing tardily that a super-steel blade meeting
that red band had been broken like a stick of dead wood and that,
thanks to the bracelet, he was still alive.
Holding his arm pressed tightly to his side to slow the flow of
blood, Troy stooped over Zul. The yellow man lay limply on the
ground but he was still breathing.
“Behind you—”
Troy tried to turn, tripped on Zul’s outflung arm, and
went to his knees, so saving his life, for he lowered just beyond
the searing edge of a blaster beam. He coughed in the ozone stench
of the discharge. Then, obeying the instinct of self-preservation,
he rolled across the ground, sick with the torment of his side and
arm, gaining cover behind another rock pillar. So Zul had at least
one companion. And disarmed and wounded, Troy would now be hunted
down, with all the advantages on the side of the hunter.
In his desire to hide, Troy knew of only one place—the
depths of Ruhkarv. Its evil reputation might slow up pursuit, give
him a breathing space. If he could only have reached the blaster he
had stunned out of Zul’s hand! But there was no chance to
hunt for that now—not with a sniper ready to fry him if he
ventured into the open.
“The depths,” he thought fuzzily, trying to contact
the animals, sure that they had scattered into hiding when he had
broken Zul’s spell-binding with the tube.
The tube! With that in Zula’s or another’s hands the
fugitives had no chance at all. Troy looked about him a little
wildly. There it lay—one end projecting beyond a stone. To
leave that intact meant disaster. Horan hunted for a
weapon—any kind of weapon.
He chose a stone block detached from a nearby dome, of a size to
fit his hand. And he hurled it—to strike hard and true. Under
its impact the tube cracked, the end shattered, past any repair, he
trusted. Their luck had held—this far.
Then, his throbbing arm tight against his chest, Troy scuttled
away, expecting every moment to see the flash of another blaster
beam or feel his flesh crisp under the beam he did not see.
Somehow he made it, falling rather than running into the open
mouth of the ramp up which they had come hours before with such
hope. And that beam he had been anticipating struck as he fell and
rolled down the inside slope. He saw the brilliant, eye-searing
flash and heard the crackle as it lapped stone. Then he was beyond
its reach, only aware that somehow he was still alive, if badly
battered.
Would his tracker come boldly on? Troy tried to listen. He could
not see well; his eyes were still dazzled by the last shot. What he
did hear was the return of the flitter, or else another flyer. And
that might have provided a signal of sorts, for dark shapes flowed
over the edge of the ramp above, visible only for a second or two
against the circle of the daylight. The animals were on their way
to join him.
Together they retired to the first level of corridors and there
paused. There was no sound from above. Had the rangers’ scout
seen the activity in the ruins and landed to investigate? Troy knew
that he had left Zul partially stunned but still able to join the
chase. If he only had the blaster that the other had dropped in their first encounter—
“It is here.”
Sahiba! Troy dared for an instant to snap on the atom torch. The
gray-blue cat, her splinted leg held at an awkward angle, was half
lying, half sitting, close to him, and next to her was her mate.
And in front of Simba rested the weapon Troy had longed for. He
caught it up, feeling the dampness of the cat’s mouth-carry
on the slender barrel, checking the charge. That was less than a
third expended. Now he could defend them.
“They come.” That was Sargon.
“How many?” Troy demanded.
“One—there are others—still
above—”
One. Zul, or the unseen with the blaster? Troy eyed the
corridors issuing from the ramp, then flashed off his torch. To
venture blindly along any of those might be to lose oneself
entirely. Better the dangers he knew than a new host, especially
with the hunt behind, for Troy was certain that Zul was not going
to give up. And he tried to plan ahead. Perhaps in that tangled
jungle below he could find the means of turning tables on the
other.
There was the problem of water and food. His bag of supplies had
been abandoned in the open. But there was water below, and perhaps
food, if he was not dainty. He knew that the animals had found
edible prey in the fungoid cavern.
“Down!” He picked up Sahiba, unsealing the front of
his tunic and settling the cat into an improvised carrying bag,
which left his good arm free. The cuts on his left forearm had
stopped bleeding, but he feared to use it freely lest they begin to
ooze again.
Though no sounds save his own breathing, the faint scurrying
that marked the going of the animals, and the thin click of his
boots reached his ears, Troy’s scouts assured him that the
pursuit was still in progress as they retreated to the level of the
next set of corridors and on back to the haunted wilderness cavern.
He went without the torch, feeling his way, and now the pallid seep
of light below marked their goal.
When he dropped from the foot of the ramp, Troy discovered the
weird daylight was again in effect. Perhaps it was true sunlight
beamed through some unknown process of Ruhkarv’s builders
into this hollow. There was a line of clouds discharging their
burden of rain, and Troy dodged to a dry space beyond. He came
against the rock wall where a filament of gray-white stuff clung,
and his shoulder brushed against it—to adhere so that he had
to jerk to free himself.
That was one of the web cords—strung all the way from the
opening—which had made a fatal trap for Fauklow’s
man.
With the glimmering of an idea, Troy examined the length
carefully. He discovered that it was not plastered to the stone
surface along its entire side, as he had first feared, but attached
at intervals by thicker portions. Thrusting his blaster into his
belt, he pried between two of those buttons and, either because the
cord was old or because it had never been meant to grip too tightly
except at those points, he freed a loop.
Troy worked fast. There were other cords, some thinner, one or
two as thick, and he moved them with caution, picking the suckers
away from the wall. The outer sides were adhesive in the extreme.
Sometimes the ends he loosened flopped and became irretrievably
glued together before he could prevent their touching.
But even laboring one-handed he had a net of sorts, though very
crude and far from the perfect mesh he had seen set over two of the
cavern entrances. With infinite care he spread his trap at the foot
of the ramp before the chopped-out trail that marked their former
trip through the jungle. Why he had been allowed time enough to
finish the job he did not know. But the animals posted on the ramp
had not given the alarm.
At Troy’s signal they leaped free of the tangle now
lightly covered with dust and trampled leaves. To the man’s
eye the net was well hidden, and he hoped his pursuers would be as
blind. Then they took cover, the animals—except
Sahiba—under the fringe of vegetation, Troy and Sahiba in the
pocket between wall and ramp.
They had set the trap. But was a trap any good without bait?
There had been no sight or sound of the enemy for more than an
hour. Had the other—or others—stopped to explore the
level corridors?
Man had only a scant portion of the patience of the four-footed
hunters, as Troy was to discover. His skin itched; his side and arm
throbbed. Hunger and thirst clawed at his insides. A hundred minor
irritations of which he would not have ordinarily been conscious
arose to the point of torment. The sinister vegetation that had
repelled him earlier now beckoned with a promise of food and
water—somewhere—somehow—
And under that physical discomfort lay the malaise of spirit
that had troubled him before when night had caught him in this
place—the suggestion that there were unseen terrors here
worse than any danger he could face body to body, weapon to
weapon.
Troy battled discomfort, vague fears, held himself taut, hoping
his forlorn hope would work. But how long he could keep this watch
he did not know. A trap—but a trap needed bait.
A bush trembled. Shang sprang from its crown onto the ramp. He
stood so for a moment, his prehensile tail curled up in a question
mark, hindquarters up slope, his round head tilt as he looked down
at Troy.
“No.” The man protested. The kinkajou could move
fast, Troy would bear witness to that, but not fast enough to
escape a blaster bolt.
But the animal did not heed him. Out of reach, the kinkajou was
now out of sight as well, up the ramp. The bait had been
provided.
Sahiba shifted her weight inside his tunic, making Troy catch
his breath as one of her hind paws scraped his tender ribs.
“One comes?” he asked hopefully.
His less able sense of contact caught again the fringe of their
joint concentration, the filament that must unite them to Shang up
there in the danger of the higher levels. And Troy, impatient, knew
that he could not badger them with questions now.
Time crept. Once more dusk was growing in the jungle, patch of
shadow united with patch of shadow, and did not retreat but became
solid.
“One comes!” Sahiba dug the claws of her good
forepaw into Troy’s flesh, jerking him out of a nod. He drew
the blaster, took the cat out of his tunic, and set her in safety
behind him.
A scurry on the ramp. Shang flew through the air from the stone
to the bushes. And now—louder—the click of shod
feet—human feet.
Above, a flicker of light—gone almost as instantly as Troy
had sighted it. An atom torch snapped on and off again? He was sure
that the newcomer must have seen the thin light of the cavern and
would now proceed guided by that alone.
“Zul?” He beamed that at Shang.
“No.”
If not Zul, then it must be that unknown who had sniped with the
blaster. Troy readied his own weapon. Whether he could burn down
another human being, even when fighting for his life, he was not
sure. The struggles in the Dipple had always been man to man, fist
and foot. And a knife was an accepted combat arm anywhere on
Korwar, in fact across the stellar lanes. But this thing in his
hand—he did not know, though he was very sure no such
scruples would check the other.
The click of boots was still. Had the other halted—or
turned back?
“No!” A reply concentrated in force from the
animals.
Then it was stealth. Troy crouched, steadied his blaster hand
against the wall. Yet for all his long period of waiting he was not
quite prepared for the sudden spring from the head of the ramp.
His own slight movement might have spiked that attack and almost
spoiled his plan. But Troy had planted the net well. The man fell
short and his landing was not clean. He went to his hands and
knees, to be enmeshed in the sticky ropes, which, as he rolled and
fought, only tied the more tightly about his body.
Troy stood away from the wall. He would not be forced to fire
after all. The other was doing a good job of making himself a
prisoner.
“Another—”
The warning startled Troy out of his absorption in the struggle.
Simba advanced into the open, avoiding the flopping captive, to
stand at the foot of the ramp looking up.
Then a blaster bolt crackled—striking not for Troy, as he
had expected, but at the writhing figure on the ground, close
enough to singe some of the cords so that they flaked away from
smoldering clothing. The bound man gave a mighty heave and rolled,
as a second bolt burned the soil where he had lain and cut a
blackened slash into the jungle.
And by that flash Troy saw the hide tunic the other wore. The
trapped man was not Zul but one of the rangers. Horan snapped an
answering bolt recklessly up the ramp. There was a cry and a figure
staggered into view, slipped, rolled to the cavern floor. When it
did not stir again, Troy went to the ranger.
“I thought I might find you here, Horan.”
He was looking down at Rerne. And his first impulse to free the
other died. Once he had almost turned to this man for help. Now all
the instincts of the hunted brought back his long-seated
suspicions. He might well have as good a reason to fear Rerne as he
did Zul. Not that the ranger would blast him without warning, but
the Clans had their own laws and those laws were obeyed in the
Wild. Troy did not sheathe the blaster, but over its barrel he
regarded the Hunter narrowly.
“Do not be a fool.” Rerne had stopped struggling,
but he was trying to raise his head and shoulders from the ground.
“You are being hunted.”
“I know,” Troy interrupted. “You are
here—”
Rerne frowned. “You have more after you than Clan rangers,
boy. Including some who want you dead, not alive.
Ha—”
His gaze swept from Troy to a point nearer ground level. Troy
follow the path of his eyes. Shang, Simba, Sargon, and Sheba had
materialized in their usual noiseless fashion, were seated at their
ease inspecting Rerne with that measuring stare Troy could still
find disconcerting when it was turned in his direction. Sahiba came
limping from the place where he had left her for safety.
“So—” Rerne returned the steady-eyed regard of
the animals, his expression eager. “These are the present
most-wanted criminals of Korwar.”