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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Voodoo Planet, by Andre Norton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Voodoo Planet
+
+Author: Andre Norton
+
+Release Date: July 16, 2006 [EBook #18846]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VOODOO PLANET ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, LN Yaddanapudi and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration (Cover):
+DUEL OF THE COSMIC MAGICIANS
+
+VOODOO
+PLANET
+
+ANDRE NORTON
+Complete Novel]
+
+
+CHALLENGE ME WITH MONSTERS!
+
+
+"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 killer.... Words issued from
+between those curved fangs, words which Dane might not understand....
+
+"Dane slid his blade out surreptitiously, setting its point against the
+palm of his hand and jabbing painfully; but the terrible creature
+continued to advance.... There was no blurring of its lines...."
+
+Dane Thorson of the space-ship _Solar Queen_ knew there was only one way
+to win out over this hideous thing--a battle to the end between his
+rational mind and the hypnotic witchcraft of Lumbrilo, the mental wizard
+of the planet Khatka.
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+VOODOO PLANET
+
+by
+
+ANDRE NORTON
+
+
+ACE BOOKS, INC.
+
+23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N. Y.
+
+
+VOODOO PLANET
+
+Copyright (c), 1959, by Ace Books, Inc.
+
+All Rights Reserved
+
+
+Printed in U. S. A.
+
+  +--------------------------------------------------------------+
+  |                                                              |
+  |                      Transcriber's Note                      |
+  |                                                              |
+  | There is no evidence that the copyright on this publication  |
+  |                         was renewed.                         |
+  |                                                              |
+  +--------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+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, 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. 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?"
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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 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 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 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 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."
+
+
+
+
+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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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!"
+
+
+
+
+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."
+
+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 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 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 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; 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 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 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 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.
+
+
+
+
+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, 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, 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."
+
+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 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.
+
+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 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 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. "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!
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+"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.
+
+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 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.
+
+"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 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 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 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!"
+
+"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.
+
+
+
+
+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 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 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. 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 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. "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 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 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 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."
+
+
+
+
+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--"
+
+"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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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."
+
+
+
+
+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. 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, 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, 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."
+
+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:
+
+"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 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
+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 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 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                                          |
+  |                                                              |
+  |                                                              |
+  | One copyright symbol was replaced with "(c)".                |
+  | The repetition "too too" and the writing of the word         |
+  | "steppingstones" without hyphen is as in the original.       |
+  |                                                              |
+  | The following typos have been corrected.                     |
+  |                                                              |
+  | Typo         Correction                                      |
+  |                                                              |
+  | breath       breathe                                         |
+  | an           on                                              |
+  | Yes. sir!    Yes, sir!                                       |
+  | Terran       Terra                                           |
+  | visiting;    visiting.                                       |
+  | Terran       Terra                                           |
+  | qraz         graz                                            |
+  | telaported   teleported                                      |
+  | Sinbad       Sindbad                                         |
+  | supersition  superstition                                    |
+  | remarkble    remarkable                                      |
+  | was          were                                            |
+  | waves        weaves                                          |
+  | missive      missile                                         |
+  | throbbling   throbbing                                       |
+  | "_Haugh!_    "_Haugh!_"                                      |
+  | succesful    successful                                      |
+  | reading      readying                                        |
+  | Nohingness   Nothingness                                     |
+  | blatt        blast                                           |
+  | pleace       please                                          |
+  | Bu           But                                             |
+  |                                                              |
+  |                                                              |
+  | "Andrew North" was one of the pseudonyms used by             |
+  | "Andre Norton".                                              |
+  |                                                              |
+  +--------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Voodoo Planet, by Andre Norton
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VOODOO PLANET ***
+
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