The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

had fallen, the warriors took another way out of the underground maze, a way which brought them out into a street running to the river.
    Here the party spread out, paying close attention to the pavement, as if they were engaged in tracking something. Raf saw impressed in one patch of earth a print dried by the sun, left by one of the reptiles. And there were smaller tracks he could not identify. All were inspected carefully, but none of them appeared to be what his companions sought.
    They trotted up and down along the river bank, and from what he had already observed concerning the aliens, Raf thought that the leader, at least, was showing exasperation and irritation. They expected to find something—it was not there—but it had to be! And they were fast reaching the point where they wanted to produce it themselves to justify the time spent in hunting for it.
    Ruthlessly they rayed to death any creature their dragnet drove into the open, leaving feebly kicking bodies of the furry, long-legged beasts Raf had first seen after the landing of the spacer. He could not understand the reason for such wholesale extermination, since certainly the rabbitlike rodents were harmless.
    In the end they gave up their quest and circled back to come out near the field where the flitter and the globe rested. When the Terran flyer came into sight, Raf left the party and hurried toward it. Soriki waved a welcoming hand.
    “’Bout time one of you showed up. What are they doing—toting half the city here to load into that thing?”
    Raf looked along the other’s pointing finger. A party of aliens towing a loaded dolly were headed for the gaping hatch of the globe, while a second party and an empty conveyance passed them on the way back to the storehouse.
    “They are emptying a warehouse, or trying to.”
    “Well, they act as if Old Time himself was heating their tails with a rocket flare. What’s the big hurry?”
    “Somebody’s been here.” Swiftly Raf outlined what he had seen in the city, and ended by describing the hunt in which he had taken an unwilling part. “I’m hungry,” he ended and went to burrow for a ration pack.
    “So,” mused Soriki as Raf chewed the stuff which never had the flavor of fresh provisions, “somebody’s been trying to beat the painted lads to it. The furry people?”
    “It was a spear shaft they found broken with the dead lizard thing,” Raf commented. “And some of those on the island were armed with spears—”
    “Must be good fighters if, armed with spears, they brought down a reptile as big as you say. It was big, wasn’t it?”
    Raf stared at the city, a square of half eaten concentrate in his fingers. Yes, that was a puzzler. The dead monster would be more than he would care to tackle without a blaster. And yet it was dead, with a smashed spear for evidence as to the manner of killing.
    All those others dead in the arena, too. How large a party had invaded the city? Where were they now?
    “I’d like to know,” he was speaking more to himself than to the com-tech, “how they did do it. No other bodies—”
    “Those could have been taken away by their friends,” Soriki suggested. “But if they’re still hanging about, I hope they won’t believe that we’re bigger and better editions of the painted lads. I don’t want a spear through me!”
    Raf, remembering the maze of lanes and streets—bordered by buildings which could provide hundreds of lurking places for attackers—which he had threaded with the confidence of ignorance earlier that day, began to realize why the aliens had been so nervous. Had a sniper with a blast rifle been stationed at a vantage point somewhere on the roofs today none of them would ever have returned to this field. And even a few spacemen with good cover and accurate throwing aim could have cut down their number a quarter or a third. He was developing a strong distaste for those structures. And he had no intention of returning to the city again.
    He lounged about with Soriki for the rest of the afternoon, watching the ceaseless activity of the aliens. It was plain that they were intent upon packing into the cargo hold of their ship everything they could wrest from the storage house. As if they must make this trip count double. Was that because they had discovered that their treasure house was no longer inviolate?
    In the late afternoon Hobart and Lablet came back with one of the work teams. Lablet was still excited, full of what he had seen,