The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

activity, as the living feasted on the slain and quarreled over the bounty. But from other quarters the crawling advance pressed on.
    “I have only one more flame flare,” Hume stated.
    One more flare—then they would be in the dark with the mist hiding the forward-moving enemy.
    “I wonder if they are watching out there?” Rynch scowled into the dark.
    “They—or what sent them. They know what they are doing.”
    “You mean they must have done this before?”
    “I think so. That L-B back there—it made a good landing, and there are supplies missing from its lockers.”
    “Which you removed—” Rynch countered.
    “No. There might have been real castaways landed here. Not that we found any trace of them. Now I can guess why—”
    “But you Guild men were here, and you didn’t run into this!”
    “I know.” Hume sounded baffled. “Not a sign then.”
    Rynch threw the last of his stones, heard it clink harmlessly against a rock. Hume balanced an object on the palm of his hand.
    “Last flare!”
    “What’s that? Over there?”
    Rynch had sighted the flashing out of the dark from the river bank, making a pattern of flickers which bore no relation to the infernal lights at the water’s edge.
    Hume’s ray tube pointed skyward as he answered with a series of short bursts.
    “Take cover!” The call came weirdly out over the water, the tone dehumanized. Hume cupped his mouth with one hand, shouted back:
    “We’re on top—no cover.”
    “Then flatten down—we’re blasting!”
    They flattened, lay almost in each other’s arms, curled on that narrow space. Even through his closed eyelids Rynch caught the flash of vivid, man-made lightning crashing first on one side of the islet and then on the other, and sweeping every crawling horror out of life, into odorous ash. The backlash of that blast must have caught the majority of the lights also. For when Rynch and Hume cautiously sat up, they saw only a handful of widely scattered and dulling globes below.
    They choked, coughed, rubbed watering eyes as the fumes from the scorched rocks wreathed up about their perch.
    “Flitter with life line—above you!”
    That voice had come out of what should have been empty air over their heads. A gangling line trailed across their bodies, a line with a safety belt locked to it, and a second was uncoiling in a slow loop as they watched.
    In unison they grabbed for those means of escape, buckled the belts about them.
    “Haul away!” Hume called. The lines tightened, their bodies swung up clear of the blasted river island, as their unseen transport headed for the eastern shore.
    CHAPTER 8
    A subdued but steady light all around him issued from stark gray walls. He lay on his back in an empty cell-room. And he’d better be on the move before Darfu comes to enforce a rising order with a powerful kick or one of these backhanded blows which the Salarkian used to reduce most humans to helpless obedience.
    Vye blinked again. But this wasn’t his cubby hole at the Starfall, his nose as well as his eyes told him that. There was no hint of uncleanliness or corruption here. He sat up stiffly, looked down at his own body in dull wonder. The only covering on his bare, brown self was a wide, scaled belt and a loin cloth. Clumsy sandals shod his feet, and his legs, up to thigh level, were striped with healing scratches and blotched with bruises.
    Painfully, with mental processes as stiff as his arms and his legs, he tried to think back. Sluggishly, memory associated one picture with another.
    Last night—or yesterday—Rynch Brodie had been locked in here. And “here” was one of the storage compartments of a spacer belonging to a man named Wass. It had been Wass’ pilot in the flitter which snaked them from the river islet where the monsters had besieged them.
    This was a concealed, fortified camp—Wass’ hideout. And he was a prisoner with a very uncertain future, depending upon the will of the Veep and a man named Hume.
    Hume, the Out-Hunter, had shown no surprise when Wass stood up in the lamplight to greet the rescued. “I see you have been hunting.” His eyes had moved from Hume to Rynch and back again.
    “Yes—but that does not matter!” the Hunter had returned impatiently.
    “No? Then what does?”
    “This is not a free world, I have to report that. Get my civs off planet before something happens to them!”
    “I thought all safari worlds were certified as free,” Wass countered.
    “This one isn’t.