The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

charred wood his people had once carried as “medicine.” “So do I promise!”
    She looked at him for a long moment and then nodded in satisfaction.
    They left the pool and pushed on toward the mountain slopes, working their way back to the pass. A low growl out of the dark brought them to an instant halt. Naginlta’s warning was sharp; there was danger ahead, acute danger.
    The moonlight from the moons made a weird pattern of light and dark on the stretch ahead. Anything from a slinking four-footed hunter to a war party of intelligent beings might have been lying in wait there.
    A flitting shadow out of shadows. Nalik’ideyu pressed against Travis’ legs, making a barrier of her warm body, attracting his attention to a spot at the left perhaps a hundred yards on. There was a great splotch of dark there, large enough to hide a really formidable opponent; that wordless communication between animal and man told Travis that such an opponent was just what was lurking there.
    Whatever lay in ambush beside the upper track was growing impatient as its destined prey ceased to advance, the coyotes reported.
    “Your left—beyond that pointed rock—in the big shadow—”
    “Do you see it?” Tsoay demanded.
    “No. But the mba’a do.”
    The men had their bows ready, arrows set to the cords. But in this light such weapons were practically useless unless the enemy moved into the path of the moon.
    “What is it?” Kaydessa asked in a half whisper.
    “Something waits for us ahead.”
    Before he could stop her, she set her fingers to her lips and gave a piercing whistle.
    There was answering movement in the shadow. Travis shot at that, his arrow followed instantly by one from Tsoay. There was a cry, scaling up in a throat-scalding scream which made Travis flinch. Not because of the sound, but because of the hint which lay behind it—could it have been a human cry?
    The thing flopped out into a patch of moonlight. It was four-limbed, its body silvery—and it was large. But the worst was that it had been groveling on all fours when it fell, and now it was rising on its hind feet, one forepaw striking madly at the two arrows dancing head-deep in its upper shoulder. Man? No! But something sufficiently manlike to chill the three downtrail.
    A whirling four-footed hunter dashed in, snapped at the creature’s legs, and it squalled again, aiming a blow with a forepaw; but the attacking coyote was already gone. Together Naginlta and Nalik’ideyu were harassing the creature, just as they had fought the split horn, giving the hunters time to shoot. Travis, although he again felt that touch of horror and disgust he could not account for, shot again.
    Between them the Apaches must have sent a dozen arrows into the raving beast before it went to its knees and Naginlta sprang for its throat. Even then the coyote yelped and flinched, a bleeding gash across its head from the raking talons of the dying thing. When it no longer moved, Travis approached to see more closely what they had brought down. That smell.…
    Just as the embroidery on Kaydessa’s jacket had awakened memories from his Terran past, so did this stench remind him of something. Where—when—had he smelled it before? Travis connected it with dark, dark and danger. Then he gasped in a half exclamation.
    Not on this world, no, but on two others: two worlds of that broken stellar empire where he had been an involuntary explorer two planet years ago! The beast things which had lived in the dark of the desert world the Terrans’ wandering galactic derelict had landed upon. Yes, the beast things whose nature they had never been able to deduce. Were they the degenerate dregs of a once intelligent species? Or were they animals, akin to man, but still animals?
    The ape-things had controlled the night of the desert world. And they had been met again—also in the dark—in the ruins of the city which had been the final goal of the ship’s taped voyage. So they were a part of the vanished civilization. And Travis’ own vague surmise concerning Topaz was proven correct. This had not been an empty world for the long-gone space people. This planet had a purpose and a use, or else this beast would not have been here.
    “Devil!” Kaydessa made a face of disgust.
    “You know it?” Tsoay asked Travis. “What is it?”
    “That I do not know, but it is a thing left over from the star people’s time. And I have seen it on two other of their worlds.”
    “A man?” Tsoay