ined.
"This is like trying to smell out a lone mouse in a zoological garden in
midsummer."

"Why the warning?" asked Peter.

"All races smell the same when they are poised for violence," said the
dog. "Trouble is that man-smell isn't pointed the way it's going, only
where it's coming from."

Peter grunted. "Catch any woman-smell?"

"Just the usual whiff. Stale scent. She was here; she passed this way.
But which way?"

"We can guess they made it away from the spaceport."

"Unless," said the dog taking another sniff of the air, "they're taking
her back to some other spacecraft." Buregarde looked up at Peter. "Do
you catch anything?"

"Just the usual mingled fright and danger, frantic despair."

"Directional?"

Peter shook his head. "No," he said. "The source is too close."

"Let's stroll up this street to the end and come back on the other
side," said the dog. "Quietly."

In a saunter they went, alert and poised. A man and his dog from all
appearances. But in Xanabar, the principal city of Xanabar the Empire
they were huntsman and companion.

Like all cities of more than ten million souls, Xanabar had its
glistening and lofty area and its slums--and what would have been a
waterfront region in a seafaring city. The conditions were the same as
they'd been everywhere for a few decades of thousands of years. Only the
technology changes. Man's cave is stainless steel and synthetic plastic;
the cave's man is swinging a better axe, and his hide is protected from
the weather by stuff far more durable than his awn skin. But he's the
same man with the same hackles; they just rise for a few more thousand
reasons than the hackles of his ancestors.

"Got it!" said Buregarde coming to a brief point at a closed door.

"Let's go in!"

* * * * *

Buregarde's reply was half-snarl and half, "Look out!"

Peter whirled to catch a glimpse of a man upon him with pencil-ray
coming to point. He faded down and toward the other, almost in a fall
out of the path of the pencil-ray that flicked on and began a sweep
upward and in. Peter caught his balance at the same time he clutched the
wrist in his right hand. Then he went on down around and over, rising on
his knees to flip the other man heels high in an arc that ended with a
full-length, spine-thudding body smash on the pavement. Buregarde leaped
in and slashed at the hand clutching the pencil-ray, snapped his head
back and forth thrice and sent