aggled, and his tail drooped, and he sneezed again. He moved as if
he could barely put one paw before another, but at the sight of Calhoun
he sneezed yet again and said, "_Chee!_" in a disconsolate voice. Then
he sat down and waited for Calhoun to pick him up.

When Calhoun did so, Murgatroyd clung to him pathetically and said,
"_Chee-chee!_" and again "_Chee-chee!_" with the intonation of one
telling of incredible horrors and disasters endured.

Calhoun headed back for the valley, the settlement and the Med Ship.
Murgatroyd clung to his neck. The girl Maril followed visibly shaken.

Calhoun did not speak to her again. He led the way. A mile back toward
the mountains, they began to see stragglers from the now-vanished herd.
A little further, those stragglers began to notice them. And it would
have been a matter of no moment if they'd been domesticated
dairy-cattle, but these were range-cattle gone wild. Twice, Calhoun had
to use his blast-rifle to discourage incipient charges by irritated
bulls or even more irritated cows. Those with calves darkly suspected
Calhoun of designs upon their offspring.

It was a relief to enter the valley again. But it was two miles more to
the landing-grid with the Med Ship beside it and the reek of carrion in
the air.

They were perhaps two hundred feet from the ship when a blast-rifle
crashed and its bolt whined past Calhoun so close that he felt the
monstrous heat. There had been no challenge. There was no warning. There
was simply a shot which came horribly close to ending Calhoun's career
in a completely arbitrary fashion.

CHAPTER 4

Five minutes later Calhoun had located one would-be killer behind a mass
of splintered planking that once had been a wall. He set the wood afire
by a blaster-bolt and then viciously sent other bolts all around the man
it had sheltered when he fled from the flames. He could have killed him
ten times over, but it was more desirable to open communication. So he
missed, intentionally.

Maril had cried out that she came from Dara and had word for them, but
they did not answer. There were three men with heavy-duty blast-rifles.
One was the one Calhoun had burned out of his hiding-place. That man's
rifle exploded when the flames hit it. Two remained. One--so Calhoun
presently discovered--was working his way behind underbrush to a shelf
from which he could shoot down at Calhoun. Calhoun had dropped into a
hollow and pulled Maril to cover at the f