the general Fourth
Level culture. But there had been one First Level item which he had
permitted himself, mainly because, suitably packaged, it was not readily
identifiable as such. Digging a respectable Fourth-Level leatherette
case from under the seat, he opened it and took out a pint bottle with a
red poison-label, and a towel. Saturating the towel with the contents of
the bottle, he rubbed every inch of his torso with it, so as not to miss
even the smallest break made in his skin by the septic claws of the
nighthound. Whenever the lotion-soaked towel touched raw skin, a pain
like the burn of a hot iron shot through him; before he was through, he
was in agony. Satisfied that he had disinfected every wound, he dropped
the towel and clung weakly to the side of the jeep. He grunted out a
string of English oaths, and capped them with an obscene Spanish
blasphemy he had picked up among the Fourth Level inhabitants of his
island home of Nerros, to the south, and a thundering curse in the name
of Mogga, Fire-God of Dool, in a Third-Level tongue. He mentioned Fasif,
Great God of Khift, in a manner which would have got him an acid-bath if
the Khiftan priests had heard him. He alluded to the baroque amatory
practices of the Third-Level Illyalla people, and soothed himself, in
the classical Dar-Halma tongue, with one of those rambling genealogical
insults favored in the Indo-Turanian Sector of the Fourth Level.

By this time, the pain had subsided to an over-all smarting itch. He'd
have to bear with that until his work was finished and he could enjoy a
hot bath. He got another bottle out of the first-aid kit--a flat pint,
labeled "Old Overholt," containing a locally-manufactured specific for
inward and subjective wounds--and medicated himself copiously from it,
corking it and slipping it into his hip pocket against future need. He
gathered up the ruined shoulder-holster and threw it under the back
seat. He put on his shirt. Then he went and dragged the dead nighthound
onto the grade by its stumpy tail.

It was an ugly thing, weighing close to two hundred pounds, with
powerfully muscled hind legs which furnished the bulk of its
motive-power, and sturdy three-clawed front legs. Its secondary limbs,
about a third of the way back from its front shoulders, were long and
slender; normally, they were carried folded closely against the body,
and each was armed with a single curving claw. The revolver-bullet had
gone in at the base of