ray was in his
hand as he measured the distance to the drummer's stand.

"It is done," Nymani whispered from the darkness behind them. Jellico
and the Chief Ranger moved to the left; Tau crept to the right and Dane
pushed level with the medic.

"When they move," Tau's lips were beside his ear, "jump for that drum. I
don't care how you get it, but get it and keep it!"

"Yes, sir!"

There was a wailing cry from the north, a howl of witless fear. The
singers stopped in mid-note, the drummer paused, his hand uplifted. Dane
darted forward in a plunge which carried him to that man. The Khatkan
did not have time to rise from his knees as the barrel of the fire rod
struck his head, sending him spinning. Then the drum was cradled in the
spaceman's arm, close to his chest, his weapon aimed across it at the
startled natives.

The crackle of blaster fire, the shrill whine of needlers in action,
raised a bedlam from the other end of the camp. Backing up a little,
Dane went down on one knee, his weapon ready to sweep over the
bewildered natives, the drum resting on the earth against his body.
Keeping the fire rod steady, his left hand went to work, not in the
muted cadence the Khatkan drummer had chosen, but in hard and vigorous
thumps which rolled across the clamor of the fight. There was no
forgetting the beat of "Terra Bound" and he delivered it with force, so
that the familiar da-dah-da-da droned loud enough to awaken the whole
camp.

Dane's move appeared to completely baffle the Khatkan outlaws. They
stared at him, the whites of their eyes doubly noticeable in their dark
faces, their mouths a little agape. As usual the unexpected had driven
them off guard. He dared not look away from that gathering to see how
the fight at the other end of the camp was progressing. But he did see
Tau's advance.

The medic came into the light of the fire, not with his ordinary
loose-limbed spaceman's stride, but mincingly, with a dancing step, and
he was singing to the drum beat of "Terra Bound." Dane could not
understand the words, but he knew that they patterned in and out of the
drum beats, weaving a net between singer and listeners as Lumbrilo had
woven his net on the mountain terrace.

Tau had them! Had every one of the native outlaws ensnared, so that Dane
rested his weapon across his knee and took up the lower beat with the
fingers of his right hand as well.

_Da-dah-da-da_.... The innocuous repetitive refrain of the original so