d made a haphazard choice for the cooker.

"Don't be too lighthearted," Tau warned. "I'll say that any stew which
was too hot for that Ranger to handle might give us burned fingers--and
quick. When we land on Khatka, walk softly and look over your shoulder,
and be prepared for the worst."

II

Lightning played along the black ridges above them, and below was a
sheer drop to a river which was only a silver thread. Under their boots,
man-made and yet dominating the wildness of jungle and mountain, was a
platform of rock slabs, fused to support a palace of towering
yellow-white walls and curved cups of domes, a palace which was also
half fortress, half frontier post.

Dane set his hands on the parapet of the river drop, blinked as a
lightning bolt crackled in a sky-splitting glare of violet fire. This
was about as far from the steaming islands of Xecho as a man could
imagine.

"The demon graz prepare for battle." Asaki nodded toward the distant
crackling.

Captain Jellico laughed. "Supposed to be whetting their tusks, eh? I
wouldn't care to meet a graz that could produce such a display by mere
tusk whetting."

"No? But think of the reward for the tracker who discovers where such go
to die. To find the graveyard of the graz herds would make any man
wealthy beyond dreams."

"How much truth is there in that legend?" Tau asked.

The Chief Ranger shrugged. "Who can say? This much _is_ true: I have
served my life in the forests since I could walk. I have listened to the
talk of Trackers, Hunters, Rangers in my father's courtyards and field
camps since I could understand their words. Yet never has any man
reported the finding of a body of a graz that died a natural death. The
scavengers might well account for the bulk of flesh, but the tusks and
the bones should be visible for years. And this, too, I have seen with
my own eyes: a graz close to death, supported by two of its kind and
being urged along to the big swamps. Perhaps it is only that the
suffering animal longs for water at its end, or perhaps in the heart of
that morass there does lie the graz graveyard. But no man has found a
naturally dead graz, nor has any returned from exploring the big
swamps...."

Lightning on peaks which were like polished jet--bare rock above, the
lush overgrowth of jungle below. And between, this fortress held by men
who dared both the heights and the depths. The wildly burgeoning life of
Khatka had surrounded the off-world