, and she seriously damaged the
machine in her irritation. So now our guards play no more fancy tricks
while on taming runs. Tomorrow--no," he corrected himself, "the day
after tomorrow I will be able to show you how the process works."

"And tomorrow?" inquired the captain.

"Tomorrow my men make hunting magic." Asaki's voice was expressionless.

"Your chief witch doctor being?" questioned Tau.

"Lumbrilo." The Chief Ranger did not appear disposed to add to that but
Tau pursued the subject.

"His office is hereditary?"

"Yes. Does that make any difference?" For the first time there was a
current of repressed eagerness in the other's tone.

"Perhaps a vast amount of difference," Tau replied. "A hereditary office
may carry with it two forms of conditioning, one to influence its
holder, one to affect the public-at-large. Your Lumbrilo may have come
to believe deeply in his own powers; he would be a very remarkable man
if he did not. It is almost certain that your people unquestionably
accept him as a worker of wonders?"

"They do so accept." Once more Asaki's voice was drained of life.

"And Lumbrilo does not accept something you believe necessary?"

"Again the truth, Medic. Lumbrilo does not accept his proper place in
the scheme of things!"

"He is a member of one of your Five Families?"

"No, his clan is small, always set apart. From the beginning here, those
who spoke for gods and demons did not also order men."

"Separation of church and state," commented Tau thoughtfully. "Yet in
our Terran past there have been times when church and state were one.
Does Lumbrilo desire that?"

Asaki raised his eyes to the mountain peaks, to the northward where lay
his beloved work.

"I do not know what Lumbrilo wants, save that it makes mischief--or
worse! This I tell you: hunting magic is part of our lives and it has at
its core some of those unexplainable happenings which you have
acknowledged do exist. I have used powers I can neither explain nor
understand as part of my work. In the jungle and on the grasslands an
off-worlder must guard his life with a stass belt if he goes unarmed.
But I--any of my men--can walk unharmed if we obey the rules of our
magic. Only Lumbrilo does other things which his forefathers did not.
And he boasts that he can do more. So he has a growing following of
those who believe--and those who fear."

"You want me to face him?"

The Chief Ranger's big hands closed upon the rim of the p