time.

When one of those taloned paws began to move again, Nymani broke. He
ran, his screams echoing thinly in the air, as the thing lurched up, the
gory mess of its head weaving about. If his feet would have obeyed him,
Dane might have followed the Khatkan. As it was, he drew his ray and
aimed it at that shambling thing. Tau struck up the barrel.

The medic's face was livid; there was the same horror in his eyes. But
he moved out to front that monster.

A spot of shadow coalesced on the ground, deepened in hue, took on
substance. Crouched low facing the rock ape, its haunches quivering for
a deadly spring, narrowed green eyes holding on its prey, was a black
leopard.

The tiny forward and backward movements of its body steadied, and it
arched through the air, brought down the ape. A pitting, snarling tangle
rolled across the slope--and was gone!

Asaki's hands shook as he drew them down his sweating face. Jellico
readied a second clip in the needler mechanically. But Tau was swaying
so that Dane leaped to take the shock of the other's weight as he
collapsed. Only for a moment did the medic hang so, then he struggled to
stand erect.

"Magic?" Jellico's voice, as controlled as ever, broke the silence.

"Mass hallucination," Tau corrected him. "Very strong."

"How!" Asaki swallowed and began again. "How was it done?"

The medic shook his head. "Not by the usual methods, that is certain.
And it worked on us--on me--when we weren't conditioned. I don't
understand that!"

Dane could hardly believe it yet. He watched Jellico stride to where the
tangle of struggling beasts had rolled, saw him examine bare ground on
which no trace of the fight remained. They must accept Tau's
explanation; it was the only sane one.

Asaki's features were suddenly convulsed with a rage so stark that Dane
realized how much a veneer was the painfully built civilization of
Khatka.

"_Lumbrilo!_" The Chief Ranger made of that name a curse. Then with a
visible effort he controlled his emotions and came to Tau, looming over
the slighter medic almost menacingly.

"How?" he demanded for the second time.

"I don't know."

"He will try again?"

"Not the same perhaps--"

But Asaki had already grasped the situation, was looking ahead.

"We shall not know," he breathed, "what is real, what is not."

"There is also this," Tau warned. "The unreal can kill the believer just
as quickly as the real!"

"That I know also. It has happened t