e fortunate, or more skillful than Dane, the medic made the hop from
the last tuft without mishap. But he was blowing heavily as he collapsed
beside the other spaceman. Together they watched the progress of their
captain.

Safe on the second tussock from the shore, Jellico halted, edged
carefully around and used the needler Nymani had left with him. A shaggy
head tossed and the bull fronting Asaki on the cliff went down. The
Chief Ranger dodged quickly to the right and a second beast rushed out
and over, to join its mired comrade in the swamp below. As Jellico shot
again, the Khatkan slung his needler and went over to gain the first
islet.

One more graz was wounded but luckily it hunched about, turning its
formidable tusks on those that followed, thus keeping the path clear for
its enemies. Jellico was making the journey, sure-footedly, with the
Chief Ranger only one hillock behind. Tau sighed.

"Someday maybe this will be just another tall tale and we'll all be
thought liars when we spout it," he observed. "That is if we survive to
tell it. So now which way do we go? If I had my choice it would be up!"

When Dane pulled himself to his feet and surveyed their small refuge, he
was ready to agree to that. For the space, packed with dead and dying
vegetable matter until one sank calf deep, was a triangle with a narrow
point running east into the swamp.

"They don't give up easily, do they?" Jellico looked back to the shore
and the cliff. Though the wounded graz bull still held the heights
against its fellows, there were others breaking from the jungle on the
lower level, wandering back and forth to paw the earth, rip up soil with
their tusks, and otherwise threaten anyone who would try to return to
the strip they patrolled.

"They will not," Asaki answered bleakly. "Arouse a graz and it will
trail you for days; kill any of the herd and you have little hope of
escaping them on foot."

It would seem now that the swamp was a deterrent to pursuit. The two
beasts that had fallen in the mire moaned in a pitiful rising note. They
had ceased to struggle and several of their kind clustered on the shore
near them, calling entreatingly. Asaki took careful aim with the needler
and put one animal after another out of its misery. But the flash of
those shots angered those on shore to a higher pitch of rage.

"No going back," he said. "At least not for several days."

Tau slapped a black, four-winged insect which had settled o