ble, hotter and drier
than the day before. There was a sense of tension in the air--no, that
was rot. And even if there were, a man must act as if it were not
there. If he let himself fall prey to every mood out in this empty
land, he only had himself to blame for whatever happened to him.

The tracking was harder now. The day before, the Cytha had only run
away, straight-line fleeing to keep ahead of them, to stay out of
their reach. Now it was becoming tricky. It backtracked often in an
attempt to throw them off. Twice in the afternoon, the trail blanked
out entirely and it was only after long searching that Sipar picked it
up again--in one instance, a mile away from where it had vanished in
thin air.

That vanishing bothered Duncan more than he would admit. Trails do not
disappear entirely, not when the terrain remains the same, not when
the weather is unchanged. Something was going on, something, perhaps,
that Sipar knew far more about than it was willing to divulge.

He watched the native closely and there seemed nothing suspicious. It
continued at its work. It was, for all to see, the good and faithful
hound.

* * * * *

Late in the afternoon, the plain on which they had been traveling
suddenly dropped away. They stood poised on the brink of a great
escarpment and looked far out to great tangled forests and a flowing
river.

It was like suddenly coming into another and beautiful room that one
had not expected.

This was new land, never seen before by any Earthman. For no one had
ever mentioned that somewhere to the west a forest lay beyond the
bush. Men coming in from space had seen it, probably, but only as a
different color-marking on the planet. To them, it made no difference.

But to the men who lived on Layard, to the planter and the trader, the
prospector and the hunter, it was important. And I, thought Duncan
with a sense of triumph, am the man who found it.

"Mister!"

"Now what?"

"Out there. _Skun!_"

"I don't--"

"Out there, mister. Across the river."

Duncan saw it then--a haze in the blueness of the rift--a puff of
copper moving very fast, and as he watched, he heard the far-off
keening of the storm, a shiver in the air rather than a sound.

He watched in fascination as it moved along the river and saw the
boiling fury it made out of the forest. It struck and crossed the
river, and the river for a moment seemed to stand on end, with a sheet
of silve