swept
his arm toward the sky--"out there they pay very much for it."

"But, mister...."

"I tell you this," said Duncan gently, "you either dig me up a
bush-runner to do the tracking for me or you can all get out, the kit
and caboodle of you. I can get other tribes to work the farm."

"No, mister!" Zikkara screamed in desperation.

"You have your choice," Duncan told it coldly.

* * * * *

He plodded back across the field toward the house. Not much of a house
as yet. Not a great deal better than a native shack. But someday it
would be, he told himself. Let him sell a crop or two and he'd build a
house that would really be a house. It would have a bar and swimming
pool and a garden filled with flowers, and at last, after years of
wandering, he'd have a home and broad acres and everyone, not just one
lousy tribe, would call him mister.

Gavin Duncan, planter, he said to himself, and liked the sound of it.
Planter on the planet Layard. But not if the Cytha came back night
after night and ate the _vua_ plants.

He glanced over his shoulder and saw that Zikkara was racing for the
native village.

Called their bluff, Duncan informed himself with satisfaction.

He came out of the field and walked across the yard, heading for the
house. One of Shotwell's shirts was hanging on the clothes-line, limp
in the breathless morning.

Damn the man, thought Duncan. Out here mucking around with those
stupid natives, always asking questions, always under foot. Although,
to be fair about it, that was Shotwell's job. That was what the
Sociology people had sent him out to do.

Duncan came up to the shack, pushed the door open and entered.
Shotwell, stripped to the waist, was at the wash bench.

Breakfast was cooking on the stove, with an elderly native acting as
cook.

Duncan strode across the room and took down the heavy rifle from its
peg. He slapped the action open, slapped it shut again.

Shotwell reached for a towel.

"What's going on?" he asked.

"Cytha got into the field."

"Cytha?"

"A kind of animal," said Duncan. "It ate ten rows of _vua_."

"Big? Little? What are its characteristics?"

The native began putting breakfast on the table. Duncan walked to the
table, laid the rifle across one corner of it and sat down. He poured
a brackish liquid out of a big stew pan into their cups.

God, he thought, what I would give for a cup of coffee.

* * * *