ube up in the air, caught it in his
plasta-hand. "I went into this deal with my eyes wide open--why
doesn't matter very much now. In fact," he stared beyond Vye out into
the empty, lighted camp, "I've begun to wonder about a lot of
things--maybe too late. No--we'll call the Patrol and we'll do it not
because it is Wass and his men out there, but because we're human and
they're human, and there's a nasty set-up here which has already
sucked in other humans for its own purposes."

The skeleton in the valley! And how very close they had been
themselves to joining that unknown in his permanent residence.

"So now we make time--back to the safari camp. Get our message off to
the Patrol and then we'll try to trace Wass and see what we can do.
Jumala is off a regular route. The Patrol won't be here tomorrow at
sunrise, no matter how much we wish a scouter would planet then."

Vye was quiet as he stowed in the flitter again. As Hume had said,
events moved fast. A little while ago he had wanted to settle with
this Out-Hunter, wring out of him not only an explanation for his
being here, but claim satisfaction for the humiliation of being moved
about to suit some others' purposes. Now he was willing to defeat
Wass, bring in the Patrol, go up against whatever hid in that lake up
there, providing Hume was not the loser. He tried to think why that
was so and could not, he only knew it was the truth.

They were both silent as they took off from Wass' deserted camp, sped
away over the black blot of the woodland towards the safari
headquarters on the plains. There were stars above again but no
globes. Just as they had won their freedom from the valley, so they
moved without escort on the plains.

But the lights were there--not impinging on the flitter, or patrolling
along its line of flight. No, they hung in a glowing cluster ahead
when in the dawn the flitter shot away from the woods, headed for the
landmark of the safari camp. A crown of lights circled over the camp
site, as if those below were in a state of siege.

Hume aimed straight for them and this time the bobbing circle split
wide open, broke to left and right. Vye looked below. Though the
grayness of the morning was still hardly more than dusk he could not
miss those humps spaced at intervals on the land, just beyond the
unseen line of the force barrier. The lights above, the beasts below,
the safari camp was under guard.

12

"There is only one way they coul