death might be hunting, but there was nothing
he could do.

A scream, filled with all the agony of a man in torment, caught up on
the echoes of that other cry. Vye sighted a wild waving of bushes. A
figure, very small and far away, crawled into the open on hands and
knees and then crumpled into only a shadowy blot on the moss. Again
the beast's cry, and a shouting!

Vye watched a second man back out of the trees, still facing whatever
pursued him. He caught the glint of sun on what must be a ray tube.
Leaves crisped into a black hole, curls of smoke arose along the path
of that blast.

The man kept on backing, passed the inert body of his companion,
glancing now and then over his shoulder at the slope up which he was
making a slow but steady way. He no longer rayed the bush, but there
was the crackle of a small fire outlining the ragged hole his beam had
cut.

Back two strides, three. Then he turned, made a quick dash, again
facing around after he had gained some yards in the open. Vye saw now
it was Wass.

Another dash and an about face. But this time to confront the enemy.
There were three of them, as monstrous as those Vye and Hume had
fought in the same place. And one of them was wounded, swinging a
charred forepaw before it, and giving voice to a wild frenzy of roars.

Wass leveled the ray tube, centered sights on the beast nearest to
him. The man hammered at the firing button with the flat of his other
hand, and almost paid for that second of distraction with his life,
for the creature made one of those lightning swift dashes Vye had so
luckily escaped. The clawed forepaw tore a strip from the shoulder of
Wass' tunic, left sprouting red furrows behind. But the man had thrown
the useless tube into its face, was now running for the gap.

Vye held the needler braced against his knee to fire. He saw the dart
quiver in the upper arm of the beast, and it halted to pull out that
sliver of dangerously poisoned metal, crumpled it into a tight twist.
Vye continued to fire, never sure of his aim, but seeing those slivers
go home in thick legs, in outstretched forelimbs, in wide, pendulous
bellies. Then there were three blue shapes lying on the slope behind
the man running straight for the gap.

Wass hit the invisible barrier full force, was hurled back, to lie
gasping on the turf, but already raising himself to crawl again to the
gateway he saw and could not believe was barred. Vye closed his eyes.
He was very ti