but with an icy promise beneath the words.

Rovald was not to be intimidated. He grinned. "Set your fins down,
fly-boy. You need Wass--and I'm here to hold his stakes for him. This
is a big deal, we won't want any misses!"

"There won't be any--not from my side." Hume stepped away from the
fire, approached a post which gleamed with a dull, red line of fire
down either side. He pressed a control button. That red line flared
into a streak of brilliance. Now encircling the bubble tents and the
space ship was a force field: routine protection of a safari camp on a
strange world and one Hume had set as a matter of course.

He stood for a long moment staring through that invisible barrier
toward the direction of the wood. It was a dark night, there were
scudding clouds to hide the stars, which meant rain probably before
morning. This was no time to be plagued by uncertain weather.

Somewhere out there Brodie was holed up. He hoped the boy had long ago
reached the "camp" so carefully erected and left for his occupancy.
The L-B, that stone covered "grave" showing signs of several years'
occupancy, was all assembled and constructed to the last small detail.
Far less might have deceived the civs in this safari. But as soon as
the story of their find leaked, there would be others on the scene,
men trained to assess the signs of a castaway's fight for survival.
His own Guild training and the ability of Wass' renegade techs should
bring them through that test.

What had Starns seen? The glint of sun on the tail of the L-B, tilted
now to the sky? Hume walked slowly back to the fire, when he saw
Rovald going up the ramp into the spacer. He smiled. Did Wass think he
was stupid enough not to guess that the Veep's man would be in com
touch with his employer? Rovald was about to report along some channel
of the shadow world that they had landed and that the play was about
to begin. Hume wondered idly how far and through how many relays that
message would pass before it reached its destination.

He stretched and yawned, moving to his sleeping pad. Tomorrow they
must find Chambriss a water-cat. Hume shoved Brodie into the back of
his mind to center his thoughts on the various ways of delivering, to
the waiting sportsman, a fair-sized alien feline.

The lights in the bubbles went out one by one. Within the circle
barrier of the force field men slept. And by midnight the rain began
to fall, streaming down the sides of the bubbles, soak