Troy worked fast. There were other cords, some thinner, one or two as thick, and he moved them with caution, picking the suckers away from the wall. The outer sides were adhesive in the extreme. Sometimes the ends he loosened flopped and became irretrievably glued together before he could prevent their touching.
But even laboring one-handed he had a net of sorts, though very crude and far from the perfect mesh he had seen set over two of the cavern entrances. With infinite care he spread his trap at the foot of the ramp before the chopped-out trail that marked their former trip through the jungle. Why he had been allowed time enough to finish the job he did not know. But the animals posted on the ramp had not given the alarm.
At Troy’s signal they leaped free of the tangle now lightly covered with dust and trampled leaves. To the man’s eye the net was well hidden, and he hoped his pursuers would be as blind. Then they took cover, the animals—except Sahiba—under the fringe of vegetation, Troy and Sahiba in the pocket between wall and ramp.
They had set the trap. But was a trap any good without bait? There had been no sight or sound of the enemy for more than an hour. Had the other—or others—stopped to explore the level corridors?
Man had only a scant portion of the patience of the four-footed hunters, as Troy was to discover. His skin itched; his side and arm throbbed. Hunger and thirst clawed at his insides. A hundred minor irritations of which he would not have ordinarily been conscious arose to the point of torment. The sinister vegetation that had repelled him earlier now beckoned with a promise of food and water—somewhere—somehow—
And under that physical discomfort lay the malaise of spirit that had troubled him before when night had caught him in this place—the suggestion that there were unseen terrors here worse than any danger he could face body to body, weapon to weapon.
Troy battled discomfort, vague fears, held himself taut, hoping his forlorn hope would work. But how long he could keep this watch he did not know. A trap—but a trap needed bait.
A bush trembled. Shang sprang from its crown onto the ramp. He stood so for a moment, his prehensile tail curled up in a question mark, hindquarters up slope, his round head atilt as he looked down at Troy.
“No.” The man protested. The kinkajou could move fast, Troy would bear witness to that, but not fast enough to escape a blaster bolt.
But the animal did not heed him. Out of reach, the kinkajou was now out of sight as well, up the ramp. The bait had been provided.
Sahiba shifted her weight inside his tunic, making Troy catch his breath as one of her hind paws scraped his tender ribs.
“One comes?” he asked hopefully.
His less able sense of contact caught again the fringe of their joint concentration, the filament that must unite them to Shang up there in the danger of the higher levels. And Troy, impatient, knew that he could not badger them with questions now.
Time crept. Once more dusk was growing in the jungle, patch of shadow united with patch of shadow, and did not retreat but became solid.
“One comes!” Sahiba dug the claws of her good forepaw into Troy’s flesh, jerking him out of a nod. He drew the blaster, took the cat out of his tunic, and set her in safety behind him.
A scurry on the ramp. Shang flew through the air from the stone to the bushes. And now—louder—the click of shod feet—human feet.
Above, a flicker of light—gone almost as instantly as Troy had sighted it. An atom torch snapped on and off again? He was sure that the newcomer must have seen the thin light of the cavern and would now proceed guided by that alone.
“Zul?” He beamed that at Shang.
“No.”
If not Zul, then it must be that unknown who had sniped with the blaster. Troy readied his own weapon. Whether he could burn down another human being, even when fighting for his life, he was not sure. The struggles in the Dipple had always been man to man, fist and foot. And a knife was an accepted combat arm anywhere on Korwar, in fact across the stellar lanes. But this thing in his hand—he did not know, though he was very sure no such scruples would check the other.
The click of boots was still. Had the other halted—or turned back?
“No!” A reply concentrated in force from the animals.
Then it was stealth. Troy crouched, steadied his blaster hand against the wall. Yet for all his long period of waiting he was not quite prepared for the sudden spring from the head of the ramp.
His own slight movement might have spiked that attack and almost spoiled his plan. But Troy had planted the net well. The man fell short and his land- ing was not clean. He went to his hands and knees, to be enmeshed in the sticky ropes, which, as he rolled and fought, only tied the more tightly about his body.
Troy stood away from the wall. He would not be forced to fire after all. The other was doing a good job , of making himself a prisoner.
“Another—“
The warning startled Troy out of his absorption in the struggle. Simba advanced into the open, avoiding the flopping captive, to stand at the foot of the ramp looking up.
Then a blaster bolt crackled—striking not for Troy, as he had expected, but at the writhing figure on the ground, close enough to singe some of the cords so that they flaked away from smoldering clothing. The bound man gave a mighty heave and rolled, as a second bolt burned the soil where he had lain and cut a blackened slash into the jungle.
And by that flash Troy saw the hide tunic the other wore. The trapped man was not Zul but one of the rangers. Horan snapped an answering bolt recklessly up the ramp. There was a cry and a figure staggered into view, slipped, rolled to the cavern floor. When it did not stir again, Troy went to the ranger.
“I thought I might find you here, Horan.”
He was looking down at Reme. And his first impulse to free the other died. Once he had almost turned to this man for help. Now all the instincts of the hunted brought back his long-seated suspicions. He might well have as good a reason to fear Reme as he did Zul. Not that the ranger would blast him without warning, but the Clans had their own laws and those laws were obeyed in the Wild. Troy did not sheathe the blaster, but over its barrel he regarded the Hunter narrowly.
“Do not be a fool.” Rerne had stopped struggling, but he was trying to raise his head and shoulders from the ground. “You are being hunted.”
“I know,” Troy interrupted. “You are here—“
Reme frowned. “You have more after you than Clan rangers, boy. Including some who want you dead, not alive. Ha—“
His gaze swept from Troy to a point nearer ground level. Troy follow the path of his eyes. Shang, Simba, Sargon, and Sheba had materialized in their usual noiseless fashion, were seated at their ease inspecting Rerne with that measuring stare Troy could still find disconcerting when it was turned in his direction. Sahiba came limping from the place where he had left her for safety.
“So—“ Reme returned the steady-eyed regard of the animals, his expression eager. ‘These are the present most-wanted criminals of Korwar.”
Fifteen
“Most wanted, maybe,”—Troy’s voice was soft, cold, one he had never used before to any man outside the Dipple—“but not criminals, Rerne.” No more subservient “Hunter” or “Gentle Homo.” This was not Tikil but a place into which the men of Tikil feared to go, and he was no longer a weaponless city laborer but one of a company who were ready to fight for what the Dipple had never held—freedom.
“You know how they served Kyger?” Rerne asked almost casually.
“I know.”
“But you could not have been a part of that—or could you?” That last portion of the question might be one Rerne was asking himself—had been asking himself—for some time. He was studying Troy with a stare almost as unblinking as that Simba could turn upon one.
“No, I was not a part of Kyger’s schemes, whatever those were. And I did not kill him—if you have any doubts about that. But neither are we criminals.”
“We?”
Troy took a step backward to join the half circle of animals. They stood together now, presenting a united front to the ranger. Rerne nodded.
“I see, it is indeed ‘we’.”
“And what do you propose to do about it?” Troy challenged.
“It is not what I propose to do, Horan. We shall all probably die unless we can work together to find a safe way out of here.” But he sounded calm enough. “You are being hunted by more than just Clan rangers —in fact, the rangers could be the least of your worries. And it seems that the order is out to blast before asking questions—blast on sight.”