“I just had the pleasant notion,” Frazer remarked, “that your Nachief might ramble into one of our less hospitable cultures around here. That’s what happened to the last two assistants they gave me, less than six months ago—and it would settle the problem, all right.” He paused, thinking. “But I suppose any reasonably alert outworlder would be able to spot most of those things.”
“I’m afraid,” Lane agreed coolly, “that he’ll be quite alert.”
He looked at her again, digesting that in silence. “You really believe he isn’t human, don’t you?”
“I know he isn’t human! He’s different biologically. He actually needs blood to live on.”
“Frome was his farm, and you colonists were his livestock, eh?”
“Something like that,” she said, displeased at a description that was accurate enough to jolt her.
“The three of you he brought out here—what was his purpose in that?”
“To turn us loose, hunt us down, and eat us!” Lane said, all in a breath. And there was a momentary, tremendous relief at having been able to put it into so many words, finally.
Frazer blinked at her in thoughtful silence. “That gives us a sort of special advantage,” he grinned then. “There’s a group of primitive little humanoids along the mainland coast the Nachief could live on, if he got over there. But he doesn’t know about them. So he’ll be pretty careful not to blast us to pieces with that big gun you told me about.”
Lane twisted her hands hard together. “He’d prefer that . . .” she agreed tonelessly.
“Then there’s the gravity rider.” Frazer turned a glance in the direction of the half-hidden vehicle behind them. “It gives us the greater mobility. If I were the Nachief, I’d wreck the rider before I tried to close in.”
“And what do we do then?”
“Why, then we’ll have a few tricks to play.” He gave her his quick grin. “The rider’s our bait. Until the Nachief takes it—or shows himself at the bubble—we can’t do much about him. But after he’s taken it, he’ll try to move in on us.”
Lane shook her head resignedly. She didn’t particularly like Frazer. But she had a feeling now that he wasn’t bluffing. He was decidedly of a different and more dangerous breed than the colonists of Frome. “You’re in charge,” she said.
“Still afraid of him?” he challenged.
“Plenty! But in a way this is better than I’d hoped for. I thought if I told anyone here about the Nachief, they’d think I was crazy—until it was too late.”
Frazer scratched his chin, squinting at the distant bubble, as if studying some motion she couldn’t see. “If he isn’t human,” he said, “what do you think he is?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted, with the surge of superstitious terror that speculation always aroused in her.
“I might have thought you were crazy,” Frazer went on, smiling at her, “except—it seems you’ve never heard of the Nalakians?”
She shook her head.
“It was a colony of Earth people. Not too far from the Hub Systems, but not much of a colony either—everybody seems to have forgotten about it for about eight generations after it was started. When it was rediscovered, the descendants of the original colonists had changed into something more or less like you describe your Nachief. There were internal physiological modifications—I forget the details. Those new Nalakians showed a cannibalistic interest in other human beings, which may have been mainly psychological. And they’re supposed to have been muscled like lions, with a lion’s reactions. In short, a perfect human carnivore type.”
He had her interest now—because it fitted! She sat up excitedly. “What happened to them?”
Frazer grinned. “What a lion can expect to happen when he draws too much attention to himself. They raided colonies in nearby systems, got tracked back to their own planet, and were pretty thoroughly exterminated. All that was about eighty years ago. But there may have been survivors in space at the time, you see. And those survivors may have had descendants who were clever enough to camouflage themselves as ordinary human beings. I thought of that when you first told me about your Nachief.”
It gave her a curious sense of relief. The Nachief of Frome had become somewhat less terrifying, seemed much more on a par with themselves. “It could be.”
“It could very much be,” Frazer nodded. “Aside from wanting to play cat-and-mouse with you, he didn’t tell you of any special motive for bringing you to this particular world, did he?”
“No,” Lane said puzzled. “He was taking us away from Frome, so he could make it look like an accident. What other special motive should he have?”
“Probably not a very sane one,” Frazer said, “but it checks, all right. I was born on this station, you see, and I know the area pretty well. This planet is Nalakia, and the original Nalakian colony was on the mainland, only eight hundred miles from here. They even used animals like Sally there in their hunting.”
They stared at each other in speculative silence; and Lane shivered.
“They’re not here now,” Frazer said positively. “Not one of them—or I would have spotted their traces. But what was his purpose? A sort of blood-sacrifice to his lamented ancestors, or to planetary gods? I almost wish we could take him alive, to find out—”
He stopped suddenly. Lane stiffened, wondering what he’d seen or heard. He made a tiny gesture with one hand, motioning her to silence. In the stillness, she became aware of something moving into her range of vision to the left and becoming quiet again. She realized Sally had joined them.
Then there were long seconds filled with nothing but the wild beating of her heart.
The period ended in a brief, not-very-loud thudding sound behind them, which was nevertheless the complete and final shattering of the gravity rider.
The Nachief of Frome had grounded them.
* * *
More than a mile off, Frazer was flattened on the rocky ground beside her, pulling her backward. “He’s got me outgunned, all right. Now, just keep crawling back till you reach the gully that’s twenty feet behind us. When you get there, keep low and let yourself slide down into it.”
Lane tried to answer and shook her head instead.
“Is he using one of those ultrasonic gadgets you were telling me about? Sally feels something she doesn’t like.”
“I—I don’t know. He never used one on me before.”
“Well, how do you feel?”
“It’s crazy!” she bleated. “I want to run back there! I want to run back to him!” Her legs were beginning to jerk uncontrollably.
“Close your eyes a moment, Lane.”
She didn’t question him . . . he was going to do something to help her. She closed her eyes.
* * *
Very gradually, Lane Rawlings became aware of the fact that she and Frazer and Sally were in a different sort of place now. It began to shape itself in her consciousness as a deeply shaded place with tall trees all around. To the right, a wall of gray rock rose steeply to a point where it vanished above the tops of the trees. The nearby area was dotted with boulders and grown with straggling gray grass. It was enclosed by solid ranks of gray-green thickets which rose up to a height of twenty feet or more between the trees.
Lane had a vague feeling next that a considerable amount of time had passed. Only then did she realize that her eyes were open—and that she was suspended somehow in mid-air, her feet free of the ground. The next thing she noticed was that her hands were fastened together before her. Jolted fully awake by that, she discovered finally the harness of straps around her by which she swung from a thick tree-branch overhead.
Frazer was standing beside her. He looked both apologetic and grimly amused.
“Sorry I had to tie you up. You were being very active.” His voice was low and careful.
“What happened?” Becoming aware of assorted aches and discomforts in her body, she squirmed futilely. “Can’t you let me down?”
“Not so loud.” He made a gesture of silence. “Afraid not. Your friend isn’t so far off, though I don’t think he’s actually located us as yet.”
She swallowed and was still.
“He keeps trying to get a reaction out of you,” Frazer went on, in the same careful tone. “It’s some kind of signal. Sally can sense it, and it makes her furious; though I don’t feel anything myself. You must be conditioned to it—and the effect is to make you want to run toward the source of the vibrations.”
“I didn’t know he’d brought any instruments with him,” Lane said dully.
“He may not have intended to use them, unless the game took a turn he didn’t like. Which I expect it has now. I gave you a hypo shot back at the gully that knocked you out, an hour ago,” he added mildly. “The reason you’re tied up is that, conscious or not, you keep trying to run back to the Nachief. It’s rather fantastic to watch, but running in the air won’t get you any closer to him . . .”