a high-pitched voice, and Dane noted that those of the
audience nearest the stools where Asaki and the captain were seated now
watched the Chief Ranger and the space officer. He felt Tau tense beside
him.

"Trouble coming...." The warning from Tau was the merest thread of
sound. Dane forced himself to look away from the swaying cat-dog, to
watch instead the singers who were now furtively eying their lord and
his guest. The Terran knew that there were feudal bonds between the
Ranger and his men. But suppose this was a showdown between Lumbrilo and
Asaki--whose side would these men take?

He watched Captain Jellico's hand slide across his knee, his fingers
drop in touching distance of knife hilt. And the hand of the Chief
Ranger, hanging lax at his side, suddenly balled into a fist.

"So!" Tau expelled the word as a hiss. He moved with sure-footed speed.
Now he passed between the stools to confront the dancing cat-dog. Yet he
did not look at that weird creature and its attendants. Instead his arms
were flung high as if to ward off--or perhaps welcome--something on the
mountain side as he shouted:

"_Hodi, eldama! Hodi!_"

As one, those on the terrace turned, looked up toward the slope. Dane
was on his feet, holding his knife as he might a sword. Though of what
use its puny length would be against that huge bulk moving in slow
majesty toward them, he did not try to think.

Gray-dark trunk curled upward between great ivory tusks, ears went wide
as ponderous feet crunched volcanic soil. Tau moved forward, his hands
still upraised, clearly in greeting. That trunk touched skyward as if in
salute to the man who could be crushed under one foot.

"_Hodi, eldama!_" For the second time Tau hailed the monster elephant
and the trunk raised in silent greeting from one lord of an earth to
another he recognized as an equal. Perhaps it had been a thousand years
since man and elephant had stood so, and then there had been only war
and death between them. Now there was peace and a current of power
flowing from one to the other. Dane sensed this, saw the men on the
terrace likewise drawing back from the unseen tie between the medic and
the bull he had so clearly summoned.

Then Tau's upheld hands came together in a sharp clap and men held their
breath in wonder. Where the great bull had stood there was
nothing--except rocks in the sun.

As Tau swung around to face the cat-dog, that creature had no substance
either. For he fronte