my invitation!"

They stood eye to eye, equal in height, in authority of person, and that
indefinable something which made them both masters in their own
different worlds. Then Jellico's hand went out, his fingertip flicked
the hilt of the bared blade.

"There was no trickery," he conceded. "I knew that your need was great
when you came to the _Queen_."

Since both the captain and Tau appeared to accept the situation, Dane,
not quite understanding it all, was prepared to follow their lead. And
for the moment they had nothing more in plan than to visit the Zoboru
preserve.

They went by flitter--Asaki, one of his Hunter pilots, and the three
from the _Queen_--lifting over the rim of mountains behind the
fortress-palace and speeding north with the rising sun a flaming ball to
the east. Below, the country was stark--rocks and peaks, deep purple
shadows marking the veins of crevices. But that was swiftly behind and
they were over a sea of greens, many shades of green, with yellow, blue,
even red cutting into the general verdant carpet of treetops. Another
chain of heights and then open land, swales of tall grass already burnt
yellow by the steady sun. There was a river here, a crazy, twisted
stream coiling nearly back upon itself at times.

Once more broken land, land so ravished by prehistoric volcanic action
that it was a grotesque nightmare of erosion-whittled outcrops and
mesas. Asaki pointed to the east. There was a dark patch widening out
into a vast wedge.

"The swamp of Mygra. It has not yet been explored."

"You could air map it," Tau began.

The Chief Ranger was frowning. "Four flitters have been lost trying
that. Com reports fail when they cross that last mountain ridge
eastward. There is some sort of interference which we do not yet
understand. Mygra is a place of death; later we may be able to travel
along its fringe and then you shall see. Now--" He spoke to the pilot in
his own tongue and the flitter pointed up-nose at an angle as they
climbed over the highest peak they had yet seen in this mountainous
land, to reach at last a country of open grass dotted with small forest
stands. Jellico nodded approvingly.

"Zoboru?"

"Zoboru," Asaki assented. "We shall go up to the northern end of the
preserve. I wish to show you the roosts of the fastals. This is their
nesting season and the sight is one you will long remember. But we shall
take an eastern course; I have two Ranger stations to check on the w