ves, too. Damn!
Damn!" His eyes blurred and he slammed his fist into the soft earth.

When he raised his eyes again the jungle was perceptibly darker.
Stealthy rustlings in the shadows grew louder with the setting sun.
Branches snapped unaccountably in the trees overhead and every now and
then leaves or a twig fell softly to the ground, close to where he lay.
Reaching into his jacket, Alan fingered his pocket blaster. He pulled it
out and held it in his right hand. "This pop gun wouldn't even singe a
robot, but it just might stop one of those pumas."

[Illustration: They said the blast with your name on it would find you
anywhere. This looked like Alan's blast.]

Slowly Alan looked around, sizing up his situation. Behind him the dark
jungle rustled forbiddingly. He shuddered. "Not a very healthy spot to
spend the night. On the other hand, I certainly can't get to the camp
with a pack of mind-activated mechanical killers running around. If I
can just hold out until morning, when the big ship arrives ... The big
ship! Good Lord, Peggy!" He turned white; oily sweat punctuated his
forehead. Peggy, arriving tomorrow with the other colonists, the wives
and kids! The metal killers, tuned to blast any living flesh, would
murder them the instant they stepped from the ship!

* * * * *

A pretty girl, Peggy, the girl he'd married just three weeks ago. He
still couldn't believe it. It was crazy, he supposed, to marry a girl
and then take off for an unknown planet, with her to follow, to try to
create a home in a jungle clearing. Crazy maybe, but Peggy and her green
eyes that changed color with the light, with her soft brown hair, and
her happy smile, had ended thirty years of loneliness and had, at last,
given him a reason for living. "Not to be killed!" Alan unclenched his
fists and wiped his palms, bloody where his fingernails had dug into the
flesh.

There was a slight creak above him like the protesting of a branch too
heavily laden. Blaster ready, Alan rolled over onto his back. In the
movement, his elbow struck the top of a small earthy mound and he was
instantly engulfed in a swarm of locust-like insects that beat
disgustingly against his eyes and mouth. "Fagh!" Waving his arms before
his face he jumped up and backwards, away from the bugs. As he did so, a
dark shapeless thing plopped from the trees onto the spot where he had
been lying stretched out. Then, like an ambient fungus, it slit