ships behind them, and Cain's
abrupt uselessness to his Thrayxite employers. Then--

But the gamble was too great. Cain might not double back, but instead
plunge headlong further and further into the concealing morass before
him. No, Cain would not double back. Not now. For in Kriijorl he had
met an even match, and now he was afraid!

Fully an hour had passed when, his tunic torn and the exposed flesh
bleeding, Mason caught up with Kriijorl.

"He was nearly within my hands for a moment--" the giant whispered
hoarsely. He breathed with difficulty, and there were long slashes
gleaming redly in the darkness across his great muscles.

Mason stood silently for moments, toying with a thought that nagged
insistently at the edge of his brain. He knew Cain. He knew the man.

Then suddenly his thoughts were interrupted by the muffled sound of a
rocket blast, and within moments there was a vertical trail of fire
above them as a Thrayxite ship hurtled skyward.

"By Jhavuul--"

"No!" Mason exclaimed. "The blast was from in front of us, he didn't
double back! Must be another colony near our own, and he stumbled out
of this overgrown mess and right into it. There was simply an empty
ship--"

"Then the traitor has won!" Kriijorl's face was tilted upward, and in
the faint glow of the planetesimal belt that girdled Thrayx, it seemed
more than ever that of an heroic Viking king of ages gone.

"There's a chance he hasn't!" Mason breathed. He had the thought now,
pinned down, clear in his head. "If there has been no alarm back at
our own camp we may still have the mentacom to ourselves. We'll signal
Ihelos as you planned and then--then there is something else you will
say. Something else that I think will, as the saying goes on Earth,
kill two birds with a single blast."

Mason had lost track of time; perhaps it was as many as two hours
before they had fought their way through the clutching undergrowth
back to the mentacom at the fringe of their own camp. Several times
they had had to stop, for there had been sounds in the jungle other
than those they had made themselves. Animals, Kriijorl had said, who
had got the scent of their blood. But the noises had not been fast and
crashing--more those of stealth, as were those of their own steps. A
single animal, perhaps, with the scent of their blood; or that of the
breeder guard they had slain. And stalking.

The dome was still silent, and the stiff corpses outside it lay
undisturbe