him the evening before. The tiger in his belly quit pacing back and
forth; it crouched and licked its chops, but its tail was stuck up in
his throat. Jack could feel the dry fur swabbing his pharynx and mouth.
He suffered, but he was used to that. Night would come as surely as
anything did. He'd get a drink then to quench his thirst.

Boredom began to sit on his eyelids. Just as he was about to accept some
much needed sleep, he moved a leaf with an accidental jerk of his hand
and uncovered a caterpillar. It was dark except for a row of yellow
spots along the central line of some of its segments. As soon as it was
exposed, it began slowly shimmying away. Before it had gone two feet, it
was crossed by a moving shadow. Guiding the shadow was a black wasp with
an orange ring around the abdomen. It closed the gap between itself and
the worm with a swift, smooth movement and straddled the dark body.

Before the wasp could grasp the thick neck with its mandibles, the
intended victim began rapidly rolling and unrolling and flinging itself
from side to side. For a minute the delicate dancer above it could not
succeed in clenching the neck. Its sharp jaws slid off the frenziedly
jerking skin until the tiring creature paused for the chip of a second.

Seizing opportunity and larva at the same time, the wasp stood high on
its legs and pulled the worm's front end from the ground, exposing the
yellowed band of the underpart. The attacker's abdomen curved beneath
its own body; the stinger jabbed between two segments of the prey's
jointed length. Instantly, the writhing stilled. A shudder, and the
caterpillar became as inert as if it were dead.

Jack had watched with an eye not completely clinical, feeling the
sympathy of the hunted and the hounded for a fellow. His own struggles
of the past few months had been as desperate, though not as hopeless,
and ...

He stopped thinking. His heart again took up the rib-thudding. Out of
the corner of his left eye he had seen a shadow that fell across the
garden. When he slowly turned his head to follow the stain upon the
sun-splashed soil, he saw that it clung to a pair of shining black
boots.

Jack did not say anything. What was the use? He put his hands against
the weeds and pushed his body up. He looked into the silent mouth of a
.38 automatic. It told him his running days were over. You didn't talk
back to a mouth like that.

II

Jack was lucky. As one of the last to be herded in