nto his pocket, went down the slope and
started up the knoll. He reached the place where the Cytha had fallen.
There were three small gouts of torn, mangled fur and flesh lying on
the ground and there was nothing else.

He spun around and jerked his rifle up. Every nerve was screamingly
alert. He swung his head, searching for the slightest movement, for
some shape or color that was not the shape or color of the bush or
grass or ground. But there was nothing. The heat droned in the hush of
afternoon. There was not a breath of moving air. But there was
danger--a saw-toothed sense of danger close behind his neck.

"Sipar!" he called in a tense whisper, "Watch out!"

The native stood motionless, unheeding, its eyeballs rolling up until
there was only white, while the muscles stood out along its throat
like straining ropes of steel.

Duncan slowly swiveled, rifle held almost at arm's length, elbows
crooked a little, ready to bring the weapon into play in a fraction of
a second.

Nothing stirred. There was no more than emptiness--the emptiness of
sun and molten sky, of grass and scraggy bush, of a brown-and-yellow
land stretching into foreverness.

Step by step, Duncan covered the hillside and finally came back to the
place where the native squatted on its heels and moaned, rocking back
and forth, arms locked tightly across its chest, as if it tried to
cradle itself in a sort of illusory comfort.

The Earthman walked to the place where the Cytha had fallen and picked
up, one by one, the bits of bleeding flesh. They had been mangled by
his bullet. They were limp and had no shape. And it was queer, he
thought. In all his years of hunting, over many planets, he had never
known a bullet to rip out hunks of flesh.

He dropped the bloody pieces back into the grass and wiped his hand
upon his thighs. He got up a little stiffly.

He'd found no trail of blood leading through the grass, and surely an
animal with a hole of that size would leave a trail.

And as he stood there upon the hillside, with the bloody fingerprints
still wet and glistening upon the fabric of his trousers, he felt the
first cold touch of fear, as if the fingertips of fear might
momentarily, almost casually, have trailed across his heart.

* * * * *

He turned around and walked back to the native, reached down and shook
it.

"Snap out of it," he ordered.

He expected pleading, cowering, terror, but there was none.