portending atmosphere
spread from the alien things as might a tangible wave.

For perhaps two breaths they stood so, man facing alien. Then Hume
turned, walked back, his face set. Rynch offered him the ray tube.

"Fight our way out?"

"Too late. Look!"

Moving lines of blue-green coming down to the river. Not five or six
now--a dozen--twenty. There was a small trickle of moisture down the
side of the Hunter's brown face.

"We're penned--except straight ahead."

"But we're going to fight!" Rynch protested.

"No. Move on!"

7

It was some time before Hume found what he wanted, an islet in
midstream lacking any growth and rising to a rough pinnacle. The sides
were seamed with crevices and caves which promised protection for
one's back in any desperate struggle. And they had discovered it none
too soon, for the late afternoon shadows were lengthening.

There had been no attack, just the trailing to herd the men to the
northeast. And Rynch had lost the first tight pinch of panic, though
he knew the folly of underestimating the unknown.

They climbed with unspoken consent, going clear to the top, where they
huddled together on a four-foot tableland. Hume unhooked his distance
lenses, but it was toward the rises of the mountains that he aimed
them, not along the back trail.

Rynch wriggled about, studied the river and its banks. The beasts
there were quiet, blue-green lumps, standing down on the river bank or
squatting in the grass.

"Nothing." Hume lowered the lenses, held them before his broad chest
as he still watched the peaks.

"What did you expect?" Rynch snapped. He was hungry, but not hungry
enough to abandon the islet.

Hume laughed shortly. "I don't know. Only I'm sure they are heading us
in that direction."

"Look here," Rynch rounded on him. "You know this planet, you've been
here before."

"I was one of the survey team that approved it for the Guild."

"Then you must have combed it pretty thoroughly. How is it that you
didn't know about them?" He gestured to their pursuers.

"That is what I would like to ask a few assorted experts right about
now," Hume returned. "The verifiers registered no intelligent native
life here."

"No native life." Rynch chewed that over, came up with the obvious
explanation. "All right--so then maybe our blue-backed friends are
imported. Suppose someone's running a private business of his own here
and wants to get rid of visitors?"

Hume looked thou