he was not Rynch Brodie. For a fleeting second
he wondered why that conditioning had not completely worked, then went
back to the problem of his relationship with Hume.

No, the Out-Hunter had expected a castaway who would be just what he
ordered. Then this affair of the watchers--creatures the Guild men had
not found here a few months ago--Rynch felt a small cold chill along
his spine. Hume's game was one thing, something he could understand,
but the silent beasts were another and somehow far more disturbing
threat.

Rynch edged forward, watching the mist on the water, his brain
striving to solve this other puzzle as neatly as he thought he had
discovered the reason for his scrambled memories and his being on
Jumala.

The mist was an added danger. Thick enough and those watchers could
move in under its curtain. A needler was efficient, yes, but it could
wipe out only an enemy at which it was aimed. Blind cross sweeping
with its darts would only exhaust the clip without results, save by
lucky chance.

On the other hand, suppose they could turn that same gray haze to
their own advantage--use it to blanket their withdrawal? He was about
to go to Hume with that suggestion when he sighted the new move in
their odd battle with the aliens.

A wink of light--two more--blinking, following the erratic course by
the pull of the stream. All bobbing along toward the rugged coastline
of the islet. Those had appeared out of nothingness as suddenly as the
globes when this chase had begun.

The globes and the winking lights on the water connected in his mind,
argued new danger. Rynch took careful aim, fired a dart at one which
had grounded on the pointed tip of the rocks where the river current
came together after its division about the island. For the first time
Rynch realized those things below were moving _against_ the
current--they had come upstream as if propelled.

He had fired and the light was still there, two more coming in behind
it, so that now there was an irregular cluster of them. And there was
activity on the water-washed rocks before them. Just as the scavengers
had moved ahead of the globes on land, so now aquatic creatures had
come out of the river, were flopping higher on the islet. And those
lights were changing color--from white to reddish-yellow.

Rynch scrabbled with one hand in a rock crevice, found a stone he had
noted earlier. He hurled that at the cluster of lights. There was a
puff of brilliant re