There were animal tracks across the blackened ground, hoof marks, paw prints, and—
I bent over, squinting to be sure. Footprints, human, or near enough. I knew how Robinson Crusoe had felt; the evidence of a fellow man gave me a sudden feeling of exposure along my backbone. I made it to the surrounding unburned wall of jungle in three jumps, slid down flat on the ground, and scanned the landscape. I tried to tell myself that this was a lucky break, the first real hope I’d had—but an instinct older than theories of the Brotherhood of Man told me that I had encountered the world’s most deadly predator. The fact that we might be of the same species just meant competition for the same hunting ground.
My spear wasn’t a handy weapon, and my skill with it wasn’t anything to strike a medal in praise of. I checked my pocket for one of my stones, found a smashed egg. For a moment, the ludicrousness of the situation threatened to start me snickering. Then I heard a sound from nearby—in what direction, I wasn’t sure. I eased back, rose up far enough to scan the woods behind me. I saw nothing. I tried to think the situation through. If I was right—if it was a man who’d visited here—it was important to establish contact. Even a primitive would have some sort of culture—food, fire, garments of sorts, shelter. I had skills: pottery making, basket weaving, the principle of the bow. We could work out something, perhaps—but only if I survived the first meeting.
I heard the sound again, saw a deer-like creature making its way across the burn. I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. There was no way of knowing how long ago the man prints had been made. Still, I couldn’t lie here forever. I emerged, made a quick check of the burned-out shuttle. Everything was as I’d left it.
I took another look at the footprints. They seemed to be made not by a bare foot, but by a flat sandal of some sort. They came across the burn, circled the shuttle, went away again. On the latter portion of the trail, they clearly overlay my own booted prints. Whoever my visitor had been, he was following me—or had started out on my trail. It was a thought that did nothing for my peace of mind.
I tried to calm the instinct that told me to get as far from the spot as possible. I needed to meet this fellow—and on terms that I could control. I didn’t want to kill him, of course—but neither did I want to try the palm outward “I friend” routine. That left—capture.
It was risky business, working out in the open. But then being alive was a risky business. If the man tracking me had followed my trail, then lost it somewhere on the high ground, it might be a matter of many hours before he came back here to cast about again—and I was sure, for some reason, that he’d do that. And when he did—
I had been working hard for two hours now, setting up my snare. It wasn’t fancy, and if my proposed captive were any kind of woodsman—which he had to be, to survive here—it wouldn’t fool him for a moment. Still, it was action of a sort—occupational therapy, maybe, but better than hiding under a bush and waiting—and it was helpful to my morale to imagine that I was taking the initiative.
The arrangement consisted of a shallow pit excavated in the soft soil, covered over with a light framework of twigs and leaves, and camouflaged with a scattering of blackened soil. I had done the digging with my bare hands, helped out by a board from the wreck, and the dirt had been heaped under the brush, out of sight behind the wall of foliage. The hole was no more than four feet deep, but that was sufficient for my purpose—to throw the intruder off-balance, and give me the drop on him sufficiently to open negotiations.
I was hungry enough now to scrape one of the smashed eggs from the lining of my pocket and eat it. But first I had to select my hiding place and get ready to act when the victim stepped into the trap. I picked a spot off to the left, arranged myself so as to be able to jump out at the psychological moment, and settled down to wait.
The pit was dug just in front of the wreckage, at the point where the opening to the interior would lead an inquisitive victim. I had dropped a lacy-edged hanky just inside the opening as an added attraction. It was one Olivia had lent me to mop my forehead during that last all-night session, and it still held a whiff of a perfume that would attract a primitive more surely than a scattering of gold coins. I had done all I could. The next step was up to the opposition.
I awoke from a light doze to see that it was late evening. The trees were black lacework against a red-gold sky, and the chirruping of crickets and the shrill tseet! tseet! of a bird were the only sounds against an absolute stillness—
And then the crackle of underbrush, the snap of broken twigs, the sound of heavy breathing… I froze, trying to see through the gloom. He was coming. Hell, he was here! And making no effort at stealth. He was sure of himself, this native—which probably meant that here in his own stamping ground he was top carnivore. I tried to picture the kind of man who could stand up to the King Cat I’d seen, and gave it up as too discouraging. And this was the fellow I was going to trip up and then threaten with a broom handle…
I swallowed the old corn husks that had gotten wedged in my throat, squinted some more. I made out a tall figure coming across the burned ground, stooping, apparently peering around—looking for me, no doubt. The thought gave me no comfort. I couldn’t see what kind of weapon he had. I gripped my spear, tried to hold my breathing to a deep, slow rhythm. He was close now, pausing to glance over the shuttle, then turning toward the entrance hold. The handkerchief would be visible in the dim light, and the scent… He took a step, another. He was close now, a vague, dark shape in deep shadow—
There was a choked yell, a crashing, a thud, and I was out of my hidey-hole, stumbling across a tangle of roots, bringing my spear up, skidding to a halt before the pale torso and dark head of the man who struggled, scrabbling for a handhold, hip deep in my trap.
“Hold it right there!” I barked through clenched teeth, holding the spear ready with both hands, poised over the man who stood frozen now, a narrow-shouldered, long-armed figure, his face a dark blob under a white headpiece—
“I say, Bayard,” Dzok’s voice came. “You’ve led me a merry chase, I must say!”
Chapter Eleven
“It wasn’t easy, old boy,” Dzok said, offering me a second cup of a coffee-like drink he had brewed over the small fire he had built. “I can assure you I was in bad odor with the Council for my part in bringing you to Xonijeel. However, the best offense is a good defense, as the saying goes. I countered by preferring charges against Minister Sphogeel for compromise of an official TDP position, illegal challenge of an Agent’s competence, failure to refer a matter of Authoritarian security to a full Board meeting—”
“I don’t quite get the picture, Dzok,” I interrupted. “You conned me into going to Xonijeel by promising me help against the Hagroon—”
“Really, Bayard, I promised no more than that I’d do my best. It was a piece of ill luck that old Sphogeel was on the Council that week. He’s a notorious xenophobe. I never dreamed he’d go so far as to consign you to exile on the basis of a kangaroo hearing—”
“You were the one who grabbed my gun,” I pointed out.
“Lucky thing, too. If you’d managed to kill someone, there’d have been nothing I could do to save you from being burned down on the spot. And I’m not sure I’d have wanted to. You are a bloodthirsty blighter, you know.”