"He could take a bigger one out 0' yours," said Tay Shun. "Now, why don't y'all do like he says and hush up. At least then, if some dangerous kind of critter tries to sneak up on us, at least we'll have some chance to hear it."
"SHHH!" said Qual, who'd sneaked up on them unnoticed again. When the hunters were done jumping, the Zenobian said, "Game is very close. We wanting to surprise it. Follow me, and be very, very quiet."
Dutifully, the hunters fell into single file behind Qual and crept forward through the tall alien vegetation. Now Qual carried a dim handlight of some sort-more for the hunters' convenience than for his own, it seemed. The little Zenobian's vision was evidently as good in the starlit night of his home world as theirs was in full daylight. Perhaps the sunglasses he habitually wore in bright sunlight were another consequence of his night-adapted vision.
The party came into a moderately large clearing, perhaps twenty meters across. The sandy soil was soft and loosely packed here. "Look!" said Qual, shining his light on a depression in the ground. It was an enormous footprint.
"Ghu almighty, what kind of critter made that?" said Asho. "It must be enormous..."
"That is game we hunt," said Qual. "The mark is fresh, so we are very up close to it. It went that away." He pointed to the left.
"How did somethin' that big walk past us and we didn't even hear it?" said Tay-Shun, falling in behind Qual, who had wordlessly begun to stalk in the direction the footprints pointed-they could now see that there were more of them.
"Here's another footprint," O'Better whispered, turning back over his shoulder. He pointed down. "This mother's big-you boys got your guns ready?"
"Sure do," said L. P. Asho, brandishing the Legion surplus weapon he'd gotten from Chocolate Harry's arsenal. "Who gets first shot?"
"I dunno-I reckon we all oughta be ready, in case it charges. When we see it, we better spread out so's we all have a clear shot in case it charges or somethin'. If we get time to think about it, we can decide who's got the hammer then."
"Good plan," whispered 0'Better. "Can anybody see anything? It's darker than the inside of a horse..."
"SHHHH!" said Qual, turning around. "I sense the game just ahead," he whispered. "It is in a small clearing. I will turn out the light, and we will all step forward utterly quietly, or it may respond unpredictably. Everyone is to expand sideways, so we are having direct view before I turn on light."
The hunters stepped forward into the clearing, suddenly aware despite the darkness of some huge living creature there in front of them. Asho held his stun ray at the ready, and to either side he could hear his friends moving into place. "Now!" whispered Qual, and turned his light on to a brighter beam.
Asho stared upward, where the beast ought to be, startled at the sudden brightness in the clearing. Where was it? Had it heard them and escaped already?
"What the hell..." said O'Better, expressing the puzzlement all of them felt. They swung their heads in all directions, looking for the huge creature that must be directly in front of them. "Where' s the critter?"
"Down there!" said Qual, pointing. Sure enough, there on the floor of the clearing, directly in front of them, sat the creature they had been trailing. It was a stubby creature, more or less the size of a lounge chair. At first glance it looked like nothing so much as the enormous paw of some huge beast of prey, cut off just above the ankle. At the top, a pair of bulbous eyes on thin stalks swung toward the sudden light, staring at the hunters for just a moment. Then, before any of them could react, the huge appendage flexed its toes and bounded out of the clearing, too swiftly for any of them to get a shot off.
"What the hell?" said Asho, making up in vehemence what he lacked in originality. "I never seen anything like that before. What was that thing?"
Qual turned to them, and said, grinning toothily, "Didn't I tell you? It is just as I said: The game's a foot!"
"Look here, Qual, this won't do at all," said Euston 0'Better. "We'd be pure and simple laughin' stocks if we showed up back home with that kind of thing as a trophy." The hunters had returned to the camp, and the three of them were sitting with the Zenobian around a small camp stove, warming up coffee for the humans.
Qual grinned, showing his intimidating array of daggerlike teeth. "You did not explain this to me," he said. "What kind of game is it you search, then, if the snool is not it?"
"Hell, dinos!" said L. P. Asho. "The big mothers--you know, like tranasaurs or brontosaurs. You got 'em here, don't you?"
"Big mothers?" Qual looked puzzled. "My own mother is rather large, perhaps twenty centimeters taller than the average female, and proportionately weighty. But I do not think she would like being hunted..."
"L. P's just usin' a figure of speech, is all," said O'Better, hastily. "He don't really want to shoot nobody's mother, do you now, L. P.?"
"Well, I gotta think about that, Euston," said Asho, rubbing his chin. "Eddy Joe Hollub's mom was always real mean to me back when I was a kid..."
"Har, har!" said O'Better. "L. P.'s full of jokes, ain't he? But seriously, Qual, a big hairy jumpin' foot's pretty unusual, but I don't think it's quite the kind of thing you can be proud of havin' shot, y'know? It don't make a very smart trophy."
"I think not," said Qual. "The snool is a very stupid animal. It rarely knows whether it is coming or going..."
Austen, Tay-Shun cut him off. "Nab, we don't want the animal to be smart-we want it to look impressive as a mounted trophy. You know, big and fierce, like that." Qual's eyes opened wider. "Big and fierce? Aha, why did you not say so? I can find you many such beasts."
"All right," said Asho, setting his coffee cup loudly down on a flat stone. "Now we're cookin' with raw antimatter. What kind of critters are we talkin' about, and how soon can we get a shot at 'em?"
"Oh, these are very large beasts," said Qual, his eyes rolling as if to suggest their magnitude. "They are bad tempered and always hungry. I do not know whether a wise sophont would go looking for them on purpose. The best way to deal with them is to be somewhere else."
"Whoo-ee, that sure sounds nasty," said Asho. "Do they have big teeth, or claws, or somethin' else like that?"
"Teeth, and claws, and horns, and a sharp, sharp barb on the tippy-tip of the tail," said Qual, putting his hands over his eyes. "I think you are very smart humans. Listen to me; you go hunt for these animals, maybe they get the smart idea to come hunting for humans instead. And if that happens, the beasts having all the fun."
"Whoo-ee," said 0'Better. "I reckon we oughta stop and think about that one, boys."
"I knew you would be smart humans," said Qual. "Now, I can find you nice safe things to hunt, like gryff..."
"Damnit, we don't want safe!" bellowed Asho. "What are you boys, men or miffles? We come here for just two things, to get us some samples of Phule-Proof's new models and to hunt some big ol' critters."
"Shh!" said 0'Better. "The boy here might tell somebody!"
""Shee-it, Euston, the boy ain't gonna tell nobody," said Asho. "He don't know anybody at Phule-Proof to go yappin' to. But he sure does sound like he can take us to some serious big game-I mean, fierce-lookin' critters with teeth and claws. I don't want to come home with nothin', but I don't want the folks back on Tejas to think I shot some poor old woman's milk cow, neither."