Voodoo Planet by Andre Norton (big ebook reader txt) 📕

swabbed with a handful of grass at his bloodied breeches and blundered on into the sunlight.

Nymani found them a foam-flecked stream below a miniature falls where the swift current prevented the lurking of sand worms. They stripped eagerly, cleaning first themselves and then their fouled clothing while Tau tended the wealth of fire-wasp stings. There was little he could do to relieve the swelling and pain, until Asaki produced a reed-like plant which, chopped in sections, yielded a sticky purple liquid that dried on the skin as a tar gum⁠—the native remedy. So, glued and plastered, they climbed away from the water and prepared to spend the night in a hollow between two leaning rocks, certainly not as snug as the cave but a fortress of sorts.

“And credit-happy space hoppers pay a fortune for an outing like this!” Tau commented bitterly, hunching well forward so that a certain stung portion of his anatomy would not come in contact with the rock beneath him.

“Hardly for this,” Jellico replied, and Dane saw Nymani grin one-sidedly, his other cheek puffed and painted sticky purple.

“We do not always encounter apes and fire-wasps in the same day,” supplied the Chief Ranger. “Also, guests at the preserves wear stass belts.”

Jellico snorted. “I don’t think you’d get any repeats from your clients otherwise! What do we meet tomorrow? A herd of graz on stampede, or something even more subtle and deadly?”

Nymani got up and walked a little way from their rock shelter. He turned down-slope and Dane saw his nostrils expand as they had when he had investigated the cave.

“Something is dead,” he said slowly. “A very large something. Or else⁠—”

Asaki strode down to join his men. He gave a curt nod and Nymani skidded on down the mountain side.

“What is it?” Jellico asked.

“It might be many things. There is one I hope it is not,” was the Chief Ranger’s somewhat evasive reply. “I will hunt a labbla⁠—there was fresh spoor at the stream.” He set off along their back trail to return a half hour later, the body of his kill slung across one shoulder. He was skinning it when Nymani trotted back.

“Well?”

“Death pit,” supplied the Hunter.

“Poachers?” Jellico inquired.

Nymani nodded. Asaki continued his task, but there was a glint in his dark eyes as he butchered with sure and expert strokes. Then he glanced at the shadow extending beyond the rocks.

“I, too, would see,” he told Nymani.

Jellico arose, and Dane, interested, followed. Some five minutes later none of them needed the native keenness of smell to detect the presence of some foulness ahead. The odor of corruption was almost tangible in the sultry air. And it grew worse until they stood on the edge of a pit. Dane retreated hurriedly. This was as bad as the battlefield of the rock apes. But the captain and the two Khatkans stood calmly assessing the slaughter left by the hide poachers.

“Glam, graz, hoodra,” Jellico commented. “Tusks and hides⁠—the full line of trade stuff.”

Asaki, his expression bleak, stepped back from the pit. “Day old calves, old ones, females⁠—all together. They kill wantonly and leave those they do not choose to pelt.”

“Trail⁠—” Nymani pointed eastward. “Leads to Mygra swamp.”

“The swamps!” Asaki was shaken. “They must be mad!”

“Or know more about this country than your men do,” Jellico corrected.

“If poachers can enter Mygra, then we can follow!”

But not now, Dane protested silently. Certainly Asaki did not mean that they were to track outlaws into swamps the Khatkan had already labeled unexplored death traps!

V

Sitting up, Dane stared wide-eyed into the dark. A handful of glowing coals, guarded by rocks, was the center of their camp. He hunched up to that hardly knowing why he moved. His hands were shaking, his skin damp with sweat no heat produced. Yet, now that he was conscious of the night, the Terran could not remember the nightmare from which he had just awakened, though he was left with a growing apprehension which he could not define. What prowled out there in that dark? Walked the mountain side? Listened, spied and waited?

Dane half started to his feet as a form did move into the dim light of the fire. Tau stood there, regarding him with sober intensity.

“Bad dream?”

The younger man admitted to that with a nod, partly against his will.

“Well, you aren’t the only one. Remember any of it?”

With an effort, Dane looked away from the encircling dark. It was as if the fear which had shaken him awake, now embodied, lurked right there.

“No.” He rubbed sleep-smarting eyes.

“Neither did I,” Tau remarked. “But both of ’em must have been jet-powered.”

“I suppose one could expect to have nightmares after yesterday.” Dane advanced the logical explanation, yet at the same time something deep inside him denied every word of it. He had known nightmares before; none of them had left this aftertaste. And he wanted no return of sleep tonight. Reaching to the pile of wood he fed the fire as Tau settled down beside him.

“There is something else.⁠ ⁠…” the medic began, and then fell silent. Dane did not press him. The younger man was too busy fighting a growing desire to whirl and aim the fire ray into that darkness, to catch in its withering blast that lurking thing he could feel padded there, biding its time.

Despite his efforts Dane did drowse again before morning, waking unrefreshed, and, to his secret dismay, with no lessening of his odd dislike for the country about them.

Asaki did not suggest that they trail the poachers into the morass of Mygra. Instead the Chief Ranger was eager to press on in the opposite direction, find a way over the range to the preserve where he could assemble a punitive force to deal with the outlaws. So they began an upward climb which took them away from the dank heat of the lowlands, into the parched blaze of the sunbaked ledges above.

The sun was bright, far too bright, and there were few shadows left. Yet Dane, stopping to