Star Hunter by Andre Norton (reading fiction .TXT) 📕

great amount of time and trouble by acting the overjoyed, rescued castaway.

But he could sight nothing at all in that direction to excite any attention. The distant mountains provided a stark, dark blue background. Up their foothills and lower slopes was a thick furring of trees with foliage of so deep a green as to register black from this distance. And on the level country was the lighter blue-green of the other variety of wood edging the open country about the river. In there rested the L-B.

“I don’t see anything!” he snapped, so sharply the little man stared at him in open surprise. Hume forced a quick smile.

“Just what did you sight, Gentlehomo Starns? There is no large game in the woodlands.”

“This was not an animal, Hunter. Rather a flash of light, just about there.” Again he pointed.

Sun, Hume thought, could have been reflected from some portion of the L-B. He had believed that small spacer so covered with vines and ringed in by trees that it could not have been so sighted. But a storm might have disposed of some of nature’s cloaking. If so Starns’ interest must be fed, he would make an ideal discoverer.

“Odd.” Hume produced his distance glasses. “Just where, Gentlehomo?”

“There.” Starns obligingly pointed a third time.

If there had been anything to see it was gone now. But it did lie in the right direction. For a second or two Hume was uneasy. Things seemed to be working too well; his cynical distrust was triggered by fitting so smoothly.

“Might be the sun,” he observed.

“Reflected from some object you mean, Hunter? But the flash was very bright. And there could be no mirror surface in there, surely there could not be?”

Yes, things were moving too fast. Hume might be overly cautious but he was determined that no hint of any pre-knowledge of the L-B must ever come to these civs. When they would find the Largo Drift’s life boat and locate Brodie, there would be a legal snarl. The castaway’s identity would be challenged by a half dozen distant and unloving relatives, and there would be an intense inquiry. These civs must be the impartial witnesses.

“No, I hardly believe in a mirror in an uninhabited forest, Gentlehomo,” he chuckled. “But we are on a hunting planet and not all its life forms have yet been classified.”

“You are thinking of an intelligent native race, Hunter?” Chambriss, the most demanding of the civ party, strode up to join them.

Hume shook his head. “No native intelligence on a hunting world, Gentlehomo. That is assured before the planet is listed for a safari. However, a bird or flying thing, perhaps with metallic plumage or scales to catch the sunlight, might under the right circumstances seem a flash of light. That has happened before.”

“It was very bright,” Starns said doubtfully. “We might look over there later.”

“Nonsense!” Chambriss spoke briskly as one used to overriding the conflicting wishes in any company. “I came here for a water-cat, and a water-cat I’m going to have. You don’t find those in wooded areas.”

“There will be a schedule,” Hume announced. “Each of you has signed up, according to contract, for a different trophy. You for a water-cat, Gentlehomo. And you, Gentlehomo Starns, want to make tri-dees of the pit-dragons. While Gentlehomo Yactisi wishes to try electo fishing in the deep holes. To alternate days is the fair way. And, who knows, each of you may discover your own choice near the other man’s stake out.”

“You are quite right, Hunter,” Starns nodded. “And since my two colleagues have chosen to try for a water creature, perhaps we should start along the river.”

It was two days, then, before they could work their way into the woods. One part of Hume protested, the more cautious section of his mind was appeased. He saw, beyond the three clients now turning over and sorting space bags, Wass’ man glanced at the woods and then back to Starns. And, being acutely aware of all undercurrents here, Hume wondered what the small civ had actually seen.

The camp was complete, a cluster of seven bubble tents not too far from the ship. At least this crowd did not appear to consider that the Hunter was there to do all the serious moving and storing of supplies. All three of the clients pitched in to help, and Wass’ man went down to the river to return with half a dozen silver-fins cleaned and threaded on a reed, ready to broil over the cook unit.

A fire in the night was not needed except to afford the proper stage setting. But it was enjoyed. Hume leaned forward to feed the flames, and Starns pushed some lengths of driftwood closer.

“You have said, Hunter, that hunting worlds never contain intelligent native life. Unless the planet is minutely explored how can your survey teams be sure of that fact?” His voice bordered on the pedantic, but his interest was plain.

“By using the verifier.” Hume sat crosslegged, his plasta-hand resting on one knee. “Fifty years ago, we would have had to keep rather a lengthy watch to be sure of a free world. Now, we plant verifiers at suitable test points. Intelligence means mental activity of some sort⁠—any of which would be recorded on the verifier.”

“Amazing!” Starns extended his plump hands to the flames in the immemorial gesture of a human attracted not only to the warmth of the burning wood, but to its promise of security against the forces of the dark. “No matter how few, or how scattered your native thinkers may be, you record them without missing any?”

Hume shrugged. “Maybe one or two,” he grinned, “might get through such a screening. But we have yet to discover a planet with such a sparse native life as that at the level of intelligence.”

Yactisi juggled a cup in and out of the firelight. “I agree, this is most interesting.” He was a thin man, with scanty drab gray hair and dark skin, perhaps the result of the mingling of