Murdoch said, “I want you all to meet Kly Brannon. He’s going to be our guide. He’s spent eleven years hunting on Cutwold—really knows the place. Brannon, let me introduce you to the clients.”
Brannon was introduced. He eyed each of them in turn.
There were four couples, one single man. All were Terrans. All looked wealthy, all looked bored. Typical tourist-type hunters, Brannon thought in weary contempt.
At the far left was Leopold Damon and his wife. Damon was fat and bald and looked to be on his second or third rejuvenation; his wife was about his age, puffy-eyed, ugly. They were probably tougher than they looked.
Next to them sat the Saul Marshalls. Marshall was a thin dried-out man with glittering eyes and a hooked ascetic nose. His wife was warmer-looking, a smiling brunette of thirty or so.
At their right was Clyde Llewellyn and his wife. Llewellyn was mild, diffident-looking, a slim red-haired man who seemed about as fierce as a bank clerk. His wife—Brannon blinked—his wife was a long, luxurious, cat-like creature with wide bare shoulders, long black hair, and magnificent breasts concealed only by sprayon patches the size of a one-unit coin.
The fourth couple consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Fredrik Rhawn, two sleek socialites, flawless of face and form, who seemed to have been turned out on a machine lathe. Next to them sat the loner, Rod Napoli, a burly, immensely broad man with thick features and gigantic hands.
“Mr. Napoli lost his wife on our previous tour,” Murdoch said discreetly. “It—ah—explains the uneven number we have.”
“I see,” Brannon said. Napoli didn’t look particularly bereaved. He sat inhaling huge gulps of air at each breath, looking like a highly efficient killing machine and nothing else.
“Well, now you’ve met everyone,” said Murdoch. “I want you to know that this group is experienced in the ways of hunting, and that you’re not just guiding a group of silly amateurs.” His eyes narrowed. “Our goal, as you know, is the Nurillin.”
“I know,” Brannon returned acidly. “That’s already been made clear.”
“When would you like to start?” Murdoch asked.
“Now,” said Brannon.
“Now?”
“Now?” said Fredrik Rhawn, half-rising. “So soon? But we just had lunch. I mean, couldn’t we hold this thing over till tomorrow?”
“I’d like to get started,” Brannon said stubbornly. He added silently, the quicker the better. I want to get this thing over with.
Rhawn’s wife murmured something to him, and he said, “All right. It’s foolish of me to hold everyone back, isn’t it? We’re ready to go any time.”
“Good,” Murdoch said. He glanced at Brannon. “Our equipment is packed and ready. We’re at your disposal.”
“Let’s go, then,” Brannon said.
Brannon estimated privately that the trip would take two days of solid march. He had found the Nurillins after only little more than a day’s journey out of the settlement, but that was when he was alone and moving at a good pace.
They left the settlement single file at three-thirty that afternoon, Brannon in the lead, followed by Napoli, who lugged along the handtruck carrying their supplies and provisions, and then, in order, the Rhawns, the Damons, the Marshalls, and the Llewellyns, with Murdoch last of all, just back of radiant Marya Llewellyn.
Two days. As Brannon pushed on slowly through the thick forest, slashing down the clinging vines as he went, the thought of spending two days with these people was intolerable, the thought of the quest they were on impossible to carry in his mind. When he thought of the soft-voiced Nurillins and the few happy days he had spent with them, and now realized that he was bringing nine trophy-happy tourists through the woods to their secret hiding place—
He shook his head. Behind him, Napoli said, “Something wrong?”
“Damned fly buzzing in my ears. They’ll eat you alive if you let them.”
Napoli chuckled. They moved on.
Brannon was sure the tourists knew what the Nurillins were. That just added an extra twist to it. Murder was punishable by life imprisonment, which in these days of hundred-fifty-year lifespans was ten times as dreadful as capital punishment. Since detection was almost unavoidable, people rarely murdered.
But legal murder—ah, that was another thing. All the thrill of destroying a thinking, breathing, intelligent creature, with none of the drawbacks. In the early days of stellar expansion, the natives of a thousand worlds had been hewn down mercilessly by wealthy Terrans who regarded the strange life forms as “just animals.”
To stop that, the Extraterrestrial Life Treaty of 2977 had been promulgated, and its supplement. From then on, none of the creatures listed could be shot for game. But there still were other worlds, newer worlds, worlds which had been missed in the survey. And races such as the Nurillins, with but a handful of members. The Nurillins had retreated when the Terrans came, and so they had been missed by the Treaty-makers.
And so they were still free game for the guns of Rod Napoli and Leopold Damon and anyone else willing to pay for their pleasure. Brannon scowled.
A vine tumbled down out of nowhere and splashed itself stickily across his face. He slashed it out of the way with his machete and pushed on.
He knew the forest well. His plan was to take the most circuitous route possible, in hopes that Murdoch would never be able to find his way to the Nurillins again. Accordingly he struck out between two vast cholla-trees, signaling for the others to follow him.
Suddenly Murdoch called out, “Hold it up there, Brannon! Mrs. Damon wants to rest.”
“But—”
“Hold it,” Murdoch snapped. There was urgency in the hunt director’s voice. Brannon stopped.
He turned and saw Mrs. Damon sitting on a coarse-grained gray rock at the side of the footpath, massaging her feet. Brannon smiled and revised his estimate upward. It was going to take three days to get there, if this kept on happening with any regularity.
Murdoch said, “Brannon, could I see you for a minute as long as we’ve stopped?”
“Sure,” Brannon said. “What is it?”
Murdoch had drawn away from the others somewhat and stood at a distance, with Marya Llewellyn. Her husband was paying no attention; he had joined the group that stood around Mrs. Damon. Brannon sauntered over Murdoch.
“Are you taking us in the right direction?” Murdoch asked abruptly.
Surprised—for his foresight did not work all the time—Brannon glanced at Marya Llewellyn. The girl was staring at him out of dark pools of eyes, darker even than her jet hair. She wore only shorts and the sprayon patches over her breasts; she looked at him accusingly and said, “I don’t think we’re heading the right way.”
“How would you know?” Brannon snapped.
Murdoch smiled coldly. “You’re not the only one with heightened sensory powers, Brannon. Mrs. Llewellyn has a peculiar and very useful gift of knowing when she’s going toward a goal and when she isn’t. She says the route you just took doesn’t feel right. She says it doesn’t lead straight to the Nurillins.”
“She’s right,” Brannon admitted. “What of it? I promised I’d get you there, and I will. Does it make any difference if I take a slightly roundabout route? I’m the guide, don’t forget.”
“I haven’t forgotten it. And I’ll let you continue on this path another hour or so, provided we don’t get any further off the course. But I thought I’d warn you that Marya here will be able to detect it any time you try to fool us. Any time you deliberately try to get us lost, she’ll tell me about it.”
Brannon looked stonily at her. He said nothing.
“Losing your charges in the jungle is attempted murder,” Murdoch went on. “I’d feel entirely justified in shooting you down if necessary.”
Brannon’s jaws tightened. “For the benefit of you and your little bloodhound here, I’m doing my best. I’ll get you to the Nurillins. And if it’s okay with Mrs. Damon, I’d like to get moving again right now.”
/> An hour later, they were still moving. Dark shadows were scudding across the sky now, and the forest was thickening into jungle—jungle where death might wait behind any tree or under any pebble. But still Brannon kept moving.
Knowing that Marya Llewellyn had some strange way of sensing direction didn’t alter his plans any. He had intended from the first, whatever Murdoch’s suspicions were, to lead the party sooner or later to the Nurillins. Brannon had been around; he never deluded himself with false hopes. Murdoch had hired him to lead them there, and Murdoch would not settle for less.
The nine tourists said little as they proceeded. They were lost in the strangeness of Cutwold.
Cutwold—or Caveer V, as the starcharts called it—was a warm, almost tropical world, heavily forested, heavily inhabited by life of all sorts. Once in its history it had spawned an intelligent species, the Nurillins. But they had been too gentle for Cutwold, and when Brannon had discovered them they were in the final throes before race extinction, with perhaps ten generations remaining to them if they kept out of man’s way.
The forest was speaking, now. Crying abuse at the man who led ten others on a mission of murder.
The giant frogs, those cynical toothy amphibians half the size of a man, were honking scornfully from either side of the path. Further back originated the deep moaning bellow of the groundsnakes, and Brannon heard also the endless yipping of the little blue dogs that raged through the forest in murderous packs. He sensed nervousness spreading over his charges as night approached.
Above, Caveer, the golden-green sun that Brannon, in a forgotten past, had said was the loveliest he had ever seen, was dropping toward the horizon. Jonquil, first of the identical featureless moons of Cutwold, glimmered palely in the still-blue sky; Daffodil yet lay hidden in the nestling clouds of day, but soon would break forth and with its sister spiral across the night sky.
Then was the time of fear, in the forest—when the moons were bright.
Brannon plodded methodically forward through the darkening forest, dragging his ten charges along as if they were tied to his back. Somewhere ahead lay the refuge of the unsuspecting Nurillins; somewhere ahead lay a soft-eyed alien girl who had spoken kindly to him once long ago, and who now would receive her reward.
Karris’ accusing words burned his soul.
Judas. Judas.
It wasn’t so, Brannon protested silently. It wasn’t so. If they only could see why he was doing this—
They couldn’t. To them he was a Judas, and Judas he would remain.
He stopped, suddenly. His jungle-sensitive ears, aided by the vague blur of a foresight in his mind, picked up the sound of feet drumming against forest soil. Hundreds of feet.
“What’s the trouble?” Murdoch asked.
“Pack of wild dogs coming this way,” said Brannon. “Let’s pull into a tight circle and wait them out.”
“No!” Mrs. Marshall gasped suddenly. “No!”
Her ascetic-faced husband turned to her, skin drawn so tight over his face he looked mummified. He slapped her, once; a white blotch appeared on her face, rapidly turning red. “Keep quiet,” he said.
“That goes for all of you,” snapped Brannon. “They won’t bother us if they have some other quarry. Stay still, try not to move—and if any of you lose your heads and fire into the pack, you won’t live to fire a second time.”
He listened, tensely. First came the thump-thump of some large beast, then the pat-pat-pat of dogs, hundreds of them, in fierce pursuit.
“Here they come,” Brannon said.
The quarry came first, bursting out of the thick wall of vegetation that hemmed in the pathway on both sides. It was a Cutwold bull, eleven feet through the withers, a monster of a taurine with yellow curved horns two feet long jutting from its skull.
Now the bubbly slaver of fear covered its fierce jaws, and the thick black hide was slashed in a dozen places, blood oozing out steadily. The vanguard of the attacking force rode with the bull: two small blue dogs who clung to the animal’s hind legs, snapping furiously, hoping to slice through the hamstring tendon and bring the bull crashing to the ground.
The pack is hungry tonight, Brannon thought.
He had only a moment’s glimpse of the bull; then it was gone, blasting its way through the yielding underbrush, and only the sound of its snorting bleats of terror remained. But then came the pursuers.
Brannon had learned to fear the blue dogs of Cutwold more than the poison-trees or the velvet snakes or any of the other deadly jungle creatures he knew. The dogs were built low to the ground; they were whippet-like creatures whose claws could rend even the armor-thick leather of the giant bull, whose teeth bit the toughest meat, whose appetites never reached satiety. They burst into the clearing and streamed across the road so fast one dog appeared to melt into its successor, forming an unending lake of blue, a blur broken only by the glinting of their red eyes and snapping teeth.
Brannon remained quite still, standing with his group. The women were frozen, fearstruck; Napoli was staring at the dog horde with keen interest, but the other men appeared uneasy. Brannon counted minutes: one, two, three…
The numbers of dogs thinned until it was possible to see daylight between them. Off in the distance a cry of chilling intensity resounded: the bull had been brought to earth. Good, Brannon thought. The dogs would feed tonight, and for a while at least would keep away.
One last dog burst through the trampled brush. And paused.
And turned inquisitively, guided by who knew what mad impulse, to sniff at the clustered huddle of human beings standing silently in the jungle path.
It bared its teeth. It drew near. The rest of the pack was out of sight, almost inaudible. Suddenly Clyde Llewellyn lowered his heavy-cycle gun and sent three bullets smashing through the dog’s body and skull, even as Brannon reached out to prevent it.
The dog fell. Savagely Brannon smashed Llewellyn to the ground with one backhanded swipe. “You idiot! Want to kill us all?”
The mildness vanished from the little man’s face as he picked himself up. He started to go for his gun; Brannon tensed, but this time it was Murdoch who caught hold of Llewellyn. He shook him twice, slapped him.
“We’ve got to get moving now,” Brannon said. “The dogs are blood-crazy tonight. They’ll be back here any minute, as soon as the wind drifts the scent to them.” He pointed up the road. “Go on! Start running, and don’t stop!”
“What about you?” Murdoch asked.
“I’ll back you up. Get going.”
He watched as they ran ahead. As they passed out of sight, Brannon lifted the dead dog and heaved it as far in the opposite direction as he could. The yipping grew louder; the pack was returning.
They came a moment later, muzzles coated with red, smelling new blood. Brannon crouched beside the thick trunk of a quaa-tree, waiting. The dogs paused in the clearing, sniffed the air, and, ignoring Brannon, set off toward their dead companion.
Brannon turned and ran up ahead, rejoining the others.
They were waiting for him.
“The dogs are off our trail,” he said. He looked at the sullen-faced Llewellyn. A bruise was starting to swell on the side of his face. “You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you down as you deserved,” Brannon told him.
“Don’t talk like that to my clients,” said Murdoch.
“Your client nearly got us all killed. I specifically told you all to hold fire.”
“I didn’t like the looks of that dog,” said Llewellyn. “He looked dangerous.”
“One dog isn’t half as dangerous as a pack. And one live dog won’t draw a pack; a dead one will, when the blood gets into the air.”
“Is the whole trip going to be like this?” Mrs. Rhawn asked suddenly. “Dangerous?”
Brannon took a deep breath before replying. “Mrs. Rhawn, you’re on Cutwold to commit murder, whether you know it or not. The animals you’re hunting are people, just like you and me. Murder is never easy. There’s always da
nger. It’s the price you pay for your sport.”
Around the circle, faces whitened. Murdoch was taut with anger. Brannon looked inquisitively at him, but no reply was forthcoming.
Then he glanced upward. Both moons were high above, now, and the sun was barely visible, a lime-colored flicker hovering above the horizon, half intersected by the vaulting trees. It was getting late. It was almost time to make camp for the night.
“Let’s move along,” Brannon said.
For half an hour more they hacked their way deeper into the jungle, until it was obviously too dark to travel further that day. Brannon marched at the head of the file, eyes keen for danger, ears listening, mind shrouded in black thoughts.
Behind him came the others. Nine thrill-killers, he thought. Nine allegedly civilized human beings who were spending fabulous sums for the privilege of gunning down other beings coolly and consciencelessly.
It would be so easy, Brannon told himself, to lose these nine and their coordinator in the jungle—despite Marya Llewellyn. There were so many pitfalls to right and left of the main path: the carnivorous trees that waited, leaves quivering, for something meaty to trap their tropisms and plunge into a network of catch-claws. The giant toads whose tongues could flick out and snarl themselves around a man’s throat in an unbreakable lariat’s grip. All Brannon needed to do was lead them a short distance from the beaten path—
But that was the coward’s solution. No, he told himself. He would bring them to their destination, for only that would fully serve his purpose.
Above, a nightbird squawked in the sky, calling, “Keek! Keek! Keek!”
On Cutwold day was heralded by the dawnbirds, night by the nightbirds. It was a system more efficient than clocks. Brannon said, “Okay. We stop here. Drop your packs and let’s set up the shelter.”
Under Murdoch’s direction the plastic tent-bubble went up within minutes, puffing out of the extrusion panel carried for the purpose. Brannon patrolled the area, burning a wide swath around the camp with his flamer, as a signal to wildlife to stay away during the night. Unless they were ravenous, they would respect the singed circle of vegetation.