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BLOOD OF NALAKIA

[Editor's note: This story is not part of the Telzey cycle, since it is set in a much earlier period of Hub history. It gives some of the background of the Elaigar who figure as Telzey's opponents in the "Lion Game" sequence.] 

It was an added bitterness to Lane Rawlings to discover that in the face of sudden disaster the Nachief of Frome could react with the same unshakable, almost contemptuous, self-confidence which he showed toward her and his other human slaves. That the lonely station of the Terrestrial Bureau of Agriculture and the nameless world far below them was both alert and heavily armed enough to ward off the attack of a spaceship should have come as a stunning surprise to him—and Lane would have exchanged her own very slim chances of survival at that point for the satisfaction of seeing the Nachief show fear.

Instead, he did instantly what had to be done to avoid complete defeat.

Lane's mind did not attempt to keep up with the Nachief's actions. The ship was still rocking from the first blow of the unseen guns beneath, when she, Grant, and Sean were being flung into the central escape bubble. When a lock snapped shut behind them and the bubble lit up inside, she saw that the Nachief had followed them in and was crouched over the controls. Tenths of a second later came another explosion, triggered by the Nachief himself—an explosion that simultaneously ripped out the side of the ship and flung the bubble free . . .

Lane found herself staring out of the bubble's telescopic ports at the sunlit, green and brown strip of land toward which they were falling. It was framed on two sides by a great blue sweep of sea. Behind them, to the left, was the glassy dome of the station, twin trails of white smoke marking the mile-long parallel scars the ship's guns had cut into the soil in the instant of the Nachief's savage, wanton attack. The trails stopped just short of the dome. Whoever was down there also had reacted in the nick of time.

The scene tilted violently outside, and Lane went sprawling back on the forms of Sean and Grant. The two colonists gave no indication even of being conscious. They had sat about like terrorized children for the past several days; they lay there now like stunned animals. Regaining her balance, Lane realized the bubble was falling much too fast, and for an instant she had the fierce hope that it was out of control.

Then she understood: he wants to get us down near that station—near a food supply! A wave of sick, helpless fury washed over her.

The Nachief looked around, grinning briefly, almost as if he had caught the thought.

"Pot-shooting at us, Lane! But we'll make it."

The deep voice; the friendly, authoritative, easily amused voice she'd been in love with for over a year. The voice that had told her, quite casually, less than thirty-six hours ago, that she and Sean and Grant would have to die, because she had found out something she wasn't supposed to know—and because she had made the additional mistake of telling the other two. The voice had gone on as casually to describe the grotesque indecency of the kind of death the Nachief was planning for them—

She stared at the back of his massive blond head, weak with her terror and hatred, until the bubble lurched violently again, flinging her back. This time, when she scrambled up on hands and knees, they were dropping with a headlong, rushing finality that told her the bubble had been hit and was going to crash. But they were still a mile above ground.

She offered no resistance when the Nachief picked her up and hauled her out of the lock with him.

Ribbon-chutes were unfolding in a coordinated pattern of minor jolts above them. Though it was only the Nachief's arm that held her clamped hard against his side, Lane felt quite insanely calm. They had dropped below the point where the station's gunners could target on them. He was going to get her down alive. He had no intention of giving up his prey merely because his own life was in danger. Something struck against her legs—the barrel of the big hunting gun he held in his other hand. A sudden cunning thought came to her, and she went completely limp, waiting.

The ground was less than a hundred feet below, turning, tilting, expanding and rushing up at them, before she flung herself into a spasm of furious activity. She heard the Nachief's angry shout, felt them sway and jerk as his arm tightened with punishing, rib-cracking intensity about her. Then they struck.

Lane stood up presently, looked about dazedly and went limping over to the Nachief. He lay face down two hundred feet away. The chutes were entangled in a cluster of stubby trees, but they had dragged him that far first. He was breathing. He wasn't dead; but he was unconscious. She stared down at him incredulously, briefly close to hysterical laughter. She couldn't have done it intentionally; the Nachief kept his slaves under a repression to attempt no physical harm against him. She was free, for the moment anyway, only because she had tried to kill herself. Her glance went to a rock near his head, but a sense of weakness, a heavy dread, swept through her instantly.

The thing to do was to get out of the vicinity immediately. If she could reach the station before he did, she might warn its occupants what they were up against—provided they didn't kill her first. The Nachief's hunting gun lay almost at the point where she had fallen. It was too heavy for her use, or even to carry. But she paused long enough to thrust it hurriedly into a tangle of dry brush which should hide it from him for a while. Then she set off in the general direction of the station.

Only five hundred yards away, she had an unexpected glimpse of the crashed bubble in open ground far below her and stopped to stare at it with a sensation of horrified remorse. Grant and Sean hadn't had a chance after she had told them what she knew about the Nachief; in a way, she was responsible for their deaths. Hurrying on, she dismissed the thought with an effort, because it was more important just now that somebody might be coming out from the station to investigate the crash. But she couldn't risk waiting here. The station must be more than three miles away, and her fear of the Nachief actually still seemed to be growing. Out of sight and sound, the illusion of humanity he presented was dropping away. What remained was an almost featureless awareness of a creature as coldly and savagely alien as a monstrous spider—

Suddenly breathless and shaking, Lane stopped long enough to fight down that feeling. When she set off again, it was at a pace designed to carry her all the way to the station, if nobody came to meet her.

Ten minutes later, she heard the sharp crack of a missile-gun and a whistling overhead, followed by a distant shout. It wasn't the Nachief's gun. She turned to look for her challenger, a vast relief flooding through her.

The tall, brown-skinned man who stepped out of a little gravity-rider a few dozen feet away held a gun in his hands, but looked at Lane with no particular indication of anything but self-confident wariness and some curiosity. A sharp-snouted, sinuous, streamlined animal, something like a heavy, short-legged dog, flowed out of the rider's door behind him, sat up on muscular haunches and regarded Lane with gleaming black eyes. The man said, "Unh-uh, Sally!" warningly.

"Any other survivors?" His voice was not loud but carried the same self-assurance as his attitude.

"Only one." Lane hadn't missed the by-play. That animal, whatever it was, needed only a gesture to launch itself at her throat. Its lean brown form was that of a natural killer, and the command could easily be given. "Look," she hurried on, "will you just listen to me for thirty seconds, without interrupting—without any questions?"

"Thirty seconds?" He almost smiled. "Why not?"

"This other survivor—he's armed and dangerous! He's the one who tried to destroy your station—"

She hesitated and swallowed, realizing for the first time how preposterous her story would sound. "He's not a human being," she said flatly, almost sullenly.

The man's eyes might have become a trifle more wary, but he only nodded. And suddenly something seemed to break in Lane. She heard herself babbling it out—how Frome was a small human colony on a franchised world; how they had gone out there in a group from the Hub Systems a year before. That the Nachief, Bruce Sinclair Frome, had organized the emigration, the trip, everything. She'd been his secretary—

The station man kept on nodding and listening, noncommittally.

"I found out a few days ago that he's a man-eater! A blood-drinker—like a vampire—that was why he had set up the colony of Frome. He had eight hundred people under hypnotic control, and he was using ultrasonic signals to keep the controls in force. He's got instruments for that!" Lane said, her voice going shrill suddenly. "And he's been living on our blood all along, and nobody knew, and—"

"Take it easy!" It was a crisp though level-toned interruption, and it checked her effectively. She was sweating and shivering.

"You don't believe me, of course. He'll—"

"I might believe you," the man said amazingly. "You think he's after you now?"

"Of course, he's after me! He'll want to keep me from telling anyone. He brought us out here to kill us, the three who knew. The other two crashed in the bubble . . ."

He studied her another moment and motioned toward the gravity rider. "Better get in there."

The brown animal he'd called Sally slipped into the back of the rider ahead of Lane. It had a pungent, catty odor—the smell of a wild thing. The man came in last, and the rider rose from the ground. Seconds later, it was tracing a swift, erratic course at a twenty-foot height among the trees, soundless as a shadow.

"We're retreating a bit until we get this straightened out," the station man explained. "My name's Frazer. Yours?"

"Lane. Lane Rawlings."

"Well, Lane, we've a problem here. You see, I'm manning the station alone at present—unless you count Sally. There's a mining outfit five space-days away; they're the closest I know of. But they're not too cooperative. They might send an armed party over if I gave them an urgent enough call; and they might not. Five days is too long to wait anyway. We'll have to handle this ourselves."

"Oh, no!" she cried, stunned. "He—you don't realize how dangerous he is!"

"There'll be less risk," Frazer continued bluntly, "in going after him now, before he gets his bearings, so to speak, than to wait till he comes after us. We're on an island here, and it's not even a very big island. If he's—well, a sort of ogre, as you describe him—he'll find precious little to live on. The Bureau cleaned the animal life off the island quite a while ago. We're using it as an experimental ranch."

"Why can't we lock ourselves up in the station?" Fear was pounding in her again, a quick, hot tide.

Frazer brought the rider around in a slowing turn, halting it in mid-air.

"There's some sixty years of experimental work involved," he explained patiently. "And some of our cultures, some of the stuff we're growing here, becomes impossibly dangerous if it's not constantly controlled. The Bureau could get out a relief crew within two weeks, but we'd be obliged to raze the island from one end to the other by that time. That's getting rid of your Nachief of Frome the hard way."

Lane realized in abrupt dismay that she wouldn't be able to shake this man's hard self-confidence. And recalling suddenly the speed and effectiveness with which he had countered the Nachief's space-attack, she admitted that he might have some justification for it.

"He's got a long-range hunting gun," she warned shakily. "I suppose you know what you're doing—"

"Sure I know." Frazer smiled down at her. "Now, I'll drop you off at the station; and then Sally and I will go after your friend—"

"No!" she interrupted, terrified again at the prospect of being trapped alone on an island with the Nachief of Frome if Frazer failed. "I'll go with you. I can help."

Frazer seemed surprised but pleased. "You could be a help at that," he admitted. "Particularly since you know all his little ways. And we've got the rider—that should give us about the advantage we need . . ."

"What makes you so sure," Lane inquired a while later, "that he'll come to the bubble? He may suspect it's being watched."

They sat side by side hidden by shrubbery, a half mile from the wreck of the escape bubble, on somewhat higher ground. The gravity rider stood among bushes thirty feet behind them. A few hundred yards behind that was a great, rugged cliff face, bare of vegetation. It curved away to their left until, in the hazy distance, it dipped toward the sea.

"I imagine he does suspect it," Frazer conceded. "If he's anywhere around, he may even have seen us touch ground here." They had lifted high into the air to scan the area but had made sure of only one thing: that the Nachief of Frome was no longer where Lane had left him. On the other hand, there were a great many places where he could be by now. This part of the island was haphazardly forested. Thickets of trees alternated with stretches of rocky soil which seemed to support only a straw-colored reed. Zigzagging dense lines of hedgelike growths, almost black, seemed to follow concealed watercourses. Except for the towering cliff front, it was a place without distinguishing features of any kind where one could get lost very easily. It also provided, Lane realized uncomfortably, an ideal sort of background for the deadly game of hide-and-seek in which she was involved.

"He hasn't much choice though," Frazer was saying. "As I told you, the island's bare of all sizable animal life. He'll get hungry eventually."

Staring at the bubble, Lane felt herself whitening. Frazer went on, unaware of the effect he'd produced or unconcerned about it. "The other thing he might try is to get into the station, but his gun won't help him there. So he'll be back." His eyes shifted past Lane to the wide spread of scrub growth beyond her. "Just Sally," he said in a low voice, as if reassuring himself.

Sally came gliding into view a moment later, raised her head to gaze at them impersonally and vanished again with an undulating smoothness of motion that reminded Lane of a snake. It was as if the creature had slipped without a ripple into a gray-green sea.

"Trapped Sally on the mainland four years ago," Frazer remarked conversationally, still in low tones. "She's an elaig—seventy-pounds of killer and more brains than you'd believe. In bush like this, the average armed man wouldn't stand a chance against Sally. She knows pretty well what we're here for by now."

Lane shivered. Something about the cool, unhurried manner of Frazer as he talked and acted gave her, for minutes at a time, a sense of security she knew was false and highly dangerous. He seemed actually incapable of understanding the uncanny deadliness of this situation. She felt almost sorry for Frazer.

"You're wondering why I'm so afraid of him, aren't you?" she said slowly.

Frazer didn't answer immediately. Gun across his knees, a small knapsack he'd taken out of the rider strapped to his hip, he was studying her. Pleasantly enough, but not without an obvious appreciation of what he saw, even a touch of calculation. A tall, sun-darkened, competent man who felt capable of handling this or any other problem that might come his way to his complete satisfaction.

"Irrational fear of him could have been part of that hypnotic treatment he gave you," he told her, almost absently.

Lane shrugged, aware of a wave of sharp irritation. In the year since she'd known Bruce Sinclair Frome, she had almost forgotten the attraction the strong, clean lines of her body had for other men. She was being reminded of it now. And, perhaps because of that, she was realizing that part of her hatred for the Nachief was based in the complete shattering of her vanity in being discarded by him. She had a moment of unpleasant speculation as to what her reaction would have been if she had found out the truth about him—but had found out also that he still wanted her nevertheless . . .

She drove the thought away. The Nachief would die, if she could abet it. But the chances were that he regarded her and this overgrown boy scout beside her as not much more of a menace than Sean and Grant had been. She sat silent, fingering the small Deen nerve-gun Frazer had given her to pocket—"just in case." She'd warned him she probably wouldn't be able to force herself to use it—

"I just had the pleasant notion," Frazer remarked, "that your Nachief might ramble into one of our less hospitable cultures around here. That's what happened to the last two assistants they gave me, less than six months ago—and it would settle the problem, all right." He paused, thinking. "But I suppose any reasonably alert outworlder would be able to spot most of those things."

"I'm afraid," Lane agreed coolly, "that he'll be quite alert."

He looked at her again, digesting that in silence. "You really believe he isn't human, don't you?"

"I know he isn't human! He's different biologically. He actually needs blood to live on."

"Frome was his farm, and you colonists were his livestock, eh?"

"Something like that," she said, displeased at a description that was accurate enough to jolt her.

"The three of you he brought out here—what was his purpose in that?"

"To turn us loose, hunt us down, and eat us!" Lane said, all in a breath. And there was a momentary, tremendous relief at having been able to put it into so many words, finally.

Frazer blinked at her in thoughtful silence. "That gives us a sort of special advantage," he grinned then. "There's a group of primitive little humanoids along the mainland coast the Nachief could live on, if he got over there. But he doesn't know about them. So he'll be pretty careful not to blast us to pieces with that big gun you told me about."

Lane twisted her hands hard together. "He'd prefer that . . ." she agreed tonelessly.

"Then there's the gravity rider." Frazer turned a glance in the direction of the half-hidden vehicle behind them. "It gives us the greater mobility. If I were the Nachief, I'd wreck the rider before I tried to close in."

"And what do we do then?"

"Why, then we'll have a few tricks to play." He gave her his quick grin. "The rider's our bait. Until the Nachief takes it—or shows himself at the bubble—we can't do much about him. But after he's taken it, he'll try to move in on us."

Lane shook her head resignedly. She didn't particularly like Frazer. But she had a feeling now that he wasn't bluffing. He was decidedly of a different and more dangerous breed than the colonists of Frome. "You're in charge," she said.

"Still afraid of him?" he challenged.

"Plenty! But in a way this is better than I'd hoped for. I thought if I told anyone here about the Nachief, they'd think I was crazy—until it was too late."

Frazer scratched his chin, squinting at the distant bubble, as if studying some motion she couldn't see. "If he isn't human," he said, "what do you think he is?"

"I don't know," she admitted, with the surge of superstitious terror that speculation always aroused in her.

"I might have thought you were crazy," Frazer went on, smiling at her, "except—it seems you've never heard of the Nalakians?"

She shook her head.

"It was a colony of Earth people. Not too far from the Hub Systems, but not much of a colony either—everybody seems to have forgotten about it for about eight generations after it was started. When it was rediscovered, the descendants of the original colonists had changed into something more or less like you describe your Nachief. There were internal physiological modifications—I forget the details. Those new Nalakians showed a cannibalistic interest in other human beings, which may have been mainly psychological. And they're supposed to have been muscled like lions, with a lion's reactions. In short, a perfect human carnivore type."

He had her interest now—because it fitted! She sat up excitedly. "What happened to them?"

Frazer grinned. "What a lion can expect to happen when he draws too much attention to himself. They raided colonies in nearby systems, got tracked back to their own planet, and were pretty thoroughly exterminated. All that was about eighty years ago. But there may have been survivors in space at the time, you see. And those survivors may have had descendants who were clever enough to camouflage themselves as ordinary human beings. I thought of that when you first told me about your Nachief."

It gave her a curious sense of relief. The Nachief of Frome had become somewhat less terrifying, seemed much more on a par with themselves. "It could be."

"It could very much be," Frazer nodded. "Aside from wanting to play cat-and-mouse with you, he didn't tell you of any special motive for bringing you to this particular world, did he?"

"No," Lane said puzzled. "He was taking us away from Frome, so he could make it look like an accident. What other special motive should he have?"

"Probably not a very sane one," Frazer said, "but it checks, all right. I was born on this station, you see, and I know the area pretty well. This planet is Nalakia, and the original Nalakian colony was on the mainland, only eight hundred miles from here. They even used animals like Sally there in their hunting."

They stared at each other in speculative silence; and Lane shivered.

"They're not here now," Frazer said positively. "Not one of them—or I would have spotted their traces. But what was his purpose? A sort of blood-sacrifice to his lamented ancestors, or to planetary gods? I almost wish we could take him alive, to find out—"

He stopped suddenly. Lane stiffened, wondering what he'd seen or heard. He made a tiny gesture with one hand, motioning her to silence. In the stillness, she became aware of something moving into her range of vision to the left and becoming quiet again. She realized Sally had joined them.

Then there were long seconds filled with nothing but the wild beating of her heart.

The period ended in a brief, not-very-loud thudding sound behind them, which was nevertheless the complete and final shattering of the gravity rider.

The Nachief of Frome had grounded them.

More than a mile off, Frazer was flattened on the rocky ground beside her, pulling her backward. "He's got me outgunned, all right. Now, just keep crawling back till you reach the gully that's twenty feet behind us. When you get there, keep low and let yourself slide down into it."

Lane tried to answer and shook her head instead.

"Is he using one of those ultrasonic gadgets you were telling me about? Sally feels something she doesn't like."

"I—I don't know. He never used one on me before."

"Well, how do you feel?"

"It's crazy!" she bleated. "I want to run back there! I want to run back to him!" Her legs were beginning to jerk uncontrollably.

"Close your eyes a moment, Lane."

She didn't question him . . . he was going to do something to help her. She closed her eyes.

Very gradually, Lane Rawlings became aware of the fact that she and Frazer and Sally were in a different sort of place now. It began to shape itself in her consciousness as a deeply shaded place with tall trees all around. To the right, a wall of gray rock rose steeply to a point where it vanished above the tops of the trees. The nearby area was dotted with boulders and grown with straggling gray grass. It was enclosed by solid ranks of gray-green thickets which rose up to a height of twenty feet or more between the trees.

Lane had a vague feeling next that a considerable amount of time had passed. Only then did she realize that her eyes were open—and that she was suspended somehow in mid-air, her feet free of the ground. The next thing she noticed was that her hands were fastened together before her. Jolted fully awake by that, she discovered finally the harness of straps around her by which she swung from a thick tree-branch overhead.

Frazer was standing beside her. He looked both apologetic and grimly amused.

"Sorry I had to tie you up. You were being very active." His voice was low and careful.

"What happened?" Becoming aware of assorted aches and discomforts in her body, she squirmed futilely. "Can't you let me down?"

"Not so loud." He made a gesture of silence. "Afraid not. Your friend isn't so far off, though I don't think he's actually located us as yet."

She swallowed and was still.

"He keeps trying to get a reaction out of you," Frazer went on, in the same careful tone. "It's some kind of signal. Sally can sense it, and it makes her furious; though I don't feel anything myself. You must be conditioned to it—and the effect is to make you want to run toward the source of the vibrations."

"I didn't know he'd brought any instruments with him," Lane said dully.

"He may not have intended to use them, unless the game took a turn he didn't like. Which I expect it has now. I gave you a hypo shot back at the gully that knocked you out, an hour ago," he added mildly. "The reason you're tied up is that, conscious or not, you keep trying to run back to the Nachief. It's rather fantastic to watch, but running in the air won't get you any closer to him . . ."

He turned suddenly. Sally, upright on her haunches twenty feet away, had made a soft, snarling sound. Her head was pointing at the thickets to their left, and the black eyes glittered with excitement.

"Better not talk any more," Frazer cautioned. "He's fairly close, though he's taking his time. He's a good hunter." he added with a curious air of approval. "Now I'm giving you another shot to keep you quiet while he closes in, or he might be able to force you to do something that would spoil the play." He was reaching for her arm as he spoke.

Lane started to protest but didn't quite make it. Something jolted through her body like an electric shock. Her legs jerked violently—and Frazer's face, and the trees and rocks behind him, started vanishing in a swirling blackness. In the blackness, she felt herself running; and at its other end, the Nachief's smiling face looked at her, waiting. She thought she was screaming and became briefly aware of the hard, sweaty pads of Frazer's palm clasped about her mouth.

Frazer stood beside Lane's slowly twisting and jerking body a few seconds longer, watching her anxiously. He couldn't very well load her down with any more drug than she was carrying right now. Satisfied then that she was incapable of making any disturbance for the time, he moved quietly back to Sally, gun ready in his hands.

"Getting close, eh?" he murmured. Sally twitched both ears impatiently and thereafter ignored him.

Frazer, almost immediately, became as oblivious of his companion. In a less clearly defined way, he was also quite conscious of the gradual approach of the Nachief of Frome, though the fierce little animal beside him was using more direct channels of awareness. He knew that the approach was following the winding path through the thickets he had taken thirty minutes earlier with Lane slung across his shoulder. And he didn't need the bristling of the hair at the back of his neck or the steady thumping of his heart to tell him that an entirely new sort of death was walking on his trail.

If the Nachief of Frome followed that path to the end, he told himself calculatingly, it was going to be a very close thing—probably not even the fifty-fifty chance he'd previously considered to be the worst he need expect. He had selected the spot where they and their guns would settle it, if it came to that. But it would be the Nachief then who could select the exact instant in time for the meeting. And Frazer knew by now, with a sure, impersonal judgment of himself and of the creature gliding up the path, that he was outmatched. The Nachief simply had turned out to be a little more than he'd counted on.

For a long minute or two, it seemed the stalker had stopped and was waiting. Lane hung quietly in her harness. Frazer decided the Nachief had given up trying to prod her into action. So he knew also, now, that it was between the two of them. Frazer grinned whitely in the shadows.

But what happened next took him completely by surprise. A sense of something almost tangible but invisible, a shadow that wasn't a shadow, coming toward him. Sally, Frazer realized, wasn't aware of it; and he reassured himself by thinking that whatever Sally couldn't detect could not be very damaging, physically. Nevertheless, he discovered in himself, in the next few seconds, an unexpected capacity for horror. The mind of the Nachief of Frome was speaking to him, demandingly, a momentary indecision overlying its dark, icy purpose of destruction. Frazer, refusing the answer, felt his own mind shudder away from that contact.

Almost immediately, the contact was broken; the shadow had vanished. He had no time to wonder about it; because now the final meeting, if it came, would be only seconds away . . .

Then, as if she had received a signal, Sally made a soft, breathing sound and settled slowly back to the ground on all fours, relaxing. She glanced up at Frazer for a moment, before shifting her gaze to a point in the bushes before her.

Frazer, a little less certain of his senses, did not relax just yet. But he, too, turned his eyes cautiously from the point where the path came into the glade to study the thickets ahead of them.

Those twenty-foot bushes were an unusual sort of growth. Not precisely a native of Nalakia, but one of the genetic experiments left by the colonists, that couldn't have been tolerated on any less isolated world. The tops of a group of the shrubs dead ahead, near one of the turns of the hidden path, were shivering slightly. The Nachief, having decided to make his final approach through the thickets, was a sufficiently expert stalker not to disturb the growth to that extent.

The growth was disturbing itself . . .

Aware of the warm-blooded life moving through below it, it was gently shaking out the fluffy pods at its tips to send near-microscopic enzyme crystals floating down on the intruding life form. Coating it with a fine, dissolving dust—

Dissolving through the pores of the skin; entering more swiftly through breathing nostrils into the lungs. Seeping through mouth, and ears, and eyes—

A thrashing commotion began suddenly in the thickets. It shook a new cloud of dust out of the pods, which made a visible haze in the air, even from where Frazer stood. He watched it a trifle worriedly, though the crystals did not travel far, even on a good breeze. The growth preferred to contact and keep other life forms where they would do it the most good, immediately above its roots.

The thrashing became frenzied. There was a sudden gurgling screech.

"That's fine," Frazer said softly between his teeth. "A few good breaths of the stuff now. It'll be over quicker."

More screeches, which merged within seconds into a wet, rapid yapping. The thrashing motions had weakened but they went on for another half minute or so, before they and the yapping stopped together, abruptly. The Nachief of Frome was giving up life very reluctantly; but he gave it up.

And now, gradually, Frazer relaxed. Oddly enough, watching the tops of the monstrous growth that had done his killing for him continue to quiver in a gentle, satisfied agitation, he was aware of a feeling of sharp physical letdown. Almost of disappointment—

But that, he realized, was scarcely a rational feeling. Frazer was, by and large, a very practical man.

Some time later, he removed from his knapsack one of the tools an employee of the Bureau's lonely outworld stations was likely to require at any time. Carefully, without moving from his tracks, he burned his vegetable ally out of existence. With another tool, he presently smothered the spreading flames again.

After a little rummaging, he discovered what must be the ultrasonic transmitter—a beautifully compact little gadget, which the fire had not damaged beyond the point of repair. Frazer cleaned it off carefully and pocketed it.

It was near nightfall when he put Lane Rawlings down on his bed in the station's living area. She had not regained consciousness on the long hike back to the station. He was a little worried, since he had never been obliged to use that type of drug in so massive a dose on a human being before. However, he decided that Lane was sleeping naturally now. Her sleep might be due as much to emotional exhaustion as to the effects of the drug. She should wake up presently, very hungry and with very sore muscles, but otherwise none the worse.

Straightening up, he found Sally beside him with her forepaws on the bed, peering at the girl's face. Sally looked up at him briefly, with an obvious question. The same hungry question she had asked when they first met Lane.

He shook his head, a gesture Sally understood very well. "Unh-uh," he said softly. "This one's our friend—if you can get that kind of idea into your ugly little head. Outside, Sally!"

He shut the door to the room behind him, because one couldn't be quite sure of Sally, though the chances were she would simply ignore the girl's existence from now on. A decision involving Lane Rawlings had been shaping itself in his mind throughout the day; but he had kept pushing it back out of sight. There was no point in getting excited about it before he found out whether or not it was practicable.

Sally padded silently after him as he made his customary nightfall round of the station's control areas. A little later, checking one of the Bureau's star-maps, he found the world of Frome indicated there. That was exceptionally good luck, since he wouldn't have to rely now on the spotty kind of information regarding its location he could expect to get from Lane. And, considering his plans, the location couldn't have been improved on—almost but not quite beyond the range of the little stellar flier waiting to serve in emergencies in its bombproof hangar beneath the station. He intended to leave the Bureau's investigators no reason to suspect anything but a destructive space-raid had occurred here. But even if he slipped up, they wouldn't think of looking for Frazer as far away as Frome.

What had been no more than a notion in his mind not many hours before suddenly looked not only practicable, but foolproof. Or very nearly—

Whistling gently, he settled down in the central room of his living area, to think out the details. Now he could afford to let the excitement grow up in him.

"Know what, Sally?" he addressed his silent companion genially. "That might, just possibly, have been my old man we bumped off today!"

It was a point Sally wasn't interested in. She had jumped up on a table and was thumping its surface gently with her tapered, muscular tail, watching him—waiting to be fed. Frazer brought a container that held a day's rations for Sally out of a wall cabinet. and emptied its liquid contents into a bowl for her. Sally began to lap. Frazer hesitated a moment, took out a second container and partly filled another bowl for himself. Looking from it to the animal with an expression of sardonic amusement, he raised the second bowl to his lips. Presently be set it down empty. Sally was still lapping.

It wasn't too likely, he knew, that the late Nachief of Frome actually had been his father. But it was far from being an impossibility. Frazer had known since he was twelve years old that he had been fathered by a Nalakian living in the Hub Systems. His mother had told him, when an incident involving one of the humanoids of the mainland had revealed Frazer's developing Nalakian inclinations. She had made a fumbling, hysterical attempt to kill him immediately afterward, but had died herself instead. Even at that age, Frazer had been very quick. It had taught him, however, that to be quick wasn't enough—even living on the fringes of the unaware herds of civilization as he usually was, there remained always for one of the Nalakian breed the disagreeable necessity of being very cautious.

Until today—

At this point in his existence, he could afford to drop caution. Pure, ruthless boldness should make him sole lord and owner of the colony and the world of Frome within a week. Frazer was comfortably certain that he had enough and to spare of that quality to take over his heritage in style.

He studied the Nachief's ultrasonic transmitter a while.

"Have to learn how to use this gadget," he informed Sally idly. "But it's not very complicated. And if he has them already conditioned—"

Otherwise, he decided, he was quite capable now of doing it himself. An attempt to assume hypnotic control of his two latest station assistants had turned out unsatisfactorily half a year before, so that he'd been obliged to dispose of them. The possibility of reinforcing controls by mechanical means hadn't occurred to him at the time. His admiration for the Nachief of Frome's ingenuity was high. But it was mingled with a sort of impersonal contempt.

"Sally, if he hadn't overplayed it like a fool, he would have had all he could want for life. But a pure carnivore's bound to have a one-track mind, I suppose—"

He completed the thought to himself: That he had a very desirable advantage over the Nachief there. Biologically, he could get by comfortably on a humanly acceptable diet. Aside from the necessity of indoctrinating Lane Rawlings with a suitable set of memories, he might even decide to refrain from the use of hypnotic conditioning, until an emergency might call for it. His Nalakian qualities, sensibly restrained, would make him a natural leader in any frontier colony. There was something intriguing now about the notion of giving up the lonely delights of the predator to assume that role on Frome. In another generation, the genetically engineered biological pattern should be diluted beyond the danger point in his strain. No one need ever know.

Frazer chuckled, somewhat surprised by the sudden emergence of the social-human side of him—and also aware of the fact that he probably wouldn't take the notion too seriously in the end. But that was something he could decide on later . . .

He sat there a while, thinking pleasurably of Lane's strong young body. To play the human role completely should have undeniable compensations. Finally he became aware of Sally again, watching him with quiet black eyes. She had finished her bowl.

"Have some more?" he invited good-humoredly. "It's a celebration!"

Sally licked her lips.

He poured the balance of his container into her bowl and stood beside her, scratching her gently back of the ears, while she lapped swiftly at the thick, red liquid, shivering in the ecstasy of gorging. Frazer waited until she had finished the last drop before shooting her carefully through the back of the skull. Sally sank forward without a quiver and lay still.

"Hated to do it, Sally," he apologized gravely. "But I just couldn't take you along. We carnivores can't ever really be trusted."

Which was, he decided somewhat wryly, the simple truth. He might accept the human role, at that; but, depending on the circumstances, never quite without qualification.

It was almost his last coherent thought. The very brief one that followed was a shocked realization that the sudden, terrible, thudding sensation in his spine and skull meant that a Deen gun was being used on him.

Lane Rawlings remained motionless in the doorframe behind Frazer, leaning against it as if for support, for a good three minutes after he had dropped to the floor and stopped kicking. It wasn't that she was afraid of fainting. She only wanted to make very sure, at this distance, that Frazer was going to stay dead. She agreed thoroughly with his last remark.

The thought passed through her mind in that time that she could be grateful to the Nachief of Frome for one thing, at any rate—it had amused him to train his secretary to be a very precise shot.

After a while, she triggered the Deen gun once more, experimentally. Frazer produced no reactions now; he was as dead as Sally. Lane gave both of them a brief inspection before she pocketed the little gun and turned her attention to the food containers in the wall cabinet. With some reluctance, she opened one and found exactly what she expected to find. Now, the mainland humanoids Frazer had talked about might have a less harried existence in the future.

She looked down at Frazer's long, muscular body once more, with almost clinical curiosity. Then left the room and locked it behind her. She had no intention of entering it again, but there was evidence here that would be of interest to others—provided she found herself capable of operating the type of communicators used by the station.

Thirty minutes later, with no particular difficulty, she had contacted the area headquarters of the Bureau of Agriculture. She gave them her story coherently. Even if they didn't believe her, it was obvious they would waste no time in getting a relief crew to the station. Which was all Lane was interested in. After the Bureau concluded its investigations, somebody might do something about providing psychological treatment for the Frome colonists. But she wasn't concerned about that. She was returning to the Hub Systems.

She remained seated in the dim light of the communications cell for a time. She watched her dark reflection in the polished surfaces of its walls and listened to the intermittent whirring of a ventilator in the next office, which was all that broke the silence of the station now. She wondered whether she would have become suspicious of Frazer soon enough to do her any good, if she hadn't known for the past few weeks that she was carrying a child of the Nachief of Frome. For the past three days, she had been wondering also whether saving her life, at least for a while, by informing the Nachief of the fact, would be worthwhile. It was easy to imagine what a child of his might grow up to be.

Unaware, detail by detail since their meeting, Frazer had filled out her mental picture of that. So she had known enough to survive the two feral creatures in the end . . .

As soon as she returned to the easy-going anonymity of the Hub Systems, this other one of their strain would die unborn. The terrible insistence on life on their own terms which Frazer and the Nachief had shown was warning enough against repetition of the nightmare.

Lane caught herself thinking, though, that there had been something basically pitiful about that inward-staring, alien blindness to human values, which forced all other life into subservience to itself because it could see only itself. She stirred uneasily.

The ventilator in the next office shut off with a sudden click.

"Of course, it will die!" she heard herself say aloud in the silence of the station. Perhaps a little too loudly . . .  

After that, the silence remained undisturbed. A new contemplation grew in Lane as she sat there wondering about Frazer's mother.

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Framed