Storm Over Warlock | Page 4

as suddenly as it had appeared.
Shann squeezed between two trees and then paused. The trunk of the
larger was deeply scored with scratches dripping viscid gobs of sap, a
sap which was a bright froth of scarlet. Taggi had left his mark here,
and not too long ago.
The soft carpet of moss showed no paw marks, but he thought he knew
the goal of the animals--a lake down-valley. Shann was beginning to
plan now. The Throgs had not blasted the Terran camp out of existence;
they had only made sure of the death of its occupiers. Which meant
they must have some use for the installations. For the general loot of a
Survey field camp would be relatively worthless to those who picked
over the treasure of entire cities elsewhere. Why? What did the Throgs
want? And would the alien invaders continue to occupy the domes for
long?
Shann did not realize what had happened to him since that shock of
ruthless attack. From early childhood, when he had been thrown on his
own to scratch a living--a borderline existence of a living--on the
Dumps of Tyr, he had had to use his wits to keep life in a scrawny and

undersized body. However, since he had been eating regularly from
Survey rations, he was not quite so scrawny any more.
His formal education was close to zero, his informal and off-center
schooling vast. And that particular toughening process which had been
working on him for years now aided in his speedy adaption to a new set
of facts, formidable ones. He was alone on a strange and perhaps
hostile world. Water, food, safe shelter, those were important now. And
once again, away from the ordered round of the camp where he had
been ruled by the desires and requirements of others, he was thinking,
planning in freedom. Later (his hand went to the butt of his stunner)
perhaps later he might just find a way of extracting an accounting from
the beetle-faces, too.
For the present, he would have to keep away from the Throgs, which
meant well away from the camp. A fleck of green showed through the
amethyst foliage before him--the lake! Shann wriggled through a last
bush barrier and stood to look out over that surface. A sleek brown
head bobbed up. Shann put fingers to his mouth and whistled. The head
turned, black button eyes regarded him, short legs began to churn water.
To his gratification the swimmer was obeying his summons.
Taggi came ashore, pausing on the fine gray sand of the verge to shake
himself vigorously. Then the wolverine came upslope at a clumsy
gallop to Shann. With an unknown feeling swelling inside him, the
Terran went down on both knees, burying both hands in the coarse
brown fur, warming to the uproarious welcome Taggi gave him.
"Togi?" Shann asked as if the other could answer. He gazed back to the
lake, but Taggi's mate was nowhere in sight.
The blunt head under his hand swung around, black button nose
pointed north. Shann had never been sure just how intelligent, as
mankind measured intelligence, the wolverines were. He had come to
suspect that Fadakar and the other experts had underrated them and that
both beasts understood more than they were given credit for. Now he
followed an experiment of his own, one he had had a chance to try only
a few times before and never at length. Pressing his palm flat on

Taggi's head, Shann thought of Throgs and of their attack, trying to
arouse in the animal a corresponding reaction to his own horror and
anger.
And Taggi responded. A mutter became a growl, teeth gleamed--those
cruel teeth of a carnivore to whom they were weapons of aggression.
Danger ... Shann thought "danger." Then he raised his hand, and the
wolverine shuffled off, heading north. The man followed.
They discovered Togi busy in a small cove where a jagged tangle of
drift made a mat dating from the last high-water period. She was
finishing a hearty breakfast, the remains of a water rat being buried
thriftily against future need after the instincts of her kind. When she
was done she came to Shann, inquiry plain to read in her eyes.
There was water here, and good hunting. But the site was too close to
the Throgs. Let one of their exploring flyers sight them, and the little
group was finished. Better cover, that's what the three fugitives must
have. Shann scowled, not at Togi, but at the landscape. He was tired
and hungry, but he must keep on going.
A stream fed into the cove from the west, a guide of sorts. With very
little knowledge of the countryside, Shann was inclined to follow that.
Overhead the sun made its usual