Storm Over Warlock | Page 8

game brought in by exploring parties and labeled "safe." But how long
he could keep to the varieties of native food he knew was uncertain.
Sooner or later he must experiment for himself. Already he drank the
stream water without the aid of purifiers, and so far there had been no
ill results from that necessary recklessness. Now the stream suggested
fish. But instead he chanced upon another water inhabitant which had
crawled up on land for some obscure purpose of its own. It was a
sluggish scaled thing, an easy victim to his club, with thin, weak legs it
could project at will from a finned and armor-plated body.
Shann offered the head and guts to Togi, who had abandoned the wasp
nest. She sniffed in careful investigation and then gulped. Shann built a
small fire and seared the firm greenish flesh. The taste was flat, lacking
salt, but the food eased his emptiness. Enheartened, he started south,
hoping to find water sometime during the morning.
By noon he had his optimism justified with the discovery of a spring,
and the wolverines had brought down a slender-legged animal whose
coat was close in shade to the dusky purple of the vegetation. Smaller
than a Terran deer, its head bore, not horns, but a ridge of stiffened hair
rising in a point some twelve inches about the skull dome. Shann
haggled off some ragged steaks while the wolverines feasted in earnest,
carefully burying the head afterward.
It was when Shann knelt by the spring pool to wash that he caught the
clamor of the clak-claks. He had seen or heard nothing of the flyers
since he had left the lake valley. But from the noise now rising in an
earsplitting volume, he thought there was a sizable colony near-by and
that the inhabitants were thoroughly aroused.
He crept on his hands and knees to near-by brush cover, heading
toward the source of that outburst. If the claks were announcing a
Throg scouting party, he wanted to know it.
Lying flat, with branches forming a screen over him, the Terran gazed
out on a stretch of grassland which sloped at a fairly steep angle to the
south and which must lead to a portion of countryside well below the

level he was now traversing.
The clak-claks were skimming back and forth, shrieking their staccato
war cries. Following the erratic dashes of their flight formation, Shann
decided that whatever they railed against was on the lower level, out of
his sight from that point. Should he simply withdraw, since the
disturbance was not near him? Prudence dictated that; yet still he
hesitated.
He had no desire to travel north, or to try and scale the mountains. No,
south was his best path, and he should be very sure that route was
closed before he retreated.
Since any additional fuss the clak-claks might make on sighting him
would be undistinguished in their now general clamor, the Terran
crawled on to where tall grass provided a screen at the top of the slope.
There he stopped short, his hands digging into the earth in sudden
braking action.
Below, the ground steamed from a rocket flare-back, grasses burned
away from the fins of a small scoutship. But even as Shann rose to one
knee, his shout of welcome choked in his throat. One of those fins sank,
canting the ship crookedly, preventing any new take-off. And over the
crown of a low hill to the west swung the ominous black plate of a
Throg flyer.
The Throg ship came up in a burst of speed, and Shann waited tensely
for some countermove from the scout. Those small speedy Terran ships
were prudently provided with weapons triply deadly in proportion to
their size. He was sure that the Terran ship could hold its own against
the Throg, even eliminate the enemy. But there was no fire from the
slanting pencil of the scout. The Throg circled warily, obviously
expecting a trap. Twice it darted back in the direction from which it had
come. As it returned from its second retreat, another of its kind showed,
a black coin dot against the amber of the sky.
Shann felt sick inside. Now the Terran scout had lost any advantage
and perhaps all hope. The Throgs could box the other in, cut the

downed ship to pieces with their energy beams. He wanted to crawl
away and not witness this last disaster for his kind. But some stubborn
core of will kept him where he was.
The Throgs began to circle while beneath them the flock of clak-claks
screamed and dived at the slanting nose of the Terran ship. Then that
same slashing energy he had watched quarter the camp snapped from
the far plate across the stricken scout. The man