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7

It took almost two days to locate the swimmer ship. As Captain Bymer had predicted, it was skimming the fringes of a dense meteor cloud when spotted. It might have spotted the sentinel simultaneously. It edged into the hurtling space avalanche, vanished from instrument detection. It didn't reappear.

Bymer said, "If he tries to cut through that sludge, he's had it! He won't try."

"So where is he?" said Crowell.

"He's put down somewhere—some big rock near the point of entry. He'll come out eventually. But if we wait for that, we may lose him."

"Then let's not wait." Crowell was beginning to like Captain Bymer.

They found the swimmer presently, sitting at the bottom of a deep ragged crevice in one of the larger meteorite chunks. When they signaled it, it drove up from the crevice, guns blazing. The action lasted barely twenty seconds. Then the swimmer was hulled, silenced and blinded, spinning through space. Captain Bymer held fire. A string of spacesuited figures spurted from the wreck. They made no attempt to escape; there was nowhere to go.

An hour later, a fresh load of prisoners was in the personnel freezer, and the sentinel ship was on its way back to Kulkoor. They hadn't tried to board the swimmer. With its power dead, it was being chewed up by the drift before the last survivor of its crew had been brought into the sentinel.

* * *

Crowell had intended to interrogate some of the captured swimmers at length before returning to the Base. But when he got in contact with Guy Hansen to let him know the period of communicator silence was over, Hansen said, "I think you'd better come down as soon as you can, Crowell."

"Why?" Crowell asked.

"For one thing, you'll have an opportunity to meet that mysterious Galestral biota analyst. Farquhar's spending the night at Station Three."

"Good enough!" Crowell said. "We'll be there as quickly as Captain Bymer can get us back. Anything else?"

"Yes. The Zoology Department's lost a man. Alex Hays. We found his body today some five miles north of Station Three. He'd been killed by an animal—apparently a previously unrecorded species he was trying to collect. That, incidentally, is what brought Farquhar to view."

"How did Farquhar hear about it?"

Hansen said dryly, "It turns out that one person on the Base with whom he's been in fairly regular communicator contact is Dr. Freemont of Zoology. They've been exchanging information on Kulkoor fauna for the past month. It didn't occur to Freemont to mention it until now. He called Farquhar after the body was found, and Farquhar showed up at the Station some five hours later."

"He wants to look for the animal?" Crowell said.

"I'd assume it. He didn't tell Freemont his purpose.

"Do you know what general type of animal it's supposed to be?"

"A large fur-covered biped. Hays' initial report referred to it as a humanoid giant."

"A—when did he make that initial report?"

"Four planet days ago."

"And Dr. Freemont and the Zoology Department didn't think that was worth mentioning either?"

"It seems," said Hansen, "that the Zoology Department didn't take Alex Hays' story seriously."

* * *

"One might have called Alex a romantic, Captain Witter," Dr. Freemont was saying defensively a few hours later. "To put it more bluntly, he was an overly imaginative young man, and he let the characteristic interfere with his work. Zoology is understaffed, and on more than one previous occasion valuable department time was wasted in trying to follow up unsubstantiated reports made by him."

Crowell nodded. "I understand. Just what did he report on this occasion—and did he leave notes?"

"We've found no notes. But he did talk a good deal about his experience. Today I checked what he'd told me against what he'd told others, and found that his story was, in fact, rather consistent."

"You're inclined to believe it now?"

"I'm more inclined to believe it than I was. It's possible, after all, that the planet's fauna has developed a biped form, or, at any rate, a large animal which occasionally stands, even walks, on its hind legs. If so, it must be an exceedingly rare species, or it should have been sighted before. Hays was in an aircar, making a routine fauna count, when he saw it. He said he had the impression of looking down at a creature like the mythical ogres of Earth." Dr. Freemont's mouth quirked in distaste. "I took the time to question him about it. More factually then, he claimed it was a biped, with long straight legs, but massive and apelike in the upper part of the body. Its arms were long and heavy. It was apparently very large for that type of structure—Hays estimated it as eight feet in height, with a weight of well over five hundred pounds. It was furred, brown-black in color. Its head was relatively large, with pointed ears or earlike appendages. There were no weapons or other artifacts—in other words, no indications of more than animal intelligence."

Dr. Freemont reflected a moment. "I believe that sums up the description."

"It seems a quite specific one," Crowell said.

"Yes—perhaps more so than one should expect. Alex Hays evidently did see something. I'm not convinced that what he saw would match his description of it too closely."

"Why do you think that?"

The zoologist shrugged. "Hays said the creature moved quickly. He had it briefly in view at the edge of a stand of forest, saw it again some seconds later as it passed through an opening among the trees. He continued to circle above the forest for over an hour but saw no more of it. I feel he may have used his imagination to supply more than those glimpses actually showed him. He tried to persuade me to have Zoology organize a search for the biped, and collect it. I turned him down. I did call Gerson, who's in charge at Station Three, to check on the story. Gerson has worked together with Hays, and he simply laughed. He assured me there'd never been any indication of such a creature in that area, and, of course, Station Three has gone over the entire vicinity rather thoroughly. Hays asked to be relieved of his regular duties so he could hunt the creature by himself, and I refused."

"So he went after it without authorization?" Crowell said.

"Yes. In part, I'm afraid, because his colleagues had been making something of a joke of the Hays Ogre. I didn't learn until this morning that he'd left the Base yesterday after checking out an aircar. He'd forged my signature on the permit. When he didn't reply to communicator calls, I informed Mr. Hansen that he was missing and might be in trouble."

Crowell looked over at Hansen. Hansen said, "Herrick and I went out in two cars to look for Hays. We found his car within half an hour. It was standing in the open in the general area where he'd reported seeing the biped. What was left of his body was under some bushes a hundred yards away. Part of it had been devoured. His energy carbine lay thirty feet from the body. It was almost fully charged but set to fire, and something like a fifteen-second burst had been fired from it. Apparently Hays missed."

"Apparently?" said Crowell.

Hansen said, "There were heavy rainstorms in that section during the night. They left no tracks, nothing at all to show what kind of creature killed Hays. We made a search of the surrounding ground, thinking it might have been hurt badly enough by the carbine to go into hiding nearby. We found nothing. The place is on the edge of a dense stretch of forest which extends up into the mountains, and to look further for it seemed useless."

Dr. Freemont remarked, "The condition of Hays' body, incidentally, is no proof that the killer was carnivorous. There are a number of scavenger species in the northern forests which quickly dispose of anything dead or dying."

"Was Hays a reasonably good shot?" Crowell asked.

"I would say so. He liked hunting and brought in many specimens for the department during our first weeks of operation on Kulkoor."

"I was thinking," Crowell said, "that it isn't really easy to miss something big that's coming at you with an energy carbine. He should have had it in his sights for most of those fifteen seconds."

"Unless he panicked," Hansen said.

"Yes, that's possible. What about Farquhar, Doctor? Did he comment in any way on what had happened?"

"He said only that he'd like to find out more about the creature Hays had encountered, and asked me to arrange to have him stay over at Station Three tonight."

"You know he did show up there?"

"Yes, an hour or two after sundown. At the moment, I'm not sure of the exact time. Dan Gerson called me to say Farquhar had arrived."

Hansen said, "Would you like me to call the Station now and put you in touch with Farquhar""

Crowell shook his head, looked at his watch. "He may have reasons for not wanting to be in touch with me. The night's almost over anyway. Lieutenant Tegeler and I will fly out to the Station immediately and try to catch Farquhar before he wakes up."

* * *

It was barely first light when Crowell's repaired car came drifting down toward Station Three. The Station was a low wide structure, built against and partly into a rocky slope, two hundred feet below a dark line of forest along the crest of the slope. Ilken, watching the ground screen, said, "Two cars parked down there. Only one belongs to the Station. So Farquhar's still around."

Crowell didn't comment. Mists half veiled the slopes; he hadn't been able to distinguish the cars. A moment later, Ilken frowned. "There's—" Her voice paused; then she said, "Hold the car, Crowell!"

He checked their descent, looked quickly over at her. "Something wrong?"

"Hard to make out." She was adjusting the screen, nodded suddenly. "Take a look!" Her tone was flat.

The two cars were shadowy in the screen, but Crowell could make them out. There was something oddly distorted about their positions and outlines. He stared. "You'd think they'd been hit by a rock slide!"

"They've been smashed," Ilken agreed. "Smashed up bad!" They exchanged a glance, and she got to her feet, moved over to the gun and slipped into position there. Crowell was tapping out a number on the communicator. After a moment, he said, "Herrick? We're hanging above Station Three. See if you can raise them on Base comm in there. If there's no response, get out here fast with a couple of armed cars!"

 

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Framed