Chapter II

The thing above him made a convulsive movement, a quick clutching with its claws as if preparing to spring. McManus's face went from ivory to a dirty snow color. But the thing remained motionless, except that under its gleaming yellow carapace Pritchard could see its thorax pulsing evilly.

"Munson," Pritchard went on dryly, his arms still flagging away, although the spider-scorpion paid no apparent attention, "Munson was a great scientist. He trapped a big beetle and experimented on it for a week or so. Then he killed it for dissection. He had no idea it was a Citizen of Venus."

"Oh, I see," said the other sarcastically. "You're afraid to shoot this thing. It might be what passes for human on this mud-ball. If it drops on me, of course--"

"Shut up!" Pritchard dropped his hand to his snapper. The thing had stood up slowly, its segmented tail curving stiffly up behind it. "I think it's going to strike. You talk too much."

He brought the snapper up. "I'll do it, boys. I've got the clearest shot--"

A sharp hiss broke from the jungle. The spidion (as he thought of calling it) jerked its ugly head about. Pritchard turned and caught his breath with a sharp intake. McManus slowly lifted his head to follow Pritchard's gaze. His chopper fell from his hand. All about them, men stood on tiptoe or stooped or craned sideways to look. Somebody said, "A woman!" Kemp panned the cam-rec about wildly until he caught her in its viewer.

She stood, straight and slim, on a gnarled stub protruding from a thick tree-trunk, some ten feet from the ground and about twenty feet from Pritchard, who was nearest her. Her honey-colored hair fell in crudely cut locks to her shoulders, framing a youthful, cleanly-chiseled face from which gray-green eyes gazed steadily. A strip of hide between her legs joined another strip of hide at her waist, from which hung a plaited grass sheath holding a long, narrow-bladed knife. A third strip of hide had the obvious main function of binding down her billowing breasts, rather than concealing them. Her skin had been tanned an even nut-brown all over.

From her lips came that sharp hiss again and she slapped her thigh smartly. The spidion was gone in a scuttling rush. McManus sagged weakly to the ground and drew a thick forearm across his forehead. "Geez, thanks, sister," he muttered.

"What are you doing here?" The girl's voice rang out through the jungle's stillness.

"Hunting," replied Pritchard.

"Hunting what?"

"Anything." He smiled up at her. "Anything big and tough. What are you doing here?"

He could just make out the corner of her mouth lifting in disdain. "What do you mean by 'anything big and tough?'"

Pritchard liked to have his own questions answered, too. "Who are you, anyway?" he rapped out sternly. "How come you speak Terran English? Where's the rest of your party?"

The girl only frowned down at him. "By what right do you come tramping in here killing all my people?"

"All your _what_?" Pritchard blinked.

"People, people, people. There are beings on this world who live and breathe and think just like you. But you seem to think it's all right to come in and kill them. For sport."

Gazing up into those blazing emerald eyes and that delicious figure, Pritchard felt an unaccustomed tingling through his nerves. Any woman, however crippled, deformed or aged, could provoke some excitement after the prison of deep space. But this beauty--

He glanced sideways at McManus who had moved up alongside him. The redhead had a feral grin on his freckled mug.

"Relax," muttered Pritchard from the corner of his mouth. "This one's for me."

He said to the girl, "We haven't killed anything, certainly not any people." The vision of that carbonized carcass back on the burn flickered across his mind. "What do you think we are, murderers? You're the first person we've seen."

She cut him off with an impatient gesture. "You're a pack of killers, all of you. I wouldn't expect you to understand."

"Hey, Mr. Pritchard," called out Sturgis, "I'll bet she's from that Havilland group. Ask her."

Pritchard cocked his head. "That's right! You are, aren't you? The Havilland Survey sent out by the Astrodetic Board. Unreported for four years. What happened? Where's your base?"

The girl nodded briefly. "And you're Pritchard, the notorious big-game hunter. I've heard about you. Nothing good, of course, but I've heard."

* * * * *

Pritchard smiled his sweetest smile. "That's right. I'm well known for my slaughter of helpless animals. But, come on, now," he coaxed, "how about a report on your party? The Board will appreciate any little message you care to send it."

The girl gripped a vine as if to steady herself. "Wiped out," she said tersely.

"Oh." He nodded, lips pursed. Then, as if it were an afterthought, he said, "How?"

"What does it matter?" The face above was momentarily tense, withdrawn. "With plenty of synthetabs--and the hydroponics laid out and producing--somebody still had to go out and kill. For fresh meat." Her voice trailed off.

"And--?" Pritchard prompted.

"Oh," she sighed wearily, "they came. They were the ones who got the fresh meat." She shuddered.

"Who's 'they?'"

"Please," she said, "I'd rather not discuss it any more. But I think you'd better leave. Certainly, you'd better not kill anything if you know what's good for you. Besides, you've done enough damage already."

Pritchard cleared his throat. The men behind him were whispering and snickering. "Speaking of leaving," he said, "how about you? If the Survey was wrecked--"

"I'm not interested in leaving," she said curtly. "I've got work to do here."

"What work?"

"I'm working with the people here."

"Oh, there _are_ natives?"

"Certainly. This world is full of people."

He scowled his impatience. "What's their cultural stage?"

She favored him with a one-sided grin. "Some are foraging. A few are gregarious. You met one just now. Fortunately, I got here in time to save her life."

McManus's jaw dropped. "Save _her_ life! You don't mean that crawly brute that tried to kill me just now?"

"If she threatened you," said the girl with careful enunciation such as she might use to a child, "it was because you had disturbed her peace."

"And it--she--was what you'd call a person?" demanded Pritchard, "Do you mean that you consider absolutely all the living, moving things here, people?"

The girl nodded firmly. Pritchard gazed at her, pawing his chin.

"Tell me," he murmured, "do they kill one another for fresh meat?"

She sighed. "They still do, but I'm trying to cure them of that. That's the work I'm doing. They only kill, after all, for food. I'm trying to cure them of the killing habit by getting them to switch to synthetabs. I've--"

The rest of her words were drowned in a tidal wave of laughter. The men exploded, beat each other, howled, and fell on the ground. She stared down at them, and her eyes began to smolder anew.

Pritchard fought his own face straight and wheeled on them. "Cut that out!" he yelled. "As you were!" They gurgled back at him, pleading their helplessness, hugging their sides. McManus gripped his cheeks and tried to squeeze his mouth straight, but strangled gusts still shook him.

The spectacle weakened Pritchard's own control and he turned quickly back to the girl. The sight of her beauty, now in a passionate rage, cut sharply across his mirth. He noticed with interest that the thin strip of hide across those heaving breasts was undergoing maximum strain.

"Please allow me to apologize for my men," he said gravely. "I'm sure they don't mean to be insulting. What is your name, by the way, so I can at least report it to the Board?"

Her chin was up. "Cornelia Boyce," she said haughtily.

"And how did you manage to survive the attack on the Survey camp?"

"I was away." She was calming a little. "They came at sunrise but I wasn't there. I was out, learning to ride one of the--the people."

Pritchard looked down quickly and coughed. Fresh gurgles sounded behind him. The cam-rec whirred on. "But you are all right here? You can take care of yourself?"

"I am in no danger," she said icily. "In four years I have won most of the people over to my side. They protect me. In turn, and in my own way, I protect them. I've learned how to make synthetabs and I also feed them from the 'ponics gardens. And now I'll do my best to protect them from you. I'm sure I can't appeal to your decency but I can appeal to your reason, and perhaps convince you that this is a poor world to hunt in."

"Now, listen, Miss Boyce," Pritchard cut in patiently, "we're not here on a mission of slaughter. I gather, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that you're one of that group back on Terra that opposes big-game hunting."

"You are completely correct about that," she interposed.

"--and are pushing through legislation to make it illegal under the Space Code. But we already adhere to the Space Code. We are most zealous, I assure you, to avoid bagging anything parahuman, anything that exhibits anything like human intelligence. We--"

"That's precisely why you should abandon your hunting here. My good man, just what do you consider intelligence?" She held up her hand to prevent his answering. "For instance, a good many of the what you would call animals on this little planet have developed a spoken language. And I don't mean a mother's warning to her cubs, or one male challenging another. I mean, for instance, the news I received this morning." She smiled. "Would you like to know what a little bird told me?"

He nodded. "I'm all ears."

"Well," she said thoughtfully, "it wasn't such a little bird, and it wasn't exactly news to me. After all, I'd seen your braking jets in the ionosphere and heard the cavitation rumble when you were settling into denser atmosphere in your orbit. But, anyway, here's what my birdie told me: 'A thing with sun-fire at both ends has come down out of the sky two flights from here. Now a flock of two-legged beasts from it are attacking the plants. We don't understand!'" Her face relaxed into a disconcerting smile. "They couldn't understand why you were so angry with the grass and the trees!"

"Extremely funny," he said gravely. "It just happens to be meaningless, also."

"Don't you see? They can communicate ideas!"

"Fine," he nodded. "What of it?"

"But--but that means they're intelligent. Too intelligent to be called 'animals'!"

* * * * *

He shook his head. "On Terra only one animal developed communications to a high degree. But we long ago decided that some other animals were fairly intelligent, for all that they didn't appear to speak among themselves. On many other worlds--and I can name you a score I've visited--lots of so-called 'animals', apart from the intelligences we dealt with, had developed fairly complex methods of communications that would put the old Terran elephants and ants to shame. That still didn't make them what we called 'people'."

Her eyes were hot with scorn. "I know that! If you'd lived with the Thisbeans as long as I have you'd understand. Why--"

"Now, look," said Pritchard with rising asperity, "we have satisfactory means of determining intelligence. If your 'people' are as you claim they're in no danger. But are you going to claim there are no killers here? They're what we're after, intelligent or not. And there are killers on every world, Miss Boyce."

She shook her head in despair at his stupidity. "There are no killers here, Mr. Pritchard. There are no killers anywhere on any world. Only variant life forms trying to live and eat, eating only to live. If we help them to find food, and guide their impulses...."

Pritchard gave up. The argument was futile. It struck him that the girl was mad. The horror of the attack on the Survey camp, followed by years of isolation from her kind, had left her in a hopelessly deranged state.

And a little plan took shape in his mind.

"That's all very fine," he said, cutting across her words, "but let me show you something that will prove to you we are not here to kill indiscriminately."

He turned to McManus. "Let's have your little pet, Tom." McManus raised his eyebrows, but fumbled the button of his breast pocket flap loose and pulled out the wriggling, six-legged infant rodent. Pritchard took it and held it out toward the girl.

"Here, Miss Boyce. My friend found this. He didn't bite its head off first thing. Now we'll turn it over to you for safekeeping."

"Aw," growled McManus.

"Quiet," Pritchard growled back at him. He lifted the wriggling little beast and it squeaked. "I guess I'd better not toss it."

The eyes of Cornelia Boyce were large and glowing with maternal pity. She dropped lightly to the ground and advanced, holding out her hand. Pritchard pulled back the hand with the little wriggler in it and his other shot forward to grip the girl's wrist.

She gasped and bent backward, striving to wrench loose. Her strength was such that Pritchard, turning to hand the cub back to McManus, almost lost his balance.

"Stop it," she cried. "You don't know what--"

Her lips moved for another second, but the words were lost in the sudden tumult that erupted about them. The jungle exploded, almost seemed to come alive at their very feet. Dimly-seen shapes came lurching and crashing toward them from every side, clambering and trampling and swinging from branch to branch. Here and there a tree cracked, splintered and fell.

The men whipped out their snappers and backed against each other, eyes rolling nervously in grim set faces. The girl frantically twisted out of Pritchard's fingers and stuck two fingers in her mouth.

A piercing, two-noted whistle stabbed through the mounting din. It stabbed again, and the uproar subsided into a confused rustling and shuffling. Silence fell across the dust-charged air.

All about, in the jungle surrounding the head of the path the scouting party had hacked, the vegetation barely concealed a shoulder-to-shoulder wall of hulking beasts, while smaller animals and what looked like maned gorillas crouched or stood along the bending branches. Tusks protruded from drooling jaws and hundreds of eyes blazed forth steadily.

"No shooting, no shooting!" Pritchard was bellowing. "She has them under control, boys. Hold your fire." Then he took a deep breath and turned toward Cornelia Boyce. She had backed off to a safe distance from him, her eyes twin pools of green contempt.

"My people." She bowed ironically. "At your service."

Pritchard grinned tautly. "You win. Of course, my intentions were only of the best. I thought you ought to come back to Terra for a little observation and examination, but--" he waved lightly "--let's skip it."

"You were lucky that I was able to stop them," she said. "Next time I might not be able to in time. Now if you're wise you'll just take your little ship and go home."

"Why, certainly, certainly." He bowed. "In the meantime it was a pleasure to have met you, Miss Boyce."

"I'm sure," she replied coldly. She lifted her head, and from her lips suddenly poured an astonishing babble, a mixture of coughing, grunting and chirping. There began to be movement in the brush, and some of the things there began lurching and crashing off.

"Where are they going?" Pritchard strove for a casual tone.

"I'm deploying them along your trail," she said with equal calm. "They will escort you out of this jungle and report to me when you re-enter the ship."

"And you were really talking to them?"

She shrugged, as if at a childish question. "Of course."

He studied her, and his long features slid into a crooked, embarrassed smile. "Miss Boyce, I owe you an apology. Maybe you've got something here after all."

She raised weary eyebrows. "If you're quite through looking at my body, you can go now."

He laughed shortly. "I wasn't, especially. Although it's very--"

"Good-bye!"

He bowed again and turned. "All right, boys. You heard what the lady said. Let's pull out of here. And let's keep our little hands away from our snappers, eh? The lady's friends appear to be quite numerous and a little touchy."