Killer

With no apparent transition, the tiger slumped into the mud. His huge head hung loose, and bare bone gleamed for an instant. Blood spouted in a great torrent, then ebbed abruptly to a dark smear. The tiger arched his back convulsively in death, as his killer staggered away.

Lycon stared in disbelief as the blue-scaled killer took a careful step toward him. Blood bathed its bright scales like a glistening imperial cloak. The tiger's blood or the lizard-ape's? Its scaled hide had to be unnaturally tough-else it would be gutted like a fish.

Murder gleamed joyously in its eyes. Lycon readied his spear. He knew he was fast enough to drive home one good thrust, and after that…

Another step and the lizard-ape stumbled, bracing itself on the ground with one deadly hand. The other arm hung useless-its shoulder certainly broken by the tiger's mauling. The sauropithecus jerked erect and grinned at the hunter, its demon's face a reflection of death. It started to lunge for him, but there was no strength to its legs. Instead it skidded drunkenly on the gravelly soil, again groping for balance. It must have suffered massive internal injuries, but it staggered upright once again.

Lycon knew a stir of hope and dared take a step forward, advancing his boar spear. His own legs felt none too steady, but there had to be an end made of this night.

The lizard-ape spun about gracelessly, suddenly making for the farther hedge. Despite its stumbling gait, it easily pulled away from the pursuing hunter-Lycon afterward wondered if he might not have run faster-and gained the distant hedge. Too weakened to rip through the interlaced branches as before-or to vault the barrier-it darted headlong into the base of the hedge, wriggling snakelike between the rocks and roots.

Lycon hesitated, realizing his chances but not willing to abandon the hunt. From beyond the thorny barrier he heard a quick splash, then silence. Gritting his teeth, Lycon dropped to his belly and crawled after the lizard-ape, following the bloodtrail through the hedge.

Nothing lay beyond the hedge but the steep-banked Tiber, and the bloodtrail slid down the muddy slope and into the oblivion of black rushing current.

The moon glared down, drowning the stars with chill splendor, and casting light over the river's unbroken surface. Lycon shivered, and after a while he walked back to the road.

He felt old that night.

Chapter Three

The starship hung in orbit like a mountain of dirty ice.

To RyRelee, watching the viewscreen as his shuttlecraft drew near, the Coran starships always called to mind a congealed comet, bereft of its tail and frozen in some ungainly posture. He loathed embarking from the firm-walled compartments of the trim shuttlecraft from his homeworld to enter the seemingly organic mazes of a Coran starship, but a summons from the rulers of the measurable galaxy was not to be denied.

Such occasional summons invariably had prefaced demands upon his considerable abilities to carry out certain tasks for the Cora as their emissary-usually without the knowledge of those to whose world RyRelee was sent. While such missions inevitably entailed deadly risks, RyRelee did not normally respond to their summons with such a sense of fatalistic dread as he now felt. While the Cora had not yet informed him of the reason for this summons, RyRelee thought he knew why, and had there been any possible alternative but to obey, he would have taken it.

The interior of the Coran ship was small improvement over the comet-like appearance it gave from the outside. It had the look of something hacked from soft stone, or foamed into shape out of the spittle of an insect. The hatch closed behind his shuttlecraft as though it were growing together by a process of greatly accelerated crystalline accretion. The efficiency of Coran science was beyond question, but the organic nature of it bothered RyRelee every time it called itself to his attention. It disturbed him that he, himself an interstellar emissary and one whose race had long ago developed its own stardrive, should nonetheless be unable to comprehend the technology of the race that ruled the galaxy.

A ragged hole dissolved in one wall of the air lock. RyRelee waited for his crew to release the hatch of the shuttlecraft, then steeled himself to disembark. Though the atmosphere within this section of the starship was breathable, it smelled musty and had overtones of old meat. It was also very cold, though RyRelee's shivering was not solely a result of that physical cause. That his shuttlecraft had orders to depart immediately after bringing him here only confirmed his fear.