Chapter 4.

Would he play the role of a beggar at the back of the rest place? It was well known that the trash did this from time to time. However, should the spacer sight him, the man might think it was too much of a coincidence that he had seen Farree by the gambling tent and saw him also here, more than halfway across the Limits. What had he learned? Little enough – that there was a reason why someone would have difficulty in finding an off-world crew. There was only one trying to hire such now – the Lord-One Krip.

Farree hesitated, trying to plan his next foray for knowledge when he saw another come down the street, walking boldly and swinging a silencing club. The guards had tanglers and stunners, but most of them relied on their clubs to keep order, preferring to leave a half-dead, beaten victim in the street rather than take the time and trouble to bind and deliver a prisoner to their general headquarters.

Farree squeezed backwards as far as he could go, careful not to catch the eye of one trained to sight just such a disturber of the uncertain peace as the hunchback was deemed to be. He breathed slowly and shallowly, with as long a pause between each breath as he could manage. There was the wreckage of a crate of more than usual substance pulled into this space between two structures, and Farree made the best use of that that he could.

The guard did not hesitate, turning directly into the rest house as the spacer had earlier. Farree tried to think clearly. Perhaps this one carried some message – one that would mean much if he could report it to those who waited for him near the port. But how might he worm his way into the building, see those he must spy upon? Though it was now heavy twilight and only the few and far between street lanterns gave any glow, he knew better than to try and win past that doorway yonder.

Bristles scraped against his chest. The smux – could Toggor give him partial sight, a fraction of hearing, as he had at the drinking hole? Farree put his hand gently into the front of his befouled robe and felt the claws grip so that he could draw the smux out.

Farree's night sight had been trained to the peak of what his species could achieve during the years in the Limits. There was coming and going in the crooked street now. And at least four of the passersby turned into the rest house. He watched for his chance and crossed to shelter once more against a slimed wall, bringing out Toggor as soon as he settled himself in the best shadow concealment he could find. The smux's eyes were all up and out, fanning about his head at their farthest extent.

"What—do?"

Toggor seemed free of any fear. Farree studied the wall against which he crouched. The lowest story of the building was stone, very old and fitted block upon block with crumbling mortar in between. It might once have been an important building like those of the upper town. The second story was squared timbers, also rough. Farree thought that his own thin fingers could find openings there to draw himself up.

But the weight on his back was not meant for a climber, and would hinder any such attempt.

Instead, the hunchback held the smux closer to his own head as if the proximity would better broadcast the thought he labored to send.

"Man." Laboriously he pictured as best he could the spacer, not sure that the alien mind of the small creature could pick up the identification. "Find in – " He patted the stone of the wall with his other hand.

A little to his surprise the smux seemed almost eager to go, climbing over his fingers to latch foreclaws into one of the mortarless divisions between the blocks. Farree leaned as far as he could backward to watch the creature climb easily aloft. He reached the narrow sill of one of the slitlike windows. But apparently there was no entrance there for him. Instead he scrambled around to the wood and pulled up claw over claw. Then he was gone!

Farree looked around wildly. Had Toggor lost grip and fallen? No – there was a beam, not of thought, but emotion. Hunger, hunt – the smux had come into the runway of a vynate. Farree felt the bitterness of defeat. Once on the trail of one of those pests he could not hope to turn Toggor aside.

But neither would he loose the thin thread of mind touch that tied them together. The smux's hunger became strong enough to make Farree's own belly rumble, and he thought of a meat cake, rich, dripping with gravy, such as he had eaten only that morning. Hunger – then the attack —

He shivered, still making himself share the frenzy of Toggor as the smux tore into flesh, was spattered by blood, and then feasted to the full. Never before had Farree shared minds with a hunter, and he found his body trembling, his own hands clawing out as if he were faced with good food. Now the smux was satisfied. He must either summon it back somehow or —

Would Toggor now wish to sleep after his kill? If so, how could Farree retain any control over him?

He clasped and unclasped his fingers, drew a deep breath, and probed.

Perhaps his very uneasiness added strength to that call, for he reached the twittering mind of the small creature on the first try.

"Eat. Good. Eat!"

Farree began to despair of getting below that satisfaction of the successful hunt. He held on and kept trying though he felt that the smux was finding him an irritation but apparently not one Toggor could throw off. Deliberately Farree made his demand.

"Find. Find the man." Into that order he tried to pour the full extent of his mind hold.

"Eat!" The ecstasy of the hunt still held, and Farree could have beaten the wall beside him in his frustration.

"Find!" There were beads of sweat on his narrow forehead, matting the heavy thatch of his hair. "Find."

His mind touch wavered in and out more and more. The smux was caught up in his own world, triumphant, free to be himself perhaps for the first time since he was captured. What power could Farree raise which would bring Toggor again under his control, light as that control was?

"Find!" Though he realized that it was dangerous, Farree loosed his awareness of the world about him, built up the picture of the spacer, and beamed it savagely to the creature in the walls above. "Find!"

There were only the thinnest of threads uniting them now – and those Farree could not be sure of. The smux might continue where he was in the wall runways of the vermin, hunting and slaying to eat. Why should Toggor answer or want to come out again?

"Find!" Farree's full attention was on building that thread, on attempting to rouse the smux out of his lethargy. Then, suddenly, the thread was broken. There was only emptiness. Farree's head touched the wall up which Toggor had gone, failure making him weak. The smux had chosen his own way. He was gone!

Somehow Farree got to his feet. That the loss of the creature was his fault he understood only too well. He had been so intent on gaining his own ends that he had forgotten he was dealing with an assistant who had really no common interest with him. The smux could live for days, he was sure, scouting the runways, a killer such as no vyn could escape.

"Find!" He sent a last desperate and despairing silent cry into the nothingness where Toggor had been. Dared he wait and hope? He could not make up his mind. The spacer and the guard—there was manifestly a tie between them, one into which Russtif was also drawn. Then, out of the nothingness, there came a weak signal.

"Man!" That fuzzy picture was so bad it could have been either the spacer or the guard. But Toggor had been set to locate the spacer, so —

Wild with relief, Farree had to keep a tight grip on himself to allow his thoughts to simmer down to calmness, then to sharpen into the meet prod.

"What do – ?" That he had been wrong about Toggor made him feel a little dizzy.