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reported to the
small man who stood gazing about him with a child's wondering interest
in the new and strange.
    "Very ingenious, Hunter. Ah—now just what might that be?" His voice
was also eager as he pointed a finger to the east.

4
*
    Hume glanced up alertly. There was a bare chance that "Brodie" might
have witnessed their arrival and might be coming in now to save them
all a great amount of time and trouble by acting the overjoyed,
rescued castaway.
    But he could sight nothing at all in that direction to excite any
attention. The distant mountains provided a stark, dark blue
background. Up their foothills and lower slopes was a thick furring
of trees with foliage of so deep a green as to register black from
this distance. And on the level country was the lighter blue-green of
the other variety of wood edging the open country about the river. In
there rested the L-B.
    "I don't see anything!" he snapped, so sharply the little man stared
at him in open surprise. Hume forced a quick smile.
    "Just what did you sight, Gentlehomo Starns? There is no large game in
the woodlands."
    "This was not an animal, Hunter. Rather a flash of light, just about
there." Again he pointed.
    Sun, Hume thought, could have been reflected from some portion of the
L-B. He had believed that small spacer so covered with vines and
ringed in by trees that it could not have been so sighted. But a storm
might have disposed of some of nature's cloaking. If so Starns'
interest must be fed, he would make an ideal discoverer.
    "Odd." Hume produced his distance glasses. "Just where, Gentlehomo?"
    "There." Starns obligingly pointed a third time.
    If there had been anything to see it was gone now. But it did lie in
the right direction. For a second or two Hume was uneasy. Things
seemed to be working too well; his cynical distrust was triggered by
fitting so smoothly.
    "Might be the sun," he observed.
    "Reflected from some object you mean, Hunter? But the flash was very
bright. And there could be no mirror surface in there, surely there
could not be?"
    Yes, things were moving too fast. Hume might be overly cautious but he
was determined that no hint of any pre-knowledge of the L-B must ever
come to these civs. When they would find the Largo Drift's life boat
and locate Brodie, there would be a legal snarl. The castaway's
identity would be challenged by a half dozen distant and unloving
relatives, and there would be an intense inquiry. These civs must be
the impartial witnesses.
    "No, I hardly believe in a mirror in an uninhabited forest,
Gentlehomo," he chuckled. "But we are on a hunting planet and not all
its life forms have yet been classified."
    "You are thinking of an intelligent native race, Hunter?" Chambriss,
the most demanding of the civ party, strode up to join them.
    Hume shook his head. "No native intelligence on a hunting world,
Gentlehomo. That is assured before the planet is listed for a safari.
However, a bird or flying thing, perhaps with metallic plumage or
scales to catch the sunlight, might under the right circumstances seem
a flash of light. That has happened before."
    "It was
very
bright," Starns said doubtfully. "We might look over
there later."
    "Nonsense!" Chambriss spoke briskly as one used to overriding the
conflicting wishes in any company. "I came here for a water-cat, and a
water-cat I'm going to have. You don't find those in wooded areas."
    "There will be a schedule," Hume announced. "Each of you has signed
up, according to contract, for a different trophy. You for a
water-cat, Gentlehomo. And you, Gentlehomo Starns, want to make
tri-dees of the pit-dragons. While Gentlehomo Yactisi wishes to try
electo fishing in the deep holes. To alternate days is the fair way.
And, who knows, each of you may discover your own choice near the
other man's stake out."
    "You are quite right, Hunter," Starns nodded. "And since my two
colleagues have chosen to try for a water creature, perhaps we should
start along the river."
    It was two days, then,