"Can you get rid of it, Tau?" Jellico asked in his usual crisp voice. He
might have been inquiring about some problem aboard the _Queen_.
"I'd rather get at the source." There was a grim note in the Medic's
reply. "And to do that I want to look at their camp."
"Well enough!" Asaki crept back in the brush.
The ghost of that which was not a man had reached the shore of the
island, stood there, its blank head turned toward them. Weird as it was,
now that the first shock of sighting it was over, the spacemen could
accept and dismiss it as they had not been so able to dismiss the
phantom rock ape.
"If that thing was sent to drive us," Dane ventured, "wouldn't we be
playing their game by going inland now?"
The Chief Ranger did not pause in his crawl to the left. "I think not.
They do not expect us to arrive with our wits about us. Panic-stricken
men are easy to pull down. This time Lumbrilo has overreached himself.
Had he not played that game with the rock ape, he might have been able
to stampede us now."
Though the white thing continued to move inland, it did not change
course to fall in behind them on the new route.
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