Keeping the fire rod steady, his left hand went to work, not in the
muted cadence the Khatkan drummer had chosen, but in hard and vigorous
thumps which rolled across the clamor of the fight. There was no
forgetting the beat of "Terra Bound" and he delivered it with force, so
that the familiar da-dah-da-da droned loud enough to awaken the whole
camp.
Dane's move appeared to completely baffle the Khatkan outlaws. They
stared at him, the whites of their eyes doubly noticeable in their dark
faces, their mouths a little agape. As usual the unexpected had driven
them off guard. He dared not look away from that gathering to see how
the fight at the other end of the camp was progressing. But he did see
Tau's advance.
The medic came into the light of the fire, not with his ordinary
loose-limbed spaceman's stride, but mincingly, with a dancing step, and
he was singing to the drum beat of "Terra Bound." Dane could not
understand the words, but he knew that they patterned in and out of the
drum beats, weaving a net between singer and listeners as Lumbrilo had
woven his net on the mountain terrace.
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