For one horror-filled moment Dane feared that he did indeed
hold a dead man, that one of the outlaw Hunters must have struck a last
blow for his discredited leader. Then Tau sighed and began to breathe
deeply. Dane glanced up, amazed, at the captain.
"He's asleep!"
Jellico knelt and his hand went to test heart beat, then to touch the
medic's worn and dirty face. "Best thing for him," he said briskly.
"He's had it."
It took some time to get the facts of their triumph sorted out. Two of
the off-worlder poachers were dead. The other and the spaceman were
prisoners, while Nymani rounded up in addition the man Dane had burned
to save Tau. When the younger spaceman returned from making the medic
comfortable in the shelter, he found Asaki and Jellico holding an
impromptu court of inquiry.
The dazed native Hunters had been expertly looped together by Nymani
and, a little apart from them, the off-worlders were under examination.
"An I-C man, eh?" Jellico, smoothing a mud-spattered chin with a grimed
hand, regarded the latest arrival measuringly. "Trying to run in and
break a Combine charter, were you? You'd better spill the facts; your
own head office will disown you, you ought to know that.
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