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light caught him above the eyes in midjump. He fell
to the floor, a silent, crumpled heap.
Losting had the snuffler up and was firing before
the furcot fell. There was the distinctive soft phut of
the tank seed bursting. In the near dark, someone
screamed. Then it was quiet.
From behind a twisted, bent section of floor an un-
steady figure roseLogan. Swaying, she dropped her
pistol and reached down with both hands to pull the
jacari thorn from her right breast. A tiny blot of red
appeared, staining her tunic. She stared at it dumbly.
Losting had reloaded when the second beam caught
him in the side, ripped through skin, bone, nerves,
and organs. Usually the shock of such extensive,
abrupt destruction was enough to kill instantly. Lost-
ing, however, was not a normal man. He dropped to
his knees, then toppled onto his left side. Still alive,
he clutched with both hands at his side. The snuffler
clattered to the damp metal floor.
Logan staggered forward a couple of steps and
tried to say something to the hunched-up figure on
the floor. Her mouth worked but nothing came out.
Then her eyes glazed over as the potent nerve poison
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took hold, and she fell like a tree. She lay there un-
moving, a broken toy doll, one arm bent grotesquely
under her.
From a black tunnel nearby two figures rose cau-
tiously. Cohoma walked to the still form of Logan
and knelt beside her. Hansen continued past with
barely a glance at her, toward Losting. Behind him,
finding neither pulse nor heartbeat, the scout pilot
muttered bitterly, "He's got you there, Kimi."
The station chief kept his pistol trained on Losting
as he approached. In the hollowness of the death-
filled corridor, the hunter's breathing sounded loud.
Hansen had lost much of his clothing and all of his
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bureaucratic demeanor. He was panting heavily. Kinky
gray hair formed a mat over the bulge of his stomach.
"Before I kill you, Losting, why?"
"Bom knew," the hunter gasped painfully. A pro-
found numbness slowly blanketed him, creeping over
his body from the bumed side. "He told you. You
take without giving. You take without asking. You
borrow without returning. You do not emfol. Our . . .
world."
"It's not your world, Losting," Hansen said tiredly.
Behind them, Cohoma suddenly looked thoughtful.
He murmured something about empathetic foliation
and forced evolution. Hansen didn't hear him. "But
you refused to accept that. Too bad." Hansen turned
and called. "Muerta . . . Hofellow . . . check his
animal."
A man and woman, one armed with a pistol and the
other with a machete, emerged from the side access-
way. Taking no chances, the woman put another
burst into the head of the supine furcot, but Geeliwan
was already as dead as he would ever be.
"Damnation and hell!" Hansen roared, anger and
frustration finally coming together within him at the
same time. "No reason ... no reason for any of
this!" He gestured around, then looked back down at
Losting, his voice full of sorrow at the waste. "Don't
you seeyou didn't stop us! I've got four people"
He glanced back at Logan's motionless body. "No-
three people left."
Every word caused a sharp pain to shoot through
Losting. Each one was a new surprise. "You are all
dead. All your little sky-boats are broken and so is
the big . . . shuttle. Your little weapons are dead and
so are your walls and webs. The stormtreader beat
the life from them. The forest will come for you, now."
Hansen wore an expression of pity. "No, Losting.
It was a good try you made. You almost did it. But
we've plenty of food, and water from the sky every
night. I know how fast this hylaea grows. It may very
well obscure the station before our next relief ship ar-
rives. It's true our shuttlecraft can't fly again. But its
internal systems check out operational, including com-
munications. I don't believe those gas-bag prisms will
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come back, and I don't think we'll be attacked by
anything else capable of penetrating a ship hull. This
forest can bury us under an avalanche of green, but
our distress signal will still be picked up.
"You've managed to cost some people a lot of
credits and a lot of trouble. They won't be pleased.
But they'll rebuild this station, start over againbecause
of the immortality extract, Losting., You can't begin
to imagine what ends people will go to to secure it.
"We won't make the same mistakes again. We'll
rebuild halfway around this planet, far from your
tribe. The new outpost will have aerial patrols, three
times as many guns and bigger, with independent
power-up systems. And we'll make a clear space four
tunes as wide and twice as deep.
"No, we won't make the same mistakes again.
You're a brave man, Losting, but you've failed. A
great pity. I'd rather have been your friend."
"Grv ... rbber ..." Losting whispered.
Hansen leaned close, the muzzle of the pistol never
wavering. "What's that? I didn't hear-?"
"You would steal everything," the hunter rasped,
"even a man's soul, even a flower's smell."
Hansen shook his head slowly, sadly. "I don't un-
derstand you, Losting. I don't know if we could ever
understand one another."
He was still shaking his head when the jacari from
Bom's snuffler punctured the side of his neck.
It was over quickly. Ruumahum brought down the
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pair bending over Geeliwan's corpse. Bom's axe
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