A flapping of wings and talons, which could tear flesh into bloody ribbons, closed on his padded left shoulder as the African Black Eagle that was scouting “eyes” for Sabotage Group Number Four came to rest, sleek head lowered to draw its beak in swift, slight caress along Storm’s brown cheek.
Paws caught at his breeches as a snorting pair of small warm bodies swarmed up him, treating his body like a tree. Those claws, which uncovered and disrupted enemy installations, caught in the tough fabric of his uniform as he clasped the meerkats in his arms.
Baku, Ho, and Hing—and last of all—Surra. The eagle was majesty and winged might, great-hearted and regal as her falcon tendencies dictated. The meerkats were merry clowns, good-humored thieves who loved company. But Surra—Surra was an empress who drew homage as her due.
Generations before, her breed had been small, yellow-furred sprites in the sandy wastes of the big deserts. Shy cats, with hairy paws, which kept them from sinking into the soft sand of their hunting grounds, with pricked fox ears and fox-sharp faces, possessing the abnormal hearing that was their greatest gift, almost unknown to mankind, they had lived their hidden lives.
But when the Beast Service had been created—first to provide exploration teams for newly discovered worlds, where the instincts of once wild creatures were a greater aid to mankind than any machine of his own devising—Surra’s ancestors had been studied, crossbred with other types, developed into something far different from their desert roving kin. Surra’s color was still sand-yellow, her muzzle and ears foxlike, her paws fur sand-shoes. But she was four times the size of her remote fore-fathers, as large as a puma, and her intelligence was higher even than those who had bred her guessed. Now Storm laid his hand on her head, a caress she graciously permitted.
To the spectator the ex-Commando might be standing impassively, the meerkats clinging to him, his hand resting lightly on Surra’s round skull, the eagle quiet on his shoulder. But an awareness, which was unuttered, unheard speech, linked him with animals and bird. The breadth of that communication could not be assessed outside a “team,” but it forged them into a harmonious whole, which was a weapon if need be, a companionship always.
Baku raised her wide wings, moved restlessly to utter a small croak of protest. She disliked a cage and submitted to such confinement only when it was forced upon her. The thought Storm had given them of more ship travel displeased her. He hastened to supply a mental picture of the world awaiting them—mountains and valleys filled with the freedom of the true wilderness—all he had learned from the records here.
Baku’s wings folded neatly once again. The meerkats chirruped happily to one another. As long as they were with the others, they did not care. Surra took longer to consider. She must wear collar and leash, restraints that could bring her to stubborn resistance. But perhaps Storm’s mind-picture promised even more to her than it had to Baku. She padded across the room, to return holding the hated collar in her mouth, dragging its chain behind her.
“Yat-ta-hay—” Storm spoke softly as always, the sound of the old speech hardly more than a whisper. “Yat-ta-hay—very, very good!”
The troop ferry on which they shipped out was returning regiments, outfits, squads to several different home planets. That war, which had ended in defeat for the Xik invaders, had exhausted the Confederacy to a kind of weary emptiness, and men were on their way back to worlds that lay under yellow, blue, and red suns firm in the determination to court peace.
As Storm strapped himself down on his bunk for the take-off, awaiting the familiar squeeze, he heard Surra growl softly from her pad and turned his head to meet her yellow gaze. His mouth relaxed in a smile that this time did reach and warm his eyes.
“Not yet, runner on the sand!” He used again that tongue that now and forever hereafter must be a dead language. “We shall once more point the arrow, set up the prayer sticks, call upon the Old Ones and the Faraway Gods—not yet do we leave the war trail!”
Deep in his eyes, naked now that there was no one but the big cat to see, was the thing the Sirian Commander had sensed in him. The galaxy might lie at peace, but Hosteen Storm moved on to combat once again.
There was a company of Arzoran men on board, third- and fourth-generation descendants of off-world settlers. And Storm listened to the babble of their excited talk, filing away all the information that might be useful in the future. They were frontiersmen, these fighters from a three-quarter wilderness world. Their planet produced one product for export—frawns. Frawn meat and frawn-skin fabric, which had the sheen of fine silk and the water-repellent quality of ancient vegetable rubber, were making modest fortunes for the Arzor men.
The frawns moved in herds across the plains; their shimmering blue, heavily wooled foreparts and curving horned heads sloping sharply back to slender, almost naked hindquarters gave them a top-heavy look, which was deceitful since the frawn was well able to protect itself. There was no meat elsewhere in the galaxy to compare with frawn steak, no fabric to match that woven from their hair.
“I’ve two hundred squares cut out down on the Vakind—running straight back to the hills. Get me a crew of riders and we’ll—” The fair-haired man Storm knew as Ransford held forth eagerly.
His bunk mate nodded. “Get Norbies. You don’t lose any young stock with them riding herd. They’ll take their pay in horses. Quade uses Norbies whenever he can get them—”
“Don’t know about that,” cut in a third of the Arzoran veterans. “I’d rather have regular riders. Norbies aren’t like us—”
But Storm lost the thread of the conversation in the sudden excitement of his own thoughts. Quade was not a common name. In all his life he had only heard it once.
“Don’t tell me you believe that blather about Norbies being hostile!” The second speaker had challenged the third sharply. “Me and m’ brother always sign Norbies for the roundup, and we run the tightest outfit near the Peaks! Two of ’em are better at roundin’ herd than any dozen riders I can sign up at the Crossin’. And I’ll name names right out if you want me to—”
Ransford grinned. “Climb down off your spoutin’ post, Dort. We all know how you Lancins feel about Norbies. And I’ll agree with you about their bein’ good trackers. But there has been trouble with stock disappearin’—as well you know.”
“Sure. But nobody ever proved that Norbies made them disappear. Push anyone around and he’ll try to loosen your teeth for you! Treat a Norbie decent and square, and he’s the best backin’ you can get in the outcountry. The Mountain Butchers aren’t Norbies—”
“Mountain Butchers are herd thieves, aren’t they?” Storm asked, hoping to steer the conversation back to Quade.
“That they are,” Ransford returned pleasantly. “Say, you’re the Beast Master who’s signed up for settlement, aren’t you? Well, if all the stories we’ve heard about your kind of trainin’ are the straight goods, you’ll be able to light and tie right off. Mountain Butchers are a problem in the back country. Start a stampede in the right stretch of land, and they can peel off enough young stock durin’ it to set up in business. A man and his crew can’t cover every bit of the range. That is why it pays to hire Norbies, they know the trails and the broken lands—”
“Where do the Mountain Butchers sell their stolen goods?” Storm asked.
Ransford frowned. “That’s something every owner and rider, every frawn-protection man on the planet would like to know. There’s just one space port, and nothin’ passes through that without being checked double, sidewise and across. Unless there’s some hidden port out in the hills and a freebooter runnin’ cargo out—why, you’ve as good a guess as I have as to what they want the animals for. But they raid—”