Just this side of the forest was the hunting camp. Like a nudist at a tailors’ convention, it leapt to the eye, flagrantly alien against the blue-green veldt. A bulbous plastic camp tent the size of a mansion dominated the scene, creases marring its translucent surface to show where it was partitioned into rooms. A diminutive figure sat outside the door, its head turning to follow our sonic boom. The yacht was some distance away.

The yacht was a gaily decorated playboy’s space boat with a brilliant orange paint job and garish markings in colors that clashed. Some of the markings seemed to mean something. Bellamy, one year ago, hadn’t struck me as the type to own such a boat. Yet there it stood, on three wide landing legs with paddle-shaped feet, its sharp nose pointed up at us.

It looked ridiculous. The hull was too thick and the legs were too wide, so that the big businesslike attitude jets in the nose became a comedian’s nostrils. On a slender needle with razor-sharp swept-back airfoils that paint job might have passed. But it made the compact, finless Drunkard’s Walk look like a clown.

The camp swept under us while we were still moving at Mach two. Emil tilted the car into a wide curve, slowing and dropping. As we turned toward the camp for the second time, he said, “Bellamy’s taking precious little pains to hide himself. Oh, oh.”

“What?”

“The yacht. It’s not big enough. The ship Captain Tellefsen described was twice that size.”

A gift from the gods. “I hadn’t noticed,” I said. “You’re right. Well, that lets Bellamy out.”

“Go ahead. Tell me I’m an idiot.”

“No need. Why should I gloat over one stupid mistake? I’d have had to make the trip anyway, sometime.”

Emil sighed. “I suppose that means you’ll have to see Bellamy before we go back.”

“Finagle’s sake, Emil! We’re here, aren’t we? Oh, one thing. Let’s not tell Bellamy why we came. He might be offended.”

“And he might decide I’m a dolt. Correctly. Don’t worry, I won’t tell him.”

The “grass” covering the veldt turned out to be knee-high ferns, dry and brittle enough to crackle under our socks. Dark blue-green near the tips of the plants gave way to lighter coloring on the stalks. Small wonder the herbivores had left a trail. Small wonder if we’d seen carnivores treading that easy path.

The goggled figure in front of the camp tent was cleaning a mercy rifle. By the time we were out of the car, he had closed it up and loaded it with inch-long slivers of anesthetic chemical. I’d seen such guns before. The slivers could be fired individually or in one-second bursts of twenty, and they dissolved instantly in anything that resembled blood. One type of sliver would usually fit all the life-forms on a given world.