forward.

A heavy something fell with a sickening thud, brushing as it struck the sole of his disintegrating shoe. A cleverly rigged deadfall of small trees and rock, doubtless.

"You're slipping, Harl," he shouted.

But he could feel the sudden sweat damping his palms, and the muscles twitched unsteadily in his arms and across his stomach.

With morning he was half a mile away, in a foxhole less than sixty yards from the massive outer perimeter of the arena. Two of his snares had yielded a rabbit each, and so he was supplied for several days.

The foxhole had two entrances, both well-concealed, and he had rigged elaborate warning devices should the vicinity be approached. So he was sleeping.

His dreams were unpleasant.

In his latest dream an extremely shapely and smiling young woman with dark hair was heaving a grenade into a pit where he lay bound and helpless. The grenade swelled until it became a space ship heading directly toward the frail scout craft he piloted....

And a tiny blob of dislodged mud from the dugout spatted his face. He sat up.

Another day to hunt or be hunted. Or to lie here and try to rest and make plans. There was slight possibility that Neilson could find him here.

He gnawed at the scantly-fleshed ribs of the first rabbit, savoring the raw meaty smell and flavor. Hunger was his salt.

Now that they had lost contact with one another it might require several days to find Neilson. A wooded platter, a mile in diameter, can afford many hiding places for one creature hiding from another hunting beast.

It was time to set some of the traps he had been contriving.

There were the two nooses, attached to bent-down triggered young trees that could not be set until darkness fell again. The net, too, would need darkness to conceal the four rough pulleys, and the rocks that a tug on his rope would spill.

But the almost invisible nylon cords, set at ankle height across the paths, and the ugly little pits with their sharpened stakes set three feet below, could trip up a man and cripple him. He must put out several of those.

He had no wish to kill Neilson. If 

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