the Venusian wilds.

The sounds were in Caine's brain like a dozen records being played in a large echoing room. Teewh birds pointed their yellow beaks and came screaming at his head. The kiitz birds fluttered wildly out of the thickets, their frightened sound like the rake of giant fingernails across smooth slate.

But there were other things in this part of the jungle. Soft, gelatinous phules, the size of a man's hand, hung to the vine-trees, and when Caine passed them they shifted off the trees to his skin and began their search for juices out of his own body. He swept them away, one at a time, and more found him.

"I have nothing left in my veins for you," he said to one of them sticking to his waist. "Maybe warm tea?"

Fairchild touched the rifle against his back, and Caine pushed the phule away.

A snake-like trill wriggled in front of him, its purple and black skin glistening as though it had been drawn through oil. It was about four feet long and as thick as a heavy rope. Its never-closing eyes stared at Caine. "Hello, friend," Caine said, reaching out his good arm. The trill slid away.

That's what I really am like, he decided, wondering when the pain would come shattering into him again. I am like the trill. I ought to lie down on the ground and start wriggling, instead of walking.

The pain found him then, and his brain was cleared briefly of the veil of the drug. The pain lasted longer this time. Drug wearing off, he thought, only now I don't want it to. And then he thought of the cats; the terrible cats, the horrible cats....

His brain spun and the veil dropped. What was I thinking about? he said to himself. Cats? Was it the cats? Why? Cats are pretty, especially grith cats. They are black, like the spots on a leopard. And what makes me think of a leopard? I'll ask the man behind me, he thought, and stopped.

"Go on, Caine," Fairchild whispered. "Go on, damn you."

Leopards? Leopards? Caine asked himself, and he pushed on through the growth, feeling the ground rising more steeply.

Razor plants licked at his skin, until his flesh was slit finely in a dozen places. The gauze around his arm became a fuzzy mass, like rags. If I see a cat, Caine promised himself, I'll take a splint off my arm and hit him over the head with it.

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