Star Hunter Read Online Free Page A

bush stirred ahead, against the
pull of the light breeze. Rynch froze, then the haft of his spear slid
into a new hand grip, the coils of his net spun out. A snarl cut over
the purr of water.
    The scarlet blot which sprang for his throat was met with the flail of
the net. Rynch stabbed twice at the creature he had so swept off
balance. A water-cat, this year's cub. Dying, its claws, over-long in
proportion to its paws, drew inch deep furrows in the earth and
gravel. Its eyes, almost the same shade as its long, burr-entangled
body fur, glared up at him in deathly enmity.
    As Rynch watched, that feeling that he was studying something strange,
utterly alien, came to him once again. Yet he had hunted water-cats
for many seasons. Fortunately they were solitary, evil-tempered beasts
that marked out a roaming territory to defend it from others of their
kind, and not too many were to be encountered in cross-country travel.
    He stooped to pull his net from the now still paws. Some definite
place he must reach. The compulsion to move on in that sudden flash
shook him, raised the dull ache still troubling his temples into a
punishing throb. Going down on his knees, Rynch once more turned to
the stream water; this time after splashing it onto his face, he drank
from his cupped hands.
    Rynch swayed, his wet hands over his eyes, digging fingertips into the
skin of his forehead to ease that pain bursting in his skull. Sitting
in a room, drinking from a cup—it was as if a shadow picture fitted
over the reality of the stream, rocks and brush about him. He had sat
in a room, had drank from a cup—that action had been important!
    A sharp, hot pain made him lose contact with that shadow. He looked
down. From the gravel, from under rocks, gathered an army of
blue-black, hard-shelled things, their clawed forelimbs extended, blue
sense organs raised on fleshy stalks well above their heads, all
turned towards the dead feline.
    Rynch slapped out vigorously, stumbled into the water loosening the
hold of two vicious scavengers on the torn skin of his ankle when he
waded out knee-deep. Already that black tongue of small bodies licked
across the red-haired side of the hunter. Within minutes the corpse
would be only well-cleaned bones.
    Retrieving his spear and net, Rynch immersed both in the water to
clean off attackers, and hurried on, splashing through the creek until
he was well away from the vicinity of the kill. A little later he
flushed a four-footed creature from between two rocks and killed it
with one blow from his spear haft. He skinned his kill, feeling the
substance of the skill. Was it exceedingly rough hide, or rudimentary
scales? And knew a return of that puzzlement.
    He felt, he thought painfully as he toasted the dry looking, grayish
meat on a sharpened stick, as if a part of him knew very well what
manner of animal he had killed. And yet, far inside him, another
person he could not understand stood aloof watching in amazement.
    He was Rynch Brodie, and he had been traveling on the Largo Drift with
his mother.
    Memory presented him automatically with a picture of a thin woman with
a narrow, rather unhappy face, a twist of elaborately dressed hair in
which jeweled lights sparkled. There had been something bad—memory
was no longer exact but chaotic. And his head ached as he tried to
recall that time with greater clarity. Afterwards the L-B and a man
with him in it—
    "Simmons Tait!"
    An officer, badly hurt. He had died when the L-B landed here. Rynch
had a clear memory of himself piling rocks over Tait's twisted body.
He had been alone then with only the survival manual and some of the
L-B supplies. The important thing was that he must never forget he was
Rynch Brodie.
    He licked grease from his fingers. The ache in his head made him
drowsy. He curled up on a patch of sun-warmed sand and slept.
    Or did he? His eyes were open again. Now the sky above him was no
longer a bowl of light, but rather a muted halo of evening. Rynch sat
up,