Craig sprinted towards a window. Below lay the outer grounds. Craig leaped. As he did so, a familiar shadow swooped low--the shadow of a disc. Bukal. He brought the disc down in a fast sideslip. "Quick--!" Craig dived onto the saucer. Then they were climbing--up, away from Vydys' Tower of Cadilek, away from guards and clenched fists and shouted imprecations. Still panting, Craig said, "That was close, Bukal. Thanks." Bukal didn't answer. Craig craned round, peered up at him. "Bukal! What's the matter?" The bronzed face stayed bleak and bitter. "It is the end, Earthman," he answered heavily. "The end of my people and their dream of freedom." "The end--?" Staring, Craig fought down a numbness. "You don't mean--?" "Yes." Bukal's slash-mouth twisted. "Zenaor has carried out his threat. In a hundred spots south of the barrier, the ourobos are unleashed against us!" CHAPTER VII Restlessly, the djevodas lumbered through the grasslands--a large herd, numbering over half a hundred. A tension seemed to hang about the creatures. Great snout-heads lifted as if sniffing the morning breeze, then lowered again, swinging to and fro, watchful and surly. "You see?" Bukal clipped. "They sense that today they are the hunted, not the hunters." Frowning, Craig nodded. "Come now. The nearest of the places we seek is farther south." Craig tilted his disc, following Bukal as the Baemae leader skimmed his own saucer away, high above the ranges. Below them, another herd appeared. Another. Bukal shouted, "Observe, Craig Nesom! They move north--all of them!" The Earthman stared. Bukal's words were true. The scene below was like some vast migration--a sudden shift that turned the behemoths ever northward towards the barrier that separated this free land from the tyranny of the Kukzubas barons. Too, these new herds were moving faster, hardly pausing to tusk up the rich roots on which the monsters fed. They crossed a river. Bukal drifted his disc in close to Craig's. "Watch, now. From here on we may find ourobos." Even as he spoke, a wild scream of rage, of terror, rose from a distant group of the djevoda. "Quick--!" Bukal raced ahead. Craig followed, sweeping low behind him. Then they were above the monstrous sextupeds--hovering, peering. Craig glimpsed grey movement amidst the green-gold grass-clumps ... a shimmering as of slime that crawled and eddied. He started to glide lower. "No--!" Bukal cried. "Stop, Craig! Don't chance it!" There could be no mistaking the urgency of his tone. Discing higher, Craig studied the ground below in careful detail. Now it dawned on him that more than one grey splotch showed. Here lay another; there, two more. Like water, they seemed to seep across the land in slithering tendrils. The djevodas were bunching now, crowding together. Their great feet hammered at the earth. They tusked up clods in sudden furies.