He looked back when he reached the ship. Gorman was coming, running, and the other three were turning back from the far end of the camp to hurry after Gorman. He looked toward Curry's camp and saw Curry watching him. Curry and his men moved toward him and there were six to make a rendezvous with him. The truce was over. He found the dog behind the farthest tail fin, leashed to a thorny bush and almost invisible in the shadows. She watched him as he stopped before her, her ears forward questioningly and her tail moving a little with tentative friendliness. He spoke to her and her reply was a low bark, her tail whipping with delight. She thought he had come to release her.... He had known dogs well as a boy and he knew the one before him was not mad. He heard Gorman's feet plodding fast through the grass and he waited with his blaster in his hand. Gorman came around the tail fin, panting, his own blaster in his hand. The dog went rigid at the sight of him, the growl in her throat, and Gorman's blaster swung toward her. "_Hold it!_" he ordered. Gorman paused, and the dead eyes looked into his. "There the mad dog is--we must kill it." "We can kill it later if it's mad. We'll watch it a while, first." The suspicion became like something almost tangible about Gorman and his blaster started the first movement toward Thane. "_Why?_" "I think it can see something--" Gorman fired, so swiftly that he felt the heat of the beam even though he had been expecting it. He shot for the heart and Gorman collapsed before he could fire again. He lay still on the ground, the eyes that stared up into the sky no deader than when he had been alive. The dog was lunging against her leash, trying to get to him. Thane stepped closer and watched the grass beside Gorman's head. A patch of it the size of his hand suddenly bent down, as from an unseen weight, and then something struck his knee. He slapped at it as it darted up his leg and knocked it off; something that felt like a mass of cold, rubbery tentacles. He knew, then. He stepped back, his blaster swinging aimlessly. The thing would leap again, to reach his head as it had done with Gorman, and it was invisible. There was nothing but the moonlit grass to be seen. Perhaps it was behind him, already preparing to spring.... The dog's snarling was a frenzied scream as she fought against her leash. He swung his blaster and its blue beam cut the leash in two. She flashed toward him, then up, her ears laid back, her eyes blazing slits and her teeth slashing at his throat. His blaster was in line with her chest and for a brief instant he had only to press the firing stud. He did something he had not done for thirty years; he trusted his life to another being and did not fire.