we catch up to it.'
'We?'
'The natives will send up someone to do the tracking for me. Some of them are better than a dog.'
'Look, Gavin. I've put you to a lot of trouble and you've been decent with me. If I can be any help, I would like to go.'
'Two make better time than three. And we have to catch this Cytha fast or it might settle down to an endurance contest.'
'All right, then. Tell me about the Cytha.'
Duncan poured porridge gruel into his bowl, handed the pan to Shotwell. 'It's a sort of special thing. The natives are scared to death of it. You hear a lot of stories about it. Said to be unkillable. It's always capitalized, always a proper noun. It has been reported at different times from widely scattered places.'
'No one's ever bagged one?'
'Not that I ever heard of.' Duncan patted the rifle. 'Let me get a bead on it.'
He started eating, spooning the porridge into his mouth, munching on the stale corn bread left from the night before. He drank some of the brackish beverage and shuddered.
'Some day,' he said, 'I'm going to scrape together enough money to buy a pound of coffee. You'd think —'
'It's the freight rates,' Shotwell said. 'I'll send you a pound when I go back.'
'Not at the price they'd charge to ship it out,' said Duncan. 'I wouldn't hear of it.'
They ate in silence for a time. Finally Shotwell said: 'I'm getting nowhere, Gavin. The natives are willing to talk, but it all adds up to nothing.'
'I tried to tell you that. You could have saved your time.'
Shotwell shook his head stubbornly. 'There's an answer, a logical explanation. It's easy enough to say you cannot rule out the sexual factor, but that's exactly what has happened here on Layard. It's easy to exclaim that a sexless animal, a sexless race, a sexless planet is impossible, but that is what we have. Somewhere there is an answer and I have to find it.'
ow hold up a minute,' Duncan protested. 'There's no use blowing a gasket. I haven't got the time this morning to listen to your lecture.'
'But it's not the lack of sex that worries me entirely,' Shotwell said, 'although it's the central factor. There are subsidiary situations deriving from that central fact which are most intriguing.'
'I have no doubt of it,' said Duncan, 'but if you please—'
'Without sex, there is no basis for the family, and without the family there is no basis for a tribe, and yet the natives have an elaborate tribal setup, with taboos by way of regulation. Somewhere there must exist some underlying, basic unifying factor, some common loyalty, some strange relationship which spells out to brotherhood.'
'Not brotherhood,' said Duncan, chuckling. 'Not even sisterhood. You must watch your terminology. The word you want is ithood.'
The door pushed open and a native walked in timidly.
'Zikkara said that mister want me,' the native told them. 'I am Sipar. I can track anything but screamers, stilt-birds, longhorns and donovans. Those are my taboos.'
'I am glad to hear that,' Duncan replied. 'You have no Cytha taboo, then.'
'Cytha!' yipped the native. 'Zikkara did not tell me Cytha!'
Duncan paid no attention. He got up from the table and went to the heavy chest that stood against one wall. He rummaged in it and came out with a pair of binoculars, a hunting knife and an extra drum of ammunition. At the kitchen cupboard, he rummaged once again, filling a small leather sack with a gritty powder from a can he found.
'Rockahominy,' he explained to Shotwell. 'Emergency rations thought up by the primitive North American Indians. Parched corn, ground fine. It's no feast exactly, but it keeps a man going.'
'You figure you'll be gone that long?'
'Maybe overnight. I don't know. Won't stop until I get it. Can't afford to. It could wipe me out in a few days.'
'Good hunting,' Shotwell said. 'I'll hold the fort.'
Duncan said to Sipar: 'Quit sniveling and come on.'
He picked up the rifle, settled it in the crook of his arm. He kicked open the door and strode out.
Sipar followed meekly.
II
uncan got his first shot late in the afternoon of that first day.
In the middle of the morning, two hours after they had left the farm, they had flushed the Cytha out of its bed in a thick ravine. But there had been no chance for a shot. Duncan saw no more than a huge black blur fade into the bush.
Through the bake-oven afternoon, they had followed its trail, Sipar tracking and Duncan bringing up the rear, scanning every piece of cover, with the sun-hot rifle always held at ready.
Once they had been held up for fifteen minutes while a massive donovan tramped back and forth, screaming, trying to work up its courage for attack. But after a quarter hour of showing off, it decided to behave itself and went off at a shuffling gallop.
Duncan watched it go with a lot of thankfulness. It could soak up a lot of lead, and for all its awkwardness, it was handy with its feet once it set itself in motion. Donovans had killed a lot of men in the twenty years since Earthmen had come to Layard.
With the beast gone, Duncan looked around for Sipar. He found it fast asleep beneath a hula-shrub. He kicked the native awake with something less than gentleness and they went on again.
The bush swarmed with other animals, but they had no trouble with them.
Sipar, despite its initial reluctance, had worked well at the trailing. A misplaced bunch of grass, a twig bent to one side, a displaced stone, the faintest pug mark were Sipar's stock in trade. It worked like a lithe, well-trained hound. This bush country was its special province; here it was at home.
With the sun dropping toward the west, they had climbed a long, steep hill and as they neared the top of it, Duncan hissed at Sipar. The native looked back over its shoulder in surprise. Duncan made motions for it to stop tracking.
The native crouched and as Duncan went past it, he saw that a look of agony was twisting its face. And in the look of agony he thought he saw as well a touch of pleading and a trace of hatred. It's scared, just like the rest of them, Duncan told himself. But what the native thought or felt had no significance; what counted was the beast ahead.
Duncan went the last few yards on his belly, pushing the gun ahead of him, the binoculars bumping on his back. Swift, vicious insects ran out of the grass and swarmed across his hands and arms and one got on his face and bit him.
e made it to the hilltop and lay there, looking at the sweep of land beyond. It was more of the same, more of the blistering, dusty slogging, more of thorn and tangled ravine and awful emptiness.
He lay motionless, watching for a hint of motion, for the fitful shadow, for any wrongness in the terrain that
