I knew then why Kapper had broken, and why she hadn't told, in spite of the selak. The thing hadn't let her. And it had called to its kind, from the deep swamps and Beccalyn Shannon's Imperial Circus.

THE deep indigo night of Venus had settled down, in the smell of mud and jungle and the hot rain. Lights flared crazily here and there out of open doorways. People were yelling, the tight, animal mob-yell of fear.

There was no place to run in Nahru. The jungle held it. The thick green jungle built on quicksand and crawling with death. Behind us the four cansins raised a wild whistling screech.

It was answered, out of the hot night between the little shacks of Nahru. Brute voices, singing their hate. Suddenly I remembered what Gow had said. 'He busted a lot of cages....'

God knew what was loose in that town.

Beccie Shannon spoke beside me. We were still running, slipping and floudering in the mud, making toward the ship from sheer instinct. She gasped,

'We got to get those babies rounded up. Gow! Gow, you hear hear me? We got to get 'em back!'

Gow's voice came sullenly. 'I hear you, boss.' We slowed down. It was suddenly important to hear what more Gow had to say.

'Don't you get it?' she asked slowly. 'Gerty let 'em out. He wanted 'em – to help him. They know it. They ain't going back.'

Somewhere behind us a plastic shack cracked open like an egg-shell. Human cries were drowned in a whistling screech. Off to the right the Mercurian cavecat began to laugh like a crazy man.

Slow, patient, animal hate, walled around them, waiting. The feel

and smell of hate in the brute tank. I could feel and smell it now, in