have

could have made it on such a short fall without smashing himself.”
“So we look for a few tracks now?” Zinga’s long jaw jutted out as he glanced up at the sky. “Rain is going to spoil that—”
For the clouds were emptying their weight of water at last. Together the rangers stumbled through a beating downpour to the lee of a rock outcrop which gave a faint hint of shelter. The trees might have kept off more of that smothering blast but, Kartr decided as he saw branches whiplash under the wind, that might be more dangerous an asylum than the corner where they huddled gasping, the rain stinging their skin and finding its way through every crevice of their tunics and breeches.
“It can’t keep on like this forever—there isn’t that much water,” Kartr said and then realized that the drum of rain drowned out any but a parade ground pitch of voice.
He sneezed and shivered and thought bitterly that Zinga was going to be proved right. This deluge would mask any trail Cummi might have left hereabouts.
Then, in an instant, he snapped erect and felt Zinga’s answering jerk. The Zacathan was as startled as he had been.
They had caught a faint, very faint plea for help. From Cummi? Somehow he believed not. But it had come from a human—or rather from an intelligent mind. Someone or something which was alive, and reasoning, was in trouble. The sergeant turned slowly, trying to center the source. The pain and terror in that plea must be ­answered!

13 — CUMMI’S KINGDOM
“Due north—” Zinga’s gutturals reached him, and the Zacathan’s keener perception was right.
“Can the lifeboat ride this?” Kartr’s own experience with small air craft had been limited to those of the Patrol and the