Beast Master's Planet by Andre Norton

Author:Andre Norton [Norton, Andre]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2005-11-23T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Blade rang on blade as Storm met that attack. But Bister was boring in, confidence behind each move as he forced the Terran to retreat. Storm tried to weave a pattern of small feints and withdrawals that would bring him around so that full glare of the torch beam would strike in the other’s face. Bister was well aware of that danger and he did not advance as Storm gave way.

He could end this in a moment, the Terran knew, by one summons to Surra. But he must face Bister out by himself—standing on his own two feet, steel against steel—or else he could never command the team again.

Time had no meaning as their boots shuffled warily on the rock ledge. After his first leap of attack was countered, Bister, too, became careful, willing to wear down the slighter Terran. Storm felt a small wet trickle under the blanket on his shoulder and knew that his wound must have reopened under that protecting plaster of leaves. That trickle would drain his strength even more, put weights on his feet, just when he needed all the agility he could command.

It was he who was being forced into the path of the light, and once Bister had him blinded in the full glare of that beam he would be pinned helplessly. His thoughts raced, assembling all he knew of the apers. They had been given bodies to resemble his own, training that would make them react as closely as possible to the human. Yet still inside they must remain truly Xik, no matter how conditioned their cover or they would be of no use to their superiors. And the Xik—what set of circumstances would throw an Xik fighter off guard, rattle him badly? What would be his worst fears, his ultimate terror? Why had there always been war to the end between them and the human species?

Storm shuffled, danced, evaded by a finger’s small breadth a wily rush that would have pushed him into the danger zone. Why did the Xik fear and hate the Terrans? What was the deep-set base of that fear and could he play upon it now?

His thoughts were cut by the clash of steel meeting steel as the hilt of his own weapon was driven back almost to his breast and the jar of that blow numbed his arm for an instant. All the sixth sense that Storm drew upon when he worked with the team was alert behind the defenses of his well-trained body.

Then—as if that flash of knowledge came from some source outside his own mind—Storm knew, knew the weakness of the Xik, because in a manner it was his own weakness by racial inheritance, a weakness peculiar in turn to the Dineh also, a weakness that could also be a kind of strength, so that men clung to it for the security they desired.

“You stand alone—” He spoke those words in Galactic, his tone level. “Your kind have blown themselves up back there, Bister.

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