Seven From the Stars by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Author:Marion Zimmer Bradley [Bradley, Marion Zimmer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780575113732
Google: V6HbwwRN3ngC
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2012-12-07T17:11:33+00:00

terious fascination of this place—to lure away not only you, but Cleta?"

They paid no attention; Reidel because he had trained himself to ignore the dwarf's sarcasm, and Cleta because, telepathic, she knew there was no real malice behind it. They made room for him beside them as the train shuffled to a halt.

A man from the local newspaper had come with a camera and was snapping flashbulbs toward the prize bull. Foster and two of his foremen were edging around carefully, trying to get close to the animal; Reidel moved along the fence to where he could watch without getting in the way.

The bull snorted and heaved up his head, pawing at the straw. Reidel studied it with an expert's eye. Good breeding stock, but vicious; he'd have had it gelded as a calf. His contempt for Foster increased as he saw the ineffectual way the man was bossing the unloading. If he could have followed his inclinations, Reidel would have shoved them all aside and said, "Here, you idiots, let me do that."

Mathis frowned and muttered, "Foster's getting angry. Doesn't he know the bull will smell it on him?"

"It will charge him—" Reidel gripped the fence. And then it happened; the bull lunged, crashed through the wooden rails nailed across the boxcar door, and hurled a ton of power straight at Foster. The men leaped up on the fence. The bull crashed into the rails, and the impact hurled Foster to the ground inside the pen.

Reidel was over the fence in one leap. He ran only a few steps, but they seemed endless. On Dvaneth he had twice won a green banner for this sport. Skids deteriorate if you don't use them, he thought frantically. Can I still do it? '

Then he was hurtling at the bull's body and in another instant had stopped its charge and vaulted clear. The bull, stopped in mid-lunge, but only briefly, saw a new tormentor; he turned from Foster and the foreman dragged the dazed man safely outside the fence while Reidel, getting one arm around the bull's neck, braced his foot in the flank and clung there, swaying with the animal's maddened plunges, sending a wordless scream to Mathis. The bull tossed his head

and plunged, trying to fling this leech into the dirt and stamp on him.

Then the bull stopped, planting his feet, and Reidel let himself slide, trembling, to the ground. Mathis hobbled close and patted the heaving neck, and Reidel, breathing hard, leaned against the animal's sweating sides. Mathis had certainly saved both their lives. It was easy to grab a bull if you knew the trick of it, but if Mathis hadn't thrown himself into the empathic rapport, he'd have been thrown off sooner or later and trampled. Only a telempath could handle a really maddened animal, and Reidel had never seen a meaner one.

Foster, limping on an ankle twisted in his fall, stopped a wary few steps away, and stared.

"Man, you ought to be in the rodeo! I

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