"Drop it!"

Now or never. . .

Scott wrenched the pistol around in his hand, saw Ubel's finger tighten down on the trigger of her rifle, knew he was going to die. A shrill, snarling scream of raw hate tore the air. A streak of cream-and-grey fur launched itself toward Mariel Ubel's horse, too far away, still, to reach her. Fisher landed on the horse's rear quarters, claws unsheathed and ripping into the animal's flesh the instant he landed. The horse reared with a sharp neigh. Scott rolled frantically sideways, even as Ubel ripped off her shot. The medical pack slung over his shoulder exploded. Heat seared his back as an animal scream of agony ripped from the horse. Scott rolled wildly to his feet, off-balance and staggering. Ubel clung to that damned saddle, leech-like, and swung the rifle around again before Fisher could reach her.

Scott dove, rolling in an effort to bring up his pistol. He could feel frantic terror and fury from the stray's mind as it raced through the trees, slower than Fisher because of the cruel deprivations it had suffered. Mariel Ubel's rifle tracked around. She aimed straight at Scott. He was still off-balance, still rolling, trying to bring the pistol up in time. Fisher flung himself toward her neck, claws bared, shrieking in fury, but he couldn't possibly knock that rifle aside from where he was. Scott fired wildly, knew he'd missed—

–and a starvation-thin treecat launched itself from the trees straight at the rifle's muzzle. The stray flung itself right down the bore, shrieking its hate and fury, directly between Scott and the rifle. The treecat's lunge knocked the tip of the muzzle slightly sideways, left it sprawled across the end of the muzzle just as the shot blasted loose. Psychic pain detonated behind Scott's eyelids just as he came to his feet, pistol still too low to do any good. The shot tore through the treecat and blasted into the deadwood at Scott's feet, just missing him. Scott stumbled, grey-faced and shaken. A broken ball of fur dropped to the ground from horse height. Scott was still moving, still bringing his own weapon up. He fired blind, aiming with trembling hands as the killer on horseback brought her rifle around again, seeking his life this time.

His shot struck her chest with brutal force at the same instant Fisher reached her throat. Mariel Ubel jerked in the saddle and screamed, a gurgling, ghastly sound. A look of shock crossed her face. Fisher's claws had ripped away half her throat in the time it had taken her to scream once. The rifle thudded to the ground from nerveless fingers. Then she crumpled down after it, landing with a hard thump. Her frantic mount reared and came down right on top of her, trampled her with flint-sharp hooves. A sickening crunch reached Scott. She didn't move again. Scott fell to his knees, panting and sick. Another treecat appeared in his blurred vision, dropped from the still-screaming, blood-ribboned horse. It bucked one last time and bolted into the trees. The second treecat huddled over the too-still shape on the ground.

Scott caught back an agonized sound and stumbled forward, half-blind, already knowing what he would find. The stray was dead, shot through the body with a weapon capable of dropping a hexapuma in its tracks. Fisher keened inconsolably, rocking back and forth above him. Scott gathered the broken body up, buried his face in the bloodied fur, grieving. The treecat had thrown himself deliberately between that rifle and Scott . . . And it had known what a rifle could do. Had seen Scott's medical pack blown apart on his back, knew it was the same weapon that had downed their air car. And the stray had lunged straight into the shot's path, anyway, knocking the muzzle aside, saving Scott's life. Scott knelt on the broken ground, face buried in blood-streaked, dirt-matted fur, and cried.

You knew it would kill you, you knew . . . Scott couldn't forgive himself for bringing the stray here, for causing it to choose in that hair-trigger instant of decision, felt the blame and the guilt so keenly, he would rather the shot had blasted through him. After everything the stray had done, achieving the impossible, communicating the truth that his human friend had been murdered, Scott had let Arvin Erhardt's killer destroy the stray's life.

And Scott had never even given him a name.

He huddled over the broken, nameless little treecat and grieved.

* * *

"It's never easy to lose a friend, is it?"

Scott looked up slowly from his chair to see Sanura Hobbard standing quietly in the doorway. He'd forgotten she was coming. Scott tightened his fingers briefly through Fisher's silky fur, needing the soft croon his friend gave him, then roused himself. "I'm sorry, Dr. Hobbard. Come in."

Fisher bleeked a soft greeting.

Her smile was hesitant, her dark eyes solemn. "Thank you, Dr. MacDallan, and thank you, too, Fisher."

That she included his friend in the greeting warmed a dull, cold ache deep inside. "Dr. Hobbard." He rose to his feet, shook her hand. "And no," he added, gesturing her to a chair, "it isn't easy."

"I'm sorry. We all are."

Scott tightened his jaw muscles briefly. "Thanks," he said in a low voice.

"We found a displaced group of treecats," she said quietly into the silence, "within a few kilometers of the plant. They were clearly trying to migrate away from the zone of devastation. We've already delivered the first emergency drops of food to them. A high percentage of the game animals in the blighted area were evidently killed by toxins emitted by the dissolving picket wood trees. Now that we know what's happened out there, we'll keep the affected treecats from starving until they can relocate to another range."

Scott nodded. His hunch had been right, then. That was good, he thought tiredly. It didn't balance the loss of the stray . . . but it helped. "I'm glad."

"I talked to Nicholas Vollney. They found what caused the crash."

Scott, lost in contemplation of the subtle shadings of grey and cream in Fisher's silky fur, looked up. "Oh?"

The xenologist nodded. "It was the air car's on-board computer. It had been tampered with, of course. Caused them to veer off course, shut down their beacon and communications gear, caused the anti-gravs to malfunction, then cut power entirely at a critical moment as they were losing altitude. That's how she did it. If you hadn't grown suspicious, it would never have been noticed." Sanura Hobbard hesitated, clearly needing to ask and equally clearly not wanting to cause him further pain; but she was, above all else, a professional xenologist. Sensitivity to people's feelings had never stopped one, yet. "You know I have to ask. It's important, I don't have to tell you that, how important it is that we understand this. How did you know? Please, tell me."

Scott's mouth thinned and he shook his head. "There's nothing to tell, Dr. Hobbard. I've flown through a lot of thunderstorms. An experienced pilot would've set his beacon going, if nothing else. No mysteries, just plain old human intuition."

She leveled a cool, disappointed stare at him. "You're going to sit there and tell me there's nothing to tell, when a treecat travels five hundred kilometers to find his murdered friend's body, nearly killing himself in the process, locates the nearest humans he can find, drags them out to the crash site, and then throws himself between the killer's rifle and the human he's somehow convinced to investigate the suspicious crash? Dr. MacDallan, I wasn't born yesterday."

Scott pitied her. He really did. If he'd been in her position, he'd have wanted to throttle anyone holding back what she knew he wasn't telling her. But what the treecats had done was something the human colonists on Sphinx just weren't ready to hear, yet, not emotionally or psychologically or even politically. Stephanie Harrington was right to play the "I'm just a little kid, Dr. Hobbard," game with the xenologist. Until Scott was sure the Manticoran Star Kingdom or others like Mariel Ubel couldn't run roughshod over the treecats, Stephanie's was exactly the right game plan to play.