And a bare second later, the exercise abruptly ceased to be routine. Dead ahead, the bushes suddenly parted and a huge cat-like animal stepped out to face them.

A spine leopard.

It's impossible, a small fraction of Jin's mind insisted. The fence surrounding this part of the forest was five meters high, a theoretically impossible barrier even for a spine leopard.

And then the animal snarled, and theory was abruptly forgotten as four sets of fingertip lasers flashed out to converge on the spine leopard's head.

Uselessly, of course, and Jin silently cursed herself for letting her reflexes waste precious time that way. The decentralized spine leopard nervous system was functionally invulnerable to the kind of localized damage the fingertip lasers could inflict. The only known way of dealing with the animals was to get in a clean shot with the antiarmor laser running lengthwise down her left calf-

She was actually starting to shift her weight onto her right foot when the crucial fact caught up with her conscious mind: the trainees' current neckwrap computers didn't allow the antiarmor laser to be activated. The others' fingertip lasers were still slicing uselessly at the spine leopard, leaving blackened tracks in the fur where they passed. And the look that was growing in the creature's eyes... "Stop it!" Jin snapped. "Can't you see you're just making it mad?"

"Then what the hell do you want-?" Todor barked back.

"Try your disrupters!" Sun cut him off. An instant later a backwash of half audible, half felt sound washed over Jin as the others obeyed, playing tight cones of ultrasound over the spine leopard. Another waste of time, Jin thought tightly. Sonic weapons could throw the predators off-balance, but only temporarily; and like the fingertip lasers, their use seemed to enrage the beasts. As soon as this one got its balance back-

And then it struck her. Layn, fully equipped with both antiarmor laser and the nanocomputer needed to use it, had yet to fire a shot.

Another test. Of course-and with that all the pieces fell together. A single spine leopard, captured and released into the enclosure, to see if their first response would be to scatter or to continue their assigned mission of protecting

Layn. Doubtless the Cobra already had his antiarmor laser target-locked on the animal, ready to fire the second it looked like things were getting out of control.

Phrijpicker mousfin, she snarled mentally at him. It was a particularly stupid trick-under target-lock or not, spine leopards were far too dangerous to fool around with this way, especially on inexperienced trainees. Somehow, they had to stop the thing before it shrugged off the effects of the sonics and charged. And maybe wound up killing someone.

And whatever they were going to do, they had better do it fast, The spine leopard was rolling its weight slightly from side to side now, the spines along its forelegs beginning to bristle outward-a sign that it was starting to feel endangered. Which would make it that much more vicious when it finally attacked...

Her eyes flicked around the area, came to rest on the cyprene trees and the thick gluevines running up many of their trunks... and a small chapter of family history bobbed to the surface. "Sun!" she snapped, leaping with servo-enhanced strength into the lower branches of a gluevine-wrapped tree midway from her to the spine leopard. Her muscles tensed, but the sudden motion didn't trigger an attack. "Cut the gluevine at the base of the tree," she called back over her shoulder as she got her own lasers going on the top part of the nearest vine.

"Rip it free of the trunk-don't touch the cut end."

Sun moved to obey, and three seconds later a five-meter section of gluevine hung free in Jin's hand. Glancing down, she saw that the spine leopard was still holding its ground... but even as she watched, it leaned back on its back haunches. Preparing to spring...

"Hariman-split the vine lengthwise," Sun called. "Moreau?-I've got this end. You ready?"

Which meant he'd figured out what she had in mind. "Ready," she called back, clenching her teeth in anticipation. "Hariman?"

Her answer was a burst of laser fire that cracked the gluevine's thick outer coating, letting the incredibly sticky stuff inside ooze out. "Go!" Sun snapped; and Jin leaped.

Her target was another cyprene just beyond where the spine leopard was coiling itself for its spring. A spring that would carry it to Todor, still doggedly playing his sonic over the predator... and as time seemed to slow down for her,

Jin saw for the first time that, in moving over to cut the gluevine, Hariman had unwittingly put himself directly in the line of fire between Layn and the spine leopard. Which meant that if this didn't work, either Hariman or Todor would probably die.

The outer twigs of her target tree scratched at her face and hands as she came in through them... and with all her strength she hurled the vine to the ground.

Directly across the spine leopard's back.

The creature screamed, a blood-chilling sound Jin had never before heard one make. It almost made her miss grabbing the cyprene's trunk; as it was, she tore a gash in the back of her left hand scrambling for a grip. Twisting around, heart thudding in her ears, she looked down.

The spine leopard went ahead and leaped anyway... but even as its feet left the ground, Sun tugged on his end of the gluevine with Cobra servo strength, and an instant later the predator was flying past Todor on a tightly curved course. It landed on its feet, gluevine still draped solidly across its back, foreleg spines spread out in full defensive position-

And twisted to face Sun.

"Stick the vine somewhere and get out of there!" Jin shouted to him.

Sun needed no prompting. In a single motion, he jammed the cut end of the gluevine against the tree he'd cut it from and leaped straight up into the cyprene's branches. Barely pausing to catch his balance, he changed direction and pushed off toward Jin's tree, half a second ahead of the now leashed spine leopard's own leap toward his ankles.

He caught the trunk just above her, sending a rain of twigs and leaves down around her head. "Now what?" he muttered.

"I assume Layn's eventually going to laser it," she told him... but the Cobra was still standing there with Todor and Hariman, watching with them as the spine leopard thrashed about trying to free itself from the gluevine. Todor took a step toward the animal, and it paused in its efforts to make a short leap and slash with its front claws.

"Doesn't seem interested in doing so, does he?" Sun grunted as Todor made a hasty leap back. "Maybe they're going to tranq it and use it on the next batch of trainees."

So Sun had tracked the same line of thought she had. "Pretty damn fool game, if you ask me," she growled to him. "They could at least have waited until we had our antiarmor lasers activated."

"So maybe they want us to be creative."

Jin twisted up her head to look at him. "Meaning...?"

"Well... how long do you suppose it could live with its pseudospine broken?"

She looked down at the animal. Already it had worried a few centimeters of the gluevine free, sacrificing a narrow line of its fur in the process. Left on its own another minute of two... "What say we find out," she suggested grimly.

"Sounds good. You take the rear, I'll take just back of the head. On three; one, two, three."

And Jin pushed off from the tree, arcing into the air as high as she dared.

Sun's leap paralleled hers... and as they passed the top of their arcs and started down-

"No!" Layn bellowed; but it was far too late. Jin hit the spine leopard full in the back, keeping her knees stiff until the last second in order to transfer as much impact to the spine leopard's body as she could. Sun hit a fraction of a second behind her, and she both heard and felt the twin cracks-