Terl lifted the blast rifle muzzle-high and fired. The grenade soared in a long arc over the top of the cattle and landed well beyond them. It exploded in a bright green flash. One cow went down, hit by a fragment.

The others leaped and began to run. They ran away from the sound and straight toward Terl. Terl leveled the blast rifle. “Those hoofs are moving,” he said. “So you won't think it's an accident.”

The bulls were coming on in a headlong rush, the cows behind them. The ground shook. The distance was closing quickly.

Terl began to fire in quick single shots.

He broke the legs of the following cows and they tumbled to earth bawling.

He broke the right front leg of the farthest bull. The other was almost upon them.

One final shot and Terl broke the right front leg of the nearest bull, which skidded to a crumbled heap, mere feet in front of them.

The air was shattering with the bawls of pain from the cattle.

Terl grinned as he looked at them. Jonnie looked back at him in horror. That grin behind the faceplate was of pure joy.

Jonnie felt revulsion for the monster. Terl was– Jonnie suddenly realized there was no word for “cruel” in the Psychlo language. He turned toward the cattle.

Walking out in front with his kill-club to put them out of their agony, he heard a new sound, a rustling rumble.

Jonnie whirled. Coming away from the cave, awakened and angered by all the racket, charging straight at Terl's back, was the biggest grizzly bear Jonnie had ever seen.

“Behind you!” he yelled. But his voice was drowned in the bawling of the cattle. Terl just stood there grinning.

A moment later the bear roared.

Terl heard it and started to turn. But he was too late.

The grizzly hit him in the back with an impact that sent out a shock wave.

The blast rifle, driven from Terl's paws, soared into the air toward Jonnie. He caught it in his left hand.

But Jonnie wasn't thinking of the blast rifle as any more than a club. And he had his own kill-club up and striking before the bear could aim a second blow at Terl. The kill-club caught the grizzly square on the brain pan. The bear staggered, distracted and stunned.

Jonnie sailed in again.

The bear struck out with a massive clawed blow. Jonnie went under it. The kill-club hit again on the brain pan.

The bear reared up and struck at the kill-club as it came in again. The thong snapped.

Jonnie grasped the rifle by the barrel.

The grizzly came at him with gaping jaws.

The rifle stock crashed into the bear's teeth.

Jonnie struck again on the brain pan.

With a dwindling roar the bear went down.

It stayed down, its limbs twitching in death.

Jonnie backed up. Terl was lying on his side, conscious. His mask was in place. His eyes behind the faceplate were wide and staring.

Jonnie backed up farther. Thank god the leash hadn't caught on anything and tripped him during the fight. He snapped the leash to him. Then he turned his attention to the gun. It had little labels on its controls. The safety catch was off. There was a charge under the trigger. It was scratched but not otherwise damaged.

Jonnie looked at Terl. Terl looked back, his claws flexing and unflexing, waiting. He was certain the animal would level the gun and kill him. His paw stole down to his belt gun.

If Jonnie saw the movement toward the belt gun he ignored it. He turned his back on Terl. He located the sights on the blast rifle and then, with six shots, put the crippled cattle out of their misery.

Jonnie put on the safety catch. He reached into his pouch and got a piece of sharp-edged glass and walked over to the bear and began to skin it.

Terl lay and looked at him. At length he realized he had better check himself out. A pain in his back, a rip in his collar, a bit of green blood on his paw. He tested his back. It was nothing serious. He went over to the car and sat down on a seat with the doors open and hunched there, still looking at Jonnie.

“You're not going to carry that hide inside this car,” said Terl.

Jonnie didn't look up from his skinning.

"I’ll lash it on top.”

At length Jonnie bundled up the hide and went over to the youngest cow. Working deftly with the sharp glass, he took out the tenderloin and tongue, cut a haunch, and wrapped them in the bear hide.

Jonnie took some thongs from his pouch and lashed the hide with its meat to a gunmount on the car top.

Then he handed the blast rifle to Terl. “The safety is on,” he said. He was cleaning himself up with handfuls of grass.

Terl looked at him. Fear? Fear be damned. This animal had no fear in him. Leverage. It had to be leverage. Lots of it!

“Get in,” said Terl. “It’s getting late.”

The following day, Terl was again a blur of activity. He was getting ready for another interview with Numph.

He rushed about doing mutiny interviews, recording each one on a type of tape that could be cut and spliced. It was a very artful task, requiring the greatest care. He approached numbers of employees on the job, inside the compound and out.

The interviews went very smoothly and rapidly.

Terl would ask, “What company regulations do you know concerning mutiny?” The employees, sometimes startled, always suspicious, would quote what they knew or thought they knew concerning mutiny.

The security chief would then request, "In your own words, tell me your opinion of mutiny.” The employees would of course get long-winded and reassuring: “Mutiny is a very bad thing. Executives would cause vaporizations wholesale and no one would be safe. I sure never intend to advocate or take part in any mutiny.”

The interviews went on and on through the day, Terl rushing about, mask on outside, mask off inside. Recording, recording, recording. He always wound up an interview shaking his head and smiling and saying it was just routine and they knew how it was with management being what it was and he, Terl, was on the employee's side. But he left a bit of worry in his wake, employees vowing to themselves to have nothing whatever to do with any mutiny, pay cut or no pay cut.

From time to time, passing through his office, Terl would look at the image of the cage where the high button cameras still performed their guard duty. Curiosity and a vague unease made him keep checking.

The animal seemed very industrious. It had been up with first light. It had worked and worked, scraping the bear hide clean, and had taken old ashes and worked them into it. The hide was now hanging, pinned to the bars.

Then the fire had been built up and an odd network of branches, sort of racks, had been made, around the fireplace. The beef was cut into long, thin strips and hung on the racks near the fire. Leaves from the chopped-up trees kept being put on the fire, creating a great deal of smoke, and the smoke was winding around the meat.

Terl could not quite make out what the animal was really doing. But toward the end of the day he thought he knew. The animal was observing some kind of religious ritual having to do with spring. He had read something about this in the Chinko guidebooks. They had dances and other silly things. The smoke was supposed to carry the spirits of slain animals to the gods. Yesterday they had certainly slain enough animals. The thought of it made Terl's back twinge.

He had never believed any of these Earth creatures could actually hurt a Psychlo, but that grizzly bear had shaken his confidence slightly. It had been an awfully big bear– it weighed almost as much as Terl himself.

Probably come sunset, the animal down there in the cage would build the fire up and begin to dance or something. He concluded it wasn't up to anything dangerous and kept on with his headlong interviewing.