The thing stood almost complete, its head cocked in what was an attitude of listening.
"Lumbrilo!" Dane identified it, still knowing that the witch doctor could not be standing there listening for them. But, to shake him still farther, the head turned at his cry. Only there were no eyes, no features on the white expanse which should have been a face. And somehow that made the monster more menacing, convincing Dane against sane logic that the thing was spying on them.
"Demon!" That was Nymani; and over his sudden quaver, robbed of all the confidence which had been there only moments earlier, came Asaki's demand:
"What stands there, Medic? Tell us that!"
"A whip to drive us out of hiding, sir. As you know as well as I. If Nymani spied upon them, then they have spied upon us in turn. And this, I think, also answers another question. If there is a canker of trouble on Khatka, then Lumbrilo is close to its root."
"Nymani!" The Chief Ranger's voice was the crack of a lash. "Will you forget again that you are a man, and run crying for shelter against a shaft of light? As this off-world Medic says, Lumbrilo fashions such as that to drive us into our enemies' hands!"
The shadow thing in the swamp moved, putting its foot forward on surface which would not bear the weight of a human body, taking a deliberate step and then another, heading for the concealing brush where the fugitives lay.
"Can you get rid of it, Tau?" Jellico asked in his usual crisp voice. He might have been inquiring about some problem aboard the Queen.
"I'd rather get at the source." There was a grim note in the Medic's reply. "And to do that I want to look at their camp."
"Well enough!" Asaki crept back in the brush.