Jarl Gare spoke quietly to Waltk. "We can escape them by traveling through the trees."
"I could," said Waltk, "but you would be too slow. They would capture you."
Jarl Gare looked at Waltk appraisingly. "On your back, I would not slow you too much."
Waltk grinned widely, his moon face wrinkling. He laughed throatily. "You would not slow me at all. I had not thought of that."
Jarl Gare's ray gun swept the circle again. "I wish I could see them," he said. "I'd like to know what they looked like if I met them face to face."
Waltk's eyes turned to one of the waiting figures. "They are as tall as you. Their heads are conical, set on sloping shoulders without much neck. Their bodies are mottled green and red and brown. They carry two-pronged spears. Their feet are webbed."
"I have seen pictures of them," Jarl Gare said. "But they weren't colored. I remember reading that they can change the colors of their skin to blend with surroundings."
"They blend well," Waltk said. "It was difficult for me to see them at first after I had sensed them."
Waltk slung Jarl Gare on his back. A tensing of his mighty thews and one leap took them to a tree thirty feet away. Then they were swinging swiftly through the upper reaches of the forest, propelled by the Jovian's strength, made even more powerful by the lesser gravitational pull of Venus.
A mile away Waltk halted, while Jarl Gare swept the forest behind him with the infra-red ray. He laughed. "They're still sitting there, waiting for us."