Dan said mentally, "Can you hear me, Kielgaard?"
"Loud and clear," came the familiar voice. "We're getting sight and sound perfectly."
"Have you got your corps of experts working on everything that comes in?"
"Naturally," said Kielgaard. "But I wouldn't advise you to stop and chat right now. Those boys seem to mean business."
"Do they look like planetary police to you?"
"No. They don't look like anything that was born on that planet."
"That's exactly the way they strike me. Well, maybe I can make them some more trouble."
Dan got out a map and noted a long, fairly straight road from one of the cities, near which he had a mataform transceiver, to another distant city. From this distant city, a winding river curled away to a city even more distant. That night, Dan intended to make use of road and river alike. But right now, he spent an hour or so moving his goods to a place further away from the landing; then he partly reassembled the boat, and cat-napped till evening. He was awoken at frequent intervals by sudden drops of men and more of the tiger-like animals, at each of the four places where they had been before. Each time there was sudden activity at one of these places, a little alarm buzzed in Dan's ear, and he slid on the helmet to watch a renewed search of the ground.
He had the impression that someone had reported nothing was to be found, and that this word had been passed along to someone who had said there must be something there, and it had better be found or else. The search this time was much more careful. But it was not till the last place was searched that one of them came very close to the spy unit, and reached out toward it.
Dan regretfully slid back a protective cover at the lower edge of the helmet and pressed a button underneath. There was a dazzling flash, and then the scene was gone.