Dark-faced Hakim nodded.
Fenner went on, "I've said this before, and I'll say it again. It is possible—just possible, mind you—that this mental paralysis represents an emanation of some kind from a predator, a method of paralyzing its prey before attacking. Wasn't Bodkin off more or less by himself, away from the rest of you?"
"That's right," Gorsline said.
"And the same was true of Lermontov and Parson, both of them were alone, or at any rate, a little apart from the rest."
He got to his feet. "I'll tell you one more thing I've noticed, on my own field trips, not only in areas A and B, but also in the bush. You're familiar with this, Bodkin, you were with me all four times. But I haven't told you yet, Hagen. Those large banks of red flowers always grow near marshy areas. The marshes are thick with those furry reeds, the ones that look like giant bulrushes that have opened their seed pods. I have found two things: one, numbers of bones and exoskeletons among the flowers and the reeds, and two, in one place, in the mud, a definite mark as if a heavy body had rested there. There was a scent-spoor; the tracker confirmed it."
Hagen twisted the point of his goatee between two fingers. "This is hardly proof of anything," he said. "Now, one minute. I agree, it's interesting and provocative. Was the spoor fresh? It was? Well, it gives us something to think of. We have no definite indication, however—"
"No, of course not," Fenner said impatiently. "But we can't go on this way, losing a man almost every time we send out a party. We'll be afraid to set foot outside, after a while. And how the devil can we study ecology under these circumstances? We've got to know what we're up against."
Hagen stood up, too, and suddenly his wiry little body assumed great poise and authority. "Let me think about this," he said. "We'll have a meeting tonight of the entire Station personnel, and we'll discuss the matter. But I want time to consider all the aspects of it."
He went to the iris. "I want to look at Bodkin, too," he said. "Take it easy, gentlemen."
There was a short silence after he had left. Then Gorsline, looking speculatively at Fenner, said, "Luke, if you're right—you know, it's interesting that in the month we've been here we haven't seen a single large animal, not one larger than a rabbit."