Vultures. Are they waiting for me?
This was too real. This was unbearably real.
A herd of gazelles came bounding out of the background, relieving some of the tension. The lovely creatures seemed to float along, touching the ground only at occasional intervals. Behind them marched the dull-gray bulks of a herd of elephants, shambling with a ponderous gait.
This was Africa. This was the real thing, Hendriks told himself. It wasn't a show. Through some magic the ULTRARAMA people had actually sent him here.
He moved away, investigating. A sluggish black stream wound through the jungle; curious, Hendriks walked toward it. Dark logs lay strewn almost at random in the shallow muddy water at the sides of the stream. But as he watched, one of the logs yawned, showing a double row of deadly teeth, and slid sleepily off into deeper waters.
Crocodiles. Death threatened everywhere in the jungle.
Monkeys chittered overhead; bright-plumaged birds flapped from tree to tree. Hendriks felt the heat, his nostrils drew in the smell. This was real. He wondered if it would ever end, if he would ever return to his neat little city apartment and to his wife and children.
He glanced away from the stream, looked up at the sun blazing in the bright blue sky. And abruptly black death came roaring at him from a tree.
Hendriks had just a moment to recognize it. A leopard, black, sleek, moving with the easy grace of a machine designed for killing. He toppled backward under the impetus of the beast's furious attack, smelled the soft musky smell of the killer.
Then claws reached for his throat. Hot barbs of red pain shot through him. He screamed out, fought, tried to hold the snapping jaws away.