Blade spent the morning collecting the night's catch: four fish and something like a cross between a gopher and a duck-billed platypus. He spent the afternoon exploring the area around the camp almost tree by tree, looking for signs of whatever made the cries in the night.

Just before dinnertime he found what he was looking for. In the middle of a patch of churned-up earth, half buried in dead leaves and needles, sprawled a large animal. It reminded Blade of a short-legged moose with a shaggy coat and a long curling tail. Two pairs of broad antlers jutted out from either side of the narrow skull, bending upward at right angles. The animal looked as if it was wearing a pair of bookends on its head.

The animal was so badly mangled that Blade could hardly tell where one injury ended and another began. The neck was broken, the skull cracked and the brains eaten out, the belly slashed open and most of the internal organs gone, and the rump eaten down to the bone. The killers had been hungry as well as powerful.

Searching the area around the body, Blade turned up two kinds of footprints. One was broad and round, obviously the dead animal's. The other showed six long toes spreading out like a fan, each tipped with a claw. Blade counted at least three different sets of the second kind.

So much for his notion that this part of the forest was clear of dangerous animals. He looked around him carefully, estimating the size of the clearing. He wished now that he'd seen more of the bat-cats in action when he was in the wilderness the first time. Could they climb trees and glide across clearings, or could they attack entirely on the ground?

Blade snapped off the safety on his rifle and worked a round into the chamber. Then he headed back to camp, following a deliberately confused route, frequently stopping to listen, and trying to look in all directions at once. He heard and saw nothing, but suddenly the forest no longer seemed so friendly.