Catseye by Andre Norton Page B

passed without pausing, Horan again opened the door a crack. He could not see the retreating yardman from this position, but he heard the door at the other end of the court close. Then he saw Zul detach himself from the wall and move on. So—Zul was keeping this a secret from the regular guard? That was most intersting.
    Two, three more pens the other passed. Then he stopped before the last in that row, a larger enclosure where two small trasi from Longus were kept. They were very tame and most affectionate creatures of a subspecies of deer.
    The pen door opened and Zul disappeared within, the darkness there hiding him entirely.
    â€œObey!”
    Troy’s hand went to his head at the force of that menacing thought-order, which struck like a blow. But to it there was not the faintest trace of an answer, either agreement or protest. Somehow Troy could imagine Zul stooped above a shrouded cage, trying to arouse a ball of fur that remained stubbornly impervious to his commands.
    â€œListen!” Again that whip crack of order. “You will obey!”
    Again only complete silence. Will against will—animal opposing man? Troy leaned his forehead against the cool surface of the door behind which he half crouched, trying with every fiber of will and strength to listen in on the duel that he was sure was being waged across the courtyard.
    Minutes dragged. Then Zul slid out of the pen, made his way back along the wall, disappeared into the same passage the spacers used when they visited the shop. Troy counted slowly under his breath. When he reached fifty and there was no movement in the courtyard, he came out of the storeroom, went to the trasi pen.
    The animals stirred as he lifted the latch and let himself in. Only a little of the limited light in the yard reached here, and at first he thought that he must have been mistaken; there was no cage in sight. He stooped, brushed through the hay piled against the far wall, to bark his knuckles painfully against solid surface. Then he hunkered down, feeling over the covered cage for the fastenings. They had been doubly tied and he had difficulty in loosening them.
    Though the kinkajou must have been aware of his efforts, it made no move, neither a stir nor a mind touch. The flap of the cover was up now, but Troy could not see into the cage. He unfastened the catch of the door.
    Troy fell back as a half-seen thing flashed into the loose hay, tossing up a small whirlwind of scattered wisps, squeezed under the bottom of the pen door and was gone—before the man half comprehended that the captive had been poised ready for escape. There was no use now trying to find it in the courtyard. There were a hundred places that might have been designed to conceal a fast-moving arboreal animal such as the kinkajou—which left Troy where?
    He snapped shut the cage, refastened the covering the same way he had found it. Brushing hay from his coveralls, he detached a last telltale length from his belt. There was no use in looking for more trouble. The kinkajou was loose, and he could not help believing that the animal was far safer at this moment than it had been in that cage. Let its empty prison provide a morning mystery for Kyger or Zul.
    Troy went back to his bunk. He was convinced now that his employer had a part in a game more important than smuggling, a game in which the animals were involved. And as he dozed off, he wondered just how many four-footed Terrans with strange mental powers had been loosed on Korwar—and why.
    If the kinkajou had been missed, there was no alarm given the next day. The routine followed the same pattern it had every morning that Troy had been employed by Kyger’s, with the exception that Zul now took over a major portion of the indoor work and Troy was relegated to sweeping and cleaning jobs, which were the least desirable. But at noon he was summoned to the bird room, for it appeared that competent as he might be in other ways, Zul was not