THE NIPE STOOD QUIETLY for a moment, looking down at the thing he had killed. His stomach churned with disgust. He ignored the fading hoofbeats of the slave-animal from which he had knocked the thing that lay on the ground with a crushed skull. The slave-animal was unintelligent and unimportant.
This was the intelligent one.
But so slow! So incredibly slow! And so weak and soft!
It seemed impossible that such poorly-equipped beasts could have survived long enough on any world to evolve to become the dominant life form.
Perhaps it was not the dominant form. Perhaps it was merely a higher slave-animal. He would have to do more investigating.
He picked up the weapon the thing had drawn and examined it carefully. The mechanism was unfamiliar, but a glance at the muzzle told him that it wa
