7

He had to be careful where he landed. Very careful. According to his sensors, there were few places to land on this miserable little moon, at least no places solid enough to accommodate a space vessel. Much of the planet was a dry version of quicksand, only soft gravel, impossible to get a hold on. Anyone falling in one of those would be quick to sink. And if a ship landed, well the ignorant pilot could say good bye to his ship; any repulsorlifts or the like would have nothing to repulse off of, unless the craft was of the sort that could blast off from thin air. Safari Joe's ship was not.

The hunter found a solid patch of ground and only sat there for a moment. He observed. He watched the scanners. Sometimes he missed Mule. Not that he was a sentimental sort, but he'd been the one to do all the research, and now Safari Joe had to waste the time. But he was not stupid enough to forgo it. He knew it was necessary, but that didn't mean he had to like it.

With a small degree of amazement, he watched a large herd of creatures busting out from one of the quickpits. There were over twenty of them, maybe thirty, felines. Almost looking like malformed lions with razor sharp "fins" extending from their long, thick tails, the little things were no bigger than a large sewer rat. Safari Joe looked them up. Trentsins. There had been no more landing missions to the moon, but there had been observations from orbit; the scientists had not been able to stand not knowing about the moon's unique life.

Still he watched. Several species of spider and scorpion, and a few unimaginable insect types Safari Joe had never seen before, and could not find in his access to the databanks. There were lizards, snakes, all other manner of reptile, the largest about the same size as the trentsins. Probably the most frightening thing on the planet was an insect; it was also the largest thing on the planet, animal wise. Looking like a cross between a mosquito and a bat, this thing had six hairy legs with little talons on them, a wicked-looking proboscis, tapered to a sharp point and at least six inches long, and a fat, bloated body with insectasoid, bristly fur, and leathery, bug-shaped wings. It looked fat and lazy, but it moved with the speed of a yellowjacket. Not nice looking. Safari Joe grinned.

"Well, let's see if this moon's as tough as it thinks it is," Joe said, and stood. He pulled on a pair of wire-mesh pants, thin but of an almost impenetrable metal, and a jacket of thick, plastic-like material, a face cage, similar to those a beekeeper would use but made of the same material as the pants, thick boots, and finally, a heavy pair of gloves. "Now I'm ready!"

Grabbing a small rifle from the wall, one that shot a variety of different nets, and a few minor stun settings, not to mention a scaled down version of the levitating rocket cuffs, he stepped out of the ship and sealed it.

He had to be careful. The plants? All poisonous to some degree. There were some that shot little barbs that would burn like Tabasco sauce on a deep cut, though it was not fatal. There were some ground cover type grass plants that were covered in venom-oozing bristles that could kill a full grown man on contact, though they never grew more than a couple three centimeters. And those were stationary. Every living animal on the planet was at least as bad, and a lot of them were fast. Very fast.

Safari Joe looked around the bleak-looking world. The sand was a deep violet hue, the sky a lighter version of the color, looking like a purple twilight, a pale, bleak twilight. That was the look, twenty-four hour a day. And it was hot. The nearest sun was only a fingertip-sized dot that almost blended in with the unnatural sky, but the heat wasn't from that. The upper atmosphere was thick, thicker than on any known planet, and the chemicals in the next layer down were constantly reacting with each other. The lowest layer of air was breathable, but any higher and a person's lungs would be seared, and the person would die if he were foolish enough to breathe it. Safari Joe had done his homework.

The hunter's sharp eyes scanned the ground and the air. He hunted cats more than anything, and the little trentsins held a good deal of interest for him, though he wouldn't mind capturing a few of the lizards, maybe one of the little mouse sized canines that ran around. They were the least poisonous of the place; their venom was no more than that of a small mosquito. Easy prey for the greatest hunter in the galaxy.

He took out a hand held scanner and pressed a few buttons, no easy task with the gloves, and took a look around. A flock of the demon bugs above him, a few of the canines scattered around in a twenty-five yard radius, and some plants...a worm-sized snake...hmm. That would be interesting. It looked to be a breed of rattlesnake. Did he have a net small enough for something like that? Of course he did. A hunter is always prepared.

But he was more interested in the canines. He could hunt the little cat things later, these canines were closer. All around him, twenty yards...wait a minute, fifteen. And there were so many of them! One brave little pip-squeak of a rat-wolf ran up within five yards of the hunter's foot. He glared at it. "What the hell are you guys doing?" The little dog, which had two slitted eyes and a perpetually bared, tongueless mouth, only looked at him, then without warning he leaped.

"What in the!" Safari Joe had been taken completely by surprise, not something that happened very often. Not a lot about the creatures of these planets was known, and the few observers had never seen a pack, a full pack of the canines attacking a large animal. There were no large animals there to observe, but the little canines seemed to have an instinct for dealing ith bigger prey.

But certainly that meant they had encountered it before?

The mouse sized canine easily leaped up to Safari Joe's head height, and snapped at him, however where there had been only a few scraggly looking little teeth were now a large, nasty looking set of fangs. No harmful venom, but a nasty bite. Joe leapt back, barely avoiding the attack. The thing growled, a high pitched sound like a kitten's purr, and attacked again.

Joe was fascinated; it was almost as if the little thing had turned its mouth inside out to extend the viscous looking fangs to snap out at its prey. The fangs were bigger than it's whole body.

Just then, Safari Joe noticed the others. A hundred, maybe a hundred fifty now that they were al congregating. He started to get worried. Maybe they weren't poisonous, but he could see that they could easily take down a man. Easily. He had an image in his mind of the deadly jorick ants of Plundaar, that could devour anything it their path, and another image of a school of piranhas of Third Earth. He didn't know which was closer to fitting these thing, but he wasn't about to stay and find out.

But he soon found that he had hesitated too long. He had no choice.

About ten of them jumped on him at once, trying to bite through the tough jacket. They almost succeeded. Joe fired off a few blasts from his gun, knocking about a dozen of them away, but they were all converging in on him. He ran.

The things were fast with their reactions, but their little legs couldn't keep up with a tall man's running strides. Though they tried to swarm him, almost tripping him up, they soon fell behind, Their leaps were built for height, not distance. After a while, they gave up.

Panting hard, Safari Joe came to a stop and rested with his hands on his knees. He had been bitten four, maybe five times, once on the neck, thankfully a grazing bite when the face net had flipped up for a second. He had been caught twice on one hand, once on the other, and a fifth one had managed to sink his thin fangs in between the mesh on his pant legs. They itched like fire.

Safari Joe was seriously thinking of giving it up this time, to come back a little more prepared, but then he heard a soft beep on his little scanner. He reached down and with disgust he noticed that on his belt were two of the little dog things. He growled and batted them with all his strength. One went flying, but the other didn't let go. His body was torn from his teeth, and it went flying, but the teeth stayed. His lip curling in a grimace of distaste, Joe pried it off.

Now he could look and see what the blasted thing was beeping about. That little indicator was set to alert him of anything bigger than what should be on the planet., and there was something. A large something. "A building?" the hunter mused in amazement. "Impossible. There's no one that lives on this moon." After a moment's thought, with only the empty sound of the wind passing over rocky cave formations; and the sharp sting of the mosquito-type venom in the large bites to accompany his thoughts, Safari Joe decided to check it out. Looking down at the indicator, he started north.

Joe hunting on the moon (drawn sans gear)
Joe

A trentsin, a curious little blade-tailed creature.
trentsin

The largest creature on the planet, about the sze of a Chihuaua
bug

A little canine with unhinging jaws
ratwolf

Part 6

Part 8

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