Secret of the Stars by Andre Norton

supplies were now low. The last can of self-heating stew had been finished the night before. Now the trail in the snow was his only hope of being guided to shelter or more food. Once more he shambled into the open, and began to trudge on.
    A new fear arose to haunt his mind. What if he were traveling in the wrong direction? Had the traveler been bound the other way? He could not backtrack now, only trust that he had chosen rightly. His shamble became a wavering trot. Rounding a bend in the valley wall he came upon the unmistakable evidence of a camp.
    The stranger had sheltered better than he; a windbreak of boulders had charred sticks of a fire laid before it. Joktar drew off his mitten, poked his fingers into that ashy pile. One fear dissolved, warmth still clung there. He had a blaster, was equipped to fight for what he had to have. Now all that mattered was catching up with the other.
    Doggedly the Terran cut down his pace to preserve his strength. But time wore on and he could see no signs of his gaining on the other. A noon-time camp and he squatted in the same spot hours later, wondering if he could make contact before nightfall.
    The day was graying into dusk when the valley became a narrow slit, a gate way.
    “Arrrh . . .”
    That was certainly no human word, echoing hollowly like a beast’s roar between the walls. The sound stopped Joktar short. He reached for his blaster, memories of the cat-bear well to the fore.
    No animal erupted from a pool of shadow to attack. Instead he caught another noise, the sharp, unforgettable crack of a blaster bolt. Six feet ahead a boulder smoked, the stone blackened by that stroke of man-made lightning.
    There was no mistaking the warning in that. Joktar threw himself to the left, skidded painfully across the bare gravel which floored the cut, brought up against the cliff, an altogether too small pile of stones providing him with very inadequate refuge.
    “You, get out!”
    That voice was certainly human, the words Terran, and the order clear. But Joktar, instead of obeying, dug his mittens into the gravel and flattened himself as well as he could.

5
    “I said blast out of here, snooper!”
    The words boomed from rock to rock, distorted by the walls of the cliffs. They were reinforced by a second bolt from the blaster. Gravel smoked less than a yard away as Joktar tried to claw into the iron hard earth.
    He was over the first shock and was thinking fast. Such an ambush suggested that the unseen behind that blaster was expecting trouble. Would a company man on a lawful prospecting trip be so wary?
    Those guards on the crawlers and jumpers carried a weight of armament through the wilderness. Were the companies facing some other challenge besides an occasional lamby or cat-bear? He remembered suddenly the man in Siwaki who had bid for him with an offer of lamby skins.
    But there was no time to wonder. A third crack of the blaster delivered a flash almost in his eyes. He was sure he smelt the singe of fur that time. And he knew he was licked. So he made the only move possible.
    Joktar stood up, walked out into the main cut of the valley, his hands up, mittened palms out. Before him nothing moved, he could not spot the other’s lurking place.
    “All right, the deal’s yours.”
    “No deals, snooper. No deals with any company man.”
    For the first time, Joktar remembered that his looted furs must carry, breast and back, the company insignia.
    “I’m no company man . . .” his words tripped over each other in his eagerness. “I got this coat from—” But he never had a chance to finish his explanation.
    “You’re just asking for a burn-down, snooper,” commented that echoing voice. “Drop your blaster, toss it over by that red rock and then get back down that valley and fast!”
    A flick of dazzling light not two inches from his right boot underlined that order. With his hands shaking more from frustrated anger than fear, Joktar unbuckled his weapon belt and tossed it