THE ADAPTERS,
by Philip E. HighPryor crouched in a hollow and squinted across the swaying grass. He looked what he was, a long-time fugitive. Tattered, burned brown, emaciated and bearded.
The grass, heat-hazed in the July sun, looked sleepy, gentle and quite without danger but to Pryor’s experienced eye there were warning signs.
Here and there, patches of grass drooped listlessly or were turning brown. Way over to the left, an oak tree was weeping as if in anticipation of Autumn. With every breeze, a swirl of leaves, brown at the edges, drifted downwards from the branches.
Oh, yes, they were around here, all right, no doubt about that. A long time since they had been this way, so long that he had become careless.
No use going on in any case, the game would have pulled out in droves a
