World of the Hunter

Earth is a backwater now, one planet-wide game farm where rich outworlders come to shoot beasts imported from five dozen worlds. Gilbert, eighteen and already a guide in the swamps of Lewsanna, has led plenty of jaded clients. Mulveen is the worst.

After a thirty-ton saurian fails to impress him, the drunken hunter makes an offer: five thousand credits, ten years' pay, if Gilbert takes a rifle into the swamp tonight and survives being hunted. No Earth law touches an outworlder, and Mulveen has the beaters on his side. Gilbert says yes, and before dawn he learns he is not the only one Mulveen means to hunt.