rst. Babs stared at him. After four or five minutes he
stepped back.

"You can lean against this," he explained. "You can watch the fire quite
comfortably. And it's a sort of wall. The fire will light one side of
you and the wall will feel comforting behind you when you get sleepy."

Babs nodded. She swallowed.

"I--think I see what you mean when you say they may have trouble finding
us, because this planet is so large."

Cochrane nodded reluctantly.

"Of course there's this burned-off space for a marker," he observed
cheerfully. "But it could take several days for them to see it."

Babs swallowed again. She said carefully:

"The--ship can't hover like a helicopter, to search. You said so. It
doesn't have fuel enough. They can't really search for us at all! The
only way to make a real search would be to go back to Earth and--bring
back helicopters and fuel for them and men to fly them.... Isn't that
right?"

"Not necessarily. But we do have to figure on a matter of--well--two or
three days as a possibility."

Babs moistened her lips and he said quickly:

"I did a show once about some miners lost in a wilderness. A period
show. In it, they knew that part of their food was poisoned. They didn't
know what. They had to have all their food. And of course they didn't
have laboratories with which to test for poison."

Babs eyed him oddly.

"They bandaged their arms," said Cochrane, "and put scraps of the
different foodstuffs under the bandages. The one that was poisonous
showed. It affected the skin. Like an allergy-test. I'll try that trick
in the morning when there's light to pick samples by. There are berries
and stuff. There must be fruits. A few hours should test them."

Babs said without intonation:

"And we can watch what the animals eat."

Cochrane nodded gravely. Animals on Earth can live on things that--to
put it mildly--humans do not find satisfying. Grass, for example. But it
was good for Babs to think of cheering things right now. There would be
plenty of discouragement to contemplate later.

There was a flicker of brightness in the sky. Presently the earth
quivered. Something made a plaintive, "_waa-waa-waaaaa!_" sound off in
the night. Something else made a noise like the tinkling of bells. There
was an abstracted hooting presently, which now was nearby and now was
far away, and once they heard something which was exactly like the noise
of water running into a pool. But the source of that par