re
scattered in the other world. For some reason, that made Ed feel better,
it seemed to make the joining of the two worlds a little more permanent.

Still, it had come sudden, and it might go sudden. Ed went back into his
own world and got an ax, a saw, more ammunition, salt, a heavy sleeping
robe, a few other possibles. He brought them through and piled them in
the other world, covering them with a scrap of old tarp. He cut a couple
of poles, peeled them, and stuck them in the ground to mark the hole
from this side.

Then he looked around.

He stood on the shoulder of a hill, in a game trail that ran down toward
a stream below, in what seemed to be a fairly recent burn. There were
charred stumps, and the growth was small stuff, with some saplings
pushing up through. There was timber in the valley below, though, and on
the hills beyond, deciduous, somewhat like oak. South was where east had
been in his own world, and the sun seemed smaller, but brighter. The sky
was a very dark blue. He seemed lighter in this world, there was a
spring in his step he had not known for twenty years. He looked at his
compass. It checked with the direction of the sun.

He studied the trail. It had seen a lot of use, but less in recent
weeks. There were sharp hoof-prints of the animal he had caught, larger
hoof-prints, vague pad-marks of various sizes, but nothing that looked
human. The trail went under a charred tree trunk at a height that was
not comfortable for a man, and the spacing of the steps around the
gnarled roots of an old slump did not fit a man's stride.

He did not notice the Harn creature at all--which was understandable, it
was well camouflaged.

He worked circumspectly down the trail, staying a little off it,
studying tracks and droppings, noticing evidences of browsing on the
shrubs--mostly old--pausing to examine tufts of hair and an occasional
feather. Halfway down the slope he flushed a bird about ptarmigan-size,
grayish brown in color.

The trail was more marked where it went into the timber. It wound
through the trees for a few hundred yards and came out on a canoe-sized
stream. Here it forked. One trail crossed the stream and went up the
hill on the other side, the other followed the stream up the valley.

* * * * *

_The Harn followed Ed's movements, observing carefully. It needed a
specimen from the other world, and this biped would serve nicely, but it
might as well learn