t out of leather for your blacksmithing activities."

"Fine business, ace! Then we can save what's left of our civilized
clothes for the return trip. What do we eat?"

"The eternal question of the hungry laboring man! I've got a roasted
bongo, a fried filamaloo bird, and a boiled warple for the meat dishes.
For vegetables, mashed hikoderms and pimola greens. Neocorn bread."

"Translate that, please, into terms of food."

"Translate it yourself, after you eat it. I changed the system on you
today. I've named all the things, so it'll be easier to keep track of
those we like and the ones we don't."

With appetites sharp-set by long hours of hard labor they ate heartily;
then, in the deepening twilight, they sat and talked in comradely
fashion while Stevens smoked one precious cigarette.

* * * * *

It was not long until Nadia had her work well in hand. Game was
plentiful, and the fertile valley and the neighboring upland yielded
peculiar, but savory vegetable foods in variety and abundance; so that
soon she was able to spend some time with Stevens, helping him as much
as she could. Thus she came to realize the true magnitude of the task he
faced and the real seriousness of their position.

As Stevens had admitted before the work was started, he had known that
he had set himself a gigantic task, but he had not permitted himself to
follow, step by step, the difficulties that he knew awaited him. Now,
as the days stretched into weeks and on into months, he was forced to
take every laborious step, and it was borne in upon him just how nearly
impossible that Herculean labor was to prove--just how dependent any
given earthly activity is upon a vast number of others. Here he was
alone--everything he needed must be manufactured by his own hands, from
its original sources. He had known that progress would be slow and he
had been prepared for that; but he had not pictured, even to himself,
half of the maddening setbacks which occurred time after time because
of the crudity of the tools and equipment he was forced to use. All too
often a machine or part, the product of many hours of grueling labor,
would fail because of the lack of some insignificant thing--some item
so common as to be taken for granted in all terrestrial shops, but
impossible of fabrication with the means at his disposal. At such times
he would set his grim jaw a trifle harder, go back one step farther
toward the Stone Age, and