his hands raw, his nails broken and torn. He
sat there, stupefied with his own weariness, to stare about.

Thorvald called impatiently, and Shann reached for the torch to hold it
for the officer. Then Thorvald crawled out; he, too, looked around in
dull surprise.

On either side, peaks cut high into the amber of the sky. But this bowl
in which the men had found refuge was rich in growing things. Though the
trees were stunted, the grass grew almost as high here as it did on the
meadows of the lowlands. Quartering the pocket valley, galloped the
wolverines, expressing in that wild activity their delight in this
freedom.

"Good campsite."

Thorvald shook his head. "We can't stay here."

And, to underline that gloomy prophesy, there issued from that hole
through which they had just come, muffled and broken, but still
threatening, the howl of the Throgs' hound.

The Survey officer caught the torch from Shann's hold and knelt to flash
it into the interior of the passage. As the beam slowly circled that
opening, he held out his other arm, measuring the size of the aperture.

"When that thing gets on a hot scent"--he snapped off the beam--"the
beetle-heads won't be able to control it. There will be no reason for
them to attempt to. Those hounds obey their first orders: kill--or
capture. And I think this one operates on 'capture.' So they'll loose it
to run ahead of their party."

"And we move to knock it out?" Shann relied now on the other's
experience.

Thorvald rose. "It would need a blaster on full power to finish off a
hound. No, we can't kill it. But we can make it a doorkeeper to our
advantage." He trotted down into the valley, Shann beside him without
understanding in the least, but aware that Thorvald did have some plan.
The officer bent, searched the ground, and began to pull from under the
loose surface dirt one of those nets of tough vines which they had used
for cords. He thrust a double handful of this hasty harvest into Shann's
hold with a single curt order: "Twist these together and make as thick a
rope as you can!"

Shann twisted, discovering to his pleased surprise that under pressure
the vines exuded a sticky purple sap which not only coated his hands,
but also acted as an adhesive for the vines themselves so that his task
was not nearly as formidable as it had first seemed. With his force ax
Thorvald cut down two of the stunted trees and stripped them of
branches, wedging the poles into the rocks