coutship.

He walked over to a rocky outcrop and tugged loose a yellowish tuft of
plant, neither moss nor fungi but sharing attributes of both. Shann
recognized it without enthusiasm as one of the varieties of native
produce which could be safely digested by Terran stomachs. The stuff was
almost tasteless and possessed a rather unpleasant odor. Consumed in
bulk it would satisfy hunger for a time. Shann hoped that with the
wolverines to aid they could go back to hunting soon.

However, Thorvald showed no desire to head inland where they might
expect to locate game. He disagreed with Shann's suggestion for tracking
Taggi and Togi when those two emerged from the underbrush obviously well
fed and contented after their early morning activity.

When Shann protested with some heat, the other countered: "Didn't you
ever hear of fish, Lantee? After a storm such as last night's, we ought
to discover good pickings along the shore."

But Shann was also sure that it was not only the thought of food which
drew Thorvald back to the sea.

They crawled back through the bolt hole. The beach of gravel-sand had
vanished save for a narrow ribbon of land just at the foot of the
cliffs, where the water curled in white lace about the barrier of
boulders. There was no change in the dullness of the sky; no sun broke
through the thick lid of clouds. And the green of the sea was ashened to
gray which matched that overcast until one could strain one's eyes
trying to find the horizon, unable to mark the dividing line here
between air and water.

Utgard was a broken necklace, the outermost island-beads lost, the inner
ones more isolated by the rise in water, more forbidding. Shann let out
a startled hiss of breath.

The top of a near-by rock detached itself, drew up into a hunched thing
of armor-plated scales and heavy wide-jawed head. A tail cracked into
the air; a double tail split into equal forks for half-way down its
length. A leg lifted as a forefoot, webbed, clawed for a new hold. This
sea beast was the most formidable native thing he had sighted on
Warlock, approaching in its ugliness the hound of the Throgs.

Breathing in labored gusts, the thing slapped its tail down on the
stones with a limpness which suggested that the raising of that
appendage had overtaxed its limited supply of strength. The head sank
forward, resting across one of the forelimbs. Then Shann sighted the
fearsome wound in the side just before one of the larger hi