e stream to the
valley wall and through a feeder ravine into the larger space beyond.
There, where the stream was born at the foot of a falls, they made their
first camp. Judging that the morning haze would veil any smoke, Shann
built a pocket-size fire. He seared rather than roasted the skitterers
after he had made an awkward and messy business of skinning them, and
tore the meat from the delicate bones in greedy mouthfuls. The
wolverines lay side by side on the gravel, now and again raising a head
alertly to test the scent on the air, or gaze into the distance.

Taggi made a warning sound deep in the throat. Shann tossed handfuls of
sand over the dying fire. He had only time to fling himself face-down,
hoping the drab and weathered cloth of his uniform faded into the color
of the earth on which he lay, every muscle tense.

A shadow swung across the hillside. Shann's shoulders hunched, and he
cowered again. That terror he had known on the ledge was back in full
force as he waited for the beam to lick at him as it had earlier at his
fellows. The Throgs were on the hunt....

2. DEATH OF A SHIP

That sigh of displaced air was not as loud as a breeze, but it echoed
monstrously in Shann's ears. He could not believe in his luck as that
sound grew fainter, drew away into the valley he had just left. With
infinite caution he raised his head from his arm, still hardly able to
accept the fact that he had not been sighted, that the Throgs and their
flyer were gone.

But that black plate was spinning out into the sun haze. One of the
beetles might have suspected that there were Terran fugitives and
ordered a routine patrol. After all, how could the aliens know that they
had caught all but one of the Survey party in camp? Though with all the
Terran scout flitters grounded on the field, the men dead in their
bunks, the surprise would seem to be complete.

As Shann moved, Taggi and Togi came to life also. They had gone to earth
with speed, and the man was sure that both beasts had sensed danger. Not
for the first time he knew a burning desire for the formal education he
had never had. In camp he had listened, dragging out routine jobs in
order to overhear reports and the small talk of specialists keen on
their own particular hobbies. But so much of the information Shann had
thus picked up to store in a retentive memory he had not understood and
could not fit together. It had been as if he were trying to solve some
high