ity. There
had been a second visit to Warlock in check; worlds so well adapted to
human emigration could not be lightly thrown away. And this time there
was a negative report, no trace of dreams, no registration of any
outside influence on the delicate and complicated equipment the ship
carried. So the Survey team had been dispatched to prepare for the
coming of the first pioneers, and none of them had dreamed either--at
least, no more than the ordinary dreams all men accepted.

Only there were those who pointed out that the seasons had changed
between the first and second visits to Warlock. That first scout had
planeted in summer; his successors had come in fall and winter. They
argued that the final release of the world for settlement should not be
given until the full year on Warlock had been sampled.

But the pressure of Emigrant Control had forced their hands, that and
the fear of just what had eventually happened--an attack from the
Throgs. So they had speeded up the process of declaring Warlock open.
Only Ragnar Thorvald had protested that decision up to the last and had
gone back to headquarters on the supply ship a month ago to make a last
appeal for a more careful study.

Shann stopped brushing the sand from the tough fabric above his knee.
Ragnar Thorvald ... He remembered back to the port landing apron on
another world, remembered with a sense of loss he could not define. That
had been about the second biggest day of his short life; the biggest had
come earlier when they had actually allowed him to sign on for Survey
duty.

He had tumbled off the cross-continent cargo carrier, his kit--a very
meager kit--slung over his thin shoulder, a hot eagerness expanding
inside him until he thought that he could not continue to throttle down
that wild happiness. There was a waiting starship. And he--Shann Lantee
from the Dumps of Tyr, without any influence or schooling--was going to
blast off in her, wearing the brown-green uniform of Survey!

Then he had hesitated uncertainly, had not quite dared cross the few
feet of apron lying between him and that compact group wearing the same
uniform--with a slight difference, that of service bars and completion
badges and rank insignia--with the unconscious self-assurance of men who
had done this many times before.

But after a moment that whole group had become in his own shy appraisal
just a background for one man. Shann had never before known in his
pinched and limited