ien meant that statement literally.
Or was it a conventional expression for a prisoner among their land.

"Do as told!"

That was clear enough, and for the moment the Terran did not see that he
had any choice in the matter. But Shann refused to make any sign of
agreement to either of those two limited statements. Perhaps the
beetle-heads did not expect any. The alien who had pulled him to his
feet continued to hold him erect, but the attention of the Throg with
the translator switched elsewhere.

From the alien ship emerged a second party. The Throg in their midst was
unarmed and limping. Although to Terran eyes one alien was the exact
counterpart of the other, Shann thought that this one was the prisoner
in the skull cave. Yet the indications now suggested that he had only
changed one captivity for another and was in disgrace among his kind.
Why?

The Throg limped up to front the leader with the translator, and his
guards fell back. Again mandibles clicked, were answered, though the
sense of that exchange eluded Shann. At one point in the report--if
report it was--he himself appeared to be under discussion, for the
injured Throg waved a hand-claw in the Terran's direction. But the end
to the conference came quickly enough and in a manner which Shann found
shocking.

Two of the guards stepped forward, caught at the injured Throg's arms
and drew him away, leading him out into a space beyond the grounded
ship. They dropped their hold on him, returning at a trot. The officer
clicked an order. Blasters were unholstered, and the Throg in the field
shriveled under a vicious concentration of cross bolts. Shann gasped. He
certainly had no liking for Throgs, but this execution carried overtones
of a cold-blooded ferocity which transcended anything he had known, even
in the callous brutality of the Dumps.

Limp, and more than a little sick again, he watched the Throg officer
turn away. And a moment later he was forced along in the other's wake to
the domes of the once Terran camp. Not just to the camp in general, he
discovered a minute later, but to that structure which had housed the
com unit linking them with ships cruising the solar lanes and with the
patrol. So Thorvald had been right; they needed a Terran to
broadcast--to cover their tracks here and lay a trap for the transport.

Shann had no idea how much time he had passed among the Wyverns; the
transport with its load of unsuspecting settlers might already be in t