Shann hurried forward. It had been when he caught his first sight of
Thorvald that he realized just how deep his unacknowledged loneliness
had bit. There were two Terrans on Warlock now, and he did not need to
know why. But Thorvald was staring back at him with the blankness of
non-recognition.

"Who are you?" The demand held something close to suspicion.

That note in the other's voice wiped away a measure of Shann's
confidence, threatened something which had flowered in him since he had
struck into the wilderness on his own. Three words had reduced him again
to Lantee, unskilled laborer.

"Lantee. I'm from the camp...."

Thorvald's eagerness was plain in his next question: "How many of you
got away? Where are the rest?" He gazed past Shann up the plateau slope
as if he expected to see the personnel of the camp sprout out of the
cloak of grass along the verge.

"Just me and the wolverines," Shann answered in a colorless voice. He
cradled the blaster on his hip, turned a little away from the officer.

"You ... and the wolverines?" Thorvald was plainly startled. "But ...
where? How?"

"The Throgs hit very early yesterday morning. They caught the rest in
camp. The wolverines had escaped from their cage, and I was out hunting
them...." He told his story baldly.

"You're sure about the rest?" Thorvald had a thin steel of rage edging
his voice. Almost, Shann thought, as if he could turn that blade of rage
against one Shann Lantee for being yet alive when more important men had
not survived.

"I saw the attack from an upper ridge," the younger man said, having
been put on the defensive. Yet he had a right to be alive, hadn't he? Or
did Thorvald believe that he should have gone running down to meet the
beetle-heads with his useless stunner? "They used energy beams ...
didn't land until it was all over."

"I knew there was something wrong when the camp didn't answer our
enter-atmosphere signal," Thorvald said absently. "Then one of those
platters jumped us on braking orbit, and my pilot was killed. When we
set down on the automatics here I had just time to rig a surprise for
any trackers before I took to the hills----"

"The blast got one of them," Shann pointed out.

"Yes, they'd nicked the booster rocket; she wouldn't climb again. But
they'll be back here to pick over the remains."

Shann looked at the dead Throg. "Thanks for taking a hand." His tone was
as chill as the other's this time. "I'm heading south.