Throgs? Tensely the Terran waited for some reaction from the wolverines.
He was sure that if the aliens had followed him, both animals would give
warning. Save when they had gone wild upon hearing that strange wail
from the camp, they avoided meeting the enemy.

But from all sounds the animals had not stopped feeding. So the other
was no beetle-head. On the other hand, why would Thorvald so advertise
his coming, unless the need for speed was greater than caution? Shann
drew taut the mooring cord, bringing out his knife to saw through that
tough length. A figure passed the three-sprig signal, ran onto the raft.

"Lantee?" The call came in a hoarse, demanding whisper.

"Here."

"Cut loose. We have to get out of here!"

Thorvald flung himself forward, and together the men scrambled up on the
raft. The mangled carcass plunged into the water, dislodged by their
efforts. But before the wolverines could follow it, the mooring vine
snapped, and the river current took them. Feeling the raft sway and
begin to spin, the wolverines whined, crouched in the middle of what now
seemed a very frail craft.

Behind them, far away but too clear, sounded that eerie howling, topping
the sigh of the night wind.

"I saw----" Thorvald gasped, pausing as if to catch full lungfuls of air
to back his words, "they have a 'hound!' That's what you hear."

5. PURSUIT

As the raft revolved slowly it also slipped downstream at a steadily
increasing pace, for the current had them in hold. The wolverines
pressed close to Shann until the musky scent of their fur, their animal
warmth, enveloped him. One growled deep in its throat, perhaps in answer
to that wind-borne wail.

"Hound?" Shann asked.

Beside him in the dark Thorvald was working loose one of the poles they
had readied to help control the raft's voyaging. The current carried
them along, but there was a need for those lengths of sapling to fend
them free from rocks and water-buried snags.

"What hound?" the younger man demanded more sharply when there came no
immediate answer.

"The Throgs' tracker. But why did they import one?" Thorvald's
puzzlement was plain in his tone. He added a moment later, with some of
his usual firmness, "We may be in for bad trouble now. Use of a hound
means an attempt to take prisoners----"

"Then they do not know that we are here, as Terrans, I mean?"

Thorvald seemed to be sorting out his thoughts when he replied to that.
"They could have