caterpillar was a lumbering monster of
which he had no fear, but it was much bigger than a beetle, and could be
dangerous when cornered. Dworn had no wish to corner it; the caterpillar
itself was not the object of his stalking, but one of its supply caches
which according to caterpillar custom it would have hidden at various
places within its range.

The trail led him uphill, into a region cut by washes--dry now, since
the rainy season was past--and by ridges that rose like naked vertebrae
from the sea of sand that engulfed the valley floor.

Several times Dworn saw places where the caterpillar had halted, backed
and filled, shoved piles of earth and rocks together or scraped patches
of ground clear with its great shovel. But the beetle knew his prey's
habits of old, and he passed by these spots without a second glance,
aware that this conspicuous activity was no more than a ruse to deceive
predators like himself. If Dworn hadn't known that trick, and many
others used by the various non-predatory machine species which
manufactured food and fuel by photosynthesis, he would have been unfit
to be a beetle--and he would never have lived through the wanderyear
which weeded out the unfit according to the beetle people's stern
immemorial custom.

At last he came to a stop on a rocky hillside, where the tracks were
faint and indistinct. Carefully scanning the ground downslope, he saw
that his instinct had not misled him--the caterpillar had turned aside
at this place and had afterward returned to its original trail, backing
and dragging its digging-blade to obliterate the traces of its side
excursion.

Dworn grinned, feeling the stirring of the hunter's excitement that
never failed to move him, even on such a prosaic foraging expedition as
this. He sent the beetle bumping down the slope.

The blurred trail led into the sandy bed of a wash at the foot of the
hill, and along that easily-traveled way for a quarter mile. Then the
stream made a sharp bend, undercutting a promontory on the left and
creating a high bank of earth and soft white rock. Dworn saw that a
section of the bank had collapsed and slid into the gully. That was no
accident; the mark where a great blade had sheared into the overhang was
plain to read, even if it had not been for the scuffed over vestiges of
caterpillar tracks round about.

Dworn halted and listened intently, his amplifier turned all the way up.
No sound broke the stillness, and the black m