trength--rather than spend so much futile time trying to devise power
tools.

They were also inclined to talk too much about warping radio wave bands
through cross sections of sinowaves, and to drop their work on the cabin
in favor of spending long hours trying new hookups.

But Miss Kitty never nagged about it. She had even tried to follow some
of the theory, to share in their efforts to put such theory into
practice, to be just a third fellow. Instead she found her thoughts
wandering to how an oven could be constructed so she could bake and
roast meats instead of broiling and frying them over an open fire.

Game was plentiful, fish seemed to be begging for the hook. Every day,
without going too far away from camp, she found new foods; watercress,
mustard greens, wild turnips, wild onions, occasionally a turkey nest
with eggs still edible, hollow trees where wild bees had stored honey,
persimmons still astringent, but promising incredibly sweet and
delicious flavor when frost struck them, chinquapin, a kind of chestnut,
black walnuts. There was no end to what the country provided. Yet the
men, instead of laying in winter stores, spent their time with the warp
motor.

* * * * *

Without meaning to, Miss Kitty interrupted an explanation of Lt.
Harper's on how they were calibrating the torquing degrees. She told him
that he and Sam simply must help her harvest a hillside patch of wild
maise she had found, before the rains came and ruined all the grain with
mold, or the migrating birds ate it all.

The cabin they were erecting would contain only two rooms--a large
general room for cooking, eating, visiting, such as an old-fashioned
farm kitchen had once been. A little room, opening off it, would be her
sleeping room. She raised her eyebrows questioningly, and Sam explained
they would build a small, separate bunkhouse for himself and Lt. Harper.

She had a curious sense of displeasure at the arrangement. She knew she
should be pleased at their understanding of the need for privacy. There
was no point in becoming primitive savages. She should be grateful that
they shared her determination to preserve the civilized codes. She told
herself, rather severely, that the preservation of civilized mores was
extremely important. And she brought herself up short with a shocking
question, equal to a slap in the face.

_Why?_

She realized then she had intuitively known from the first that they