e. Clawing fingers found a crack to the right, a knob to the
left--safety! He clung there breathless.

No time for resting! Rattling stones warned of pursuit. He looked
quickly around, found a route, and after a short traverse let himself
slide to a long talus-slope. Down it he ran barefoot through sharp
debris into concealing mosses.

The silence alarmed him. But it freed him from the need for craft; he
didn't know what to avoid nor where it might be lurking, so he set out
for the spaceship by what he hoped was the shortest way.

In the village, he'd located the landing-place by sound, fixed it by
sun. The sun would guide him now. Not accurately, but well enough.

The ship would have landed in a clearing. Standing on its tail, it
should loom high over the woods. And its men would scatter--he ought to
run into one.

Run he did, trotting under thirty pounds of hardwood chain on reserves
of strength dredged from a deep pit of desperation, through a forest
overgrown with menace, full of life he could always sense but seldom
see--of noises whose origin he couldn't guess.

The Agvars, for all their inferior hearing, could at least interpret
what they heard. Chet couldn't. Every whispered cry, wild grunt and
muttered growl was completely unfamiliar. He didn't know which sound
signalled danger. He feared them all.

But more than sounds he feared the silence that chinked the logs of time
between each nerve-wracking noise. Often he had to stop and rest, and
silence threatened him then like the ominous quiet of bated breath. When
he'd force himself to go on, each tree seemed like a porchful of
malicious old women, pretending to disregard him as he passed, certain
to make trouble when he'd gone. The buzz of small life-forms was a
deprecatory murmur, ready at any second to burst into condemnation and
terror....

What was that sound? And that? Noises that seemed out of place in their
familiarity pinned him to the forest floor.

It was only the village. Satisfied, he worked up courage to skirt the
place and walk on toward the ship.

But he was near collapse. When he heard human voices he could only yell
incoherently once or twice, sob, and pass out.

* * * * *

Dimly through succeeding days Chet was aware of the ship's sickbay, of
the enlisted attendants, the hovering doctor, the silent commander.
Later he realized he'd been kept under opiates so his body could recover
while his mind rest