and Anna thought he was the village half-wit. Village
genius, more likely; the other peasants didn't understand him, and
resented his superiority. They went over for a closer look at the
wheels, and pushed them. Sonny was almost beside himself. Mom was
puzzled, but she thought they were pretty wonderful.

Then they looked at blacksmith tools. Tongs; Sonny had never seen
anything like them. Howell wondered what the Svants used to handle
hot metal; probably big tweezers made by tying two green sticks
together. There was an old Arabian legend that Allah had made the
first tongs and given them to the first smith, because nobody could
make tongs without having a pair already.

Sonny didn't understand the fan-blower until it was taken apart.
Then he made a great discovery. The wheels, and the fan, and the
pivoted tongs, all embodied the same principle, one his people
had evidently never discovered. A whole new world seemed to open
before him; from then on, he was constantly finding things pierced
and rotating on pivots.

* * * * *

By this time, Mom was fidgeting again. She ought to be doing
something to justify her presence in the camp. He was wondering
what sort of work he could invent for her when Karl Dorver called
to him from the door of the headquarters hut.

"Mark, can you spare Mom for a while?" he asked. "We want her to
look at pictures and show us which of the animals are meat-cattle,
and which of the crops are ripe."

"Think you can get anything out of her?"

"Sign-talk, yes. We may get a few words from her, too."

At first, Mom was unwilling to leave Sonny. She finally decided that
it would be safe, and trotted over to Dorver, entering the hut.

Dave Questell's construction crew began at once on the water tank,
using a power shovel to dig the foundation. They had to haul water
in a tank from the river a quarter-mile away to mix the concrete.
Sonny watched that interestedly. So did a number of the villagers,
who gathered safely out of bowshot. They noticed Sonny among the
Terrans and pointed at him. Sonny noticed that. He unobtrusively
picked up a double-bitted ax and kept it to hand.

He and Mom had lunch with the contact team. As they showed no ill
effects from breakfast, Fayon decided that it was safe to let them
have anything the Terrans ate or drank. They liked wine; they knew
what it was, all right, but this seemed to have a delightfully
different flavor. They each