his hunting shirt
thrown over his bare shoulders. He found, without much surprise,
that his father had also slept late. Verner Hughes was just
beginning to shave.

Inside the kitchen, his mother and the girls were clattering pots
and skillets.

Outside the kitchen door, his younger brother, Hector, was
noisily chopping wood.

Going through the door, he filled another of the light-metal
basins with hot water, found his razor, and went outside again,
setting the basin on the bench.

Most of the ware in the Hughes cabin was of light-metal. Murray
and his father had mined it in the dead city up the river, from a
place where it had floated to the top of a puddle of slag, back
when the city had been blasted, at the end of the hard times.

It had been hard work, but the stuff had been easy to carry down
to where they had hidden their boat. And, for once, they'd had no
trouble with the Scowrers.

Too bad they couldn't say as much for yesterday's hunting trip!

As he rubbed lather into the stubble on his face, he cursed with
irritation. That had been a bad-luck hunt, all around.

They had gone out before dawn, hunting into the hills to the
north. They'd spent the day at it, and shot one small wild pig.
Lucky it was small, at that. They'd have had to abandon a
full-grown one, after the Scowrers had began hunting them. Six of
them, as big a band as he'd ever seen together at one time, had
managed to cut them off from the stockade. He and his father had
been forced to circle miles out of their way.

His father had shot one, and he'd had to leave his hatchet
sticking in the skull of another, when his rifle had misfired.

That meant a trip to the gunsmith's, for a new hatchet and to
have the mainspring of the rifle replaced. Nobody could afford to
have a rifle that couldn't be trusted, least of all a hunter and
prospector.

On top of everything else, he had had a few words with Alex
Barrett, the gunsmith, the other day.

Well, at least that could be smoothed over. Barrett would be glad
to do business with him, once the gunsmith saw that hard
tool-steel he had dug out of that place down the river. Hardest
steel either he or his father had ever found, and it hadn't been
atom-spoiled, either.

He cleaned, wiped and stropped his razor and put it back in the
case. He threw out the wash-water on the compost pile and went
into the cabin, putting on his shirt and his belt. Then he passed
through to the front porch, where