s on Bold's collar, he became more frightened at
the thought of what a negatron-blast could do to the Crown.

The noise stopped, then started again, and he got to his feet, calling
to Brave. They were on a wide ledge that slanted upward toward the
north. It would take him closer to the top, and closer to where Vahr
and his companions would come up. Together, they started up, Raud
probing cautiously ahead of him with the ice-staff for hidden
crevasses. After a while, he came to a wide gap in the ice beside him,
slanting toward the top, its upper end lost in swirling snow. So he
and Brave began climbing, and after a while he could no longer hear
the negatron pistols.

When it was almost too dark to go farther, he suddenly found himself
on level snow, and here he made camp, digging a hole and lining it
with the sleeping robes.

The sky was clear when he woke, and a pale yellow light was glowing in
the east. For a while he lay huddled with the dog, stiff and
miserable, and then he forced himself to his feet. He ate, and fed
Brave, and then checked his rifle and made his pack.

He was sure, now, that he had a plan that would succeed. He could
reach the place where Vahr and the Southrons would come up long before
they did, and be waiting for them. In his imagination, he could see
them coming up in single file, Vahr Farg's son in the lead, and he
could imagine himself hidden behind a mound of snow, the ice-staff
upright to brace his left hand and the forestock of the rifle resting
on his outthrust thumb and the butt against his shoulder. The first
bullet would be for Vahr. He could shoot all of them, one after
another, that way....

He stopped, looking in chagrined incredulity at the tracks in front of
him--the tracks he knew so well, of one man in sealskin boots and
three men with ribbed plastic soles. Why, it couldn't be! They should
be no more than half way up the long ravine, between the two tongues
of the Ice-Father, ten miles to the north. But here they were, on the
back of the Ice-Father and crossing to the west ahead of him. They
must have climbed the sheer wall of ice, only a few miles from where
he had dragged himself and Brave to the top. Then he remembered the
negatron-blasts he had heard. While he had been chopping footholds
with a hatchet, they had been smashing tons of ice out of their way.

"Well, Brave," he said mildly. "Old Keeper wasn't so smart, after all,
was he? Come on, Brave."

The thieves were