ff the
land indefinitely. He'd be out twenty days, at the most. He would
have to have some kind of shoes, though; his feet were simply too
tender for him to walk fifty kilometers barefoot, even through this
open, leaf-carpeted forest. Some kind of long-distance weapon, say a
spear or a crude bow, would be useful, too, and effective enough at the
relatively short ranges a forest allowed. Anything else would be
strictly a convenience. It would be nice if he could rig some way to
carry coals so he wouldn't have to start a fire from scratch every
night . . . He shrugged. That wasn't very likely, and speed was his
main consideration, so it might be just as well for him to travel
light.

By the time he came to that conclusion, the stones were dry enough to
strike sparks if they were going to. He went through them
methodically, hitting each one against the flat of his knife. Two of
the first six did spark, weakly; he set them aside and kept going. The
next five did nothing at all, and he was beginning to think he'd have
to make do with one of the weak ones. Then the twelfth, a small rock
that looked like pinkish quartz, gave a big bright spark that made him
whistle in relief and admiration. Tossing the other stones back in the
stream, he put the quartz in the pocket of his shorts and headed back
for the clearing, picking up dry wood on the way.

He found a gratifying number of animal traces as well, both trails and
pawprints, and he hoped few of them were predators. He might not be
Robinson Crusoe, but he wasn't Tarzan either, and the idea of tackling
a big cat with nothing more than a knife held absolutely no appeal.
Predators, he reminded himself, didn't normally attack unless provoked.
At least the trails meant he had a chance of trapping something, and it
was a sure bet that animal skins would make better moccasins than soh
leaves would!

His leanto was still standing in the clearing, though it looked
ludicrously flimsy. He stacked the wood next to it, then began
scraping leaves and other debris to make a safe spot for a fire in
front of it. He hadn't needed Hovan to tell him that; this part was no
different from his childhood camping trips. He could almost hear his
father's voice, its calm but firm emphasis: "Always be super-cautious
with fire in the woods, son. You don't have any margin for error, no
slack at all."

His father would have liked Homeworld, Tarlac thought; he'd been as
much at home in