ling asleep, warm and secure in his shelter
with the fire keeping out the night's chill--

--the next, he was waking in the cockpit of a crashed biplane, a
fighter.

A biplane? What the hell--! Terra hadn't used biplanes in combat for
centuries!

And Homeworld hadn't for millennia.

How did he know that?

He picked splinters of glass from the bipe's shattered instrument faces
out of his leathery gray skin, working deftly with his extended claws.

Gray skin? Claws? For an instant, they seemed alien. Shouldn't he
have flat fingernails and a pinkish-tan skin?

Kranath smiled, dismissing such ridiculous thoughts. He was groggy
from the crash, that was all. This was no more than a dream,
insignificant.

He climbed from what was left of the cockpit and surveyed the remains
of his aircraft. Not much of the little biplane still held together,
he saw with regret. The wings were splinters and shredded fabric, the
fuselage little more.

His head was beginning to clear, so he decided to check the engine.
The prop would be shattered, of course, but the engine might be
salvageable, if the brush that had cushioned the crash for him had done
the same for it. Engines were handmade and expensive, not to be
abandoned lightly even by a rich clan--which St'nar was not.

Kranath was relieved to see only minor damage. St'nar's artisans would
have no difficulty repairing a cracked cylinder head and a bent push
rod. His problem, then, was to get back to the clanhome. He smiled at
that thought. To a scout-pilot, walking out of the wilderness in spring
should be almost a vacation. He wore flying leathers, was armed with a
dagger and a medium-caliber handgun, and the plane carried a full
survival kit. It was far more equipment than he'd had for wilderness
survival during his Ordeal of Honor, and he'd managed quite comfortably
even then.

This hike would be shorter, probably less than three days, and there
was no point in delay. Returning to the cockpit, he dug out the
survival kit and slung it on his back, then detached the compass, which
fortunately was undamaged, from the control panel and consulted his
flight map.

Kranath saw with dismay that St'nar's clanhome was almost directly
south, but taking that route directly was just asking for trouble.
He'd have to go around. He headed southeast and began his trek.

The underbrush, while light, was growing too irregularly for him to
settle into the ground-eating lope