had a clear memory of himself piling rocks over Tait's twisted body.
He had been alone then with only the survival manual and some of the
L-B supplies. The important thing was that he must never forget he was
Rynch Brodie.

He licked grease from his fingers. The ache in his head made him
drowsy. He curled up on a patch of sun-warmed sand and slept.

Or did he? His eyes were open again. Now the sky above him was no
longer a bowl of light, but rather a muted halo of evening. Rynch sat
up, his heart pounding as if he had been racing to outdistance the
rising wind now pushing against his half-naked body.

What was he doing here? Where _was_ here?

Panic, carried through from that awakening, dried his mouth, roughened
his skin, made wet the palms of the hands he dug into the sand on
either side of him. Vaguely, a picture projected into his mind--he had
sat in a room, and watched a man come to him with a cup. Before that,
he had been in a place of garish light and evil smells.

But he was Rynch Brodie, he had come here on an L-B when he was a boy,
he had buried the ship's officer under a pile of rocks, managed to
survive by himself because he had applied the aids in the boat to
learn how. This morning he had been hunting a strong-jaw, tempting it
out of its hiding by a hook and line and a bait of fresh killed
skipper.

Rynch's hands went to his face, he crouched forward on his knees. That
all was true, he could prove it--he would prove it! There was the
strong-jaw's den back there, somewhere on the rise where he had left
the snapped haft of the spear he had broken in his fall. If he could
find the den, then he would be sure of the reality of everything else.

He had only had a very real dream--that was it! Only, why did he
continue to dream of that room, that man, and the cup? Of the place of
lights and smells, which he hated so much that the hate was a sour
taste in his fright-dried mouth? None of it had ever been a part of
Rynch Brodie's world.

Through the dusk he started back up the stream bed, towards the narrow
little valley where he had wakened after that fall. Finally, finding
shelter within the heart of a bush, he crouched low, listening to the
noises of another world which awoke at night to take over the stage
from the day dwellers.

As he plodded back, he fought off panic, realizing that some of those
noises he could identify with confidence, while others remained
mysteries. He bit down hard on the knuck