the bubble tents he stopped,
allowed the explorer to advance alone into the dark.

Rynch went to cover under a bush. The man was heading to the stream
bed. Had they somehow learned of his own presence nearby, were they
out to find him? But the preparations the tall man had made seemed
more suited to going on patrol. The watchers! Was the other out to spy
on them? That idea made sense. And in the meantime he would let the
other past him, follow along behind until he was far enough from the
camp so that his friends could not interfere--then, they would have a
meeting!

Rynch's fingers balled into fists. He would find out what was real,
what was a dream in this crazy, mixed up mind of his! That other would
know, and would tell him the truth!

Alert as he was, he lost sight of the stranger who melted into the
dusky cover of the shadows. Then came a quiet ripple of water close to
his own hiding place. The man from the spacer camp was using the
stream as his road.

In spite of his caution Rynch was close to betrayal as he edged around
a clump of vegetation growing half in, half out of the stream. Only a
timely rustle told him that the other had sat down on a drift log.

Waiting for him? Rynch froze, so startled that he could not think
clearly for a second. Then he noted that the outline of the other's
body was visible, growing brighter by the moment.

Minute particles of pale-greenish radiance were gathering about the
other. The dark shadow of an arm flapped, the radiance swirled, broke
again into pinpoint sparks.

Rynch glanced down at his own body--the same sparks were drifting in
about him, edging his arms, thighs, chest. He pushed back into the
bushes while the sparks still flitted, but they no longer gathered in
strength enough to light his presence. Now he could see they drifted
about the vegetation, about the log where the man sat, about rocks and
reeds. Only they were thicker about the stranger as if his body were a
magnet. He continued to keep them whirling by means of waving hand and
arm, but there was enough light to show Rynch the fingers of his other
hand, busy on the front panel of the box he wore.

That fingering stopped, then Rynch's head came up as he heard a very
faint sound. Not a beast's cry--or was it?

Again those fingers moved on the panel. Was the other sending a
message by that means? Rynch watched him check the webbing, count the
equipment at his belt, settle the needler in the crook of hi