s deep and the vegetation was thick.

* * * * *

He strained his ears, not to hear if the patrol was approaching closer,
but listening for the sound of life around him. This was his one
hope--another survivor, and of necessity a mobile one. Someone to shout
and wave, to climb a tree, to find an open space and build a fire, to
light a flare, to do something--anything--that would attract the
patrol's attention. Andy Larson wasn't afraid of dying. He felt no
panic, no agonies of conscience, remorse or bitterness at the apparent
inevitability of the prospect before him. But if he was not destined to
die he needed a miracle or the assistance of that almost impossible--but
only almost--survivor. And instead of praying for the miracle, he
listened with all the hearing power at his command for the sound of
human life. That would be miracle enough, and he didn't intend to stop
listening until he couldn't any more.

Not that he didn't pray at all; back home in New Jersey, while not
considered a pillar of the church, Andy Larson was known as a good,
practicing Lutheran. But it was doubtful if the Lutherans, or any other
sect for that matter, had sent missionaries this high into the heavens
yet; the misbegotten flight he had been on had been only the fourth to
reach this strange little planet of Abernathy since its discovery by the
good professor back in '92. So Andy was no longer a practicing Lutheran,
if practicing meant going to church. But he had prayed more than once
during the long outward journey. And he was praying now, while his ears
strained for sounds and his eyes strained for movement; praying for
himself, yes, but even more for his wife, and for someone he had never
seen.

He couldn't help being afraid for Elsie; he had been gone from home
almost seven months, and she had been rocked with morning sickness for
the last three weeks before he left, moaning over her saltines and
begging him not to go even though she knew he couldn't and would not
back out. She was afraid of the unknown he was going into, and he was
afraid of the unknown that awaited her--it was the first time for both
unknowns for both of them.

In a little while he could stop straining his eyes. Greenish dusk was
slipping into night. Soon his ears would have to do all the work. The
thought of night-prowling creatures disturbed him somewhat; no-one knew
for sure yet what, if anything, lived in these thick, isolated jungl