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Updated: June 9, 2025
"That should serve." Thorvald tightened the last lashing, straightening up, his fists resting on his hips, to regard the craft with a measure of pride. Shann was not quite so content. He had matched the Survey officer in industry, but the need for haste still eluded him. So the ship such as it was was ready. Now they would be off to explore Thorvald's Utgard.
"And what are the chances of our becoming warlocks ourselves?" Again Thorvald's smile faded, but he gave a curt little nod to Shann as if approving that thought. "That is something we are going to look into, and now! If we have to convince some stubborn females, as well as fight Throgs, well" he shrugged "we'll have a busy, busy, time." "Well, it works as good as new."
The current carried them along, but there was a need for those lengths of sapling to fend them free from rocks and water-buried snags. "What hound?" the younger man demanded more sharply when there came no immediate answer. "The Throgs' tracker. But why did they import one?" Thorvald's puzzlement was plain in his tone.
He could not match Thorvald's inches, just as he must have a third less bulk than the officer, but standing, he could sight something of what now lay beyond the rising banks of the cut. That grass which had been so thick in the meadowlands around the camp had thinned into separate clumps, pale lavender in color. And the scrawniness of stem and blade suggested dehydration and poor soil.
Or, if they believe we are natives, they could want a specimen for study." "Wouldn't they just blast down Terrans on sight?" Shann saw the dark blot which was Thorvald's head shake in negation. "They might need a live Terran badly and soon." "Why?" "To operate the camp call beam." Shann's momentary bewilderment vanished.
A dark, fixed point, now partly veiled by mist, lay beyond, and it was toward that looming half-shadow that the spinning disk hurtled. Now the mist curled away to display its bulk larger, blacker and four or five times Thorvald's height. Both men stopped short, for the disk no longer played pathfinder.
"But they don't eat our kind of food...." "All the more reason for them to leave the camp supplies untouched." "The camp?" For the first time Thorvald's lips curved in a shadow smile which was neither joyous nor warming. "A native raid on an invaders' camp. What could be more natural? And we'd better make it soon." "But how can we?" To Shann what the other proposed was sheer madness.
Thorvald's was bleak, hard, his eyes on the stream behind them as if he expected at any moment to see a Throg emerge from the surface of the water. "Suppose that thing " Shann pointed upstream with his chin "follows us? What is it anyway?" Hound suggested Terran dog, but he couldn't stretch his imagination to believe in a working co-operation between Throg and any mammal.
"Now we must make a real attempt to find them if they do exist anywhere near here. A friendly native race could make all the difference in the world in any struggle with the Throgs." "Then you did have more than the dreams to back you when you argued with Fenniston!" Shann cut in. Thorvald's eyes were on him again. "When did you hear that, Lantee?"
Against that logic Shann could only set the carved disk, and he had only Thorvald's word that that had been discovered here. He dragged himself out of the water on his hands and knees and lay, winded and gasping. Taggi came to lick his face, nuzzle him, making a small, bewildered whimpering.
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