man was being given another chance.
If he was smart, if he's learned anything at all, this time he wouldn't
listen to no woman.

Somebody bust out laughing when he said that, and it kind of eased the
tension a little.

A woman said, real disgusted, that if the men was too helpless to start
a little fire, least they could do was scrape up some dry leaves because
in a few hours it would get dark. Magic or no magic, watchers or no
watchers, night would fall, and she for one liked a soft bed. That
caused them to look up at the sky, and sure enough the sun, Ceti, was
already half way down the sky from where it had been at noon. At least
the world was turning and time was moving. That, at least. About three
hours had passed in what seemed like minutes.

Somebody else, one of the men this time, said why didn't they go a
little farther than scraping up some leaves. Why didn't they get busy
and knock together some shelters in case it rained during the night--the
way it often did.

Now any one of them, man or woman, ought to have been able to put up a
small shelter in less time than it takes to tell about it, even without
no tools. Break off a limb, or take a sharp stone, dig holes in the
ground with it. Take straight saplings, trim them, stick them upright in
the ground, tamp in the dirt good and hard, lash them together with
vines, lash other poles together to make the frame of the roof, lift
that onto the poles and lash them all together with braces. Thatch it
with grass, and there you were.

But there they weren't. They couldn't do it.

Things just wouldn't behave. They dug a hole, and it filled right up
again. They couldn't cut down a sapling, because the sharp stone, the
only tool they had, would fly out of their hands. They even tried
lashing some saplings together where they grew, and the saplings were
like things alive. They wouldn't be bound. The vines slithered out of
their hands and dropped to the ground, and the saplings sprang up again
straight.

Not only that. They could scrape together some leaves into a pile, all
right, but when anybody tried to lie down in them the leaves would
scatter as if blown by a wind. Only there wasn't any wind.

Some of the women got pretty disgusted with their menfolks. They tried
it themselves, and the same things happened. After that, they was a
little more forgiving.

A couple more hours had passed while they were trying that. The sun got
low. People began to realize the