I'll fake up something to knock over some of those birds and small game,
then we can make real bow-strings and feathered arrows and I'll forge
some steel arrow-heads while you're making yourself a real bow. We'd
better make me about a hundred-pound war bow, too...."

"A _hundred_!" interrupted Nadia. "That's a lot of bow, big boy--think
you can bend it?"

"You'd be surprised," he grinned. "I'm not quite like Robin Hood--I've
been known to miss a finger-thick wand at a hundred paces--but I'm not
exactly a beginner."

"Oh, of course--I should have known by your language that you're an
archer, otherwise you'd never have used such an old-fashioned word as
'pounds.' I shoot a thirty-five-pound bow ordinarily, but for game I
should have the heaviest one I can hold accurately--about a forty-five,
probably."

"All x. And as soon as I can I'll make us a couple of suits of fairly
heavy steel armor, so that we'll have real protection if we should need
it. You see, we don't know what we are apt to run up against out here.
Then, with that much done, it'll be up to you to provide, since I'll
have to work tooth and nail at the forges. You'll have to bring home the
bacon, do the cooking and so on, and see what you can find along the
line of edible roots, grains, fruits, and what-not. Sort of reverse the
Indian idea--you be the hunter and I'll keep the home fires burning.
Can do?"

"What it takes to do that, I've got," Nadia assured him, her eyes
sparkling. "Have you your job planned out as well and as fittingly as
you have mine?"

"And then some. We've got just two methods of getting away from
here--one is to get in touch with Brandon, so that he'll come after us;
the other is to recharge our accumulators and try to make it under our
own power. Either course will need power and lots of it...."

"I never thought of going back in the 'Hope.' Suppose we could?"

"About as doubtful as the radio--I think that I could build a pair of
matched-frequency auto-dirigible transmitter and receptor units, such as
are necessary for space-ships fed by stationary power-plants, but after
I got them built, they'd take us less than half way there. Then we'd
have only what power we can carry, and I hate even to think of what
probably would happen to us. We'd certainly have to drift for months
before we could get close enough to any of our plants to radio for help,
and we'd be taking awful chances. You see, we'd have to take a very
peculiar orbi