tains, experienced the strange
world of the river at night lighted by the wan radiance of glowing
shrubs and plants, forced the starkness of the heights. Yet there had
been through all that journeying a general resemblance to his own past
on other worlds. A tree was a tree, whether it bore purple foliage or
was red-veined. A rock was a rock, a river a river. They were equally
hard and wet on Warlock or Tyr.

But now a veil he could not describe, even in his own thoughts, hung
between him and the sand over which he walked, between him and the sea
which sent spray to wet his torn clothing, between him and that wild
wrack of long-ago storms. He could put out his hand and touch sand,
drift, spray; yet they were a setting where something lay hidden behind
that setting--something watched, calculatingly, with intelligence, and
a set of emotions and values he did not, could not share.

"... storm coming." Thorvald paused in the buffeting of wind and spray,
watching the fury of the tossing sea. The sun was still a pale smear
just above the horizon. And it gave light enough to make out that
trickle of islands melting out to obscurity.

"Utgard----"

"Utgard?" Shann repeated, the strange word holding no meaning for him.

"Legend of my people." Thorvald smeared spray from his face with one
hand. "Utgard, those outermost islands where dwell the giants who are
the mortal enemies of the old gods."

Those dark lumps, most of them bare rock, only a few crowned with
stunted vegetation, might well harbor _anything_, Shann decided, giants
or the malignant spirits of any race. Perhaps even the Throgs had their
tales of evil things in the night, beetle monsters to people wild,
unknown lands. He caught at Thorvald's arm and suggested a practical
course of action.

"We'll need shelter before the storm strikes." To Shann's relief the
other nodded.

They trailed back across the beach, their backs now to the sea and
Utgard. That harsh-sounding name did so well fit the line of islands and
islets, Shann repeated it to himself. Here the beach was narrow, a strip
of blue sand-gravel walled by wave-worn boulders. And from that barrier
of stones piled into a breastwork by chance, interwoven with bone-bare
drift, arose the first of the cliffs. Shann studied the terrain with
increasing uneasiness. To be caught between a sea, whipped inland by a
storm wind, and that cliff would be a risk he did not like to consider,
as ignorant of field lore as