he was. They must locate some break nearer
than the fiord, down which they had come. And they must find it soon,
before the daylight was gone and the full fury of bad weather struck.

In the end the wolverines discovered an exit, just as they had found the
passage through the mountain. Taggi nosed into a darker line down the
face of the cliff and disappeared, Togi duplicating that feat. Shann
trailed them, finding the opening a tight squeeze.

He squirmed into dimness, his outstretched hands meeting a rough stone
surface sloping upward. After gaining a point about eight feet above the
beach he was able to look back and down through the seaward slit. Open
to the sky the crevice proved a doorway to a narrow valley, not unlike
those which housed the fiords, but provided with a thick growth of
vegetation well protected by the high walls.

Working as a now well-rehearsed team, the men set up a shelter of
saplings and brush, the back to the slit through which wind was still
able to tear a way. Walled in by stone and knowing that no Throg flyer
would attempt to fly in the face of the coming storm, they dared make a
fire. The warmth was a comfort to their bodies, just as the light of the
flames, men's age-old hearth companion, was a comfort to the fugitives'
spirits. Those dancing spears of red, for Shann at least, burned away
that veil of other-worldliness which had enwrapped the beach, providing
in the night an illusion of the home he had never really known.

But the wind and the weather did not keep truce very long. A wailing
blast around the upper peaks produced a caterwauling to equal the voices
of half a dozen Throg hounds. And in their poor shelter the Terrans not
only heard the thunderous boom of surf, but felt the vibration of that
beat pounding through the very ground on which they lay. The sea must
have long since covered the beach over which they had come and was now
trying its strength against the rock of the cliff barrier. They could
not talk to each other over that din, although shoulder touched
shoulder.

The last flush of amber vanished from the sky with the speed of a
dropped curtain. Tonight no period of twilight divided night from day,
but their portion of Warlock was plunged abruptly into darkness. The
wolverines crowded into their small haven, whining deep in their
throats. Shann ran his hands along their furred bodies, trying to give
them a reassurance he himself did not feel. Never before when on sta