weakest in the world of
the Dumps, of the Service, of the Team, Shann had very little personal
vanity. He did possess a different type of pride, born of his own
stubborn achievement in winning out over a long roster of
discouragements, failures, and adverse odds.

"Why do we dream?" he repeated Thorvald's question. "No answer, sir." He
gave the traditional reply of the Service recruit. And a little to his
surprise Thorvald laughed with a tinge of real amusement.

"Where do you come from, Lantee?" He asked as if he were honestly
interested.

"Tyr."

"Caldon mines." The Survey officer automatically matched planet to
product. "How did you come into Survey?"

Shann drew on his shirt. "Signed on as casual labor," he returned with a
spark of defiance. Thorvald had joined the Service the right way as a
cadet, then a Team man, finally an officer, climbing that nice even
ladder with every rung ready for him when he was prepared to mount it.
What did his kind know about the labor Barracks where the dull-minded,
the failures, the petty criminals on the run, lived hard under a secret
social system of their own? It had taken every bit of physical endurance
and energy, every fraction of stubborn will Shann could summon, for him
to survive his first three months in those barracks--unbroken and still
eager to be Survey. He could still wonder at the unbelievable chance
which had rescued him from that merely because Training Center had
needed another odd hand to clean cages and feed troughs for the
experimental animals.

And from the center he made a Team, because when working in a smaller
group his push and attention to duty had been noticed and had paid off.
Three years it had taken, but he _had_ made Team stature. Not that that
meant anything now. Shann pulled his boots on over the legs of rough
dried coveralls and glanced up, to find Thorvald watching him with a
new, questioning directness the younger man could not understand.

Shann sealed his blouse and stood up, knowing the bite of hunger, dull
but persistent. It was a feeling he had had so many times in the past
that now he hardly gave it a second thought.

"Supplies?" He brought the subject back to the present and the
practical. What did it matter why or how one Shann Lantee had come to
Warlock in the first place?

"What we have left of the concentrates we had better keep for
emergencies." Thorvald made no move to open the very shrunken bag he had
brought from the s