heir shaggy fur.

Ashore, the canoe became a clumsy burden and, light as the craft was,
both of the men sweated to get it up on the beach without snagging the
outrigger against stones and brush. With the thought of a Throg patrol
in mind they worked swiftly to cover it.

Taggi raised an egg-patterned snout from a hollow and licked at the
stippling of greenish yolk matting his fur. The wolverines had wasted no
time in sampling the contents of a wealth of nesting places beginning
just above the high-water mark, cupping two to four tough-shelled eggs
in each. Treading a path among those clutches, the Terrans climbed a
red-earthed slope toward the interior of the island.

They found water, not the clear running of a mountain spring, but a
stalish pool in a stone-walled depression on the crest of a rise,
filled by the bounty of the rain. The warm liquid was brackish, but
satisfied in part their thirst, and they drank eagerly.

The outer cliff wall of the island was just that, a wall, for there was
an inner slope to match the outer. And at the bottom of it a showing of
purple-green foliage where plants and stunted trees fought for living
space. But there was nothing else, though they quartered that growing
section with the care of men trying to locate an enemy outpost.

That night they camped in the hollow, roasted eggs in a fire, and ate
the fishy-tasting contents because it was food, not because they
relished what they swallowed. Tonight no cloud bank hung overhead. A
man, gazing up, could see the stars. The stars and other things, for
over the distant shore of the mainland they sighted the cruising lights
of a Throg ship and waited tensely for that circle of small sparkling
points to swing out toward their own hiding hole.

"They haven't given up," Shann stated what was obvious to them both.

"The settler transport," Thorvald reminded him. "If they do not take a
prisoner to talk her in and allay suspicion, then--" he snapped his
fingers--"the Patrol will be on their tails, but quick!"

So just by keeping out of Throg range, they were, in a way, still
fighting. Shann settled back, his tender shoulders resting against a
tree hole. He tried to count the number of days and nights lying behind
him now since that early morning when he had watched the Terran camp die
under the aliens' weapons. But one day faded into another so that he
could remember only action parts clearly--the attack on the grounded
scoutship, the sort