only too clear
to Shann, and he retreated hurriedly from the vicinity of the
excavation. They had found an earth-wasp's burrow and were hunting
grubs, naturally arousing the rightful inhabitants to bitter resentment.

Shann faced the problem of his own breakfast. He had had the immunity
shots given to all members of the team, and he had eaten game brought in
by exploring parties and labeled "safe." But how long he could keep to
the varieties of native food he knew was uncertain. Sooner or later he
must experiment for himself. Already he drank the stream water without
the aid of purifiers, and so far there had been no ill results from that
necessary recklessness. Now the stream suggested fish. But instead he
chanced upon another water inhabitant which had crawled up on land for
some obscure purpose of its own. It was a sluggish scaled thing, an easy
victim to his club, with thin, weak legs it could project at will from a
finned and armor-plated body.

Shann offered the head and guts to Togi, who had abandoned the wasp
nest. She sniffed in careful investigation and then gulped. Shann built
a small fire and seared the firm greenish flesh. The taste was flat,
lacking salt, but the food eased his emptiness. Enheartened, he started
south, hoping to find water sometime during the morning.

By noon he had his optimism justified with the discovery of a spring,
and the wolverines had brought down a slender-legged animal whose coat
was close in shade to the dusky purple of the vegetation. Smaller than a
Terran deer, its head bore, not horns, but a ridge of stiffened hair
rising in a point some twelve inches about the skull dome. Shann haggled
off some ragged steaks while the wolverines feasted in earnest,
carefully burying the head afterward.

It was when Shann knelt by the spring pool to wash that he caught the
clamor of the clak-claks. He had seen or heard nothing of the flyers
since he had left the lake valley. But from the noise now rising in an
earsplitting volume, he thought there was a sizable colony near-by and
that the inhabitants were thoroughly aroused.

He crept on his hands and knees to near-by brush cover, heading toward
the source of that outburst. If the claks were announcing a Throg
scouting party, he wanted to know it.

Lying flat, with branches forming a screen over him, the Terran gazed
out on a stretch of grassland which sloped at a fairly steep angle to
the south and which must lead to a portion of cou