en so, he made harder work of the
clumsy chopping than Thorvald had. He worried at one sapling after
another until his hands were skinned and his breath came in painful
gusts from under aching ribs. Thorvald had gone on to another task,
ripping the end of a long tough vine from just under the powdery surface
of the thick leaf masses fallen in other years.

With this the officer lashed together the tops of the poles, having
planted their splintered butts in the ground, so that he achieved a
crudely conical erection. Leafy branches were woven back and forth
through this framework, with an entrance, through which one might crawl
on hands and knees, left facing the lakeside. The shelter they completed
was compact and efficient but totally unlike anything Shann had ever
seen before, certainly far removed from the domes of the camp. He said
so, nursing his raw hands.

"An old form," Thorvald replied, "native to a primitive race on Terra.
Certainly the beetle-heads haven't come across its like before."

"Are we going to stay here? Otherwise it is pretty heavy work for one
night's lodging."

Thorvald tested the shelter with a sharp shake. The matted leaves
whispered, but the framework held.

"Stage dressing. No, we won't linger here. But it's evidence to support
our play. Even a Throg isn't dense enough to believe that natives would
make a cross-country trip without leaving evidence of their passing."

Shann sat down with a sigh he made no effort to suppress. He had a
vision of Thorvald traveling southward, methodically erecting these huts
here and there to confound Throgs who might not ever chance upon them.
But already the Survey officer was busy with a new problem.

"We need weapons----"

"We have our stunners, a force ax, and our knives," Shann pointed out.
He did not add, as he would have liked that they could have had a
blaster.

"Native weapons," Thorvald countered with his usual snap. He went back
to the beach and crawled about there, choosing and rejecting stones
picked out of the gravel.

Shann scooped out a small pit just before their hut and set about the
making of a pocket-sized fire. He was hungry and looked longingly now
and again to the supply bag Thorvald had brought with him. Dared he
rummage in that for rations? Surely the other would be carrying
concentrates.

"Who taught you how to make a fire that way?" Thorvald was back from the
pond, a selection of round stones about the size of his fist re