sfy their hunger with a handful of
concentrates from the survival kit. But those dry tablets could not
serve the animals. Shann studied the terrain with more knowledge than he
had possessed a week earlier. This was not hunting land, but there
remained the bounty of the river.

"We'll have to feed Taggi and Togi," he broke the silence abruptly. "If
we don't, they'll be into the river and off on their own."

Thorvald glanced up from one of the tough, thin sheets of map skin,
again as if he had been drawn back from some distance. His eyes moved
from Shann to the unpromising shore.

"How? With what?" he wanted to know. Then the real urgency of the
situation must have penetrated his mental isolation. "You have an
idea--?"

"There's those fish we found them eating back by the mountain stream,"
Shann said, recalling an incident of a few days earlier. "Rocks here,
too, like those the fish were hiding under. Maybe we can locate some of
them here."

He knew that Thorvald would be reluctant to work the raft in shore, to
spare time for such hunting. But there would be no arguing with hungry
wolverines, and he did not propose to lose the animals for the officer's
whim.

However, Thorvald did not protest. They poled the raft out of the main
pull of the current, sending it in toward the southern shore in the lee
of a clump of light-willows. Shann scrambled ashore, the wolverines
after him, sniffling along at his heels while he overturned likely
looking rocks to unroof some odd underwater dwellings. The fish with the
rudimentary legs were present and not agile enough even in their native
element to avoid well-clawed paws which scooped them neatly out of the
river shallows. There was also a sleek furred creature with a broad flat
head and paddle-equipped forepaws, rather like a miniature seal, which
Taggi appropriated before Shann had a chance to examine it closely. In
fact, the wolverines wrought havoc along a half-mile section of bank
before the Terran could coax them back to the raft.

As they hunted, Shann got a better idea of the land about the river. It
was sere, the vegetation dwindling except for some rough spikes of
things pushing through the parched ground like flayed fingers, their
puffed redness in contrast to the usual amethystine coloring of
Warlock's growing things. Under the climbing sun that whole stretch of
country was revealed in a stark bareness which at first repelled, and
then began to interest him.

He