ng leather coats
and carrying each a long, straight spear.

There were a score of them around the tower in the windy gloom. Stark
did not bother to draw his gun. He had learned very young the difference
between courage and idiocy.

He walked out toward them, slowly lest one of them be startled into
spearing him, yet not slowly enough to denote fear. And he held up his
right hand and gave them greeting.

They did not answer him. They sat their restive mounts and stared at
him, and Stark knew that Camar had spoken the truth. These were the
riders of Mekh, and they were wolves.

II

Stark waited, until they should tire of their own silence.

Finally one demanded, "Of what country are you?"

He answered, "I am called N'Chaka, the Man-Without-a-Tribe."

It was the name they had given him, the half-human aboriginals who had
raised him in the blaze and thunder and bitter frosts of Mercury.

"A stranger," said the leader, and smiled. He pointed at the dead Camar
and asked, "Did you slay him?"

"He was my friend," said Stark, "I was bringing him home to die."

Two riders dismounted to inspect the body. One called up to the leader,
"He was from Kushat, if I know the breed, Thord! And he has not been
robbed." He proceeded to take care of that detail himself.

"A stranger," repeated the leader, Thord. "Bound for Kushat, with a man
of Kushat. Well. I think you will come with us, stranger."

Stark shrugged. And with the long spears pricking him, he did not resist
when the tall Thord plundered him of all he owned except his
clothes--and Camar's belt, which was not worth the stealing. His gun
Thord flung contemptuously away.

One of the men brought Stark's beast and Camar's from where they were
tethered, and the Earthman mounted--as usual, over the violent protest
of the creature, which did not like the smell of him. They moved out
from under the shelter of the walls, into the full fury of the wind.

For the rest of that night, and through the next day and the night that
followed it they rode eastward, stopping only to rest the beasts and
chew on their rations of jerked meat.

To Stark, riding a prisoner, it came with full force that this was the
North country, half a world away from the Mars of spaceships and
commerce and visitors from other planets. The future had never touched
these wild mountains and barren plains. The past held pride enough.

To the north, the horizon showed a strange and ghostly glimme