y a
galactic ship. Though that did not bar such landings. The planet was,
Ross thought, thinly populated. Whole sections of the interiors of the
larger islands were wilderness, and this world must be in the same state
of only partial occupation as his own earth had been in the Bronze Age
when tribes on the march had fanned out into virgin wilderness, great
forests, and steppes unwalked by man before their coming.

Now as he balanced in the canoe and tried to keep his mind off the
queasiness in his middle and the insecurity of the one thickness of
sea-creature hide stretched over a bone framework which made up the
craft between his person and the water, Ross still mulled over what
might be true. Had the galactic invaders for their own purposes begun to
meddle here, leaking weapons or tools to upset what must be a very
delicate balance of power? Why? To bring on a conflict which would
occupy the native population to the point of exhaustion or depopulation?
So they could win a world for their own purposes without effort or risk
on their part? Such cold-blooded fishing in carefully troubled waters
fitted very well with the persons of the Baldies as he had known them on
Terra.

And he could not set aside that memory of this very coast as he had seen
it through the peep, the castle in ruins, tall pylons reaching from the
land into the sea. Was this the beginning of that change which would end
in the Hawaika of his own time, empty of intelligent life, shattered
into a loose network of islands?

"This fog is strange." Karara's words startled Ross to return to the
here and now.

The haze he had been only half conscious of when they had put out from
the tiny secret bay where Loketh kept his boat, was truly a fog, piling
up in soft billows and cutting down visibility with speed.

"The Foanna!" Loketh's answer was sharp, a recognition of danger. "Their
magic--they hide their place so! There is trouble, trouble on the move!"

"Do we land then?" Ross did not ascribe the present blotting out of the
landscape to any real manipulation of nature on the part of the
all-powerful Foanna. Too many times the reputations of "medicine men"
had been so enhanced by coincidence. But he did doubt the wisdom of
trying to bore ahead blindly in this murk.

"Taua and Tino-rau can guide us," Karara reminded him. "Throw out the
rope, Ross. What is above water will not confuse them."

He moved cautiously, striving to adapt his actions to the swin