ted the two
Darkovan brothers who were the driest to gather dry brushwood and get a
fire going. It was hardly near enough sunset to camp; but by the time we
were dry enough to go on safely, it would be, so I gave orders to get
the tent up, then rounded angrily on Kyla.

"See here, another time don't try any dangerous tricks unless you're
ordered to!"

"Go easy on her," Regis Hastur interceded, "we'd never have crossed
without the fixed rope. Good work, girl."

"You keep out of this!" I snapped. It was true, yet resentment boiled in
me as Kyla's plain sullen face glowed under the praise from the Hastur.

The fact was--I admitted it grudgingly--a lightweight like Kyla ran less
risk on an acrobat's bridge than in that kind of roaring current. That
did not lessen my annoyance; and Regis Hastur's interference, and the
foolish grin on the girl's face, made me boil over.

I wanted to question her further about the sight of trailmen on the
bridge, but decided against it. We had been spared attack on the rapids,
so it wasn't impossible that a group, not hostile, was simply watching
our progress--maybe even aware that we were on a peaceful mission.

But I didn't believe it for a minute. If I knew anything about the
trailmen, it was this--one could not judge them by human standards at
all. I tried to decide what I would have done, as a trailman, but my
brain wouldn't run that way at the moment.

The Darkovan brothers had built up the fire with a thoroughly reckless
disregard of watching eyes. It seemed to me that the morale and fitness
of the shivering crew was of more value at the moment than caution; and
around the roaring fire, feeling my soaked clothes warming to the blaze
and drinking boiling hot tea from a mug, it seemed that we were right.
Optimism reappeared; Kyla, letting Hjalmar dress her hands which had
been rubbed raw by the slipping lianas, made jokes with the men about
her feat of acrobatics.

We had made camp on the summit of an outlying arm of the main ridge of
the Hellers, and the whole massive range lay before our eyes, turned to
a million colors in the declining sun. Green and turquoise and rose, the
mountains were even more beautiful than I remembered. The shoulder of
the high slope we had just climbed had obscured the real mountain massif
from our sight, and I saw Kendricks' eyes widen as he realized that this
high summit we had just mastered was only the first step of the task
which lay before us. Th