ckled. "Hell's not so bad, is it?" he said. Then he sighed,
and rushes creaked under him.

"Mathild! What's the matter? Is he--did he die?"

"No ... no. He's breathing. He's still sicker than he realizes, that's
all.... Honath--if they'd known, up above, how much courage you have--"

"I was scared white," Honath said grimly. "I'm still scared."

But her hand touched his again in the solid blackness, and after he had
taken it, he felt irrationally cheerful. With Alaskon breathing so
raggedly behind them, there was little chance that either of them would
be able to sleep that night; but they sat silently together on the hard
stone in a kind of temporary peace. When the mouth of the cave began to
outline itself with the first glow of the red sun, they looked at each
other in a conspiracy of light all their own.

_Let us unlearn everything we knew only by rote, go back to the
beginning, learn all over again, and continue to learn...._

With the first light of the white sun, a half-grown megatherium cub rose
slowly from its crouch at the mouth of the cave and stretched
luxuriously, showing a full set of saber-like teeth. It looked at them
steadily for a moment, its ears alert, then turned and loped away down
the slope.

How long it had been crouched there listening to them, it was impossible
to know. They had been lucky that they had stumbled into the lair of a
youngster. A full-grown animal would have killed them all, within a few
seconds after its cat's-eyes had collected enough dawn to identify them
positively. The cub, since it had no family of its own, evidently had
only been puzzled to find its den occupied and didn't want to quarrel
about it.

The departure of the big cat left Honath frozen, not so much frightened
as simply stunned by so unexpected an end to the vigil. At the first
moan from Alaskon, however, Mathild was up and walking softly to the
navigator, speaking in a low voice, sentences which made no particular
sense and perhaps were not intended to. Honath stirred and followed her.

Halfway back into the cave, his foot struck something and he looked
down. It was the thigh-bone of some medium-large animal, imperfectly
cleaned and not very recent. It looked like a keepsake the megatherium
had hoped to save from the usurpers of its lair. Along a curved inner
surface there was a patch of thick grey mold. Honath squatted and peeled
it off carefully.

"Mathild, we can put this over the wound," he said. "