seen any here so far--I hope we don't. At the lower
elevations are the swamp crawlers. They're unadulterated nightmares. I
hope they don't go to these higher elevations in the summer. The
prowlers and the Hell Fever, the gravity and heat and cold and
starvation, will be enough for us to have to fight."

"I see," Lake said. He smiled, a smile that was as bleak as moonlight on
an arctic glacier. "Earth-type--remember the promise the Gerns made the
Rejects?" He looked out across the camp, at the snow whipping from the
frosty hills, at the dead and the dying, and a little girl trying vainly
to awaken her brother.

"They were condemned, without reason, without a chance to live," he
said. "So many of them are so young ... and when you're young it's too
soon to have to die."

* * * * *

Prentiss returned to his own group. The dead were buried in shallow
graves and inventory was taken of the promised "ample supplies." These
were only the few personal possessions the Rejects had been permitted to
take plus a small amount of food the Gerns had taken from the
_Constellation_'s stores. The Gerns had been forced to provide the
Rejects with at least a little food--had they openly left them to
starve, the Acceptables, whose families were among the Rejects, might
have rebelled.

Inventory of the firearms and ammunition showed the total to be
discouragingly small. They would have to learn how to make and use bows
and arrows as soon as possible.

With the first party of guards and workmen following him, Prentiss went
to the tributary valley that emptied into the central valley a mile to
the north. It was as good a camp site as could be hoped for; wide and
thickly spotted with groves of trees, a creek running down its center.

The workmen began the construction of shelters and he climbed up the
side of the nearer hill. He reached its top, his breath coming fast in
the gravity that was the equivalent of a burden half his own weight, and
saw what the surrounding terrain was like.

To the south, beyond the barren valley, the land could be seen dropping
in its long sweep to the southern lowlands where the unicorns and swamp
crawlers lived. To the north the hills climbed gently for miles, then
ended under the steeply sloping face of an immense plateau. The plateau
reached from western to eastern horizon, still white with the snows of
winter and looming so high above the world below that the clouds brush