Produced by LN Yaddanapudi, Greg Weeks and the Online

STORM OVER WARLOCK

by

ANDRE NORTON

ACE BOOKS, INC.

23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.

STORM OVER WARLOCK

Copyright ©, 1960, by Andre Norton

An Ace Book, by arrangement with The World Publishing Co.

All Rights Reserved

Printed in U.S.A.

| Transcriber's Note                                           |
| Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the     |
| U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.              |
| Front matter consisting of a blurb and a list of other       |
| publications by the author has been moved to the end of the  |
| text.                                                        |

1. DISASTER

The Throg task force struck the Terran Survey camp a few minutes after
dawn, without warning, and with a deadly precision which argued that the
aliens had fully reconnoitered and prepared that attack. Eye-searing
lances of energy lashed back and forth across the base with methodical
accuracy. And a single cowering witness, flattened on a ledge in the
heights above, knew that when the last of those yellow-red bolts fell,
nothing human would be left alive down there. His teeth closed hard upon
the thick stuff of the sleeve covering his thin forearm, and in his
throat a scream of terror and rage was stillborn.

More than caution kept him pinned on that narrow shelf of rock. Watching
that holocaust below, Shann Lantee could not force himself to move. The
sheer ruthlessness of the Throg move-in left him momentarily weak. To
listen to a tale of Throgs in action, and to be an eye-witness to such
action, were two vastly different things. He shivered in spite of the
warmth of the Survey Corps uniform.

As yet he had sighted none of the aliens, only their plate-shaped
flyers. They would stay aloft until their long-range weapon cleared out
all opposition. But how had they been able to make such a complete
annihilation of the Terran force? The last report had placed the nearest
Throg nest at least two systems away from Warlock. And a patrol lane had
been drawn about the Circe system the minute that Survey had marked its
second planet ready for colonization. Somehow the beetles had slipped
through that supposedly tight cordon and would now consolidate their
gains with their usual speed at rooting. First an energy attack to
finish the small Terran force; then they would simply take over.

A month later, or maybe two months, and they could not have done it. The
grids would have been up, and any Throg ship venturing into Warlock's
amber-tinted sky would abruptly cease to be. In the race for survival as
a galactic power, Terra had that one small edge over the swarms of the
enemy. They need only stake out their new-found world and get the grids
assembled on its surface; then that planet would be locked to the
beetles. The critical period was between the first discovery of a
suitable colony world and the erection of grid control. Planets in the
past had been lost during that time lag, just as Warlock was lost now.

Throgs and Terrans ... For more than a century now, planet time, they
had been fighting their queer, twisted war among the stars. Terrans
hunted worlds for colonization, the old hunger for land of their own
driving men from the over-populated worlds, out of Sol's system to the
far stars. And those worlds barren of intelligent native life, open to
settlers, were none too many and widely scattered. Perhaps half a dozen
were found in a quarter century, and of that six maybe only one was
suitable for human life without any costly and lengthy adaption of man
or world. Warlock was one of the lucky finds which came so seldom.

Throgs were predators, living on the loot they garnered. As yet, mankind
had not been able to discover whether they did indeed swarm from any
home world. Perhaps they lived eternally on board their plate ships with
no permanent base, forced into a wandering life by the destruction of
the planet on which they had originally been spawned. But they were
raiders now, laying waste defenseless worlds, picking up the wealth of
shattered cities in which no native life remained. And their hidden
temporary bases were looped about the galaxy, their need for worlds with
an atmosphere similar to Terra's as necessary as that of man. For in
spite of their grotesque insectile bodies, their wholly alien minds, the
Throgs were warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing creatures.

After the first few clashes the early Terran explorers had endeavored to
promote a truce between the species, only to discover that between Throg
and man there appeared to be no meeting ground at all--total differences
of mental processes producing insurmountable misunderstanding. There was
simply no point of communication. So the Terrans had suffered one
smarting defeat after another until they perfected the grid. And now
their colonies were safe, at least when time worked in their favor.

It had not on Warlock.

A last vivid lash of red cracked over the huddle of domes in the valley.
Shann blinked, half blinded by that glare. His jaws ached as he
unclenched his teeth. That was the finish. Breathing raggedly, he raised
his head, beginning to realize that he was the only one of his kind left
alive on a none-too-hospitable world controlled by enemies--without
shelter or supplies.

He edged back into the narrow cleft which was the entrance to the ledge.
As a representative of his species he was not impressive, and now with
those shudders he could not master, shaking his thin body, he looked
even smaller and more vulnerable. Shann drew his knees up close under
his chin. The hood of his woodsman's jacket was pushed back in spite of
the chill of the morning, and he wiped the back of his hand across his
lips and chin in an oddly childish gesture.

None of the men below who had been alive only minutes earlier had been
close friends of his; Shann had never known anyone but acquaintances in
his short, roving life. Most people had ignored him completely except to
give orders, and one or two had been actively malicious--like Garth
Thorvald. Shann grimaced at a certain recent memory, and then that
grimace faded into wonder. If young Thorvald hadn't purposefully tried
to get Shann into trouble by opening the wolverines' cage, Shann
wouldn't be here now--alive and safe for a time--he'd have been down
there with the others.

The wolverines! For the first time since Shann had heard the crackle of
the Throg attack he remembered the reason he had been heading into the
hills. Of all the men on the Survey team, Shann Lantee had been the
least important. The dirty, tedious clean-up jobs, the dull routines
which required no technical training but which had to be performed to
keep the camp functioning comfortably, those had been his portion. And
he had accepted that status willingly, just to have a chance to be
included among Survey personnel. Not that he had the slightest hope of
climbing up to even an S-E-Three rating in the service.

Part of those menial activities had been to clean the animal cages. And
there Shann Lantee had found something new, something so absorbing that
most of the tiring dull labor had ceased to exist except as tasks to
finish before he could return to the fascination of the animal runs.

Survey teams had early discovered the advantage of using mutated and
highly trained Terran animals as assistants in the exploration of
strange worlds. From the biological laboratories and breeding farms on
Terra came a trickle of specialized aides-de-camp to accompany man into
space. Some were fighters, silent, more deadly than weapons a man wore
at his belt or carried in his hands. Some were keener eyes, keener
noses, keener scouts than the human kind could produce. Bred for
intelligence, for size, for adaptability to alien conditions, the animal
explorers from Terra were prized.

Wolverines, the ancient "devils" of the northlands on Terra, were being
tried for the first time on Warlock. Their caution, a quality highly
developed in their breed, made them testers for new territory. Able to
tackle in battle an animal three times their size, they should be added
protection for the man they accompanied into the wilderness, and their
wide ranging, their ability to climb and swim, and above all, their
curiosity were assets.

Shann had begun contact by cleaning their cages; he ended captivated by
these miniature bears with long bushy tails. And to his unbounded
delight the attraction was mutual. Alone to Taggi and Togi he was a
person, an important person. Those teeth, which could tear flesh into
ragged strips, nipped gently at his fingers, closed without any pressure
on arm, even on nose and chin in what was the ultimate caress of their
kind. Since they were escape artists of no mean ability, twice he had
had to track and lead them back to camp from forays of their own
devising.

But the second time he had been caught by Fadakar, the chief of animal
control, before he could lock up the delinquents. And the memory of the
resulting interview still had the power to make him flush with impotent
anger. Shann's explanation had been contemptuously brushed aside, and he
had been delivered an ultimatum. If his carelessness occurred again, he
would be sent back on the next supply ship, to be dismissed without an
official sign-off on his work record, thus locked out of even the lowest
level of Survey for the rest of his life.

That was why Garth Thorvald's act of the night before had made Shann
brave the unknown darkness of Warlock alone when he had discovered that
the test animals were gone. He had to locate and return them before
Fadakar made his morning inspection; Garth Thorvald's attempt to get him
into bad trouble had saved his life.

Shann cowered back, striving to make his huddled body as small as
possible. One of the Throg flyers appeared silently out of the misty
amber of the morning sky, hovering over the silent camp. The aliens were
coming in to inspect the site of their victory. And the safest place for
any Terran now was as far from the vicinity of those silent domes as he
could get. Shann's slight body was an asset as he wedged through the
narrow mouth of a cleft and so back into the cliff wall. The climb
before him he knew in part, for this was the path the wolverines had
followed on their two other escapes. A few moments of tricky scrambling
and he was out in a cuplike depression choked with brush covered with
the purplish foliage of Warlock. On the other side of that was a small
cut to a sloping hillside, giving on another valley, not as wide as that
in which the camp stood, but one well provided with cover in the way of
trees and high-growing bushes.

A light wind pushed among the trees, and twice Shann heard the harsh,
rasping call of a clak-clak--one of the bat-like leather-winged flyers
that laired in pits along the cliff walls. That present snap of two-tone
complaint suggested that the land was empty of strangers. For the
clak-claks vociferously and loudly resented encroachment on their chosen
hunting territory.

Shann hesitated. He was driven by the urge to put as much distance
between him and the landing Throg ship as he could. But to arouse the
attention of inquisitive clak-claks was asking for trouble. Perhaps it
would be best to keep on along the top of the cliff, rather than risk a
descent to take cover in the valley the flyers patrolled.

A patch of dust, sheltered by a tooth-shaped projection of rock, gave
the Terran his first proof that Taggi and his mate had preceded him, for
printed firmly there was the familiar paw mark of a wolverine. Shann
began to hope that both animals had taken to cover in the wilderness
ahead.

He licked dry lips. Having left secretly without any emergency pack, he
had no canteen, and now Shann inventoried his scant possessions--a field
kit, heavy-duty clothing, a short hooded jacket with attached mittens,
the breast marked with the Survey insignia. His belt supported a
sheathed stunner and bush knife, and seam pockets held three credit
tokens, a twist of wire intended to reinforce the latch of the wolverine
cage, a packet of bravo tablets, two identity and work cards, and a
length of cord. No rations--save the bravos--no extra charge for his
stunner. But he did have, weighing down a loop on the jacket, a small
atomic torch.

The path he followed ended abruptly in a cliff drop, and Shann made a
face at the odor rising from below, even though that scent meant he
could climb down to the valley floor here without fearing any clak-clak
attention. Chemical fumes from a mineral spring funneled against the
wall, warding off any nesting in this section.

Shann drew up the hood of his jacket and snapped the transparent face
mask into place. He must get away--then find food, water, a hiding
place. That will to live which had made Shann Lantee fight innumerable
battles in the past was in command, bracing him with a stubborn
determination.

The fumes swirled up in a smoke haze about his waist, but he strode on,
heading for the open valley and cleaner air. That sickly lavender
vegetation bordering the spring deepened in color to the normal
purple-green, and then he was in a grove of trees, their branches
pointed skyward at sharp angles to the rust-red trunks.

A small skitterer burst from moss-spotted ground covering, giving an
alarmed squeak, skimming out of sight as suddenly as it had appeared.
Shann squeezed between two trees and then paused. The trunk of the
larger was deeply scored with scratches dripping viscid gobs of sap, a
sap which was a bright froth of scarlet. Taggi had left his mark here,
and not too long ago.

The soft carpet of moss showed no paw marks, but he thought he knew the
goal of the animals--a lake down-valley. Shann was beginning to plan
now. The Throgs had not blasted the Terran camp out of existence; they
had only made sure of the death of its occupiers. Which meant they must
have some use for the installations. For the general loot of a Survey
field camp would be relatively worthless to those who picked over the
treasure of entire cities elsewhere. Why? What did the Throgs want? And
would the alien invaders continue to occupy the domes for long?

Shann did not realize what had happened to him since that shock of
ruthless attack. From early childhood, when he had been thrown on his
own to scratch a living--a borderline existence of a living--on the
Dumps of Tyr, he had had to use his wits to keep life in a scrawny and
undersized body. However, since he had been eating regularly from Survey
rations, he was not quite so scrawny any more.

His formal education was close to zero, his informal and off-center
schooling vast. And that particular toughening process which had been
working on him for years now aided in his speedy adaption to a new set
of facts, formidable ones. He was alone on a strange and perhaps hostile
world. Water, food, safe shelter, those were important now. And once
again, away from the ordered round of the camp where he had been ruled
by the desires and requirements of others, he was thinking, planning in
freedom. Later (his hand went to the butt of his stunner) perhaps later
he might just find a way of extracting an accounting from the
beetle-faces, too.

For the present, he would have to keep away from the Throgs, which meant
well away from the camp. A fleck of green showed through the amethyst
foliage before him--the lake! Shann wriggled through a last bush barrier
and stood to look out over that surface. A sleek brown head bobbed up.
Shann put fingers to his mouth and whistled. The head turned, black
button eyes regarded him, short legs began to churn water. To his
gratification the swimmer was obeying his summons.

Taggi came ashore, pausing on the fine gray sand of the verge to shake
himself vigorously. Then the wolverine came upslope at a clumsy gallop
to Shann. With an unknown feeling swelling inside him, the Terran went
down on both knees, burying both hands in the coarse brown fur, warming
to the uproarious welcome Taggi gave him.

"Togi?" Shann asked as if the other could answer. He gazed back to the
lake, but Taggi's mate was nowhere in sight.

The blunt head under his hand swung around, black button nose pointed
north. Shann had never been sure just how intelligent, as mankind
measured intelligence, the wolverines were. He had come to suspect that
Fadakar and the other experts had underrated them and that both beasts
understood more than they were given credit for. Now he followed an
experiment of his own, one he had had a chance to try only a few times
before and never at length. Pressing his palm flat on Taggi's head,
Shann thought of Throgs and of their attack, trying to arouse in the
animal a corresponding reaction to his own horror and anger.

And Taggi responded. A mutter became a growl, teeth gleamed--those cruel
teeth of a carnivore to whom they were weapons of aggression. Danger ...
Shann thought "danger." Then he raised his hand, and the wolverine
shuffled off, heading north. The man followed.

They discovered Togi busy in a small cove where a jagged tangle of drift
made a mat dating from the last high-water period. She was finishing a
hearty breakfast, the remains of a water rat being buried thriftily
against future need after the instincts of her kind. When she was done
she came to Shann, inquiry plain to read in her eyes.

There was water here, and good hunting. But the site was too close to
the Throgs. Let one of their exploring flyers sight them, and the little
group was finished. Better cover, that's what the three fugitives must
have. Shann scowled, not at Togi, but at the landscape. He was tired and
hungry, but he must keep on going.

A stream fed into the cove from the west, a guide of sorts. With very
little knowledge of the countryside, Shann was inclined to follow that.

Overhead the sun made its usual golden haze of the sky. A flight of
vivid green streaks marked a flock of lake ducks coming for a morning
feeding. Lake duck was good eating, but Shann had no time to hunt one
now. Togi started down the bank of the stream, Taggi behind her. Either
they had caught his choice subtly through some undefined mental contact,
or they had already picked that road on their own.

Shann's attention was caught by a piece of the drift. He twisted the
length free and had his first weapon of his own manufacture, a club.
Using it to hold back a low sweeping branch, he followed the wolverines.

Within the half hour he had breakfast, too. A pair of limp skitterers,
their long hind feet lashed together with a thong of grass, hung from
his belt. They were not particularly good eating, but they were meat and
acceptable.

The three, man and wolverines, made their way up the stream to the
valley wall and through a feeder ravine into the larger space beyond.
There, where the stream was born at the foot of a falls, they made their
first camp. Judging that the morning haze would veil any smoke, Shann
built a pocket-size fire. He seared rather than roasted the skitterers
after he had made an awkward and messy business of skinning them, and
tore the meat from the delicate bones in greedy mouthfuls. The
wolverines lay side by side on the gravel, now and again raising a head
alertly to test the scent on the air, or gaze into the distance.

Taggi made a warning sound deep in the throat. Shann tossed handfuls of
sand over the dying fire. He had only time to fling himself face-down,
hoping the drab and weathered cloth of his uniform faded into the color
of the earth on which he lay, every muscle tense.

A shadow swung across the hillside. Shann's shoulders hunched, and he
cowered again. That terror he had known on the ledge was back in full
force as he waited for the beam to lick at him as it had earlier at his
fellows. The Throgs were on the hunt....

2. DEATH OF A SHIP

That sigh of displaced air was not as loud as a breeze, but it echoed
monstrously in Shann's ears. He could not believe in his luck as that
sound grew fainter, drew away into the valley he had just left. With
infinite caution he raised his head from his arm, still hardly able to
accept the fact that he had not been sighted, that the Throgs and their
flyer were gone.

But that black plate was spinning out into the sun haze. One of the
beetles might have suspected that there were Terran fugitives and
ordered a routine patrol. After all, how could the aliens know that they
had caught all but one of the Survey party in camp? Though with all the
Terran scout flitters grounded on the field, the men dead in their
bunks, the surprise would seem to be complete.

As Shann moved, Taggi and Togi came to life also. They had gone to earth
with speed, and the man was sure that both beasts had sensed danger. Not
for the first time he knew a burning desire for the formal education he
had never had. In camp he had listened, dragging out routine jobs in
order to overhear reports and the small talk of specialists keen on
their own particular hobbies. But so much of the information Shann had
thus picked up to store in a retentive memory he had not understood and
could not fit together. It had been as if he were trying to solve some
highly important puzzle with at least a quarter of the necessary pieces
missing, or with unrelated bits from others intermixed. How much control
did a trained animal scout have over his furred or feathered
assistants? And was part of that mastery a mental rapport built up
between man and animal?

How well would the wolverines obey him now, especially when they would
not return to camp where cages stood waiting as symbols of human
authority? Wouldn't a trek into the wilderness bring about a revolt for
complete freedom? If Shann could depend upon the animals, it would mean
a great deal. Not only would their superior hunting ability provide all
three with food, but their scouting senses, so much keener than his,
might erect a slender wall between life and death.

Few large native beasts had been discovered on Warlock by the Terran
explorers. And of those four or five different species, none had proved
hostile if unprovoked. But that did not mean that somewhere back in the
wild lands into which Shann was heading there were no heretofore
unknowns, perhaps slyer and as vicious as the wolverines when they were
aroused to rage.

Then there were the "dreams," which had afforded the prime source of
camp discussion and dispute. Shann brushed coarse sand from his boots
and thought about the dreams. Did they or did they not exist? You could
start an argument any time by making a definite statement for or against
the peculiar sort of dreaming reported by the first scout to set ship on
this world.

The Circe system, of which Warlock was the second of three planets, had
first been scouted four years ago by one of those explorers traveling
solo in Survey service. Everyone knew that the First-In Scouts were a
weird breed, almost a mutation of Terran stock--their reports were rife
with strange observations.

So an alarming one concerning Circe (a yellow sun such as Sol) and her
three planets was not so rare. Witch, the world nearest in orbit to
Circe, was too hot for human occupancy without drastic and too costly
world-changing. Wizard, the third out from the sun, was mostly bare rock
and highly poisonous water. But Warlock, swinging through space between
two forbidding neighbors, seemed to be just what the settlement board
ordered.

Then the Survey scout, even in the cocoon safety of his well-armed ship,
began to dream. And from those dreams a horror of the apparently empty
world developed, until he fled the planet to preserve his sanity. There
had been a second visit to Warlock in check; worlds so well adapted to
human emigration could not be lightly thrown away. And this time there
was a negative report, no trace of dreams, no registration of any
outside influence on the delicate and complicated equipment the ship
carried. So the Survey team had been dispatched to prepare for the
coming of the first pioneers, and none of them had dreamed either--at
least, no more than the ordinary dreams all men accepted.

Only there were those who pointed out that the seasons had changed
between the first and second visits to Warlock. That first scout had
planeted in summer; his successors had come in fall and winter. They
argued that the final release of the world for settlement should not be
given until the full year on Warlock had been sampled.

But the pressure of Emigrant Control had forced their hands, that and
the fear of just what had eventually happened--an attack from the
Throgs. So they had speeded up the process of declaring Warlock open.
Only Ragnar Thorvald had protested that decision up to the last and had
gone back to headquarters on the supply ship a month ago to make a last
appeal for a more careful study.

Shann stopped brushing the sand from the tough fabric above his knee.
Ragnar Thorvald ... He remembered back to the port landing apron on
another world, remembered with a sense of loss he could not define. That
had been about the second biggest day of his short life; the biggest had
come earlier when they had actually allowed him to sign on for Survey
duty.

He had tumbled off the cross-continent cargo carrier, his kit--a very
meager kit--slung over his thin shoulder, a hot eagerness expanding
inside him until he thought that he could not continue to throttle down
that wild happiness. There was a waiting starship. And he--Shann Lantee
from the Dumps of Tyr, without any influence or schooling--was going to
blast off in her, wearing the brown-green uniform of Survey!

Then he had hesitated uncertainly, had not quite dared cross the few
feet of apron lying between him and that compact group wearing the same
uniform--with a slight difference, that of service bars and completion
badges and rank insignia--with the unconscious self-assurance of men who
had done this many times before.

But after a moment that whole group had become in his own shy appraisal
just a background for one man. Shann had never before known in his
pinched and limited childhood, his lost boyhood, anyone who aroused in
him hero worship. And he could not have put a name to the new emotion
that added so suddenly to his burning desire to make good, not only to
hold the small niche in Survey which he had already so painfully
achieved, but to climb, until he could stand so in such a group talking
easily to that tall man, his uncovered head bronze-yellow in the
sunlight, his cool gray eyes pale in his brown face.

Not that any of those wild dreams born in that minute or two had been
realized in the ensuing months. Probably those dreams had always been as
wild as the ones reported by the first scout on Warlock. Shann grinned
wryly now at the short period of childish hope and half-confidence that
he could do big things. Only one Thorvald had ever noticed Shann's
existence in the Survey camp, and that had been Garth.

Garth Thorvald, a far less impressive--one could say "smudged"--copy of
his brother. Swaggering with an arrogance Ragnar never showed, Garth was
a cadet on his first mission, intent upon making Shann realize the
unbridgeable gulf between a labor hand and an officer-to-be. He had
appeared to know right from their first meeting just how to make Shann's
life a misery.

Now, in this slit of valley well away from the domes, Shann's fists
balled. He pounded them against the earth in a way he had so often hoped
to plant them on Garth's smoothly handsome face, his well-muscled body.
One didn't survive the Dumps of Tyr without learning how to use fists,
and boots, and a list of tricks they didn't teach in any academy. He had
always been sure that he could take Garth if they mixed it up. But if he
had loosed the tight rein he had kept on his temper and offered that
challenge, he would have lost his chance with Survey. Garth had proved
himself able to talk his way out of any scrape, even minor derelictions
of duty, and he far out-ranked Shann. The laborer from Tyr had had to
swallow all that the other could dish out and hope that on his next
assignment he would not be a member of young Thorvald's team. Though,
because of Garth Thorvald, Shann's toll of black record marks had
mounted dangerously high and each day the chance for any more duty tours
had grown dimmer.

Shann laughed, and the sound was ugly. That was one thing he didn't have
to worry about any longer. There would be no other assignments for him,
the Throgs had seen to that. And Garth ... well, there would never be a
showdown between them now. He stood up. The Throg ship had disappeared;
they could push on.

He found a break in the cliff wall which was climbable, and he coaxed
the wolverines after him. When they stood on the heights from which the
falls tumbled, Taggi and Togi rubbed against him, cried for his
attention. They, too, appeared to need the reassurance they got from
contact with him, for they were also fugitives on this alien world, the
only representatives of their kind.

Since he did not have any definite goal in view, Shann continued to be
guided by the stream, following its wanderings across a plateau. The sun
was warm, so he carried his jacket slung across one shoulder. Taggi and
Togi ranged ahead, twice catching skitterers, which they devoured
voraciously. A shadow on a sun-baked rock sent the Terran skidding for
cover until he saw that it was cast by one of the questing falcons from
the upper peaks. But that shook his confidence, so he again sought
cover, ashamed at his own carelessness.

In the late afternoon he reached the far end of the plateau, faced a
climb to peaks which still bore cones of snow, now tinted a soft peach
by the sun. Shann studied that possible path and distrusted his own
powers to take it without proper equipment or supplies. He must turn
either north or south, though he would then have to abandon a sure water
supply in the stream. Tonight he would camp where he was. He had not
realized how tired he was until he found a likely half-cave in the
mountain wall and crawled in. There was too much danger in fire here; he
would have to do without that first comfort of his kind.

Luckily, the wolverines squeezed in beside him to fill the hole. With
their warm furred bodies sandwiching him, Shann dozed, awoke, and dozed
again, listening to night sounds--the screams, cries, hunting calls, of
the Warlock wilds. Now and again one of the wolverines whined and moved
uneasily.

Fingers of sun picked at Shann through a shaft among the rocks, striking
his eyes. He moved, blinked blearily awake, unable for the first few
seconds to understand why the smooth plasta wall of his bunk had become
rough red stone. Then he remembered. He was alone and he threw himself
frantically out of the cave, afraid the wolverines had wandered off.
Only both animals were busy clawing under a boulder with a steady
persistence which argued there was a purpose behind that effort.

A sharp sting on the back of one hand made that purpose only too clear
to Shann, and he retreated hurriedly from the vicinity of the
excavation. They had found an earth-wasp's burrow and were hunting
grubs, naturally arousing the rightful inhabitants to bitter resentment.

Shann faced the problem of his own breakfast. He had had the immunity
shots given to all members of the team, and he had eaten game brought in
by exploring parties and labeled "safe." But how long he could keep to
the varieties of native food he knew was uncertain. Sooner or later he
must experiment for himself. Already he drank the stream water without
the aid of purifiers, and so far there had been no ill results from that
necessary recklessness. Now the stream suggested fish. But instead he
chanced upon another water inhabitant which had crawled up on land for
some obscure purpose of its own. It was a sluggish scaled thing, an easy
victim to his club, with thin, weak legs it could project at will from a
finned and armor-plated body.

Shann offered the head and guts to Togi, who had abandoned the wasp
nest. She sniffed in careful investigation and then gulped. Shann built
a small fire and seared the firm greenish flesh. The taste was flat,
lacking salt, but the food eased his emptiness. Enheartened, he started
south, hoping to find water sometime during the morning.

By noon he had his optimism justified with the discovery of a spring,
and the wolverines had brought down a slender-legged animal whose coat
was close in shade to the dusky purple of the vegetation. Smaller than a
Terran deer, its head bore, not horns, but a ridge of stiffened hair
rising in a point some twelve inches about the skull dome. Shann haggled
off some ragged steaks while the wolverines feasted in earnest,
carefully burying the head afterward.

It was when Shann knelt by the spring pool to wash that he caught the
clamor of the clak-claks. He had seen or heard nothing of the flyers
since he had left the lake valley. But from the noise now rising in an
earsplitting volume, he thought there was a sizable colony near-by and
that the inhabitants were thoroughly aroused.

He crept on his hands and knees to near-by brush cover, heading toward
the source of that outburst. If the claks were announcing a Throg
scouting party, he wanted to know it.

Lying flat, with branches forming a screen over him, the Terran gazed
out on a stretch of grassland which sloped at a fairly steep angle to
the south and which must lead to a portion of countryside well below the
level he was now traversing.

The clak-claks were skimming back and forth, shrieking their staccato
war cries. Following the erratic dashes of their flight formation,
Shann decided that whatever they railed against was on the lower level,
out of his sight from that point. Should he simply withdraw, since the
disturbance was not near him? Prudence dictated that; yet still he
hesitated.

He had no desire to travel north, or to try and scale the mountains. No,
south was his best path, and he should be very sure that route was
closed before he retreated.

Since any additional fuss the clak-claks might make on sighting him
would be undistinguished in their now general clamor, the Terran crawled
on to where tall grass provided a screen at the top of the slope. There
he stopped short, his hands digging into the earth in sudden braking
action.

Below, the ground steamed from a rocket flare-back, grasses burned away
from the fins of a small scoutship. But even as Shann rose to one knee,
his shout of welcome choked in his throat. One of those fins sank,
canting the ship crookedly, preventing any new take-off. And over the
crown of a low hill to the west swung the ominous black plate of a Throg
flyer.

The Throg ship came up in a burst of speed, and Shann waited tensely for
some countermove from the scout. Those small speedy Terran ships were
prudently provided with weapons triply deadly in proportion to their
size. He was sure that the Terran ship could hold its own against the
Throg, even eliminate the enemy. But there was no fire from the slanting
pencil of the scout. The Throg circled warily, obviously expecting a
trap. Twice it darted back in the direction from which it had come. As
it returned from its second retreat, another of its kind showed, a black
coin dot against the amber of the sky.

Shann felt sick inside. Now the Terran scout had lost any advantage and
perhaps all hope. The Throgs could box the other in, cut the downed ship
to pieces with their energy beams. He wanted to crawl away and not
witness this last disaster for his kind. But some stubborn core of will
kept him where he was.

The Throgs began to circle while beneath them the flock of clak-claks
screamed and dived at the slanting nose of the Terran ship. Then that
same slashing energy he had watched quarter the camp snapped from the
far plate across the stricken scout. The man who had piloted her, if not
dead already (which might account for the lack of defense), must have
fallen victim to that. But the Throg was going to make very sure. The
second flyer halted, remaining poised long enough to unleash a second
bolt--dazzling any watching eyes and broadcasting a vibration to make
Shann's skin crawl when the last faint ripple reached his lookout post.

What happened then the overconfident Throg was not prepared to take.
Shann cried out, burying his face on his arm, as pinwheels of scarlet
light blotted out normal sight. There was an explosion, a deafening
blast. He cowered, blind, unable to hear. Then, rubbing at his eyes, he
tried to see what had happened.

Through watery blurs he made out the Throg ship, not swinging now in
serene indifference to Warlock's gravity, but whirling end over end
across the sky as might a leaf tossed in a gust of wind. Its rim caught
against a rust-red cliff, it rebounded and crumpled. Then it came down,
smashing perhaps half a mile away from the smoking crater in which lay
the mangled wreckage of the Terran ship. The disabled scout pilot must
have played a last desperate game, making of his ship bait for a trap.

The Terran had taken one Throg with him. Shann rubbed again at his eyes,
just barely able to catch a glimpse of the second ship flashing away
westward. Perhaps it was only his impaired sight, but it appeared to him
that the Throg followed an erratic path, either as if the pilot feared
to be caught by a second shot, or because that ship had also suffered
some injury.

Acid smoke wreathed up from the valley making Shann retch and cough.
There could be no survivor from the Terran scout, and he did not believe
that any Throg had lived to crawl free of the crumpled plate. But there
would be other beetles swarming here soon. They would not dare to leave
the scene unsearched. He wondered about that scout. Had the pilot been
aiming for the Survey camp, the absence of any rider beam from there
warning him off so that he made the detour which brought him here? Or
had the Throgs tried to blast the Terran ship in the upper atmosphere,
crippling it, making this a forced landing? But at least this battle had
cost the Throgs, settling a small portion of the Terran debt for the
lost camp.

The length of time between Shann's sighting of the grounded ship and the
attack by the Throgs had been so short that he had not really developed
any strong hope of rescue to be destroyed by the end of the crippled
ship. On the other hand, seeing the Throgs take a beating had exploded
his subconscious acceptance of their superiority. He might not have even
the resources of a damaged scout at his command. But he did have Taggi,
Togi, and his own brain. Since he was fated to permanent exile on
Warlock, there might just be some way to make the beetles pay for that.

He licked his lips. Real action against the aliens would take a lot of
planning. Shann would have to know more about what made a Throg a Throg,
more than all the wild stories he had heard over the years. There _had_
to be some way a Terran could move effectively against a beetle-head.
And he had a lot of time, maybe the rest of his life to work out a few
answers. That Throg ship lying wrecked at the foot of the cliff ...
perhaps he could do a little investigating before any rescue squad
arrived. Shann decided such a move was worth the try and whistled to the
wolverines.

3. TO CLOSE RANKS

Shann made his way at an angle to avoid the smoking pit cradling the
wreckage of the Terran ship. There were no signs of life about the Throg
plate as he approached. A quarter of its bulk was telescoped back into
the rest, and surely none of the aliens could have survived such a
smash, tough as they were reputed to be with those horny carapaces
serving them in place of more vulnerable human skin.

He sniffed. There was a nauseous odor heavy on the morning air, one
which would make a lasting impression on any human nose. The port door
in the black ship stood open, perhaps having burst in the impact against
the cliff. Shann had almost reached it when a crackle of chain lightning
beat across the ground before him, turning the edge of the buckled
entrance panel red.

Shann dropped to the ground, drawing his stunner, knowing at the same
moment that such a weapon was about as much use in meeting a blaster as
a straw wand would be to ward off a blazing coal. A chill numbness held
him as he waited for a second blast to charr the flesh between his
shoulders. So there had been a Throg survivor, after all.

But as moments passed and the Throg did not move in to make an easy
kill, Shann collected his wits. Only one shot! Was the beetle injured,
unable to make sure of even an almost defenseless prey? The Throgs
seldom took prisoners. When they did....

The Terran's lips tightened. He worked his hand under his prone body,
feeling for the hilt of his knife. With that he could speedily remove
himself from the status of Throg prisoner, and he would do it gladly if
there was no hope of escape. Had there been only one charge left in that
blaster? Shann could make half a dozen guesses as to why the other had
made no move, but that shot had come from behind him, and he dared not
turn his head or otherwise make an effort to see what the other might be
doing.

Was it only his imagination, or had that stench grown stronger during
the last few seconds? Could the Throg be creeping up on him? Shann
strained his ears, trying to catch some sound he could interpret. The
few clak-claks that had survived the blast about the ship were shrieking
overhead, and Shann made one attempt at counterattack.

He whistled the wolverines' call. The pair had not been too willing to
follow him down into this valley, and they had avoided the crater at a
very wide circle. But if they would obey him now, he just might have a
chance.

There! That _had_ been a sound, and the smell _was_ stronger. The Throg
must be coming to him. Again Shann whistled, holding in his mind his
hatred for the beetle-head, the need for finishing off that alien. If
the animals could pick either thoughts or emotions out of their human
companion, this was the time for him to get those unspoken half-orders
across.

Shann slammed his hand hard against the ground, sent his body rolling,
his stunner up and ready.

And now he could see that grotesque thing, swaying weakly back and forth
on its thin legs, yet holding a blaster, bringing that weapon up to
center it on him. The Throg was hunched over and perhaps to Taggi
presented the outline of some four-footed creature to be hunted. For the
wolverine male sprang for the horn-shelled shoulders.

Under that impact that Throg sagged forward. But Taggi, outraged at the
nature of creature he had attacked, squalled and retreated. Shann had
had his precious seconds of distraction. He fired, the core of the stun
beam striking full into the flat dish of the alien's "face."

That bolt, which would have shocked a mammal into insensibility, only
slowed the Throg. Shann rolled again, gaining a temporary cover behind
the wrecked ship. He squirmed under metal hot enough to scorch his
jacket and saw the reflection of a second blaster shot which had been
fired seconds late.

Now the Throg had him tied down. But to get at the Terran the alien
would have to show himself, and Shann had one chance in fifty, which was
better than that of three minutes ago--when the odds had been set at one
in a hundred. He knew that he could not press the wolverines in again.
Taggi's distaste was too manifest; Shann had been lucky that the animal
had made one abortive attack.

Perhaps the Terran's escape and Taggi's action had made the alien
reckless. Shann had no clue to the thinking processes of the non-human,
but now the Throg staggered around the end of the plate, his digits,
which were closer to claws than fingers, fumbling with his weapon. The
Terran snapped another shot from his stunner, hoping to slow the enemy
down. But he was trapped. If he turned to climb the cliff at his back,
the beetle-head could easily pick him off.

A rock hurtled from the heights above, striking with deadly accuracy on
the domed, hairless head of the Throg. His armored body crashed forward,
struck against the ship, and rebounded to the ground. Shann darted
forward to seize the blaster, kicking loose the claws which still
grasped it, before he flattened back to the cliff, the strange weapon
over his arm, his heart beating wildly.

That rock had not bounded down the mountainside by chance; it had been
hurled with intent and aimed carefully at its target. And no Throg would
kill one of his fellows. Or would he? Suppose orders had been issued to
take a Terran prisoner and the Throg by the ship had disobeyed? Then,
why a rock and not a blaster bolt?

Shann edged along until the upslanted, broken side of the Throg flyer
provided him with protection from any overhead attack. Under that
shelter he waited for the next move from his unknown rescuer.

The clak-claks wheeled closer to earth. One lit boldly on the carapace
of the inert Throg, shuffling ungainly along that horny ridge. Cradling
the blaster, the Terran continued to wait. His patience was rewarded
when that investigating clak-clak took off uttering an enraged snap or
two. He heard what might be the scrape of boots across rock, but that
might also have come from horny skin meeting stone.

Then the other must have lost his footing not too far above. Accompanied
by a miniature landslide of stones and earth, a figure slid down several
yards away. Shann waited in a half-crouch, his looted blaster covering
the man now getting to his feet. There was no mistaking the familiar
uniform, or even the man. How Ragnar Thorvald had reached that
particular spot on Warlock or why, Shann could not know. But that he was
there, there was no denying.

Shann hurried forward. It had been when he caught his first sight of
Thorvald that he realized just how deep his unacknowledged loneliness
had bit. There were two Terrans on Warlock now, and he did not need to
know why. But Thorvald was staring back at him with the blankness of
non-recognition.

"Who are you?" The demand held something close to suspicion.

That note in the other's voice wiped away a measure of Shann's
confidence, threatened something which had flowered in him since he had
struck into the wilderness on his own. Three words had reduced him again
to Lantee, unskilled laborer.

"Lantee. I'm from the camp...."

Thorvald's eagerness was plain in his next question: "How many of you
got away? Where are the rest?" He gazed past Shann up the plateau slope
as if he expected to see the personnel of the camp sprout out of the
cloak of grass along the verge.

"Just me and the wolverines," Shann answered in a colorless voice. He
cradled the blaster on his hip, turned a little away from the officer.

"You ... and the wolverines?" Thorvald was plainly startled. "But ...
where? How?"

"The Throgs hit very early yesterday morning. They caught the rest in
camp. The wolverines had escaped from their cage, and I was out hunting
them...." He told his story baldly.

"You're sure about the rest?" Thorvald had a thin steel of rage edging
his voice. Almost, Shann thought, as if he could turn that blade of rage
against one Shann Lantee for being yet alive when more important men had
not survived.

"I saw the attack from an upper ridge," the younger man said, having
been put on the defensive. Yet he had a right to be alive, hadn't he? Or
did Thorvald believe that he should have gone running down to meet the
beetle-heads with his useless stunner? "They used energy beams ...
didn't land until it was all over."

"I knew there was something wrong when the camp didn't answer our
enter-atmosphere signal," Thorvald said absently. "Then one of those
platters jumped us on braking orbit, and my pilot was killed. When we
set down on the automatics here I had just time to rig a surprise for
any trackers before I took to the hills----"

"The blast got one of them," Shann pointed out.

"Yes, they'd nicked the booster rocket; she wouldn't climb again. But
they'll be back here to pick over the remains."

Shann looked at the dead Throg. "Thanks for taking a hand." His tone was
as chill as the other's this time. "I'm heading south...."

And, he added silently, I intend to keep on that way. The Throg attack
had dissolved the pattern of the Survey team. He didn't owe Thorvald any
allegiance. And he had been successfully on his own here since the camp
had been overrun.

"South," Thorvald repeated. "Well, that's as good a direction as any
right now."

But they were not united. Shann found the wolverines and patiently
coaxed and wheedled them into coming with him over a circuitous route
which kept them away from both ships. Thorvald went up the cliff, swung
down again, a supply bag slung over one shoulder. He stood watching as
Shann brought the animals in.

Then Thorvald's arm swept out, his fingers closing possessively about
the barrel of the blaster. Shann's own hold on the weapon tightened, and
the force of the other's pull dragged him partly around.

"Let's have that----"

"Why?" Shann supposed that because it had been the other's well-aimed
rock which had put the Throg out of commission permanently, the officer
was going to claim their only spoils of war as personal booty, and a hot
resentment flowered in the younger man.

"We don't take that away from here." Thorvald made the weapon his with a
quick twist.

To Shann's utter astonishment, the Survey officer walked back to kneel
beside the dead Throg. He worked the grip of the blaster under the
alien's lax claws and inspected the result with the care of one
arranging a special and highly important display. Shann's protest became
vocal. "We'll need that!"

"It'll do us far more good right where it is...." Thorvald paused and
then added, with impatience roughening his voice as if he disliked the
need for making any explanations, "There is no reason for us to
advertise our being alive. If the Throgs found a blaster missing, they'd
start thinking and looking around. I want to have a breathing spell
before I have to play quarry in one of their hunts."

Put that way, his action did make sense. But Shann regretted the loss of
an arm so superior to their own weapons. Now they could not loot the
plateship either. In silence he turned and started to trudge southward,
without waiting for Thorvald to catch up with him.

Once away from the blasted area, the wolverines ranged ahead at their
clumsy gallop, which covered ground at a surprising rate of speed. Shann
knew that their curiosity made them scouts surpassing any human and that
the men who followed would have ample warning of any danger to come.
Without reference to his silent trail companion, he sent the animals
toward another strip of woodland which would give them cover against the
coming of any Throg flyer.

As the hours advanced he began to cast about for a proper night camp.
The woods ought to give them a usable site.

"This is a water wood," Thorvald said, breaking the silence for the
first time since they had left the wrecks.

Shann knew that the other had knowledge, not only of the general
countryside, but of exploring techniques which he himself did not
possess, but to be reminded of that fact was an irritant rather than a
reassurance. Without answering, the younger man bored on to locate the
water promised.

The wolverines found the small lake first and were splashing along its
shore when the Terrans caught up. Thorvald went to work, but to Shann's
surprise he did not unstrap the force-blade ax at his belt. Bending over
a sapling, he pounded away with a stone at the green wood a few inches
above the root line until he was able to break through the slender
trunk. Shann drew his own knife and bent to tackle another treelet when
Thorvald stopped him with an order: "Use a stone on that, the way I
did."

Shann could see no reason for such a laborious process. If Thorvald did
not want to use his ax, that was no reason that Shann could not put his
heavy belt knife to work. He hesitated, ready to set the blade to the
outer bark of the tree.

"Look--" again that impatient edge in the officer's tone, the need for
explanation seeming to come very hard to the other--"sooner or later the
Throgs might just trace us here and find this camp. If so, they are
_not_ going to discover any traces to label us Terran----"

"But who else could we be?" protested Shann. "There is no native race on
Warlock."

Thorvald tossed his improvised stone ax from hand to hand.

"But do the Throgs know that?"

The implications, the possibilities, in that idea struck home to Shann.
Now he began to understand what Thorvald might be planning.

"Now there is going to be a native race." Shann made a statement instead
of a question and saw that the other was watching him with a new
intentness, as if he had at last been recognized as a person instead of
rank and file and very low rank at that--Survey personnel.

"There is going to be a native race," Thorvald affirmed.

Shann resheathed his knife and went to search the pond beach for a
suitable stone to use in its place. Even so, he made harder work of the
clumsy chopping than Thorvald had. He worried at one sapling after
another until his hands were skinned and his breath came in painful
gusts from under aching ribs. Thorvald had gone on to another task,
ripping the end of a long tough vine from just under the powdery surface
of the thick leaf masses fallen in other years.

With this the officer lashed together the tops of the poles, having
planted their splintered butts in the ground, so that he achieved a
crudely conical erection. Leafy branches were woven back and forth
through this framework, with an entrance, through which one might crawl
on hands and knees, left facing the lakeside. The shelter they completed
was compact and efficient but totally unlike anything Shann had ever
seen before, certainly far removed from the domes of the camp. He said
so, nursing his raw hands.

"An old form," Thorvald replied, "native to a primitive race on Terra.
Certainly the beetle-heads haven't come across its like before."

"Are we going to stay here? Otherwise it is pretty heavy work for one
night's lodging."

Thorvald tested the shelter with a sharp shake. The matted leaves
whispered, but the framework held.

"Stage dressing. No, we won't linger here. But it's evidence to support
our play. Even a Throg isn't dense enough to believe that natives would
make a cross-country trip without leaving evidence of their passing."

Shann sat down with a sigh he made no effort to suppress. He had a
vision of Thorvald traveling southward, methodically erecting these huts
here and there to confound Throgs who might not ever chance upon them.
But already the Survey officer was busy with a new problem.

"We need weapons----"

"We have our stunners, a force ax, and our knives," Shann pointed out.
He did not add, as he would have liked that they could have had a
blaster.

"Native weapons," Thorvald countered with his usual snap. He went back
to the beach and crawled about there, choosing and rejecting stones
picked out of the gravel.

Shann scooped out a small pit just before their hut and set about the
making of a pocket-sized fire. He was hungry and looked longingly now
and again to the supply bag Thorvald had brought with him. Dared he
rummage in that for rations? Surely the other would be carrying
concentrates.

"Who taught you how to make a fire that way?" Thorvald was back from the
pond, a selection of round stones about the size of his fist resting
between his chest and his forearm.

"It's regulation, isn't it?" Shann countered defensively.

"It's regulation," Thorvald agreed. He set down his stones in a row and
then tossed the supply bag over to his companion. "Too late to hunt
tonight. But well have to go easy on those rations until we can get
more."

"Where?" Did Thorvald know of some supply cache they could raid?

"From the Throgs," the other answered matter of factly.

"But they don't eat our kind of food...."

"All the more reason for them to leave the camp supplies untouched."

"The camp?"

For the first time Thorvald's lips curved in a shadow smile which was
neither joyous nor warming. "A native raid on an invaders' camp. What
could be more natural? And we'd better make it soon."

"But how can we?" To Shann what the other proposed was sheer madness.

"There was once an ancient service corps on Terra," Thorvald answered,
"which had a motto something like this: 'The improbable we do at once;
the impossible takes a little longer.' What did you think we were going
to do? Sulk around out here in the bush and let the Throgs claim Warlock
for one of their pirate bases without opposition?"

Since that was the only future Shann had visualized, he was ready enough
to admit the truth, only some shade of tone in the officer's voice kept
him from saying so aloud.

4. SORTIE

Five days later they came up from the south so that this time Shann's
view of the Terran camp was from a different angle. At first sight there
had been little change in the general scene. He wondered if the aliens
were using the Terran dome shelters themselves. Even in the twilight it
was easy to pick out such landmarks as the com dome with the shaft of a
broadcaster spearing from its top and the greater bulk of the supply
warehouse.

"Two of their small flyers down on the landing field...." Thorvald
materialized from the shadow, his voice a thread of whisper.

By Shann's side the wolverines were moving restlessly. Since Taggi's
attack on the Throg neither beast would venture near any site where they
could scent the aliens. This was the nearest point to which the men
could urge either animal, which was a disappointment, for the wolverines
would have been an excellent addition to the surprise sortie they
planned for tonight, halving the danger for the men.

Shann ran his fingers across the coarse fur on the animals' shoulders,
exerting a light pressure to signal them to wait. But he was not sure of
their obedience. The foray was a crazy idea, and Shann wondered again
why he had agreed to it. Yet he had gone along with Thorvald, even
suggested a few modifications and additions of his own, such as the
contents of the crude leaf sack now resting between his knees.

Thorvald flitted away, seeking his own post to the west. Shann was still
waiting for the other's signal when there arose from the camp a sound to
chill the flesh of any listener, a wail which could not have come from
the throat of any normal living thing, intelligent being or animal.
Ululating in ear-torturing intensity, the cry sank to a faint, ominous
echo of itself, to waver up the scale again.

The wolverines went mad. Shann had witnessed their quick kills in the
wilds, but this stark ferocity of spitting, howling rage was new. They
answered that challenge from the camp, streaking out from under his
hands. Yet both animals skidded to a stop before they passed the first
dome and were lost in the gloom. A spark glowed for an instant to his
right; Thorvald was ready to go, so Shann had no time to try and recall
the animals.

He fumbled for those balls of soaked moss in his leaf bag. The chemical
smell from them blotted out that alien mustiness which the wind brought
from the campsite. Shann readied the first sopping mess in his sling,
snapped his fire sparker at it, and had the ball awhirl for a toss
almost in one continuous movement. The moss burst into fire as it curved
out and fell.

To a witness it might have seemed that the missile materialized out of
the air, the effect being better than Shann had hoped.

A second ball for the sling--spark ... out ... down. The first had
smashed on the ground near the dome of the com station, the force of
impact flattening it into a round splatter of now fiercely burning
material. And his second, carefully aimed, lit two feet beyond.

Another wail tearing at the nerves. Shann made a third throw, a fourth.
He had an audience now. In the light of those pools of fire the Throgs
were scuttling back and forth, their hunched bodies casting weird
shadows on the dome walls. They were making efforts to douse the fires,
but Shann knew from careful experimentation that once ignited the stuff
he had skimmed from the lip of one of the hot springs would go on
burning as long as a fraction of its viscid substance remained
unconsumed.

Now Thorvald had gone into action. A Throg suddenly halted, struggled
frantically, and toppled over into the edge of a fire splotch, legs
looped together by the coils of the curious weapon Thorvald had put
together on their first night of partnership. Three round stones of
comparable weight had each been fastened at the end of a vine cord, and
those cords united at a center point. Thorvald had demonstrated the
effectiveness of his creation by bringing down one of the small "deer"
of the grasslands, an animal normally fleet enough to feel safe from
both human and animal pursuit. And those weighted ropes now trapped the
Throg with the same efficiency.

Having shot his last fireball, Shann ran swiftly to take up a new
position, downgrade and to the east of the domes. Here he put into
action another of the primitive weapons Thorvald had devised, a spear
hurled with a throwing stick, giving it double range and twice as
forceful penetration power. The spears themselves were hardly more than
crudely shaped lengths of wood, their points charred in the fire.
Perhaps these missiles could neither kill nor seriously wound. But more
than one thudded home in a satisfactory fashion against the curving back
carapace or the softer front parts of a Throg in a manner which
certainly shook up and bruised the target. And one of Shann's victims
went to the ground, to lie kicking in a way which suggested he had been
more than just bruised.

Fireballs, spears.... Thorvald had moved too. And now down into the
somewhat frantic melee of the aroused camp fell a shower of slim
weighted reeds, each provided with a clay-ball head. The majority of
those balls broke on landing as the Terrans had intended. So, through
the beetle smell of the aliens, spread the acrid, throat-parching fumes
of the hot spring water. Whether those fumes had the same effect upon
Throg breathing apparatus as they did upon Terran, the attackers could
not tell, but they hoped such a bombardment would add to the general
confusion.

Shann began to space the hurling of his crude spears with more care,
trying to place them with all the precision of aim he could muster.
There was a limit to their amount of varied ammunition, although they
had dedicated every waking moment of the past few days to manufacture
and testing. Luckily the enemy had had none of their energy beams at the
domes. And so far they had made no move to lift their flyers for
retaliation blasts.

But the Throgs were pulling themselves into order. Blaster fire cut the
dusk. Most of the aliens were now flat on the ground, sending a creeping
line of fire into the perimeter of the camp area. A dark form moved
between Shann and the nearest patch of burning moss. The Terran raised a
spear to the ready before he caught a whiff of the pungent scent emitted
by a wolverine hot with battle rage. He whistled coaxingly. With the
Throgs eager to blast any moving thing, the animals were in danger if
they prowled about the scene.

That blunt head moved. Shann caught the glint of eyes in a furred mask;
it was either Taggi or his mate. Then a puff of mixed Throng and
chemical scent from the camp must have reached the wolverine. The animal
coughed and fled westward, passing Shann.

Had Thorvald had time and opportunity to make his planned raid on the
supply dome? Time during such an embroilment was hard to measure, and
Shann could not be sure. He began to count aloud, slowly, as they had
agreed. When he reached one hundred he would begin his retreat; on two
hundred he was to run for it, his goal the river a half mile from the
camp.

The stream would take the fugitives to the sea where fiords cut the
coastline into a ragged fringe offering a wealth of hiding places.
Throgs seldom explored any territory on foot. For them to venture into
that maze would be putting themselves at the mercy of the Terrans they
hunted. And their flyers could comb the air above such a rocky
wilderness without result.

Shann reached the count of one hundred. Twice a blaster bolt singed
ground within distance close enough to make him wince, but most of the
fire carried well above his head. All of his spears were gone, save for
one he had kept, hoping for a last good target. One of the Throgs who
appeared to be directing the fire of the others was facing Shann's
position. And on pure chance that he might knock out that leader, Shann
chose him for his victim.

The Terran had no illusions concerning his own marksmanship. The most he
could hope for, he thought, was to have the primitive weapon thud home
painfully on the other's armored hide. Perhaps, if he were very lucky,
he could knock the other from his clawed feet. But that chance which
hovers over any battlefield turned in Shann's favor. At just the right
moment the Throg stretched his head up from the usual hunched position
where the carapace extended over his wide shoulders to protect one of
the alien's few vulnerable spots, the soft underside of his throat. And
the fire-sharpened point of the spear went deep.

Throgs were mute, or at least none of them had ever uttered a vocal
sound to be reported by Terrans. This one did not cry out. But he
staggered forward, forelimbs up, clawed digits pulling at the wooden pin
transfixing his throat just under the mandible-equipped jaw, holding his
head at an unnatural angle. Without seeming to notice the others of his
kind, the Throg came on at a shambling run, straight at Shann as if he
could actually see through the dark and had marked down the Terran for
personal vengeance. There was something so uncanny about that forward
dash that Shann retreated. As his hand groped for the knife at his belt
his boot heel caught in a tangle of weed and he struggled for balance.
The wounded Throg, still pulling at the spear shaft protruding above the
swelling barrel of his chest, pounded on.

Shann sprawled backward and was caught in the elastic embrace of a bush,
so he did not strike the ground. He fought the grip of prickly branches
and kicked to gain solid earth under his feet. Then again he heard that
piercing wail from the camp, as chilling as it had been the first time.
Spurred by that, he won free. But he could not turn his back on the
wounded Throg, keeping rather a sidewise retreat.

Already the alien had reached the dark beyond the rim of the camp. His
progress now was marked by the crashing through low brush. Two of the
Throgs back on the firing line started up after their leader. Shann
caught a whiff of their odor as the wounded alien advanced with the
single-mindedness of a robot.

It would be best to head for the river. Tall grass twisted about the
Terran's legs as he began to run. In spite of the gloom, he hesitated to
cross that open space. At night Warlock's peculiar vegetation displayed
a very alien attribute--ten ... twenty varieties of grass, plant, and
tree emitted a wan phosphorescence, varying in degree, but affording
each an aura of light. And the path before Shann now was dotted by
splotches of that radiance, not as brilliant as the chemical-born flames
the attackers had kindled in the camp, but as quick to betray the unwary
who passed within their dim circles. And there had never been any reason
to believe that Throg powers of sight were less than human; there was
perhaps some evidence to the contrary. Shann crouched, charting the
clumps ahead for a zigzag course which would take him to at least
momentary safety in the river bed.

Perhaps a mile downstream was the transport the Terrans had cobbled
together no earlier than this afternoon, a raft Thorvald had professed
to believe would support them to the sea which lay some fifty Terran
miles to the west. But now he had to cover that mile.

The wolverines? Thorvald? There was one lure which might draw the
animals on to the rendezvous. Taggi had brought down a "deer" just
before they had left the raft. And instead of allowing both beasts to
feast at leisure, Shann had lashed the carcass to the shaky platform of
wood and brush, putting it out to swing in the current, though still
moored to the bank.

Wolverines always cached that part of the kill which they did not
consume at the first eating, usually burying it. He had hoped that to
leave the carcass in such a way would draw both animals back to the raft
when they were hungry. And they had not fed particularly well that day.

Thorvald? Well, the Survey officer had made it very plain during the
past five days of what Shann had come to look upon as an uneasy
partnership that he considered himself far abler to manage in the field,
while he had grave doubts of Shann's efficiency in the direction of
survival potential.

The Terran started along the pattern of retreat he had laid out to the
river bed. His heart pounded as he ran, not because of the physical
effort he was expending, but because again from the camp had come that
blood-freezing howl. A lighter line marked the lip of the cut in which
the stream was set, something he had not foreseen. He threw himself down
to crawl the last few feet, hugging the earth.

That very pale luminescence was easily accounted for by what lay below.
Shann licked his lips and tasted the sting of sap smeared on his face
during his struggle with the bushes. While the strip of meadow behind
him now had been spotted with light plants, the cut below showed an
almost solid line of them stringing willow-wise along the water's edge.
To go down at this point was simply to spotlight his presence for any
Throg on his trail. He could only continue along the upper bank, hoping
to finally find an end to the growth of luminescent vegetation below.

Shann was perhaps five yards from the point where he had come to the
river, when a commotion behind made him freeze and turn his head
cautiously. The camp was half hidden, and the fires there must be dying.
But a twisting, struggling mass was rolling across the meadow in his
general direction.

Thorvald fighting off an attack? The wolverines? Shann drew his legs
under him, ready to erupt into a counter-offensive. He hesitated
between drawing stunner or knife. In his brush with the injured Throg at
the wreck the stunner had had little impression on the enemy. And now he
wondered if his blade, though it was super-steel at its toughest, could
pierce any joint in the armored bodies of the aliens.

There was surely a fight in progress. The whole crazily weaving blot
collapsed and rolled down upon three bright light plants. Dull sheen of
Throg casing was revealed ... no sign of fur, or flesh, or clothing. Two
of the aliens battling? But why?

One of those figures got up stiffly, bent over the huddle still on the
ground, and pulled at something. The wooden shaft of Shann's spear was
wanly visible. And the form on the ground did not stir as that was
jerked loose. The Throg leader dead? Shann hoped so. He slid his knife
back into the sheath, tapped the hilt to make sure it was firmly in
place, and crawled on. The river, twisting here and there, was a
promising pool of dusky shadow ahead. The bank of willow-things was
coming to an end, and none too soon. For when he glanced back again he
saw another Throg run across the meadow, and he watched them lift their
fellow, carrying him back to camp.

The Throgs might seem indestructible, but he had put an end to one,
aided by luck and a very rough weapon. With that to bolster his
self-confidence to a higher notch, Shann dropped by cautious degrees
over the bank and down to the water's edge. When his boots splashed into
the oily flood he began to tramp downstream, feeling the pull of the
water, first ankle high and then about his calves. This early in the
season they did hot have to fear floods, and hereabouts the stream was
wide and shallow, save in mid-current at the center point.

Twice more he had to skirt patches of light plants, and once a young
tree stood bathed in radiance with a pinkish tinge instead of the usual
ghostly gray. Within the haze which tented the drooping branches,
flitted small glittering, flying things; and the scent of its half-open
buds was heavy on the air, neither pleasant nor unpleasant in Shann's
nostrils, merely different.

He dared to whistle, a soft call he hoped would carry along the cut
between the high banks. But, though he paused and listened until it
seemed that every cell in his thin body was occupied in that act, he
heard no answering call from the wolverines, nor any suggestion that
either the animals or Thorvald were headed in the direction of the raft.

What was he going to do if none of the others joined him downstream?
Thorvald had said not to linger there past daylight. Yet Shann knew that
unless he actually sighted a Throg patrol splashing after him he would
wait until he made sure of the others' fate. Both Taggi and Togi were as
important to him as the Survey officer. Perhaps more so, he told himself
now, because he understood them to a certain degree and found
companionship in their undemanding company which he could not claim from
the man.

Why _did_ Thorvald insist upon their going on to the seashore? To
Shann's mind his own first plan of holing up back in the eastern
mountains was better. Those heights had as many hiding places as the
fiord country. But Thorvald had suddenly become so set on this westward
trek that he had given in. As much as he inwardly rebelled when he took
them, he found himself obeying the older man's orders. It was only when
he was alone, as now, that he began to question both Thorvald's motives
and his authority.

Three sprigs of a light bush set in a triangle. Shann paused and then
climbed out on the bank, shaking the water from his boots as Taggi might
shake such drops from a furred limb. This was the sign they had set to
mark their rendezvous point, but....

Shann whirled, drawing his stunner. The raft was a dark blob on the
surface of the water some feet farther on. And now it was bobbing up and
down violently. That was not the result of any normal tug of current. He
heard an indignant squeal and relaxed with a little laugh. He need not
have worried about the wolverines; that bait had drawn them all right.
Both of them were now engaged in eating, though they had to conduct
their feast on the rather shaky foundation of the makeshift transport.

They paid no attention as he waded out, pulling at the anchor cord as he
went. The wind must have carried his familiar scent to them. As the
water climbed to his shoulders Shann put one hand on the outmost log of
the raft. One of the animals snarled a warning at being disturbed. Or
had that been at him?

Shann stood where he was, listening intently. Yes, there was a splashing
sound from upstream. Whoever followed his own recent trail was taking no
care to keep that pursuit a secret, and the pace of the newcomer was
fast enough to spell trouble.

Throgs? Tensely the Terran waited for some reaction from the wolverines.
He was sure that if the aliens had followed him, both animals would give
warning. Save when they had gone wild upon hearing that strange wail
from the camp, they avoided meeting the enemy.

But from all sounds the animals had not stopped feeding. So the other
was no beetle-head. On the other hand, why would Thorvald so advertise
his coming, unless the need for speed was greater than caution? Shann
drew taut the mooring cord, bringing out his knife to saw through that
tough length. A figure passed the three-sprig signal, ran onto the raft.

"Lantee?" The call came in a hoarse, demanding whisper.

"Here."

"Cut loose. We have to get out of here!"

Thorvald flung himself forward, and together the men scrambled up on the
raft. The mangled carcass plunged into the water, dislodged by their
efforts. But before the wolverines could follow it, the mooring vine
snapped, and the river current took them. Feeling the raft sway and
begin to spin, the wolverines whined, crouched in the middle of what now
seemed a very frail craft.

Behind them, far away but too clear, sounded that eerie howling, topping
the sigh of the night wind.

"I saw----" Thorvald gasped, pausing as if to catch full lungfuls of air
to back his words, "they have a 'hound!' That's what you hear."

5. PURSUIT

As the raft revolved slowly it also slipped downstream at a steadily
increasing pace, for the current had them in hold. The wolverines
pressed close to Shann until the musky scent of their fur, their animal
warmth, enveloped him. One growled deep in its throat, perhaps in answer
to that wind-borne wail.

"Hound?" Shann asked.

Beside him in the dark Thorvald was working loose one of the poles they
had readied to help control the raft's voyaging. The current carried
them along, but there was a need for those lengths of sapling to fend
them free from rocks and water-buried snags.

"What hound?" the younger man demanded more sharply when there came no
immediate answer.

"The Throgs' tracker. But why did they import one?" Thorvald's
puzzlement was plain in his tone. He added a moment later, with some of
his usual firmness, "We may be in for bad trouble now. Use of a hound
means an attempt to take prisoners----"

"Then they do not know that we are here, as Terrans, I mean?"

Thorvald seemed to be sorting out his thoughts when he replied to that.
"They could have brought a hound here just on chance that they might
miss one of us in the initial mop-up. Or, if they believe we are
natives, they could want a specimen for study."

"Wouldn't they just blast down Terrans on sight?"

Shann saw the dark blot which was Thorvald's head shake in negation.

"They might need a live Terran--badly and soon."

"Why?"

"To operate the camp call beam."

Shann's momentary bewilderment vanished. He knew enough of Survey
procedure to guess the reason for such a move on the part of the aliens.

"The settler transport?"

"Yes, the ship. She won't planet here without the proper signal. And the
Throgs can't give that. If they don't take her, their time's run out
before they have even made a start here."

"But how could they know that the transport is nearly due? When we
intercept their calls they're pure gibberish to us. Can they read our
codes?"

"The supposition is that they can't. Only, concerning Throgs, all we
know is supposition. Anyway, they do know the routine for establishing a
Terran colony, and we can't alter that procedure except in small
nonessentials," Thorvald said grimly. "If that transport doesn't pick up
the proper signal to set down here on schedule, her captain will call in
the patrol escort ... then exit one Throg base. But if the beetle-heads
can trick the ship in and take her, then they'll have a clear five or
six more months here to consolidate their own position. After that it
would take more than just one patrol cruiser to clear Warlock; it will
require a fleet. So the Throgs will have another world to play with, and
an important one. This lies on a direct line between the Odin and
Kulkulkan systems. A Throg base on such a trade route could eventually
cut us right out of this quarter of the galaxy."

"So you think they want to capture us in order to bring the transport
in?"

"By our type of reasoning, that would be a logical move--_if_ they know
we are here. They haven't too many of those hounds, and they don't risk
them on petty jobs. I'd hoped we'd covered our trail well. But we had to
risk that attack on the camp.... I needed the map case!" Again Thorvald
might have been talking to himself. "Time ... and the right maps--" he
brought his fist down on the raft, making the platform tremble--"that's
what I have to have now."

Another patch of light-willows stretched along the river-banks, and as
they sailed through that ribbon of ghostly radiance they could see each
other's faces. Thorvald's was bleak, hard, his eyes on the stream behind
them as if he expected at any moment to see a Throg emerge from the
surface of the water.

"Suppose that thing--" Shann pointed upstream with his chin--"follows
us? What is it anyway?" Hound suggested Terran dog, but he couldn't
stretch his imagination to believe in a working co-operation between
Throg and any mammal.

"A rather spectacular combination of toad and lizard, with a few other
grisly touches, is about as close as you can get to a general
description. And that won't be too accurate, because like the Throgs its
remote ancestors must have been of the insect family. If the thing
follows us, and I think we can be sure that it will, we'll have to take
steps. There is always this advantage--those hounds cannot be controlled
from a flyer, and the beetle-heads never take kindly to foot slogging.
So we won't have to expect any speedy chase. If it slips its masters in
rough country, we can try to ambush it." In the dim light Thorvald was
frowning. "I flew over the territory ahead on two sweeps, and it is a
queer mixture. If we can reach the rough country bordering the sea,
we'll have won the first round. I don't believe that the Throgs will be
in a hurry to track us in there. They'll try two alternatives to chasing
us on foot. One, use their energy beams to rake any suspect valley, and
since there are hundreds of valleys all pretty much alike, that will
take some time. Or they can attempt to shake us out with a dumdum should
they have one here, which I doubt."

Shann tensed. The stories of the effects of the Throg's dumdum weapon
were anything but pretty.

"And to get a dumdum," Thorvald continued as if he were discussing a
purely theoretical matter and not a threat of something worse than
death, "They'll have to bring in one of their major ships. Which they
will hesitate to do with a cruiser near at hand. Our own danger spot now
is the section we should strike soon after dawn tomorrow if the rate of
this current is what I have timed it. There is a band of desert on this
side of the mountains. The river gorge deepens there and the land is
bare. Let them send a ship over and we could be as visible as if we were
sending up flares----"

"How about taking cover now and going on only at night?" suggested
Shann.

"Ordinarily, I'd say yes. But with time pressing us now, no. If we keep
straight on, we could reach the foothills in about forty hours, maybe
less. And we have to stay with the river. To strike across country there
without good supplies and on foot is sheer folly."

Two days. With perhaps the Throgs unleashing their hound on land,
combing from their flyers. With a desert.... Shann put out his hands to
the wolverines. The prospect certainly didn't seem anywhere near as
simple as it had the night before when Thorvald had planned this escape.
But then the Survey officer had left out quite a few points which were
not pertinent. Was he also leaving out other essentials? Shann wanted to
ask, but somehow he could not.

After a while he dozed, his head resting on his knees. He awoke, roused
out of a vivid dream, a dream so detailed and so deeply impressed in a
picture on his mind that he was confused when he blinked at the
riverbank visible in the half-light of early dawn.

Instead of that stretch of earth and ragged vegetation now gliding past
him as the raft angled along, he should have been fronting a vast skull
stark against the sky--a skull whose outlines were oddly inhuman, from
whose eyeholes issued and returned flying things while its sharply
protruding lower jaw was lapped by water. In color that skull had been a
violent clash of blood-red and purple. Shann blinked again at the
riverbank, seeing transposed on it still that ghostly haze of bone-bare
dome, cavernous eyeholes and nose slit, fanged jaws. That skull was a
mountain, or a mountain was a skull--and it was important to him; he
must locate it!

He moved stiffly, his legs and arms cramped but not cold. The wolverines
stirred on either side of him. Thorvald continued to sleep, curled up
beyond, the pole still clasped in his hands. A flat map case was slung
by a strap about his neck, its thin envelope between his arm and his
body as if for safekeeping. On the smooth flap was the Survey seal, and
it was fastened with a finger lock.

Thorvald had lost some of the bright hard surface he had shown at the
spaceport where Shann had first sighted him. There were hollows in his
cheeks, sending into high relief those bone ridges beneath his eye
sockets, giving him a faint resemblance to the skull of Shann's dream.
His face was grimed, his field uniform stained and torn. Only his hair
was as bright as ever.

Shann smeared the back of his hand across his own face, not doubting
that he must present an even more disreputable appearance. He leaned
forward cautiously to look into the water, but that surface was not
quiet enough to act as a mirror.

Getting to his feet as the raft bobbed under his shift of weight, Shann
studied the territory now about them. He could not match Thorvald's
inches, just as he must have a third less bulk than the officer, but
standing, he could sight something of what now lay beyond the rising
banks of the cut. That grass which had been so thick in the meadowlands
around the camp had thinned into separate clumps, pale lavender in
color. And the scrawniness of stem and blade suggested dehydration and
poor soil. The earth showing between those clumps was not of the usual
blue, but pallid, too, bleached to gray, while the bushes along the
stream's edge were few and smaller. They must have crossed the line into
the desert Thorvald had promised.

Shann edged around to face west. There was light enough in the sky to
sight tall black pyramids waiting. They had to reach those distant
mountains, mountains whose feet on the other side were resting in sea
water. He studied them carefully, surveying each peak he could separate
from its fellows.

Did the skull lie among them? The conviction that the place he had seen
in his dream was real, that it was to be found on Warlock, persisted.
Not only was it a definite feature of the landscape somewhere in the
wild places of this world, but it was also necessary for him to locate
it. Why? Shann puzzled over that, with a growing uneasiness which was
not quite fear, not yet, anyway.

Thorvald moved. The raft tilted and the wolverines became growly. Shann
sat down, one hand out to the officer's shoulder in warning. Feeling
that touch Thorvald shifted, one hand striking out blindly in a blow
which Shann was just able to avoid while with the other he pinned the
map case yet tighter to him.

"Take it easy!" Shann urged.

The other's eyelids flicked. He looked up, but not as if he saw Shann at
all.

"The Cavern of the Veil----" he muttered. "Utgard...." Then his eyes did
focus and he sat up, gazing around him with a frown.

"We're in the desert," Shann announced.

Thorvald got up, balancing on feet planted a little apart, looking to
the faded expanse of the waste spreading from the river cut. He stared
at the mountains before he squatted down to fumble with the lock of the
map case.

The wolverines were growing restless, though they still did not try to
move about too freely on the raft, greeting Shann with vocal complaint.
He and Thorvald could satisfy their hunger with a handful of
concentrates from the survival kit. But those dry tablets could not
serve the animals. Shann studied the terrain with more knowledge than he
had possessed a week earlier. This was not hunting land, but there
remained the bounty of the river.

"We'll have to feed Taggi and Togi," he broke the silence abruptly. "If
we don't, they'll be into the river and off on their own."

Thorvald glanced up from one of the tough, thin sheets of map skin,
again as if he had been drawn back from some distance. His eyes moved
from Shann to the unpromising shore.

"How? With what?" he wanted to know. Then the real urgency of the
situation must have penetrated his mental isolation. "You have an
idea--?"

"There's those fish we found them eating back by the mountain stream,"
Shann said, recalling an incident of a few days earlier. "Rocks here,
too, like those the fish were hiding under. Maybe we can locate some of
them here."

He knew that Thorvald would be reluctant to work the raft in shore, to
spare time for such hunting. But there would be no arguing with hungry
wolverines, and he did not propose to lose the animals for the officer's
whim.

However, Thorvald did not protest. They poled the raft out of the main
pull of the current, sending it in toward the southern shore in the lee
of a clump of light-willows. Shann scrambled ashore, the wolverines
after him, sniffling along at his heels while he overturned likely
looking rocks to unroof some odd underwater dwellings. The fish with the
rudimentary legs were present and not agile enough even in their native
element to avoid well-clawed paws which scooped them neatly out of the
river shallows. There was also a sleek furred creature with a broad flat
head and paddle-equipped forepaws, rather like a miniature seal, which
Taggi appropriated before Shann had a chance to examine it closely. In
fact, the wolverines wrought havoc along a half-mile section of bank
before the Terran could coax them back to the raft.

As they hunted, Shann got a better idea of the land about the river. It
was sere, the vegetation dwindling except for some rough spikes of
things pushing through the parched ground like flayed fingers, their
puffed redness in contrast to the usual amethystine coloring of
Warlock's growing things. Under the climbing sun that whole stretch of
country was revealed in a stark bareness which at first repelled, and
then began to interest him.

He discovered Thorvald standing on the upper bluff, looking out toward
the waiting mountains. The officer turned as Shann urged the wolverines
to the raft, and when he jumped down the drop to join them, Shann saw he
carried a map strip unrolled in his hand.

"The situation is not as good as we hoped," he told the younger man.
"Well have to leave the river to cross the heights."

"Why?"

"There're rapids--bending in a falls." The officer squatted down,
spreading out the strip and making stabs at it with a nervous finger
tip. "Here we have to leave. This is all rough ground. But lying to the
south there's a gap which may be a pass. This was made from an aerial
survey."

Shann knew enough to realize to what extent such a guide could go wrong.
Main features of the landscape would be clear enough from aloft, but
there might be unsurmountable difficulties at ground level which were
not distinguishable from the air. Yet Thorvald had planned this journey
as if he had already explored their escape route and that it was as open
and easy as a stroll down Tyr's main transport way. Why was it so
necessary that they try to reach the sea? However, since he had no
objection to voice except a dislike for indefinite information, Shann
did not question the other's calm assumption of command, not yet,
anyway.

As they embarked and worked back into the current, Shann studied his
companion. Thorvald had freely listed the difficulties lying before
them. Yet he did not seem in the least worried about their being able to
win through to the sea--or if he was, his outer shell of unconcern
remained uncracked. Before their first day together had ended, the
younger Terran had learned that to Thorvald he was only another tool, to
be used by the Survey officer in some project which the other believed
of primary importance. And his resentment of the valuation was under
control so far. He valued Thorvald's knowledge, but the other's attitude
chilled and rebuffed his need for something more than a half partnership
of work.

Why had Thorvald come back to Warlock in the first place? And why had it
been necessary for him to risk his life--perhaps more than his life if
their theory was correct concerning the Throgs' wish to capture a
Terran--to get that set of maps from the plundered camp? When he had
first talked of that raid, his promised loot had been supplies to fill
their daily needs; there had been no mention of maps. By all signs
Thorvald was engaged on some mission. And what would happen if he,
Shann, suddenly stopped being the other's obedient underling and
demanded a few explanations here and now?

Only Shann knew enough about men to also know that he would not get any
information out of Thorvald that the latter was not ready to give, and
that such a showdown, coming prematurely, would only end in his own
discomfiture. He smiled wryly now, remembering his emotions when he had
first seen Ragnar Thorvald months ago. As if the officer ever considered
the likes, dislikes--or dreams--of one Shann Lantee. No, reality and
dreams seldom approached each other. Dreams....

"On any of those shoreline maps," he asked suddenly, "do they have
marked a mountain shaped like a skull?"

Thorvald thrust with his pole. "Skull?" he repeated, a little absently,
as he so often did in answer to Shann's questions unless they dealt with
some currently important matter.

"A queer sort of skull," Shann said. Just as vividly as when he had
first awakened, he could picture that skull mountain with the flying
things about its eye sockets. And that, too, was odd; dream impressions
usually faded with the passing of waking hours. "It has a protruding
lower jaw and the waves wash that ... red-and-purple rock----"

"What?"

He had Thorvald's complete attention now.

"Where did you hear about it?" That demand followed quickly.

"I didn't hear about it. I dreamed of it last night. I stood there right
in front of it. There were birds--or things flying like birds--going in
and out of the eyeholes----"

"What else?" Thorvald leaned across his pole, his eyes alive, avid, as
if he would pull the reply he wanted out of Shann by force.

"That was all I remember--the skull mountain." He did not add his other
impression, that he was meant to find that skull, that he _must_ find
it.

"Nothing...." Thorvald paused, and then spoke slowly, with a visible
reluctance. "Nothing else? No cavern with a green veil--a wide green
veil--strung across it?"

Shann shook his head. "Just the skull mountain."

Thorvald looked as if he didn't quite believe that, but Shann's
expression must have been convincing, for he laughed shortly.

"Well, there goes one nice neat theory up in smoke!" he commented. "No,
your skull doesn't appear on any of our maps, and so probably my cavern
does not exist either. They may both be smoke screens----"

"What--?" But Shann never finished that query.

A wind was rising in the desert to blow across the slit which held the
river, carrying with it a fine shifting of sand which coasted down into
the water as a gray haze, coating men, animals, and raft, and sighing as
snow sighs when it falls.

Only that did not drown out another cry, a thin cry, diluted by the
miles of land stretching behind them, but yet carrying that long
ululating howl they had heard in the Throg camp. Thorvald grinned
mirthlessly.

"The hound's on trail."

He bent to the pole, using it to aid the pace of the current. Shann,
chilled in spite of the sun's heat, followed his example, wondering if
time had ceased to fight on their side.

6. THE HOUND

The sun was a harsh ball of heat baking the ground and then, in some odd
manner, drawing back that same fieriness. In the coolness of the eastern
mountains Shann would not have believed that Warlock could hold such
heat. The men discarded their jackets early as they swung to dip the
poles. But they dared not strip off the rest of their clothing lest
their skin burn. And again gusts of wind now drove sand over the edge of
the cut to blanket the water.

Shann wiped his eyes, pausing in his eternal push-push, to look at the
rocks which they were passing in threatening proximity. For the slash
which held the river had narrowed. And the rock of its walls was naked
of earth, save for sheltered pockets holding the drift of sand dust,
while boulders of all sizes cut into the path of the flowing water.

He had not been mistaken; they were going faster, faster even than their
efforts with the poles would account for. With the narrowing of the bed
of the stream, the current was taking on a new swiftness. Shann said as
much and Thorvald nodded.

"We're approaching the first of the rapids."

"Where we get off and walk around," Shann croaked wearily. The dust
gritted between his teeth, irritated his eyes. "Do we stay beside the
river?"

"As long as we can," Thorvald replied somberly. "We have no way of
transporting water."

Yes, a man could live on very slim rations of food, continue to beat his
way over a bad trail if he had the concentrate tablets they carried. But
there was no going without water, and in this heat such an effort would
finish them quickly. Always they both listened for another cry from
behind, a cry to tell them just how near the Throg hunting party had
come.

"No Throg flyers yet," Shann observed. He had expected one of those
black plates to come cruising the moment the hound had pointed the
direction for their pursuers.

"Not in a storm such as this." Thorvald, without releasing his hold on
the raft pole, pointed with his chin to the swirling haze cloaking the
air above the cut walls. Here the river dug yet deeper into the
beginning of a canyon. They could breathe better. The dust still sifted
down but not as thickly as a half hour earlier. Though over their heads
the sky was now a grayish lid, shutting out the sun, bringing a portion
of coolness to the travelers.

The Survey officer glanced from side to side, watching the banks as if
hunting for some special mark or sign. At last he used his pole as a
pointer to indicate a rough pile of boulders ahead. Some former
landslide had quarter dammed the river at that point, and the drift of
seasonal floods was caught in and among the rocky pile to form a prickly
peninsula.

"In there----"

They brought the raft to shore, fighting the faster current. The
wolverines, who had been subdued by the heat and the dust, flung
themselves to the rocks with the eagerness of passengers deserting a
sinking ship for certain rescue. Thorvald settled the map case more
securely between his arm and side before he took the same leap. When
they were all ashore he prodded the raft out into the stream again,
pushing the platform along until it was sucked by the current past the
line of boulders.

"Listen!"

But Shann had already caught that distant rumble of sound. It was
steady, beating like some giant drum. Certainly it did not herald a
Throg ship in flight and it came from ahead, not from their back trail.

"Rapids ... perhaps even the falls," Thorvald interpreted that faint
thunder. "Now, let's see what kind of a road we can find here."

The tongue of boulders, spiked with driftwood, was firmly based against
the wall of the cut. But it sloped up to within a few feet of the top of
that gap, more than one landslide having contributed to its fashioning.
The landing stage paralleled the river for perhaps some fifty feet.
Beyond it water splashed a straight wall. They would have to climb and
follow the stream along the top of the embankment, maybe being forced
well away from the source of the water.

By unspoken consent they both knelt and drank deeply from their cupped
hands, splashing more of the liquid over their heads, washing the dust
from their skins. Then they began to climb the rough assent up which the
wolverines had already vanished. The murk above them was less solid, but
again the fine grit streaked their faces, embedding itself in their
hair.

Shann paused to scrape a film of mud from his lips and chin. Then he
made the last pull, bracing his slight body against the push of the wind
he met there. A palm struck hard between his shoulders, nearly sending
him sprawling. He had only wits enough left to recognize that as an
order to get on, and he staggered ahead until rock arched over him and
the sand drift was shut off.

His shoulder met solid stone, and having rubbed the sand from his eyes,
Shann realized he was in a pocket in the cliff walls. Well overhead he
caught a glimpse of natural amber sky through a slit, but here was a
twilight which thickened into complete darkness.

There was no sign of wolverines. Thorvald moved along the pocket
southward, and Shann followed him. Once more they faced a dead end. For
the crevice, with the sheer descent to the river on the right, the cliff
wall at its back, came to an abrupt stop in a drop which caught at
Shann's stomach when he ventured to look down.

If some battleship of the interstellar fleet had aimed a force beam
across the mountains of Warlock, cutting down to what lay under the
first envelope of planet-skin, perhaps the resulting wound might have
resembled that slash. What had caused such a break between the height on
which they stood and the much taller peak beyond, Shann could not guess.
But it must have been a cataclysm of spectacular dimensions. There was
certainly no descending to the bottom of that cut and reclimbing the
rock face on the other side. The fugitives would either have to return
to the river with all its ominous warnings of trouble to come, or find
some other path across that gap which now provided such an effective
barrier to the west.

"Down!" Just as Thorvald had pushed him out of the murk of the dust
storm into the crevice, so now did that officer jerk Shann from his
feet, forcing him to the floor of the half cave from which they had
partially emerged.

A shadow moved across the bright band of sunlit sky.

"Back!" Thorvald caught at Shann again, his greater strength prevailing
as he literally dragged the younger man into the dusk of the crevice.
And he did not pause, nor allow Shann to do so, even when they were well
undercover again. At last they reached the dark hole in the southern
wall which they had passed earlier. And a push from Thorvald sent his
companion into that.

Then a blow greater than any the Survey officer had aimed at him struck
Shann. He was hurled against a rough wall with impetus enough to explode
the air from his lungs, the ensuing pain so great that he feared his
ribs had given under that thrust. Before his eyes fire lashed down the
slit, searing him into temporary blindness. That flash was the last
thing he remembered as thick darkness closed in, shutting him into the
nothingness of unconsciousness.

It hurt to breathe; he was slowly aware first of that pain and then the
fact that he _was_ breathing, that he had to endure the pain for the
sake of breath. His whole body was jarred into a dull torment as a
weight pressed upon his twisted legs. Then strong animal breath puffed
into his face. Shann lifted one hand by will power, touched thick fur,
felt the rasp of a tongue laid wetly across his fingers.

Something close to terror engulfed him for a second or two when he knew
that he could not see! The black about him was colored by jagged flashes
of red which he somehow guessed were actually inside his eyes. He groped
through that fire-pierced darkness. An animal whimper from the throat of
the shaggy body pressed against him; he answered that movement.

"Taggi?"

The shove against him was almost enough to pin him once more to the
wall, a painful crush on his aching ribs, as the wolverine responded to
his name. That second nudge from the other side must be Togi's bid for
attention.

But what had happened? Thorvald had hurled him back just after that
shadow had swung over the ledge. That shadow! Shann's wits quickened as
he tried to make sense of what he could remember. A Throg ship! Then
that fiery lash which had cut after them could only have resulted from
one of those energy bolts such as had wiped out the others of his kind
at the camp. But he was still alive----!

"Thorvald?" He called through his personal darkness. When there was no
answer, Shann called again, more urgently. Then he hunched forward on
his hands and knees, pushing Taggi gently aside, running his hands over
projecting rocks, uneven flooring.

His fingers touched what could only be cloth, before they met the warmth
of flesh. And he half threw himself against the supine body of the
Survey officer, groping awkwardly for heartbeat, for some sign that the
other was still living.

"What----?" The one word came thickly, but Shann gave something close to a
sob of relief as he caught the faint mutter. He squatted back on his
heels, pressed his forearm against his aching eyes in a kind of fierce
will to see.

Perhaps that pressure did relieve some of the blackout, for when he
blinked again, the complete dark and the fiery trails had faded to gray,
and he was sure he saw dimly a source of light to his left.

The Throg ship had fired upon them. But the aliens could not have used
the full force of their weapon or neither of the Terrans would still be
alive. Which meant, Shann's thoughts began to make sense--sense which
brought apprehension--the Throgs probably intended to disable rather
than kill. They wanted prisoners, just as Thorvald had warned.

How long did the Terrans have before the aliens would come to collect
them? There was no fit landing place hereabouts for their flyer. The
beetle-heads would have to set down at the edge of the desert land and
climb the mountains on foot. And the Throgs were not good at that. So,
the fugitives still had a measure of time.

Time to do what? The country itself held them securely captive. That
drop to the southwest was one barrier. To retreat eastward would mean
running straight into the hands of the hunters. To descend again to the
river, their raft gone, was worse than useless. There was only this side
pocket in which they sheltered. And once the Throgs arrived, they could
scoop the Terrans out at their leisure, perhaps while stunned by a
controlling energy beam.

"Taggi? Togi?" Shann was suddenly aware that he had not heard the
wolverines for some time.

He was answered by a weirdly muffled call--from the south! Had the
animals found a new exit? Was this niche more than just a niche? A cave
of some length, or even a passage running back into the interior of the
peaks? With that faint hope spurring him, Shann bent again over
Thorvald, able now to make out the other's huddled form. Then he drew
the torch from the inner loop of his coat and pressed the lowest stud.

His eyes smarted in answer to that light, watered until tears patterned
the grime and dust on his cheeks. But he could make out what lay before
them, a hole leading into the cliff face, the hole which might furnish
the door to escape.

The Survey officer moved, levering himself up, his eyes screwed tightly
shut.

"Lantee?"

"Here. And there's a tunnel--right behind you. The wolverines went that
way...."

To his surprise there was a thin ghost of a smile on Thorvald's usually
straight-lipped mouth. "And we'd better be away before visitors arrive?"

So he, too, must have thought his way through the sequence of past
action to the same conclusion concerning the Throg movements.

"Can you see, Lantee?" The question was painfully casual, but a note in
it, almost a reaching for reassurance, cut for the first time through
the wall which had stood between them from their chance meeting by the
wrecked ship.

"Better now. I couldn't when I first came to," Shann answered quickly.

Thorvald opened his eyes, but Shann guessed that he was as blind as he
himself had been, He caught at the officer's nearer hand, drawing it to
rest on his own belt.

"Grab hold!" Shann was giving the orders now. "By the look of that
opening we had better try crawling. I've a torch on at low----"

"Good enough." The other's fingers fumbled on the band about Shann's
slim waist until they gripped tight at his back. He started on into the
opening, drawing Thorvald by that hold with him.

Luckily, they did not have to crawl far, for shortly past the entrance
the fault or vein they were following became a passage high enough for
even the tall Thorvald to travel without stooping. And then only a
little later he released his hold on Shann, reporting he could now see
well enough to manage on his own.

The torch beam caught on a wall and awoke from there a glitter which
hurt their eyes--a green-gold cluster of crystals. Several feet on,
there was another flash of embedded crystals. Those might promise
priceless wealth, but neither Terran paused to examine them more closely
or touch their surfaces. From time to time Shann whistled. And always he
was answered by the wolverines, their calls coming from ahead. So the
men continued to hope that they were not walking into a trap from which
the Throgs could extract them.

"Snap off your torch a moment!" Thorvald ordered.

Shann obeyed. The subdued light vanished. Yet there was still light to
be seen--ahead and above.

"Front door," Thorvald observed. "How do we get up?"

The torch showed them that, a narrow ladder of ledges branching off when
the passage they followed took a turn to the left and east. Afterward
Shann remembered that climb with wonder that they had actually made it,
though their advance had been slow, passing the torch from one to
another to make sure of their footing.

Shann was top man when a last spurt of effort enabled him to draw
himself out into the open, his hands raw, his nails broken and torn. He
sat there, stupefied with his own weariness, to stare about.

Thorvald called impatiently, and Shann reached for the torch to hold it
for the officer. Then Thorvald crawled out; he, too, looked around in
dull surprise.

On either side, peaks cut high into the amber of the sky. But this bowl
in which the men had found refuge was rich in growing things. Though the
trees were stunted, the grass grew almost as high here as it did on the
meadows of the lowlands. Quartering the pocket valley, galloped the
wolverines, expressing in that wild activity their delight in this
freedom.

"Good campsite."

Thorvald shook his head. "We can't stay here."

And, to underline that gloomy prophesy, there issued from that hole
through which they had just come, muffled and broken, but still
threatening, the howl of the Throgs' hound.

The Survey officer caught the torch from Shann's hold and knelt to flash
it into the interior of the passage. As the beam slowly circled that
opening, he held out his other arm, measuring the size of the aperture.

"When that thing gets on a hot scent"--he snapped off the beam--"the
beetle-heads won't be able to control it. There will be no reason for
them to attempt to. Those hounds obey their first orders: kill--or
capture. And I think this one operates on 'capture.' So they'll loose it
to run ahead of their party."

"And we move to knock it out?" Shann relied now on the other's
experience.

Thorvald rose. "It would need a blaster on full power to finish off a
hound. No, we can't kill it. But we can make it a doorkeeper to our
advantage." He trotted down into the valley, Shann beside him without
understanding in the least, but aware that Thorvald did have some plan.
The officer bent, searched the ground, and began to pull from under the
loose surface dirt one of those nets of tough vines which they had used
for cords. He thrust a double handful of this hasty harvest into Shann's
hold with a single curt order: "Twist these together and make as thick a
rope as you can!"

Shann twisted, discovering to his pleased surprise that under pressure
the vines exuded a sticky purple sap which not only coated his hands,
but also acted as an adhesive for the vines themselves so that his task
was not nearly as formidable as it had first seemed. With his force ax
Thorvald cut down two of the stunted trees and stripped them of
branches, wedging the poles into the rocks about the entrance of the
hole.

They were working against time, but on Thorvald's part with practiced
efficiency. Twice more that cry of the hunter arose from the depths
behind them. As the westering sun, almost down now, shone into the
valley hollow Thorvald set up the frame of his trap.

"We can't knock it out, any more than we can knock out a Throg. But a
beam from a stunner ought to slow it up long enough for this to work."

Taggi burst out of the grass, approaching the hole with purpose. And
Togi was right at his heels. Both of them stared into that opening,
drooling a little, the same eagerness in their pose as they had
displayed when hunting. Shann remembered how that first howl of the
Throg hound had drawn both animals to the edge of the occupied camp in
spite of their marked distaste for its alien masters.

"They're after it too." He told Thorvald what he had noted on the night
of their sortie.

"Maybe they can keep it occupied," the other commented. "But we don't
want them to actually mix with it; that might be fatal."

A clamor broke out in the interior passage. Taggi snarled, backing away
a few steps before he uttered his own war cry.

"Ready!" Thorvald jumped to the net slung from the poles; Shann raised
his stunner.

Togi underlined her mate's challenge with a series of snarls rising in
volume. There was a tearing, scrambling sound from within. Then Shann
fired at the jack-in-the-box appearance of a monstrous head, and
Thorvald released the deadfall.

The thing squalled. Ropes beat, growing taut. The wolverines backed from
jaws which snapped fruitlessly. To Shann's relief the Terran animals
appeared content to bait the now imprisoned--or collared--horror,
without venturing to make any close attack.

But he reckoned that too soon. Perhaps the stunner had slowed up the
hound's reflexes, for those jaws stilled with a last shattering snap,
the toad-lizard mask--a head which was against all nature as the Terrans
knew it--was quiet in the strangle leash of the rope, the rest of the
body serving as a cork to fill the exit hole. Taggi had been waiting
only for such a chance. He sprang, claws ready. And Togi went in after
her mate to share the battle.

7. UNWELCOME GUIDE

There was a small eruption of earth and stone as the hound came alive,
fighting to reach its tormentors. The resulting din was deafening.
Shann, avoiding by a hand's breadth a snap of jaws with power to crush
his leg into bone powder and mangled flesh, cuffed Togi across her nose
and buried his hands in the fur about Taggi's throat as he heaved the
male wolverine back from the struggling monster. He shouted orders, and
to his surprise Togi did obey, leaving him free to yank Taggi away.
Perhaps neither wolverine had expected the full fury of the hound.

Though he suffered a slash across the back of one hand, delivered by the
over-excited Taggi, in the end Shann was able to get both animals away
from the hole, now corked so effectively by the slavering thing.
Thorvald was actually laughing as he watched his younger companion in
action.

"This ought to slow up the beetles! If they haul their little doggie
back, it's apt to take out some of its rage on them, and I'd like to see
them dig around it."

Considering that the monstrous head was swinging from side to side in a
collar of what seemed to be immovable rocks, Shann thought Thorvald
right. He went down on his knees beside the wolverines, soothing them
with hand and voice, trying to get them to obey his orders willingly.

"Ha!" Thorvald brought his mud-stained hands together with a clap, the
sharp sound attracting the attention of both animals.

Shann scrambled up, swung out his bleeding hand in the simple motion
which meant to hunt, being careful to signal down the valley westward.
Taggi gave a last reluctant growl at the hound, to be answered by one of
its ear-torturing howls, and then trotted off, Togi tagging behind.

Thorvald caught Shann's slashed hand, inspecting the bleeding cut. From
the aid packet at his belt he brought out powder and a strip of
protecting plasta-flesh to cleanse and bind the wound.

"You'll do," he commented. "But we'd better get out of here before full
dark."

The small paradise of the valley was no safe campsite. It could not be
so long as that monstrosity on the hillside behind them roared and
howled its rage to the darkening sky. Trailing the wolverines, the men
caught up with the animals drinking from a small spring and thankfully
shared that water. Then they pushed on, not able to forget that
somewhere in the peaks about must lurk the Throg flyer ready to attack
on sight.

Only darkness could not be held off by the will of men. Here in the open
there was no chance to use the torch. As long as they were within the
valley boundaries the phosphorescent bushes marked a path. But by the
coming of complete darkness they were once more out in a region of bare
rock.

The wolverines had killed a brace of skitterers, consuming hide and soft
bones as well as the meager flesh which was not enough to satisfy their
hunger. However, to Shann's relief, they did not wander too far ahead.
And as the men stopped at last on a ledge where a fall of rock gave them
some limited shelter both animals crowded in against the humans, adding
the heat of their bodies to the slight comfort of that cramped resting
place.

From time to time Shann was startled out of a troubled half sleep by the
howl of the hound. Luckily that sound never seemed any louder. If the
Throgs had caught up with their hunter, and certainly they must have
done so by now, they either could not, or would not free it from the
trap. Shann dozed again, untroubled by any dreams, to awake hearing the
shrieks of clak-claks. But when he studied the sky he was able to sight
none of the cliff-dwelling Warlockian bats.

"More likely they are paying attention to our friend back in the
valley," Thorvald said dryly, rightly reading Shann's glance to the
clouds overhead. "Ought to keep them busy."

Clak-claks were meat eaters, only they preferred their chosen prey weak
and easy to attack. The imprisoned hound would certainly attract their
kind. And those shrill cries now belling through the mountain heights
ought to draw everyone of their species within miles.

"There it is!" Thorvald, pulling himself to his feet by a rock handhold,
gazed westward, his gaunt face eager.

Shann, expecting no less than a cruising Throg ship, searched for cover
on their perch. Perhaps if they flattened themselves behind the fall of
stones, they might be able to escape attention. Yet Thorvald made no
move into hiding. And so Shann followed the line of the other's fixed
stare.

Before and below them lay a maze of heights and valleys, sharp drops,
and saw-toothed rises. But on the far rim of that section of badlands
shone the green of a Warlockian sea rippling on to the only dimly seen
horizon. They were now within sight of their goal.

Had they had one of the exploration sky-flitters from the overrun camp,
they could have walked its beach sands within the hour. Instead, they
fought their way through a Devil-designed country for the next two days.
Twice they had narrow escapes from the Throg ship--or ships--which
continued to sweep across the rugged line of the coast, and only a quick
dive to cover, wasting precious time cowering like trapped animals,
saved them from discovery. But at least the hound did not bay again on
the tangled trail they left, and they hoped that the trap and the
clak-claks had put that monster permanently out of service.

On the third day they came down to one of those fiords which tongued
inland, fringing the coast. There had been no lack of hunting in the
narrow valleys through which they had threaded, so both men and
wolverines were well fed. Though animal fur wore better than the now
tattered uniforms of the men.

"Now where?" Shann asked.

Would he now learn the purpose driving Thorvald on to this coastland?
Certainly such broken country afforded good hiding, but no better
concealment than the mountains of the interior.

The Survey officer turned slowly around on the shingle, studying the
heights behind them as well as the angle of the inlet where the wavelets
lapped almost at their battered boot tips. Opening his treasured map
case, he began a patient checking of landmarks against several of the
strips he carried. "We'll have to get on down to the true coast."

Shann leaned against the trunk of a conical branched mountain tree,
pulling absently at the shreds of wine-colored bark being shed in
seasonal change. The chill they had known in the upper valleys was
succeeded here by a humid warmth. Spring was becoming a summer such as
this northern continent knew. Even the fresh wind, blowing in from the
outer sea, had already lost some of the bite they had felt two days
before when its salt-laden mistiness had first struck them.

"Then what do we do there?" Shann persisted.

Thorvald brought over the map, his black-rimmed nail tracing a route
down one of the fiords, slanting out to indicate a lace of islands
extending in a beaded line across the sea.

"We head for these."

To Shann that made no sense at all. Those islands ... why, they would
offer less chance of establishing a safe base than the broken land in
which they now stood. Even the survey scouts had given those spots of
sea-encircled earth the most cursory examination from the air.

"Why?" he asked bluntly. So far he had followed orders because they had
for the most part made sense. But he was not giving obedience to
Thorvald as a matter of rank alone.

"Because there is something out there, something which may make all the
difference now. Warlock isn't an empty world."

Shann jerked free a long thong of loose bark, rolling it between his
fingers. Had Thorvald cracked? He knew that the officer had disagreed
with the findings of the team and had been an unconvinced minority of
one who had refused to subscribe to the report that Warlock had no
native intelligent life and therefore was ready and waiting for human
settlement because it was technically an empty world. But to continue to
cling to that belief without a single concrete proof was certainly a
sign of mental imbalance.

And Thorvald was regarding him now with frowning impatience. You were
supposed to humor delusions, weren't you? Only, could you surrender and
humor a wild idea which might mean your death? If Thorvald wanted to go
island-hopping in chance of discovering what never had existed, Shann
need not accompany him. And if the officer tried to use force, well,
Shann was armed with a stunner, and had, he believed, more control over
the wolverines. Perhaps if he merely gave lip agreement to this
project.... Only he didn't believe, noting the light deep in those gray
eyes holding on him, that anybody could talk Thorvald out of this
particular obsession.

"You don't believe me, do you?" The impatience arose hotly in that
demand.

"Why shouldn't I?" Shann tried to temporize. "You've had a lot of
exploration experience; you should know about such things. I don't
pretend to be any authority."

Thorvald refolded the map and placed it in the case. Then he pulled at
the sealing of his blouse, groping in an inner secret pocket. He
uncurled his fingers to display his treasure.

On his palm lay a coin-shaped medallion, bone-white but possessing an
odd luster which bone would not normally show. And it was carved. Shann
put out a finger, though he had a strange reluctance to touch the
object. When he did he experienced a sensation close to the tingle of a
mild electric shock. And once he had made that contact, he was also
impelled to pick up that disk and examine it more closely.

The carved pattern was very intricate and had been done with great
delicacy and skill, though the whorls, oddly shaped knobs, ribbon
tracings, made no connected design he could determine. After a moment or
two of study, Shann became aware that his eyes, following those twists
and twirls, were "fixed," that it required a distinct effort to look
away from the thing. Feeling some of that same alarm as he had known
when he first heard the wailing of the Throg hound, he let the disk fall
back into Thorvald's hold, even more disturbed when he discovered that
to relinquish his grasp required some exercise of will.

"What is it?"

Thorvald restored the coin to his hiding place.

"You tell me. I can say this much, there is no listing for anything even
remotely akin to this in the Archives."

Shann's eyes widened. He absently rubbed the fingers which had held the
bone coin--if it was a coin--back and forth across the torn front of his
blouse. That tingle ... did he still feel it? Or was his imagination at
work again? But an object not listed in the exhaustive Survey Archives
would mean some totally new civilization, a new stellar race.

"It is definitely a created article," the Survey officer continued. "And
it was found on the beach of one of those sea islands."

"Throg?" But Shann already knew the answer to that.

"Throg work--_this_?" Thorvald was openly scornful. "Throgs have no
conception of such art. You must have seen their metal plates--those are
the beetle-heads' idea of beauty. Have those the slightest resemblance
to this?"

"Then who made it?"

"Either Warlock has--or once had--a native race advanced enough in a
well-established form of civilization to develop such a sophisticated
type of art, or there have been other visitors from space here before us
and the Throgs. And the latter possibility I don't believe----"

"Why?"

"Because this was carved of bone or an allied substance. We haven't been
quite able to identify it in the labs, but it is basically organic
material. It was found exposed to the weather and yet it is in perfect
condition, could have been carved any time within the past five years.
It has been handled, yes, but not roughly. And we have come across
evidences of no other star-cruising races or species save ourselves and
the Throgs. No, I say this was made here on Warlock, not too long ago,
and by intelligent beings of a very high grade of civilization."

"But they would have cities," protested Shann. "We've been here for
months, explored all over this continent. We would have seen them or
some traces of them."

"An old race, maybe," Thorvald mused, "a very old race, perhaps in
decline, reduced to a remnant in numbers with good reason to retire into
hiding. No, we've discovered no cities, no evidence of a native culture
past or present. But this--" he touched the front of his blouse--"was
found on the shore of an island. We may have been looking in the wrong
place for our natives."

"The sea...." Shann glanced with new interest at the green water surging
in wavelets along the edge of the fiord.

"Just so, the sea!"

"But scouts have been here for more than a year, one team or another.
And nobody saw anything or found any traces."

"All four of our base camps were set inland, our explorations along the
coast were mainly carried out by flitter, except for one party--the one
which found this. And there may be excellent local reasons why any
native never showed himself to us. For that matter, they may not be able
to exist on land at all, any more than we could live without artificial
aids in the sea."

"Now----?"

"Now we must make a real attempt to find them if they do exist anywhere
near here. A friendly native race could make all the difference in the
world in any struggle with the Throgs."

"Then you did have more than the dreams to back you when you argued with
Fenniston!" Shann cut in.

Thorvald's eyes were on him again. "When did you hear that, Lantee?"

To his great embarrassment, Shann found himself flushing. "I heard you,
the day you left for Headquarters," he admitted, and then added in his
own defense, "Probably half the camp did, too."

Thorvald's gathering frown flickered away. He gave a snort of laughter.
"Yes, I guess we did rather get to the bellowing point that morning. The
dreams--" he came back to the subject--"Yes, the dreams