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“We’re going to have to hack our way through this,” he said. “Let me go first, and when I give out, Josh, you can take over.”
    â€œThat sounds good,” Josh said. “Stick together, now. I’d hate to get lost in this mess.”
    Reb walked ahead, slashing at the vines with the razor-keen machete. He worked tirelessly for an hour, then Josh took his place. He lasted almost that long. Dave, who was third, was not as handy with a macheteas the other two. He lasted only half an hour. Then Jake said, “Let me at that stuff. I can use either hand, not like you righties or lefties.”
    Wash said, “Yeah, he’s amphibious. He can use either hand.”
    â€œAn amphibian is an
alligator
or something like that!” Jake said. He waded in manfully, and the little column wound its way through the thick jungle. It was exhausting going, and the bugs swarmed, biting their exposed hands and faces.
    Toward sunset, Josh called a halt in plenty of time to build a fire and cook a good meal. They slept like the dead that night.
    The next two days were just as hard going. Sometimes they came to wild, fierce rivers that were difficult to ford. They saw many signs of wild animals. Once Reb glimpsed what he thought was a lion, but it slunk away before he could unloose an arrow after it.
    The following morning, they had traveled not more than two hours when suddenly Josh said, “Look, that’s smoke up there!”
    â€œEither a forest fire,” Sarah said, “or maybe a village.”
    â€œAccording to the map,” Josh said, “there ought to be a river there and a little village, if we’ve done our navigating right.”
    They were all eager to find some kind of civilization.
    â€œI hope they’re friendly. I used to read in
National Geographic
about pygmies,” Dave said with a worried look. “They had blowguns, and they would shoot you with poison darts.”
    Abbey moved closer to Dave and did not get far from him as they made their way along a path that showed signs of human use.
    The vegetation thinned out, and at last, when they turned a corner, they saw a small huddle of grass huts and several fires going in the middle of the encampment. A number of people were moving around.
    Josh said, “Let’s not scare them—give them a chance to look us over.”
    They had not gone much farther before a cry went up, and they were soon ringed by natives. They were brown-skinned people, smaller than the Sleepers, and they spoke a broken form of the common language of Nuworld.
    â€œWe are on a mission from Goél,” Josh told them, holding his hand up in the sign of peace. He saw at once that the name
Goél
meant something to these people.
    The tallest among them—perhaps their leader— was a man of about fifty but with white hair. He grinned, exposing broken teeth. “Goél! We are followers of Goél.”
    â€œGreat!” Josh said. He explained their mission, and the villagers and the chief listened.
    â€œCome in,” the chief invited. “We have feast tonight.”
    â€œI could stand somebody else’s cooking,” Reb said to Wash. “I hope they don’t feed us monkey, though.”
    Truthfully, they half expected to be fed something outlandish. But in fact, they were served fish and wild pig, which had been roasted by turning the whole carcass over a fire.
    â€œSure wish I had some good barbecue sauce to go with this here pig,” Reb said, “but we take it as it comes.”
    During the feast, the Sleepers were entertained by the natives, who performed a rather strange dance in which they stomped the ground rapidly in unison and clapped their hands together.
    â€œYou want to dance, Abbey?” Dave said, chewing on a piece of the roast pork, which was delicious. “You’re always one for a dance.”
    â€œNot
that
kind of dance,” Abbey said.
    â€œWell, you’re