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exhibition.
    Storm nodded. Gorgol’s left hand went to a cord about his own neck on which hung two curved objects, black and shiny. There was a shy self-consciousness about the native as he dropped his hand again to sign:
    “I no warrior yet—hunter only. Have been in high peaks and killed an evil flyer—”
    Storm asked the proper question in return. “An evil flyer? I not of this world—I know not evil flyer—”
    “Big!” The Norbie’s fingers spread to their farthest extent making the sign for great size. “Bird—evil bird. Hunt horse—hunt Norbie—kill!” His forefinger and thumb scissored in the emphatic sign for sudden and violent death, then rose again to tap the trophies swinging against the corselet which covered his breast.
    Storm stretched out his hand in polite question and the boy pulled the thong from his neck, passing it to the Terran for examination. The objects strung on it were plainly a bird’s claws. And, using the length of Baku’s talons in relation to her thirty-four inches as comparison, the creature that had borne them must indeed havebeen huge, for each claw measured the length of Storm’s hand from wrist to the end of the longest finger. He returned the necklet to its proud owner.
    “You great hunter,” Storm nodded vigorously to underline his finger statement. “Evil flyer must be hard to kill.”
    Gorgol’s face might be half hidden by the scarf mask, but his whole person expressed pleasure as he answered.
    “I kill for man deed. Not warrior yet—but hunter, yes.”
    And well he might boast, Storm thought. If this boy had killed the monster he described while hunting alone—and the Terran had learned enough of Norbie customs from Dort to know that idle boasting was no part of native character—he had every right in the world to claim to be a hunter.
    “You be frawn herder?” the Norbie continued.
    “No. I have no land—no herd—”
    “Be hunter. Kill evil flyer—kill yoris—trade their skins—”
    “I stranger,” Storm pointed out, making the signs slowly as he launched bravely into expressing more complicated ideas. “Norbies hunt Norbie lands—off-world men do not so hunt—”
    The hunting law was one of the few rigidly enforced by the loosely knit government of Arzor, as the Terran had been warned at the Center and again at the space port. Norbie rights were protected. Herd riders could kill yoris or other predatory creatures attacking their stock. But any animal living in the mountains, or in the native-held sections of the plains was taboo as far as the settlers were concerned.
    Gorgol objected. “You bird totem warrior—Krotag’s people bird totem—you hunt Krotag’s land—no one say no—”
    Far within Storm a feeling stirred faintly, some emotion, frozen on that day when he had returned from a hazardous three months of duty behind the enemy lines to discover that he was a homeless man. He moved restlessly on the saddle pad and Rain snorted nervously, as if the stallion, too, had felt that painful tug. The Terran’s face, beneath his mask, was set in passionless endurance as he fought against that feeble response to Gorgol’s impulsive offer.
    “You’re pullin’ it late—” Bister’s dust-hoarsened voice rasped not only on Storm’s ears but on his awakened nerves. “Sure got you a bigbunch this time. The goat here lead you to where he had ’em all salted away nice and neat?”
    That new aliveness in Storm rose in answer to the prod of antagonism. He did not like Bister, but he no longer accepted that passively as just another unpleasant fact of his present existence. There might be cause for him to do something positive to counter the other’s needling. The Terran did not know that over the edge of the scarf his eyes, usually better controlled, now gave him away. Coll Bister was more alert to small points than he seemed.
    The settler pulled his own scarf away from his mouth and spat. “Maybe you don’t believe these goats have