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face.
    “Come and make us!” he hooted.
    However, if they disregarded Jony's command, they had still to reckon with Huuf and Uga. Huuf moved up behind Geogee, his hands out, to close upon the boy's upper arms. In spite of Geogee's irate yells and kicks, he bore him calmly to the bank, to dump him on the grass not far from where Geogee's kilt lay in a tangle. Uga disappeared under the spray curtain, to return in less than a breath, not carrying the screaming Maba, but leading her by the long streamers of her hair, on which Uga had a good and unshakable grip.
    “Jony—” Maba screamed as soon as she was through the water curtain into the open. “Make her stop! She's hurting me!”
    “Do as you're told,” he replied with satisfaction, “and you won't get hurt. It's time to head back and you know it.”
    Though perhaps she did not. None of the three had the built-in sense of time which moved the People calmly and serenely through their days, a time to eat, a time to doze, a time to make nettings, to heap up bedding for the night, to look about them.
    The People used some tools. They knotted nets which they employed as loose bags to carry fruit and edible roots with them. Also each treasured a staff such as Jony now reached for. These were carefully made from a well-selected thick branch or sapling.
    One end curved in a hook for pulling down fruit-laden branches. The other end was sharpened by much patient rubbing between stones to aid in digging up roots and grubs. It could also be a weapon upon occasion. Voak had slain a vor bird with his staff. Though after he had thrown away the staff, since a kill-thing must not be used again.
    The People were equipped with their own armament. The tremendous strength of their thickly muscled arms and their fangs was enough to make them formidable opponents. Only the vor birds, which could attack from aloft, and smaa, a legged reptile with lightning lash speed, were any real danger. Of course there were the Red Heads, too. Jony had only seen them once, and the memory was enough to make him shiver even now. They had looked (to the unknowing) like tall plants, with huge flaming scarlet balls for flowers, one large ball aloft on each stalk. By day they were root-fixed in the ground—growing. At dusk their life changed. Feet, which were also roots, wriggled out of their chosen pits of sod as they set out to catch and devour any life they could meet.
    From the lower parts of their ball heads they discharged a light yellowish powder, the brisk waving of which had seemed like leaves wafted out into the air. Whatever breathed that powder became quickly insensate; the Red Heads would gather up the limp body, enfolding it in thorned leaves which aided in sucking the juices from it. Once this grisly meal was concluded, the shrunken remains were hurled into the open root holes, as if the refuse of their horrible meals would nourish them even longer.
    The People knew no way of defeating the Red Heads. One merely avoided them as best one could. Luckily their coloring was such that they could be easily sighted. And they were the first enemy to scout for upon coming into any unfamiliar territory.
    Jony watched Maba and Geogee dry themselves off with bunches of grass and belt on their kilts. Rutee had taught them how to weave those, using the same fibers, but thinner and split, which the People processed to construct their nets. In addition all three possessed squares of more closely woven stuff, packed tighter with feathers of vor birds, which they pulled about them in the cold times.
    Jony leaped down from his rock perch, crossed the stream with a couple of jumps from rock to rock. The cubs already headed purposefully toward that clump of trees which marked their present campsite. Both had full nets; their morning had been spent to better purpose than just playing in the water.
    “You let them pull us out!” Maba's lower lip stuck out as she scowled at Jony. “You think they know more than we