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collapsed a meter away, and then as they left it crawled after them for a long while …. Bren almost
     drowned in a mudhole. The ground was full of them, concealed by plants growing on their surface …. Urduga came near a sort
     of vine, whichgrabbed him. The sucker mouths couldn’t break his skin, but he couldn’t get loose either. I had to chop free; naturally we
     never left camp alone …. Though we had portable radios and gyrocompasses, we dreaded losing our way in these featureless marshlands
     …. From time to time we noticed bipedal forms skulk in the distant brush. They disappeared before we could bring optical aids
     to bear, but Galmer insisted he had glimpsed a spear carried by one of them. And without the main reactor, the ship’s heavy
     weapons were inert. We had a few sidearms, nothing else.
    Microbes we simply had to risk. We should be immune to all viruses, and odds were that no native bacteria or protozoa could
     make headway in our systems either. But you never knew for certain, and sometimes you lay awake wondering if the ache in your
     body was only weariness. Until we got our hut assembled, endless dim day and frequent rains made sleep hard to come by.
    In spite of strain, or perhaps because of it, no quarrels flapped up at first—except once, when I told Bren and Galmer to
     make measurements. I wanted precise values for gravity, air pressure, humidity, magnetism, ionization, horizon distance, rotation
     period, solar spectrum lines, whatever could be found with a battery of instruments from the ship.
    “Why now?” Rorn demanded. He was no more gaunt and dirty than the rest of us, as we sat in our shelter while another storm
     drummed on the roof. “We’ve hardly begun the heavy work like building a stockade.”
    “Information-gathering is just as urgent,” I answered. “The sooner we know what kind of place we’re in, the sooner we can
     lay plans that make sense.”
    “Why those two men, though?” Rorn’s mouth twisted uncontrollably. We hadn’t yet installed lights, and the single flash hanging
     overhead cast his eyes into thick shadow, as ifalready a skull looked at me. “We can take turns. Easy to sit and twiddle with a pendulum and clock.”
    “Well,” Bren said mildly, “that sounds fair.”
    “Veto,” I said. “You boys are trained in navigation and planetography. You can do the job quicker and better than anyone else.”
    “Besides,” Valland pointed out, “they won’t sit continuously. Between sun shots, for instance, we’ll put ’em to some-thin’
     real hard.” He grinned. “Like maybe findin’ some way to make the bloody plankton imitate steak.”
    “Don’t remind me!” Rorn grated. “Aren’t we miserable enough?”
    “What do you propose to do about our troubles?” I asked sharply. A gust of wind made the thin metal walls shake around us.
    “What do
you?
How do we get off of here?”
    “The most obvious way,” Urduga said, “is to fix a radio transmitter that can beam to Yonder.”
    “If they use radio,” Rorn countered. “We don’t any more, except for special things like spacesuits. Why shouldn’t they space-jump
     electron patterns, the same as us? Then they’ll never detect our signal—if you actually can build an interplanetary ’caster
     with your bare hands!”
    “Oh, we got tools and parts,” Valland said. “Or maybe we can fix one of the ferries. Got to take a close look into that possibility.
     Simmer down, Yo. Once I get a home brewery rigged, we’ll all feel better.”
    “If you don’t want to work with us, Rorn,” Urduga added, “you have the freedom of this planet.”
    “None of that!” I exclaimed. “Once we turn on each other, we’re done. How about a song, Hugh?”
    “Well, if you can stand it.” Valland got his omnisonor and launched into another ballad he had translated from old times on
     Earth. No doubt it should have been something decorous about home and mother, or something heroically defiant.