_Eighth Day_ I can only suppose that these actions of the aliens represent some kind of religious ritual. Again I am presented with the problem of whether these rituals are a part of their normal, daily life, or are they a special series instigated by my presence? Yesterday I observed two of the quronos repairing one of the village houses. The native lumber seems to be ill-suited to construction purposes. Several times I have noticed logs tearing themselves free and crawling back into the virgin forest. Due to the instability of their building materials the aliens are constantly having to repair their houses. In watching the two quronos at work I observed something highly significant. The humanoids worked smoothly as a team, splitting and planing down the reluctant logs with double-bladed axes. Then, putting the lumber in place, they fastened it down with triangular wooden pegs. They pounded these pegs home awkwardly with the flat side of the axes. The axes are crude and obviously indigenous to the culture. I view this with considerable alarm. Obviously any culture that can produce an axe is capable of inventing the hammer. The quronos are not using their hammers in front of me. I am producing a change in their routine. Where will it end? What are they saving their hammers for? _800: Eighth Day_ Barnhart had written that just before dawn, but as usual the aliens had continued to ignore him. For all he knew the ritual might go on for years--before they used their hammers. Or whatever they were planning. It was drawing near time for his nap, but he felt completely wide awake even inside the safety of the force field. His throat hurt and the backs of his legs ached with the waiting, the waiting for the natives to come out and begin xenogutting. He wiped his hands together and forced a smile. Why should he worry what the natives did? He was completely safe. He could live out his life in immutable security. But this wasn't his world. No part of it was his ... or at least only the part he had brought with him. Sanity lay in holding to what was left of his own world. But sanity didn't always mean survival. What if he could make the quronos' world his own? Barnhart wiped at the tiny stings against his face and his fingertips came away moist with beads of perspiration. The aliens began marching out of the houses, in twos from the ten-foot doors, singly from the foot-square openings of every other facing wall. It wasn't his world of fire-works-streaked Ohio summers and bold green hills, this planet cowled with nun-like secrecy, looking acrid, tasting violet and transmitting a beauty and confusion only a trio of physical scientists could solve. But there was only one thing to do. Barnhart let down his force field and went out.