Her eyes were hot with scorn. "I know that! If you'd lived with the Thisbeans as long as I have you'd understand. Why--" "Now, look," said Pritchard with rising asperity, "we have satisfactory means of determining intelligence. If your 'people' are as you claim they're in no danger. But are you going to claim there are no killers here? They're what we're after, intelligent or not. And there are killers on every world, Miss Boyce." She shook her head in despair at his stupidity. "There are no killers here, Mr. Pritchard. There are no killers anywhere on any world. Only variant life forms trying to live and eat, eating only to live. If we help them to find food, and guide their impulses...." Pritchard gave up. The argument was futile. It struck him that the girl was mad. The horror of the attack on the Survey camp, followed by years of isolation from her kind, had left her in a hopelessly deranged state. And a little plan took shape in his mind. "That's all very fine," he said, cutting across her words, "but let me show you something that will prove to you we are not here to kill indiscriminately." He turned to McManus. "Let's have your little pet, Tom." McManus raised his eyebrows, but fumbled the button of his breast pocket flap loose and pulled out the wriggling, six-legged infant rodent. Pritchard took it and held it out toward the girl. "Here, Miss Boyce. My friend found this. He didn't bite its head off first thing. Now we'll turn it over to you for safekeeping." "Aw," growled McManus. "Quiet," Pritchard growled back at him. He lifted the wriggling little beast and it squeaked. "I guess I'd better not toss it." The eyes of Cornelia Boyce were large and glowing with maternal pity. She dropped lightly to the ground and advanced, holding out her hand. Pritchard pulled back the hand with the little wriggler in it and his other shot forward to grip the girl's wrist. She gasped and bent backward, striving to wrench loose. Her strength was such that Pritchard, turning to hand the cub back to McManus, almost lost his balance. "Stop it," she cried. "You don't know what--" Her lips moved for another second, but the words were lost in the sudden tumult that erupted about them. The jungle exploded, almost seemed to come alive at their very feet. Dimly-seen shapes came lurching and crashing toward them from every side, clambering and trampling and swinging from branch to branch. Here and there a tree cracked, splintered and fell. The men whipped out their snappers and backed against each other, eyes rolling nervously in grim set faces. The girl frantically twisted out of Pritchard's fingers and stuck two fingers in her mouth. A piercing, two-noted whistle stabbed through the mounting din. It stabbed again, and the uproar subsided into a confused rustling and shuffling. Silence fell across the dust-charged air.