He looked at her in surprise. Her eyes were angry, but her lower lip quivered. "Hey," he said, startled. "Maybe I'm being a pig!" "You sure are!" Peer said, relieved. The lip stopped quivering. "You're not going over there, then?" "Not if you feel that way about it," Channok said. He paused. "I guess," he admitted awkwardly, "I just didn't like the idea of Santis flitting around space, Holy Aynstyn knows where, and still putting in his two millicredits worth every so often, through crew-member Peer!" Peer blew her nose and considered in turn. "Just the same," she concluded, "when Santis says something like that, it's a lot better if people do it. Is 'Holy Aynstyn knows where' a swear-word?" "No," said Channok. "Not exactly." * * * * * He'd finished his lunch and was just going to suggest they run the tractor out of the cache and back the few hundred yards to the _Asteroid_ for the first load of Santis' cargo, when he noticed that all the ghouls had vanished. He called Peer's attention to the fact. "Uh-huh," she said in an absent-minded tone. "They do that sometimes...." Channok looked at her. She was staring at a high boulder a short distance away, with a queer, intent expression, as if she were deep in thought about something. He hoped she wasn't still brooding about their little argument-- Then she glanced at him, gave him a sudden grin, swung herself around and slid nimbly off the rock. "Come on down quick!" she said. "I want to show you something before you get back to work. A ghoul-burrow!" "A ghoul-burrow?" Channok repeated unenthusiastically. "Yes, sure!" said Peer impatiently. "They're cute! They're all lined with glass or something." She spread her arms wide. "Jump, and I'll catch you!" Channok laughed, flopped over on his stomach with his legs over the edge of the rock, and slid down in a fair imitation of Peer's nonchalant style of descent, spraining his ankle only a little. Well, he hadn't grown up skipping from craggy moon to asteroid to heavy-planet to whatnot like she had.... They threaded their way about the rocks to the spot she had been studying. She explained that he'd have to climb into the burrow to get a good idea of what it was like. "Well, look now, Peer!" Channok protested, staring into the big, round hole that slanted downwards under a big boulder--it did seem to be lined with black glass or some similar stuff. "That cave's got 'No Trespassing' written all over it. Supposing I slide down a half a mile and land in a mess of ghouls!" "No, you won't," Peer said hurriedly. "It goes level right away, and they're never more than thirty feet long. And the ghoul's out--there's never more than one to a burrow; and I saw this one pop out and run off just before we started here! You're not scared, are you? Wilf and I crawled in and out of hundreds of them!" "Well, just for a moment then," said Channok resignedly. * * * * *