"Look--" again that impatient edge in the officer's tone, the need for explanation seeming to come very hard to the other--"sooner or later the Throgs might just trace us here and find this camp. If so, they are _not_ going to discover any traces to label us Terran----" "But who else could we be?" protested Shann. "There is no native race on Warlock." Thorvald tossed his improvised stone ax from hand to hand. "But do the Throgs know that?" The implications, the possibilities, in that idea struck home to Shann. Now he began to understand what Thorvald might be planning. "Now there is going to be a native race." Shann made a statement instead of a question and saw that the other was watching him with a new intentness, as if he had at last been recognized as a person instead of rank and file and very low rank at that--Survey personnel. "There is going to be a native race," Thorvald affirmed. Shann resheathed his knife and went to search the pond beach for a suitable stone to use in its place. Even so, he made harder work of the clumsy chopping than Thorvald had. He worried at one sapling after another until his hands were skinned and his breath came in painful gusts from under aching ribs. Thorvald had gone on to another task, ripping the end of a long tough vine from just under the powdery surface of the thick leaf masses fallen in other years. With this the officer lashed together the tops of the poles, having planted their splintered butts in the ground, so that he achieved a crudely conical erection. Leafy branches were woven back and forth through this framework, with an entrance, through which one might crawl on hands and knees, left facing the lakeside. The shelter they completed was compact and efficient but totally unlike anything Shann had ever seen before, certainly far removed from the domes of the camp. He said so, nursing his raw hands. "An old form," Thorvald replied, "native to a primitive race on Terra. Certainly the beetle-heads haven't come across its like before." "Are we going to stay here? Otherwise it is pretty heavy work for one night's lodging." Thorvald tested the shelter with a sharp shake. The matted leaves whispered, but the framework held. "Stage dressing. No, we won't linger here. But it's evidence to support our play. Even a Throg isn't dense enough to believe that natives would make a cross-country trip without leaving evidence of their passing." Shann sat down with a sigh he made no effort to suppress. He had a vision of Thorvald traveling southward, methodically erecting these huts here and there to confound Throgs who might not ever chance upon them. But already the Survey officer was busy with a new problem. "We need weapons----" "We have our stunners, a force ax, and our knives," Shann pointed out. He did not add, as he would have liked that they could have had a blaster.