They found it necessary to hike eight miles north of Monterey before they were beyond the area of total destruction. The ruins, scattered among the encroaching trees, became recognizable as skeletal relics of things that might once have been homes. They found one frame cottage still whole because it had been built close to a hillside. The battered walls would provide shelter for Pendillo and the missionary. Further, the house had a stone fireplace where they could cook their food, and close by a shallow spring bubbled from the dark earth. Gill and Lanny trapped a deer and carried the carcass back to the cottage. Both Tak Laleen and Pendillo were struggling to make a fire. Lanny took over the chore and in seconds flames leaped through the dead brush heaped on the hearth. It had always puzzled him that Pendillo could have taught him the techniques, and still not be able to make the fire himself. Tak Laleen was just as helpless. Without their machines the Almost-men were nothing: again and again that became apparent. Gill stripped off the deer hide carefully so it could be made into a second jacket for Pendillo. While he stretched the skin in the afternoon sun, Lanny turned the meat over the fire. When they began to eat, both Lanny and Gill were amused that Tak Laleen had manners as fastidious as Pendillo's. The missionary nibbled delicately at her food, as if she thought the grease would soil her lips. Afterward she and Pendillo washed in water which they heated over the fire. Pendillo's sons stripped and swam in the ocean, as a man properly should to make himself clean. They made beds for their father and the missionary in front of the fire. Lanny and his brother would have been willing to continue the march north until nightfall; the food had restored their balance of energy, as it always did. But they knew the other two had to rest. Lanny and Gill dug burrows in the warm sand outside the cottage, where they felt more comfortable. They were consciously an integrated part of their world, nurtured by the earth and the sun. To them it seemed absurd to build walls of wood or stone to separate themselves from a part of their own being. None of the younger generation had ever understood the need of their elders for artificial shelter. That feeling, too, was a product of of their education, though neither they nor their teachers grasped what it implied. The children of the prison camps lived in a new universe, not yet defined. Lanny and Gill were immediately asleep. It did not occur to them that Tak Laleen might try to escape. They assumed she had read the signs of the plentiful game in the forest: they were a long way from any enemy installation.