Two more of the mysterious objects were found, both of which Ch'aka ate as well. Only when his immediate hunger was satisfied did he make any attempt to be the good provider. When the next one was found he called over a slave and threw the object into a crudely woven basket he was carrying on his back. After this the basket-toting slave walked directly in front of Ch'aka who was carefully watchful that every one of the things that was dug up went into the basket. Jason wondered what they were--and they were edible, too, an angry rumbling in his stomach reminded him. The slave next in line to Jason shouted and pointed to the sand. Jason let Mikah sink to a sitting position when they stopped and watched with interest as the slave attacked the ground with his piece of wood, scratching around a tiny sprig of green that projected from the desert sand. His burrowings uncovered a wrinkled gray object from which the green leaves were growing, a root or tuber of some kind. It appeared as edible as a piece of stone to Jason, but obviously not to the slave who drooled heavily and actually had the temerity to sniff the root. Ch'aka howled with anger at this and when the slave had dropped the root into the basket with the others he received a kick so strong that he had to limp back painfully to his position in the line. Soon after this Ch'aka called a halt and the tattered slaves huddled around while he poked through the basket. He called them over one at a time and gave them one or more of the roots according to some merit system of his own. The basket was almost empty when he poked his club at Jason. "_K'e nam h'vas vi?_" he asked. "_Mia namo estas Jason, mia amiko estas Mikah._" Jason answered in correct Esperanto that Ch'aka seemed to understand well enough, because he grunted and dug through the contents of the basket. His masked face stared at them and Jason could feel the impact of the unseen watching eyes. The club pointed again. "Where you come from? That you ship that burn, sink?" "That was our ship. We come from far away." "From other side of ocean?" This was apparently the largest distance the slaver could imagine. "From the other side of the ocean, correct." Jason was in no mood to deliver a lecture on astronomy. "When do we eat?" "You a rich man in your country, got a ship, got shoes. Now I got your shoes. You a slave here. My slave. You both my slaves." "I'm your slave, I'm your slave," Jason said resignedly. "But even slaves have to eat. Where's the food?" Ch'aka grubbed around in the basket until he found a tiny and withered root which he broke in half and threw onto the sand in front of Jason. "Work hard you get more."