_Don't look around--just face the direction you'll have to run. There's only one thing you have to worry about, only one thing you have to listen for. A hissing, whistling sound. When you hear it, hold your breath and run._ He waited, his muscles contracted for instant action. Time went by. He remembered to count. If you counted up to five hundred, slowly, and nothing happened, you were likely to be all right. You could assume the Monster probably hadn't noticed you. So the experienced warriors said, the men who had lived through such an experience. Five hundred. He reached five hundred and, just to be on the safe side, still tense, still ready to run, counted another five hundred, up to the ultimate number conceived by man, a full thousand. No hissing, no whistling sounds. No suggestion of danger. He relaxed, and his muscles--suddenly set free--gave way. He fell to the floor of the burrow, whimpering with the release of tension. It was over. His Theft was over. He was a man. * * * * * He had been in the same place as a Monster, and lived through it. He had met Strangers and dealt with them as a representative of Mankind. Such things as he would have to tell his uncle! His uncle. Where was his uncle? Where was the band? Suddenly fully aware of how much was wrong, Eric scrambled to his feet and walked cautiously back to the open doorway. The burrow was empty. They hadn't waited for him. But that was another incredible thing! A band never gave an initiate up for lost until at least two full days had gone by. In the chief's absence, of course, this was measured by the sleep periods of the band captain. Any band would wait two days before giving up and turning homeward. And, Eric was positive, his uncle would have waited a bit longer than that for _him_. He'd been away for such a short time! Then what had happened? He crept to the doorway and peeped outside. There was almost no dizziness this time. His eyes adjusted quickly to the different scale of distance. The Monster was busy on the other side of the larder. It had merely been crossing the room, then, not pursuing and attacking. Apparently it hadn't noticed him at all. Fantastic. And with all the noise he had made! All that rushing back and forth, that battering-down of the door! The Monster turned abruptly, walked a few gigantic steps and hurled itself at the structure in which Eric had met the Strangers. The walls, the floor, everything, shook mightily in sympathy to the impact of the great organism as it wriggled a bit and became still. Eric was startled until he realized that the creature had done no more than lie down in the structure. It _was_ a piece of Monster furniture, after all. How had that felt to Arthur the Organizer and Walter the Weapon-Seeker and the others hidden in the base? Eric grinned. Those Strangers must be a little less haughty, a little more sober at this moment. Meanwhile, he had work to do, things to find out.