"I split myself," the Cytha said. "A part of me dug the pit and the other part that stayed on the surface got me out when the job was done." "Convenient," grunted Duncan. And it _was_ convenient. That was what had happened to the Cytha when he had shot at it--it had split into all its component parts and had got away. And that night beside the waterhole, it had spied on him, again in the form of all its separate parts, from the safety of the thicket. "You are caught and so am I," the Cytha said. "Both of us will die here. It seems a fitting end to our association. Do you not agree with me?" "I'll get you out," said Duncan wearily. "I have no quarrel with children." * * * * * He dragged the rifle toward him and unhooked the sling from the stock. Carefully he lowered the gun by the sling, still attached to the barrel, down into the pit. The Cytha reared up and grasped it with its forepaws. "Easy now," Duncan cautioned. "You're heavy. I don't know if I can hold you." But he needn't have worried. The little ones were detaching themselves and scrambling up the rifle and the sling. They reached his extended arms and ran up them with scrabbling claws. Little sneering screamers and the comic stilt-birds and the mouse-size kill-devils that snarled at him as they climbed. And the little grinning natives--not babies, scarcely children, but small editions of full-grown humanoids. And the weird donovans scampering happily. They came climbing up his arms and across his shoulders and milled about on the ground beside him, waiting for the others. And finally the Cytha, not skinned down to the bare bones of its Thanksgiving-turkey-size, but far smaller than it had been, climbed awkwardly up the rifle and the sling to safety. Duncan hauled the rifle up and twisted himself into a sitting position. The Cytha, he saw, was reassembling. He watched in fascination as the restless miniatures of the planet's life swarmed and seethed like a hive of bees, each one clicking into place to form the entire beast. And now the Cytha was complete. Yet small--still small--no more than lion-size. "But it is such a little one," Zikkara had argued with him that morning at the farm. "It is such a young one." Just a young brood, no more than suckling infants--if suckling was the word, or even some kind of wild approximation. And through the months and years, the Cytha would grow, with the growing of its diverse children, until it became a monstrous thing. It stood there looking at Duncan and the tree. "Now," said Duncan, "if you'll push on the tree, I think that between the two of us--" "It is too bad," the Cytha said, and wheeled itself about. He watched it go loping off. "Hey!" he yelled. But it didn't stop. He grabbed up the rifle and had it halfway to his shoulder before he remembered how absolutely futile it was to shoot at the Cytha. He let the rifle down. "The dirty, ungrateful, double-crossing--"