Half an hour before sunset, he called a halt when they reached a brackish waterhole. The light soon would be getting bad for shooting. In the morning, they'd take up the trail again, and by that time the Cytha would be at an even greater disadvantage. It would be stiff and slow and weak. It might be even dead. Duncan gathered wood and built a fire in the lee of a thorn-bush thicket. Sipar waded out with the canteens and thrust them at arm's length beneath the surface to fill them. The water still was warm and evil-tasting, but it was fairly free of scum and a thirsty man could drink it. The sun went down and darkness fell quickly. They dragged more wood out of the thicket and piled it carefully close at hand. Duncan reached into his pocket and brought out the little bag of rockahominy. "Here," he said to Sipar. "Supper." The native held one hand cupped and Duncan poured a little mound into its palm. "Thank you, mister," Sipar said. "Food-giver." "Huh?" asked Duncan, then caught what the native meant. "Dive into it," he said, almost kindly. "It isn't much, but it gives you strength. We'll need strength tomorrow." * * * * * Food-giver, eh? Trying to butter him up, perhaps. In a little while, Sipar would start whining for him to knock off the hunt and head back for the farm. Although, come to think of it, he really was the food-giver to this bunch of sexless wonders. Corn, thank God, grew well on the red and stubborn soil of Layard--good old corn from North America. Fed to hogs, made into corn-pone for breakfast back on Earth, and here, on Layard, the staple food crop for a gang of shiftless varmints who still regarded, with some good solid skepticism and round-eyed wonder, this unorthodox idea that one should take the trouble to grow plants to eat rather than go out and scrounge for them. Corn from North America, he thought, growing side by side with the _vua_ of Layard. And that was the way it went. Something from one planet and something from another and still something further from a third and so was built up through the wide social confederacy of space a truly cosmic culture which in the end, in another ten thousand years or so, might spell out some way of life with more sanity and understanding than was evident today. He poured a mound of rockahominy into his own hand and put the bag back into his pocket. "Sipar." "Yes, mister?" "You were not scared today when the donovan threatened to attack us." "No, mister. The donovan would not hurt me." "I see. You said the donovan was taboo to you. Could it be that you, likewise, are taboo to the donovan?" "Yes, mister. The donovan and I grew up together." "Oh, so that's it," said Duncan. He put a pinch of the parched and powdered corn into his mouth and took a sip of brackish water. He chewed reflectively on the resultant mash.