They'd learn now! Even though the children had stopped shrieking and gone away, disgusted at his passivity, no villager's insensitive ears could yet hear the ship. In their boastfulness, the Agvars had invited other tribes to come and look at him and poke at him and laugh at him. His presence was known over the whole planet. He'd be found, no matter where on Hedlot the spaceship landed. And then would come the showdown! * * * * * But the showdown came earlier than he expected, speeded because the ship landed close by. Chet told himself he should have counted on that kind of accuracy, but he'd underestimated his fellow pilots. He had himself signalled Earthside, just before the crash, that his ship was about to land. He'd given his position--described sea and shoreline. They'd find him, if he stayed chained to the post. But he didn't. Taken unaware by the Agvars who loosed him, Chet was docile, happy even--certain they wouldn't hurt him now, but would try to minimize their former cruelty as they turned him over to the spacemen. When they put new chains on him, around neck and waist, he thought it was only to make sure he didn't run away before they could deliver him ostentatiously to the ship. A dozen adult males had gathered in the clearing, but that was hardly an unusual event. Even when they all started out, on a winding trail that didn't head in the direction of the ship's recent landing-sounds, Chet was convinced they were just circling some geographic obstacle. He was interested in the forest of 20-foot mosses and 50-foot evergreen hardwoods pressing densely on each side of the trail. Unconscious when they'd carried him from the beach, he'd never been out of the village since, had never inspected these woods. And he thought his mates from Earth would want to know about them. Chet could easily have outdistanced the clumsy Agvars if not forced to imitate their crouching walk. But he knew from experience that to show off his erect stance and 18-inch height advantage would make them find some unpleasant way to put him in his place. They'd shown him that quite often. He'd show _them_--but later, not just yet. And after showing them, he'd put these Agvars behind him--them, their filthy planet, and their scorching sun. It had often tortured him, that gauzy, amorphous solar blaze, but never more than now. For the sun of Hedlot, when he glanced at it vengefully, proved from its position that he was not being taken to the ship, but away from it. * * * * * Disappointment didn't rouse Chet to a fighting pitch--it caused him to become crafty. Slyness and deceit, the indirect weapons of the powerless, were not attributes schooled into a student space-pilot. But he'd learned them tied naked to a sunbaked post. That, too, is an effective school.