"Man." The giant murmured it cautiously, prolonging the vowel; he touched his chest. "_Essa kana._" A finger ran exploringly over the gauze. "Essa kana--man," said Wright, and swayed on his feet. The giant pointed at the bloody mess on the ground and rumbled: "_Kawan_." He shuddered, and his arm swept in a loose gesture that appeared to indicate the curving quarter mile where lake and jungle met each other in a black-water marsh. Then he was staring out, muttering, at the wings in the meadow, and presently he touched Paul's bandage with fantastic lightness. "_Omasha_," he said, pointing at the flying beasts. He indicated the rifle wobbling in Sears' arm and held up two fingers. "Omasha." "Yes, we killed two omasha. Sears-man. Paul-man. Wright-man." The giant rumpled his chest fur. "Mijok." "Mijok-man.... Mijok, why didn't I have you in Anthropology IA fifteen years ago? We'd've cleaned up the joint." Mijok knew laughter; his booming in response to Wright's tone and smile could mean nothing else. But Wright staggered and was breathing hard. Dorothy whispered, "Paul--" It could not be pushed aside any more--the pain separate from the smart of his shoulder, tightness in the eyeballs, chill, nausea. "The air--" Wright's knees buckled. Sears had dropped the rifle and was helping him to the lifeboat, Paul watching the action in a daze of stupidity. Wright's eyes had gone empty.... Paul was uncertain how he himself came to be sitting on the ground. Dorothy's face was somewhere; he touched it. Her brown cheek was fire-hot, and she was trying to speak. "Paul--take care of you--always--" The face of Mijok was there too--red vapor turning black. 5 Paul Mason stared into blue calm: airy motion of branches against the sky, a mystery remembered from long ago, in a place called New Hampshire. Those years were not dead: secretly the mind had brought them here. _What a small journey! Less than five light-years: on a star map you could hardly represent it with the shortest of lines...._ He was without pain, and cool. Time? Why, that amiable thud of a heart in a firm, familiar body (his own, surely?), that was indicating time. The boy in New Hampshire, after sprawling on his lazy back and discovering the miracle of sky--hadn't he tried to paint it, even then? Messed about with his uncle's palette, creating a daub that had--oh, something, a little something. _Very well. Once upon a time there was a painter named Paul Mason_.... Dorothy.... "You're back--oh, darling! No, Paul, don't sit up fast or your head'll hurt. Mine did." Now she was curling into the hollow of his arm, laughing and weeping. "You're back...." A thin old man sat cross-legged on gray moss. Paul asked him, "How long?"