Pakriaa had studied the giants' walls with contempt. "Until I shame this worm spawn Lantis into meeting me alone. She must respect custom. Her first answer is a--what word?--rejection, because she has fear. I have sent a second challenge. She will meet me, or her own people will condemn her. I will pin her belly to the ground. Her government will be mine." There had been no mistaking it: for the first time in the year since the idol of Ismar fell and was not restored, Pakriaa was making vast decisions wholly her own, with only perfunctory interest in what the Charins might think. In her wrath against the mighty soldier ruler in the south there was natural grief at the outrages of past years, but something else too. Her red face glaring southward said: _She has what I desire; she is doing what I would do_. Pakriaa had finished her answer quietly: "It is _I_ who will be Queen of the World." Three days ago. It could have been a mistake to leave the camp at all. Now--a streak of sunshine on gray at the end of familiar meadow. With fuel for only a few more flights, Paul knew he had never made a better landing. The drawbridge was down. Dorothy ran to meet him. Sears was shouting, "Chris! It's perfect--no kaksmas--everything Paul said it was--" Paul stammered, "You look like a million dollars." "Dollars. What're those?" "I forget. What's news?" "Your funny mouth is tickling my ear." "That isn't news, Dope. Helen--" "Full of the best gurgles. Come and see." He thought: _How do I tell her of the boats, the thirty-mile hive of savage hatreds_--but Sears was already talking of it. Wright had no smile for Paul, only a warm gray-eyed stare and pressure of the hand. Paul asked, "Where's Ed? Mijok and the boys?" Ann looked up from cutting a square of hide. She had not come to meet them. Ann's way nowadays; one's mind insisted: _It doesn't mean anything_. "Ed's hunting. Should have been back last night." Dorothy added: "Mijok's off missionarying, with Elis and Surok. They took Blondie--Lisson, I mean: moral support." Wright was hag-ridden. "Sears, if it were only Pakriaa's tribe--but--not fuel enough to fly all the giants over. We cannot abandon _them_." "Then let's get the women there and the rest of us go overland." Ann said, "I'm going overland." Wright muttered, "Damn it, Nancy--" Sears patted her shoulder and ignored her speech as she ignored the touch. "Chris, I've labored, myself, over that damn knotty little brain of Pakriaa's. She can't see things our way. We need a hundred years."