the struggle.
It was a cheerless and bone-damp bed to sleep in, but there
was no better alternative. They curled up as best they could.
Just before he was about to drop off at last, Honath heard
Mathild whimpering to herself, and, on impulse, crawled ovei
to her and began to smooth down her fur with his tongue. To
his astonishment, each separate, silky hair was loaded with
dew. Long before the girl had curled herself more tightly and
her complaints had dwindled into sleepy murmurs, Honath’s
thirst was assauged. He reminded himself to mention the
method in the morning.
But when the white sun finally came up, there was no time
to think of thirst. Charl the Reader was gone. Something had
plucked him from their huddled midst as neatly as a fallen
breadfruitand had dropped his cleaned ivory skull just
as negligently, some two hundred feet farther on up the
slope which led toward the pink cliffs.
*3
Late that afternoon, the three found the blue, turbulent
stream flowing out of the foothills of the Great Range. Not
even Alaskon knew quite what to make of it. It looked like
water, but it flowed like the rivers of lava that crept downward
fSpm the volcanoes. Whatever else it could be, obviously it
wasn’t water; water stood, it never flowed. It was possible to
imagine a still body of water as big as this, but only as a mo-
ment of fancy, an exaggeration derived from the known
bodies of water in the tank-plants. But this much water in
motion? It suggested pythons; it was probably poisonous. It
did not occur to any of them to drink from it. They were