“My class put through seventeen boys and eleven girls. Commander Benboe told us there would be four classes in the same test area.
“That’s more than the Deacon bothered to tell us. However, my class put through about twenty.”
Jack looked thoughtful. “Around a hundred people, probably.”
“Not counting casualties.”
“Not counting casualties. Maybe two thirds boys, one third girls. Plenty of choice, if we can find them.”
“No girls on this team, Jack.”
“What have you got against girls?”
“Me? Nothing at all. Girls are swell on picnics, they are just right on long winter evenings. I’m one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the female race. But for a hitch like this, they are pure poison.”
Jack did not say anything. Rod went on, “Use your head, brother. You get some pretty little darling on this team and we’ll have more grief inside than stobor, or such, can give us from outside. Quarrels and petty jealousies and maybe a couple of boys knifing each other. It will be tough enough without that trouble.”
“Well,” Jack answered thoughifully, “suppose the first one we locate is a girl? What are you going to do? Tip your hat and say, ‘It’s a fine day, ma’am. Now drop dead and don’t bother me.’?”
Rod drew a pentagon in the ashes, put a star in the middle, then rubbed it out. “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “Let’s hope we get our team working before we meet any. And let’s hope they set up their own teams.”
“I think we ought to have a policy.”
“I’m clean out of policies. You would just accuse me of trying to be logical. Got any ideas about how to find anybody?”
“Maybe. Somebody has been hunting upstream from here.”
“So? Know who it is?”
“I’ve seen him only at a distance. Nobody from my class. Half a head shorter than you are, light hair, pink skin and a bad sunburn. Sound familiar?”
“Could be anybody,” Rod answered, thinking fretfully that the description did sound familiar. “Shall we see if we can pick up some sign of him?”
“I can put him in your lap. But I’m not sure we want him.”
“Why not? If he’s lasted this long, he must be competent.”
“Frankly, I don’t see how he has. He’s noisy when he moves and he has been living in one tree for the past week.”
“Not necessarily bad technique.”
“It is when you drop your bones and leavings out of the tree. It was jackals sniffing around that tipped me off to where he was living.”
“Hmm. . . well, if we don’t like him, we don’t have to invite him.”
“True.”
Before they set out Jack dug around in the gloomy cave and produced a climbing line. “Rod, could this be yours?”
Rod looked it over. “It’s just like the one I had. Why?”
“I got it the way I got Colonel Bowie, off the casualty. If it is not yours, at least it is a replacement.” Jack got another, wrapped it around and over body armor. Rod suspected that Jack had slept in the armor, but he said nothing. If Jack considered such marginal protection more important than agility, that was Jack’s business each to his own methods, as the Deacon would say.
The tree stood in a semi-clearing but Jack brought Rod to it through bushes which came close to the trunk and made the final approach as a belly sneak. Jack pulled Rod’s head over and whispered in his ear, “If we lie still for three or four hours, I’m betting that he will either come down or go up.
“Okay. You watch our rear.”
For an hour nothing happened. Rod tried to ignore tiny flies that seemed to be all bite. Silently he shifted position to ward off stiffness and once had to kill a sneeze. At last he said, “Pssst!”
“Yeah, Rod?”
“Where those two big branches meet the trunk, could that be his nest?”
“Maybe.”
“You see a hand sticking out?”
“Where? Uh, I think I see what you see. It might just be leaves.”
“I think it’s a hand and I think he is dead; it hasn’t moved since we got here.”