Though there were no clouds to screen off the sun's rays, shadows laced the cleft through which the stream issued, and Diskan saw that the walls of that cut rose slowly on either hand.  It grew more chill between those barriers, and the frozen growth was scarcer.  He had a choice, to halt here for the night where there was still fuel for a fire, or to go on into the unknown on chance.  Finally, he decided in favor of the halt.

He had his fire going and was gleaning more fuel for its night feeding when he straightened, his hand going to the club he had thrust through his belt.  The sensation of being watched was so sharp that he was disconcerted when he swung about to perceive nothing but the rocks, the frosty earth, and the broken brush.  As far as he could tell, there was no hole in the surface of either cleft wall large enough to hide a sizable enemy in ambush.

Yet he was sure that there was something - or someone - lurking there, watching.  Diskan pulled his weapon from his belt, making a show of  using it to pry a length of drift from the iron-hard hold of the frozen soil.  He hoped his sudden about-face had not betrayed his suspicions.  It might be a small advantage for him if the hidden one believed he was still unconscious of its presence.  But Diskan gathered his wood now with his left hand and kept the club ready in the right.

Twice more he tramped back to the side of the fire todump loads.  He was trying to locate the source of that spying.  No hole in the cliff faces, no growth large enough to mask anything of a size to be feared.  Or was that true?  There were reptiles, insectile things, small, but still deadly, to be met on other worlds.  The same might well be true here.  Only Diskan could not associate his feeling of being under observation with the idea of a reptile or an insect.  He chose a water-worn rock and set his back against it.  Keep it up - this act of unconcern - and do not, he told himself fiercely, do not use what you know to judge what may be met here!

He rubbed his thumb across the knot end of the spear-club.  A piece of wood.  What kind of defense could it offer against any attacker?  Diskan picked at the projecting stubs - three of them shooting at angles.  He had had a hazy idea of connecting the teeth to those stubs.  But how could they be fitted so?  Always he had made a botch of any hand work that required exact fingering.

"Take it slow -" he said, his words a muttered whisper.  "Just take it slow -"  He blinked into the fire, thinking.

Always - always there had been a pushing at him from without.  The impatience of all those quick ones through whose world he had shambled, stumbled, blundered, had beat at him.  He had never traveled at his own pace - not that he could remember - except those times when they had left him alone to do some dirty job.  And even then there had been surprise supervision from those who made manifest their belief that his efforts would always fall far short of their demands.