Genesis | Page 5

mostly space-suit undergarments, enough bed-robes, one hand-axe, two
flashlights, a first-aid kit, and three atomic lighters. Each one had a combat-dagger. There
was enough tinned food for about a week.
"We'll have to begin looking for game and edible plants, right away," Glav considered. "I
suppose there is game, of some sort; but our ammunition won't last forever."
"We'll have to make it last as long as we can; and we'll have to begin improvising
weapons," Dard told him. "Throwing-spears, and throwing-axes. If we can find metal, or
any recognizable ore that we can smelt, we'll use that; if not, we'll use chipped stone.
Also, we can learn to make snares and traps, after we learn the habits of the animals on
this planet. By the time the ammunition's gone, we ought to have learned to do without
firearms."
"Think we ought to camp here?"
Kalvar Dard shook his head. "No wood here for fuel, and the blast will have scared away
all the game. We'd better go upstream; if we go down, we'll find the water roiled with
mud and unfit to drink. And if the game on this planet behave like the game-herds on the
wastelands of Doorsha, they'll run for high ground when frightened."
Varnis rose from where she had been sitting. Having mastered her emotions, she was
making a deliberate effort to show it.
"Let's make up packs out of this stuff," she suggested. "We can use the bedding and spare

clothing to bundle up the food and ammunition."
They made up packs and slung them, then climbed out of the gully. Off to the left, the
grass was burning in a wide circle around the crater left by the explosion of the
rocket-boat. Kalvar Dard, carrying one of the heavy rifles, took the lead. Beside and a
little behind him, Analea walked, her carbine ready. Glav, with the other heavy rifle,
brought up in the rear, with Olva covering for him, and between, the other girls walked,
two and two.
Ahead, on the far horizon, was a distance-blue line of mountains. The little company
turned their faces toward them and moved slowly away, across the empty sea of grass.

3
They had been walking, now, for five years. Kalvar Dard still led, the heavy rifle cradled
in the crook of his left arm and a sack of bombs slung from his shoulder, his eyes forever
shifting to right and left searching for hidden danger. The clothes in which he had jumped
from the rocket-boat were patched and ragged; his shoes had been replaced by high laced
buskins of smoke-tanned hide. He was bearded, now, and his hair had been roughly
trimmed with the edge of his dagger.
Analea still walked beside him, but her carbine was slung, and she carried three spears
with chipped flint heads; one heavy weapon, to be thrown by hand or used for stabbing,
and two light javelins to be thrown with the aid of the hooked throwing-stick Glav had
invented. Beside her trudged a four-year old boy, hers and Dard's, and on her back, in a
fur-lined net bag, she carried their six-month-old baby.
In the rear, Glav still kept his place with the other big-game gun, and Olva walked beside
him with carbine and spears; in front of them, their three-year-old daughter toddled.
Between vanguard and rearguard, the rest of the party walked: Varnis, carrying her baby
on her back, and Dorita, carrying a baby and leading two other children. The baby on her
back had cost the life of Kyna in childbirth; one of the others had been left motherless
when Eldra had been killed by the Hairy People.
* * * * *
That had been two years ago, in the winter when they had used one of their two
demolition-bombs to blast open a cavern in the mountains. It had been a hard winter; two
children had died, then--Kyna's firstborn, and the little son of Kalvar Dard and Dorita. It
had been their first encounter with the Hairy People, too.
Eldra had gone outside the cave with one of the skin water-bags, to fill it at the spring. It
had been after sunset, but she had carried her pistol, and no one had thought of danger
until they heard the two quick shots, and the scream. They had all rushed out, to find four
shaggy, manlike things tearing at Eldra with hands and teeth, another lying dead, and a
sixth huddled at one side, clutching its abdomen and whimpering. There had been a quick

flurry of shots that had felled all four of the assailants, and Seldar Glav had finished the
wounded creature with his dagger, but Eldra was dead. They had built a cairn of stones
over her body, as they had done over the bodies