thing, here, would be human footprints on top of cattle tracks. If
your friends are a meat-getting party from Dara, as I believe, they
should cover up their tracks, get off-planet as fast as possible, and
pray that no signs of their former presence are ever discovered. That
would be their best first move, certainly!"

"What should I do?" she asked helplessly.

"I'm far from sure. At a guess, and for the moment, probably nothing.
I'll work something out. I've got the devil of a job before me,
though. I can't spend but so much time here."

"You can leave me here...."

He grunted and turned away. It was naturally unthinkable that he
should leave another human being on a supposedly uninhabited planet,
with the knowledge that it might actually be uninhabited, and the
future knowledge that any visitors would have the strongest of
possible reasons to hide themselves away.

He believed that there were Darians here, and the girl in the Med
ship, so he also believed, was also a Darian. But any who might be
hiding had so much to lose if they were discovered that they might be
hundreds or even thousands of miles from anywhere a space ship would
normally land--if they hadn't fled after the incident of the
spaceship's departure with its load of doomed passengers.

Considered detachedly, the odds were that there was again a food
shortage on Dara; that blueskins, in desperation, had raided or were
raiding or would raid the cattle herds of Orede for food to carry back