like a dipsomaniac's dream. Then he tramped solidly into the afternoon, with difficulty found the nameless tree and swung the axe with a great shout and echoed with a surprised laugh as the axe deflected with a solid "chunk" against his shin bone.

She shook him and squawled at him, while he reflected it was unfortunate he had never taught her to make a tourniquet. It was really quite amusing.

When the blow began to reverberate up his leg, he troubled to examine his shin and saw the blood was not rhythmically jetting over the leaves. It was oozing to a stop. The axe had solved nothing. So he crawled wearily to the shack.

A clattering woke him. She had lit the wood in the stove, which he had warned her never to do, and was stirring whole, jaggedly peeled potatoes in the frypan. This surprised him, for he had never tried to teach her to cook. It seemed far too complicated for an animal incapable of consistently picking ripe tomatoes from among the green or of hoeing a bean row for more than a few minutes without losing interest and running over to hug him.He was awakened by a burning hot potato trying to get in his mouth. He pulled it apart with his hands, forced himself to down it with a smile although it was like a rock in the center and he was woozy to begin with. Raising his head, he saw she had wrapped his foot in a sheet. He grinned as he felt her hand on his cheek. "Next you'll be lecturing me on Pasteur." She chirped happily.

Later when he heard her smiling, he twisted his head and realized she was trying to thread a needle; of course she had watched him sew. He did not offer to help since his hands were trembling like an old man's, and finally she gave it up and began boiling peas without shelling them. "And I always suspected you were an idiot," he laughed. He suspected, no, he had to admit to himself, that he was nearer the idiot. Apparently you do not train a girl the same way you train an animal; that should be obvious, yet he had given her no more responsibility and less incentive than he would have given a dog. "From now on, strategy will be my middle name." He stretched and grinned as though something wonderful had been accomplished.

But with morning, rocket deceleration thundered overhead. He sent her running into the hills until he could see who the rocket contained. It was not the _Doric_, and he was relieved, for suddenly they seemed a villainous, lecherous bunch. He could never have sent her to Earth with them. Slipping his automatic into his waistband, he hobbled, with his double shadows lurching 

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