I

The nearer moon went by overhead. It was jagged and irregular in shape,and was probably a captured asteroid. Huyghens had seen it oftenenough, so he did not go out of his quarters to watch it hurtle acrossthe sky with seemingly the speed of an atmosphere-flier, occulting thestars as it went. Instead, he sweated over paper work, which shouldhave been odd because he was technically a felon and all his labors onLoren Two felonious. It was odd, too, for a man to do paper work in aroom with steel shutters and a huge bald eagle—untethered—dozing ona three-inch perch set in the wall. But paper work was not Huyghens'real task. His only assistant had tangled with a night-walker and thefurtive Kodius Company ships had taken him away to where Kodius Companyships came from. Huyghens had to do two men's work in loneliness. Tohis knowledge, he was the only man in this solar system.

Below him, there were snufflings. Sitka Pete got up heavily andpadded to his water pan. He lapped the refrigerated water and sneezedviolently. Sourdough Charley waked and complained in a rumbling growl.There were divers other rumblings and mutterings below. Huyghenscalled reassuringly, "Easy there!" and went on with his work. Hefinished a climate report, and fed figures to a computer, and whileit hummed over them he entered the inventory totals in the stationlog, showing what supplies remained. Then he began to write up the logproper.

"Sitka Pete," he wrote, "has apparently solved the problem ofkilling individual sphexes. He has learned that it doesn't do to hugthem and that his claws can't penetrate their hide—not the top hide,anyhow. Today Semper notified us that a pack of sphexes had found thescent-trail to the station. Sitka hid down-wind until they arrived.Then he charged from the rear and brought his paws together on bothsides of a sphex's head in a terrific pair of slaps. It must have beenlike two twelve-inch shells arriving from opposite directions at thesame time. It must have scrambled the sphex's brains as if they wereeggs. It dropped dead. He killed two more with such mighty pairs ofwallops. Sourdough Charley watched, grunting, and when the sphexesturned on Sitka, he charged in his turn. I, of course, couldn't shoottoo close to him, so he might have fared badly but that Faro Nell camepouring out of the bear quarters to help. The diversion enabled SitkaPete to resume the use of his new technic, towering on his hind legsand swinging his paws in the new and grisly fashion. The fight endedpromptly. Semper flew and screamed above the scrap, but as usual didnot join in. Note: Nugget, the cub, tried to mix in but his mothercuffed him out of the way. Sourdough and Sitka ignored him as usual.Kodius Champion's genes are sound!"

The noises of the night went on outside. There were notes like organtones—song lizards. There were the tittering giggling cries ofnight-walkers—not to be tittered back at. There were sounds liketack hammers, and doors closing, and from every direction came noiseslike hiccups in various keys. These were made by the improbable smallcreatures which on Loren Two took the place of insects.

Huyghens wrote out:

"Sitka seemed ruffled when the fight was over. He painstakingly usedhis trick on eve