"Of course," Tzal agreed placidly.
Brink was remembering that easy promise, a month later, as he bound the last raggedly split shake atop the cabin roof. The cabin was but ten feet wide and twice as long, and built of smallish logs, but its cost in blistered flesh and exhaustion had been terrific....
Six days had passed after their arrival here in Middle Park before his unfamiliar, lead-propelling rifle finally had brought down a small deerlike creature ... the hunting wasn't easy—nothing here on Sulle II was easy.
He slid off the roof and down the trunk of a small tree that he had left here atop this grassy knoll. He straightened his hunched shoulders and heard the muscles grate and snap across the cartilage. He looked down over the grassy parkland, where a meandering stream watered the soil, and counted, for the hundredth time, the five young spotted ruminants that Carby, Tzal, and he had captured from a herd of wild creatures.
"Cows," Carby, and Tzal, his partner, called these giant cattle-like creatures, and he followed suit. It was easier to apply the familiar names to creatures that resembled those of Earth than to use the names supplied them at the Reception Center.
"Dorav!" He heard the voice and then the pressure of two rounded soft arms were around him.
"Rea!" he grunted, facing her. He pushed her arms aside, all too conscious of the shielded breast that brushed the back of his hand.
"Why are you here?" he demanded. "You have work at your cabin. The walls are only half finished."
The girl smiled at him. She was very attractive in a slim boyish sort of way. The palm of her sun-tanned hand, as she laid it upon his wrist, was not calloused as were Tzal's and his own.