Masson looked out through the window at the men moving about their tasks in the factory and further down beside the lake, in the fields. They worked listlessly, hopelessly. What was there to work for now?
"So the old women of the tribes carried the eggs away and hid them?" Masson rubbed the unlovely flesh of his jowls thoughtfully. "They were forbidden to follow. Taboo or something of the sort. And then the old females brought back the young ones?"
"Could be, of course," said Ellis doubtfully, "that they are concealing the truth. Lying to us." He shook his head. "But I doubt it. Most of them are glad to be safe here where raiding tribes and the more vicious saurians cannot reach them. They learn fast, too," he added.
"Nothing to do," Masson said grimly, "but for me to trail the old women. I'll take Dolan. He's never satisfied unless he's prowling the jungles outside the crater."
"I'm going, too," Ellis began, but Masson shook his head.
"Your knowledge of chemistry and metallurgy are needed here," he said. "If I am lost you can carry on, but you are the only living text book available."
And he overrode the other's protests.
Later in the day Masson and Dolan slipped out through the barrier at the crater's rim and made their way toward the nearest Butrad village. They took with them plenty of ammunition and supplies, for they expected to be gone for many days.
"There they go, Glade!" Joe Dolan's scarred face twisted in a hideous parody of a grin.
They lay in the lush oozy bed of rotted growth above the shallow ravine where the Frog village lay. Nik-nik brush and giant broad-leaved grass of mottled yellow and green concealed them from the eyes of the Butrads in the ugly huddle of elevated huts below.