"You're a whiz with the sabre, no doubt?" said Madsen dryly.
"No, I tried swordplay for a while, but gave it up. It's a little too, er—primitive for my tastes."
"Primitive!" Madsen glanced around at the alien scene and nearly choked. "I'm crossing my fingers, but what would you do if some carnivore, or a gang of those spiders suddenly appeared and started for us with evil intentions?"
"I think I'd run," said Morley simply. "It was pretty dull at General Plastic but at least the comptometers weren't man-eating."
Madsen blinked, and seeming to find expression difficult, forbore to answer.
They ate, and relaxed on the soft sod, lulled almost into a feeling of security. Not being foolhardy, however, they slept in six hour shifts. Morley stood the first watch, and slept the second. When he awoke, Madsen was tensely examining a ration tin. Jarred into instant alertness by a feeling of urgency and alarm, Morley leaped to his feet.
"Something wrong?"
Without answering, Madsen handed him the tin. It was pockmarked with inch wide patches of metallic gray fungus, from several of which liquid was seeping. There was a sharp odor of decay.
Madsen was hastily dumping the contents of the knapsacks on the ground. Morley joined him, and both men commenced scraping the clinging gray patches from the tins. All but three were perforated and ruined.
"We'll at least be traveling light from now on," Madsen said. "Any idea what this stuff is?"