"Your funny mouth is tickling my ear."
"That isn't news, Dope. Helen—"
"Full of the best gurgles. Come and see." He thought: How do I tell her of the boats, the thirty-mile hive of savage hatreds—but Sears was already talking of it. Wright had no smile for Paul, only a warm gray-eyed stare and pressure of the hand. Paul asked, "Where's Ed? Mijok and the boys?"
Ann looked up from cutting a square of hide. She had not come to meet them. Ann's way nowadays; one's mind insisted: It doesn't mean anything. "Ed's hunting. Should have been back last night."
Dorothy added: "Mijok's off missionarying, with Elis and Surok. They took Blondie—Lisson, I mean: moral support."
Wright was hag-ridden. "Sears, if it were only Pakriaa's tribe—but—not fuel enough to fly all the giants over. We cannot abandon them."
"Then let's get the women there and the rest of us go overland."
Ann said, "I'm going overland."
Wright muttered, "Damn it, Nancy—"
Sears patted her shoulder and ignored her speech as she ignored the touch. "Chris, I've labored, myself, over that damn knotty little brain of Pakriaa's. She can't see things our way. We need a hundred years."