Hopping, sometimes staggering, skirting the wider pools in the swamp. Asa managed to go about a mile before he had to stop and rest. Harriet climbed out of the sling and settled down on a patch of weeds, a wet and slippery mat upon the mud.
"We're going to make it," she said cheerfully.
"I hope so," he said. "Not just for ourselves. A lot of changes should be made. There must be millions of eggs on this planet. You're getting only a couple hundred a year."
He was panting between sentences and stopped talking until he could catch his breath.
"For one thing," he continued, "rockets are the wrong weapon against the Sliders. Flame throwers would be better. Of course they're a lot heavier than guns. But everything about the way you go after eggs is wrong. It's criminal to send one man out alone. It's utterly irresponsible to have only one helicopter. You're putting a price on eggs in terms of human lives. Muck men are human, you know, no matter what we look like."
"You are very human," she said softly, "and very brave."
He returned her smile, adding, "And we'll both be very dead unless we get going."
They had traveled considerably less than a mile when he had to stop again.
"How would you run things here?" Harriet asked.
"Start with new premises. There's no need to make monsters out of the muck men. Double their strength, and perhaps give them web feet, but why legs like a frog? If I could walk normally I could be pulling you on a sled. And why shovel hands instead of proper tools? Of course you would still have to give them a skin for this weather."