"No. We are Earthmen!"
"Yes, Earthmen—all of us. Not beasts that howl by night and haunt the forest trails. Men. We are men. But also we have a tribe."
I tried to make my explanation more explicit. "We came here in a sky carrier which is named the Olympus. It rests now up by the great ice wall. There are others like us, too, who may—" I stopped, because one by one they were rising and moving away from me.
"You are wrong!" the Chief cried. "Your tribe cannot live by the glacier, on the tabooed ground!"
As he mentioned the name, it threw the whole tribe into a panic. Nothing I could say would undo their rising fear. They shrank from me, running into the dark recesses of the cave. Eventually the high priest—with Baiel standing beside him—restored order by crying shrill prayers up at his brother, the glacier. Fortunately, the harm I had done did not seem to call for the drastic remedy of human sacrifice.
After the tumult had passed, the Chief said to me, "It was a cruel thing to say, Seus-man." (The tribe always had trouble pronouncing my name; sometimes they would drop whole syllables from it.)
"On my word, it was not meant so," I replied. After a silence, I asked cautiously, "Suppose it had been true?"
"It may not be. The brother glacier is a great threat to us all. He is not a friend. In my time and in the time of my father before me, the ice has always moved closer to us, everywhere destroying more and more of our hunting ground."
"Can your people not move away from it, into better land?"
"We have, as far as we dare. Beyond the forest the ground is taboo. There the sun god strikes fire from the mountain tops, to warn us away from his domain."