"Rosemary has been living here for quite a while," I said. "She admitted her gun was useless, so I don't think there are any dangerous animals. And I'm certainly not going to let her laugh at me by carrying a gun to protect myself from her, even—even if she is a lady wrestler."
Clive nodded. "I see your point. But if we leave the guns here, she may get them."
"I'll take care of that." I picked up both weapons and hunted till I found what probably had been a well. I dropped them into it, albeit with misgivings. Still, a woman's laughter is something that masculine pride would rather die than face. Women do laugh at men, but they do it politely, or where men can't hear them. Maybe Rosemary was laughing now.
Without the guns, though, we had a more difficult food problem. We would have to trap animals, or depend on fish, if fish existed in the stream that ran through the ruined city. And there were.
I sharpened a couple of sticks with my knife and we tried spearing fish. We decided that it would take a lot of skill, and probably days of practice. We'd have to weave some nets, and this would take time too. I was about to suggest that we go back to the spaceship and live on what we had, when Clive found a clam.
It was different from the terrestrial clam, in that it was almost egg-shaped, but there was no mistaking what it was. Presently Clive had dug up quite a pile of them from the stream and I had a little fire glowing under some stones. On top of the stones, I piled wet moss to steam the clams and I was just about ready to have a clam bake, when Clive started to groan.
"What's the matter?" I asked.
"I ate a clam," he said. "Raw. It-it's poisoning me!"
Presently he was lying on the ground, writhing.