"With my life, Lord," the Indian vowed as the group broke up. Robin ran to Charlie and hugged him, kissing his cheek half playfully, half in earnest.
"You be careful, too," she said, and went off with Tashtu and several of the braves.
Naturally she was excited. She knew more about spacemen than Charlie did. She had read the encyclopedia more carefully, hadn't she? She wondered what the spacemen would be like. She couldn't help wondering it because the only man she had ever known, except for those they had created, was Charlie. Of course, she hadn't told Charlie this in so many words, but she felt, had always felt, vaguely and now felt clearly, that before she could settle down contentedly with Charlie, she would have to know something of the world beyond Crimson. And there was a vast world—a multitude of worlds—beyond Crimson. She knew that. The encyclopedia mentioned all of them but did not mention Crimson at all.
They walked for several minutes through green forest, and then abruptly came to the edge of the Wild Country. Even the idea of the Wild Country brought an eagerness to Robin's limbs and made her walk more rapidly. The Wild Country was unknown, wasn't it? They had created it without knowing quite what they were creating, and had never explored it.
She went ahead with Tashtu over the rocks and crushed pumice. No winds blew in Wild Country. The air was neither hot nor cold. The landscape seemed changeless and eternal, as if it had been that way since before the dawn of history, although actually Charlie and Robin had created it only a few years before.
They forged on for two hours, Tashtu following the easily read spoor in the pumice. They came at last to a low crater wall, where the spoor disappeared. At first Tashtu was confused, but then he pointed to the top, several hundred feet above their heads. Robin caught a glimpse of tawny skin and feathers and buckskin in the sunlight.
"Haloo!" Tashtu called, and some of the braves above them whirled, all speaking excitedly in the clumsy English which was the only tongue they knew.
"Huragpha slay monster," they said. "Capture other monster. But then see ..." the words drifted off into silence. Obviously, the Indians were perplexed. "You come, see. Monster, him bleed like man."
At Tashtu's side, Robin rushed up the steep rocky slope. When they reached the top, breathless and all but exhausted, Robin put her hand to her mouth with a little cry of horror.