“Everything turns into a language lesson,” Aurie Gaynor remarked the first evening when the colonists still had enough energy to congregate in the mess hall.

“If a language lesson is accompanied by such willing hands, I have no objections how many I take,” Ben had replied.

Gaynor had rumbled a monosyllabic objection as he inspected the blisters on his hands. With massive antihistamines he was able to associate with the Hrrubans but the drugs made him slow and sleepy.

“At the rate we're going,” McKee said, “we really will raise that barn in two more days.”

Reeve eased his aching shoulder muscles, cramped from hunching over the wheel of the power sled. It took more skill than a man realized at first, to keep the drag load from jackknifing. He'd thought about it all morning and wondered if it wouldn't have been easier to drag the logs by animal team. He'd suggested it to Ben at the lunch break and received a long humorous look.

“Those horses and cattle have been pampered too long, Ken. They just aren't suitable for heavy draying, but their descendants will be.”

“Well, one thing sure, we'll all sleep tonight,” Ken remarked now, rising and gesturing to Pat, who was deep in conversation with Kate Moody. Still trying to apologize for Todd, Ken decided from the tense look of her face; not that it had been Todd's fault-exactly.

The Hrruban youngsters had come along with their parents that morning to play with the Terrans. Todd had pre-empted Hrriss's company and, with Bill Moody and another cub, had gone off to the village to play some Hrruban game.

Hrriss's mother, Mrrva, had brought Bill Moody home with a split lip, a black eye, and shaking with sobs. Todd, not bothering to hide his disgust, much less his own honorable battle scars, had listened unrepentantly to the bilingual conversation.

“I'm not blaming Todd, Pat,” Kate had said. “But how can Bill possibly cope with a rough-and-tumble fight when he's never had a finger lifted against him in his life? But there's not a cowardly bone in Bill's body.”

“Of course not,” Pat agreed loyally, looking at Ken who hastily agreed.

“It just made matters worse to have Todd pitch in and settle the argument,” Kate concluded grimly.

Ken groaned inwardly. Todd was seven years younger and at least fifty pounds lighter than Bill Moody.

“I simply haven't understood how a fight started in the first place.” Pat frowned, perplexed. “The children were supposed to make friends.”

“I was given to understand wrestling between evenly matched youngsters is a friendly sport,” Ken said dryly.

Both Pat and Kate turned on him indignantly.

“Hell, don't look at me like that. I don't invent Hrruban customs,” he protested.

“I honestly don't think we'd better let the children leave the Common, even in the company of the Hrrubans,” Kate said thoughtfully. “For one thing, there's not much point in letting them spread out if we only have to box them up again. Yet I hate to see them lose the opportunity, no matter how short it is. Why, none of them has ever been to a Square Mile!” She turned to her husband who had just entered. “Where have you been?”

“Painting scratches, lacerations and numerous contusions, removing splinters, and aiding abused digestive systems.” Ezra took things literally.

“I beg your pardon,” Kate and Pat said with a certain amount of understandable irritation.

“Pat, lets go to bed,” Ken said firmly and drew her away.

The second day was, in some ways, worse than the first. Everyone was sore from unaccustomed exertions, and tempers were short. Yet they were able to turn out an incredible amount of work. Ken, jouncing on the tractor-sled seat as he drove it back toward the barn site with the day's final load of logs, gazed out across the meadow where the horses were grazing. Hrrula, who had worked as hard as anyone, was stalking the stallion. Reeve grinned. Hrrula's fascination with horses was surpassed only by Todd's obsession with Hrruban tails.

Ken hoped there hadn't been another crisis involving Todd today. Kate and Ezra had been generous yesterday but Todd – Ken stopped that line of thought. It wasn't Todd's fault that he was different from the other children; that he refused to be conditioned to cramped spaces, to play games that required no space, that he made noise and could not be pressured into unchildish quiet.

When he reached the front yard, there was Todd, happily and dirtily erecting a series of twig houses. His arms and legs were scratched in countless places. The heel of one hand was skinned and there was dried grass in his hair. His coverall, fortunately made of an indestructible fabric, was encrusted with mud.

“Hey, Todd, how'd you do today with Patrick Eckerd?” he greeted his son cheerfully. The wary look he received in return braced him.

“Patrick Eckerd does not know how to swim,” was Pat's opening phrase.

“Huh? You mean Todd does?”

“Evidently,” Pat remarked with lavish sarcasm. She hastily turned down the heat under the pan she was tending and then devoted her entire attention to the day's episode. “As nearly as I can understand it, Hrriss and another cub joined Todd and Patrick in the calm pool below the falls at the village. Patrick was picked because he was too big for any of the other cubs to fight with.”

Ken groaned and sank to the couch. “Go on.”

“Todd caught a huge fish and was, according to him, doing great. However, the fish pulled him in although he says he wasn't in any trouble at all in such shallow water. Anyway, Patrick plunged in, thinking Todd needed to be rescued, only he lost his footing and had to be hauled out. Don't laugh, Ken, the boy could have drowned. And I don't know who'll go with Todd tomorrow. Everyone's scared to be with him.”

It was clearly a problem and it was clearly to be his problem, Ken realized. It was also obvious that Todd, even though he was undismayed by his environment could not be left alone at six years of age. Nor was he to be left with his mother.

“Okay, Todd will not go to the village tomorrow. He'll be confined to this side of the river with the rest of the kids.”

Todd was not very happy about this because there was no way to tell Hrriss ahead of time. Nor could an adult go over and back with such a time-consuming message. One of the McKee twins was assigned to keep an eye on him around the Common.

The logging crews, Terrans and Hrrubans both, completed the cutting, peeling and notching of the logs by the end of that third day's hard labor. Ken, with thoughts of dinner only, wearily turned down the path to his cabin. No aroma assailed his hungry senses. The kitchen area was empty. Ilsa, hearing his step, came out of her room, round-eyed.

“Mother's at the McKees,” she began, washing her hands in dry anxiety.

“Goddam, what happened this time? Todd duck out to the village?”

«Oh, no, daddy, he stayed here all day. But we all took a walk in the woods this afternoon to look for pretties – you said we should. Something bit Maria and her arm is all swollen up.»

Reeve raced to the McKees' house, his heart pounding in his chest, wondering what poisonous thing it was. Pat and Todd were sitting, very stiffly, at the kitchen table. Ken could hear Moody's voice, answered by Maria's quavering whimper.

“Why didn't they send for Ezra earlier?” he muttered at Pat, limiting his communication with Todd to a fierce glare.

“Todd only got her here a few minutes ago. It happened about an hour back he thinks.”

“Todd, what was it?”

“Rroamal,” the child replied with a perfect pitched vowel. “I told her it was bad stuff but it was blooming and she picked it. Can she yell!” He rolled his eyes expressively. “All the other girls ran away, screaming.” His tone indicated what he thought of them. “And then she started to hurt. And cry. I had the worst time with her.”