“Look at place Wise One bring us!” Big She was railing. “Wise One tell us, to sun’s left hand is good place, always warm, always good-to-eat things. This is what Wise One say; Wise One not know. Wise One bring us to this place. Big moving-water, not cross. Rain make down, rain make down, make wet, all time cold. Not find good-to-eat things, everybody hungry. And look at moving-water; how we cross that?”

“Then we go up moving-water, find place to cross. And rain stop some time; rain always stop some time,” he said. “Is everybody-know thing.”

“You not know,” Lame One said. “This is different place. Maybe all time rain here.”

“You make fool-talk. Rain all time, water everywhere.”

“Much water here,” Other She said. “Big wide water-places. Maybe much rain here.”

“Sky look brighter,” Stabber remarked. “Wind blow, too. Maybe rain stop make down soon.”

And the gray not-see was gone, too; soon the rain would stop and the sun would come out again. But how to get across this big water? The moving-water was wide and deep, there were no stony places; it was a bad not-cross moving-water, and there were all the big wide-waters, and it would be far-far to where they would be able to cross over.

“Hungry, too,” Fruitfinder complained. “Not eat since long time before last dark-time.”

He was hungry himself. If he had been alone, he would have gone on, hoping to find something, until he was able to cross the moving-water. None of the others, not even Stabber, would do that, however. They wanted to eat now.

“Animals stay under things, stay out of rain, not move about,” he said. “Be where brush is thick. We go hunt different places. Anybody kill anything, bring back here, all eat.”

They nodded agreement. That was the way they did it when it was best not to hunt all together. He thought for a moment. He didn’t want Big She and Fruitfinder and Stonebreaker hunting together. They would all the time make talk against him, and when they came back they would make bad talk to the others.

“Stabber, you, Big She, go that way.” He pointed down the river. “Take care, not get in bad not-go-through place. Lame One, you, Other She, Stonebreaker, go up moving-water. Carries-Bright-Things, Fruitfinder, come with me. We go back in woods. Maybe find hatta-zosa.”

They were all angry with him because it had rained and because they had come to this big not-cross moving-water, and because they had found nothing to eat. They blamed him for all that. It was hard being Wise One and leading a band. They all praised Wise One when things went well, but when they didn’t they all blamed him. But when he told them how to hunt, they all agreed. They had to have somebody to tell them what to do, and nobody else would.

BEGINNING OF A new era for our planet, the smooth, ingratiating voice came out of thousands of telecast-speakers all over Zarathustra, in living rooms and cafes, in camp bunkhouses and cattle-town saloons. Already, Mallorysport assumes a festive air in preparation to greet the Honorable Delegates to the Constitutional Convention which will begin its work a week from today.

There is a note of sadness, however, to mar our happy enthusiasm. Word from the CZC camp at Yellowsand is that the search for Little Fuzzy, lost, presumably in the torrent of Yellowsand River, has been definitely called off; no hope remains of finding that lovable little person alive. A whole planet mourns for him, and joins with his human friend and guardian, Jack Holloway, in his grief.

Good-bye, Little Fuzzy. You were only with us a short while, but Zarathustra will never forget you.

LITTLE FUZZY SAID, “Sunnabish!” again, in even deeper disgust. He relighted his pipe, but after two puffs it went out; there was nothing but ashes in it. He blew through the stem and put it away. There was no use making a big fire here; Pappy Vic and his friends were looking for him along the other river, the one that came out from Yellowsand. He couldn’t even hear the aircar-sounds anymore. And all the way he would have to go, up this river and then down again…

“Jeeze-krise!”

Why hadn’t he thought of that before? No, he wouldn’t have to do all that! He would make a raft, the way he had been taught. Why, he had even helped teach others to do it. Then he would go down this river until he came in sight of the other river, and work over to the right bank. Then he would be close to Yellowsand and along the river where they were looking for him. As soon as he got on land again, he would make a big fire and right away somebody would see and come for him.

He couldn’t do it here. The banks were too high, and if he made a raft he would never be able, alone, to get it down. So he would have to go up this river, but only till he found a good place, with the banks low, where there was wood to make the raft and the kind of trees that had fine, tough roots to twist into rope to tie the raft together. And before he started to work on the raft he would have to hunt for a while to get meat to eat while he was working.

He scuffed dirt over the ashes he had knocked from his pipe, picked up his axe and spear, and started off up the river. After a while, the river turned south a little, and then it became very wide. He stopped and looked: a big lake. That was good. There would be low places along it and the water would be still; he could build the raft right in the water. The sun was beginning to come out now, not brightly, but growing steadily brighter. He was feeling very happy; building the raft was going to be much fun.

Then he stopped short and said a number of the Big Ones’ angry-words, but even that didn’t make him feel better. In front of him the ground dropped off in a cliff, as high as one of the big metal houses at Wonderful Place. Beyond he could see flat ground full of trees and bushes and tangled vines, with water everywhere. There was small stream at the foot of the cliff, and it spread out all over everything. This was a bad sunnabish not-go-through place; he would have to go up the little stream to get around it. How far up the river it went he had no idea. He looked at his compass again, saw that the small stream went almost due north, and started up along it.

The sun was out brightly now, and there were many big blue places in the sky and the clouds were white instead of gray. He walked steadily, looking about for things to eat and looking at his compass. Finally he came to where the stream ran over stones, and the water-everywhere place had stopped.

He crossed over and went west, looking often at his compass and remembering which way the big river was. He heard noises ahead, and stopped to listen, then was very happy because it was the noise of goofers chewing at tree-bark. He went forward carefully and came upon five of them, all chewing at trees. He picked out the plumpest of them, drew back his arm, and threw his spear; it was not a very good throw because it caught the goofer through the belly, just back of the hips, from one side to the other. As he ran forward to finish it, another, frightened, ran straight at him. He hit it between the eyes with the axe; it died at once. He hadn’t meant to kill two goofers, but a frightened goofer would attack a person. Then he finished the one he had wounded with his spear and pulled the spear out. The other goofers had all run away.

He gutted both of them, took out the livers and hearts and kidneys, and spitted them on sticks he cut with his knife. Then he built a fire. When he had a good bed of red coals he propped the sticks against stones and weighed them with other stones and sat down to watch that the meat didn’t burn. It was very good.

He cut off the head of one goofer and made a pack of the carcass, as he had the one he had killed the day before. The other he skinned and cut up and wrapped the hind legs and the backmeat in the skin and tied that to the whole one. This was going to be a heavy load, but he thought he could manage it. He started off again. He didn’t bother looking for good-to-eat things anymore; he had already eaten, and he had a whole goofer and the best meat of another. Even if he had seen a land-prawn, he wouldn’t have bothered with it. He turned south; now he had the sun, and didn’t need to bother getting out his compass.