“They,” said Lockley drily, “would hardly make a surprise landing.  They’d have parked on the moon and squeaked at us until we got curious, and then they’d arrange to land, or to meet men in orbit, or something.  But they didn’t.  They made a surprise landing, and cleared a big space of humans, keeping themselves to themselves.  But if they do think we’re animals, like rabbits, they’d kill people instead of stinging them up a bit, or paralyzing them for a while and then letting them go.  That’s not like any monster I can imagine!”

“Then—­”

“You’d better go to sleep,” said Lockley.  “We’ve got a long day’s hike before us tomorrow.”

“Yes-s-s,” agreed Jill reluctantly.  “Good-night.”

“’Night,” said Lockley curtly.

He stayed awake.  It was amusing that he was uneasy about wild animals.  There were predators in the Park, and he had only an improvised club for a weapon.  But he knew well enough that most animals avoid man because of a bewildering sudden development of instinct.

Grizzly bears, before the white man came, were so scornful of man that they could be considered the dominant species in North America.  They’d been known to raid a camp of Indians to carry away a man for food.  Indian spears and arrows were simply ineffective against them.  When Stonewall Jackson was a lieutenant in the United States Army, stationed in the West to protect the white settlers, he and a detachment of mounted troopers were attacked without provocation by a grizzly who was wholly contemptuous of them.  The then Lieutenant Jackson rode a horse which was blind in one eye, and he maneuvered to get the bear on the horse’s blind side so he could charge it.  With his cavalry sabre he split the grizzly’s skull down to its chin.  It was the only time in history that a grizzly bear was ever killed by a man with a sword.  But no grizzly nowadays would attack a man unless cornered.  Even cubs with no possible experience of humankind are terrified by the scent of men.

All that was true enough.  In addition, preparations for the Park included much activity by the Wild Life Control unit, which persuaded bears to congregate in one area by putting out food for them, and took various other measures for deer and other animals.  It had seeded trout streams with fingerlings and the lake itself with baby big-mouthed bass.  The huge trailer truck of Wild Life Control was familiar enough.  Lockley had seen it headed up to the lake the day before the landing.  Now he found himself wondering sardonically to what degree the Wild Life Control men determined where mountain lions should hunt.

He’d slept in the open innumerable times without thinking of mountain lions.  With Jill to look after, though, he worried.  But he was horribly weary, and he knew somehow that in the back of his mind there was something unpleasant that was trying to move into his conscious thoughts.  It was a sort of hunch.  Wearily and half asleep, he tried to put his mind on it.  He failed.