He was prepared to bet they didn't eat rat. Humans had it really easy. They were big and slow, but they didn't have to live in damp burrows waiting for daft old women to let the fire go out. They never had maggots in their tea. They went wherever they wanted and they did whatever they liked. The whole world belonged to them.

And all night long they drove up and down in these little lorries with lights on. Didn't they ever go to sleep? There must be hundreds of them.

He'd dreamt of leaving on a lorry. They often stopped at the cafe. It would be easy.- well, fairly easy -to find a way on to one. They were clean and shiny, they had to go somewhere better than this. And after all, what was the alternative? They'd never see winter through; here, and setting out across the fields with the bad weather coming on didn't bear thinking about.

Of course, he'd never do it. You never actually did it, in the end. You just dreamed about following those swishing lights.

And above the rushing lights, the stars. Torrit said the stars were very important. Right at the moment, Masklin didn't agree. You couldn't eat them. They weren't even much good for seeing by. The stars were pretty useless, when you thought about it...

Somebody screamed.

Masklin's body got to his feet almost before his mind had even thought about it, and sped silently through the scrubby bushes towards the burrow.

Where, its head entirely underground and its brush waving excitedly at the stars, was a dog fox. He recognized it. He'd had a couple of close shaves with it in the past.

Somewhere inside Masklin's head, the bit of him that was really him - old Torrit had a lot to say about this bit was horrified to see him snatch up his spear, which was still in the ground where he had plunged it, and stab the fox as hard as he could in a hind leg.