Mowry’s abandonment of the forest cache

Mowry’s abandonment of the forest cache turns a concealed refuge into a suspected ambush and leaves him cut off from Terra. The Cave warning ring’s silence gives him no reassurance: at the familiar warning point, it does not tingle, and a faint sound in the trees supplies the danger the device has failed to announce. Mowry retreats rather than risk returning to the hideout, then presses southeast with almost nothing beyond what he carries.

The Warning That Does Not Come

Little refreshed, Mowry resumes his journey at a listless pace. When he reaches the place where the Cave warning ring invariably begins to tingle, this time it gives no response. He stops immediately and studies the large trees ahead. The forest’s shifting light and shadow make it possible, he recognizes, for a motionless sentinel to remain high in a tree for hours without being seen by someone approaching.

The ring’s failure conflicts with what Mowry was taught at college: it is supposed to be a reliable alarm that must be heeded. But the advice offers no answer to the immediate uncertainty. He considers whether people are lying in wait around the cave or whether Container-22 has stopped functioning because of an internal defect. Neither possibility can be settled by standing in the open, and the silence of the ring does not establish that the route is safe.

A Sound in the Trees

While Mowry is still deciding what to do, he hears something about twenty yards ahead. It is low and faint, like a suppressed sneeze or muffled cough, and he would not have heard it if peril had not sharpened his attention. He takes it as evidence that someone is nearby and trying to stay quiet. In his judgment, the cave and its contents have been discovered, and the finders are waiting for him to return.

Mowry backs away almost at a crawl, keeping his attention on the trees. His withdrawal is deliberately cautious: after leaving the suspected ambush, he moves so slowly that it takes him an hour to cover a mile. The initial uncertainty—whether the ring has failed or the cave is watched—therefore resolves into a practical decision. He does not test the hideout or try to recover what is there; he keeps putting distance between himself and the danger.

The Cost of Leaving

The cache’s loss means more than abandoning a place to shelter. Mowry has also lost further contact with Terra. He is left with the clothes he is wearing, a gun, and twenty thousand guilders: money in hand, but none of the wider support or stored resources represented by the hideout. The account’s bitter contrast is material rather than financial; he may possess a substantial sum, yet has almost nothing with which to secure his immediate survival.

He understands that continuing away from the cave is necessary for as long as he can still move. If the authorities have found a Terran war-dump, they may turn that part of the forest into a gigantic trap, and he expects that process to begin soon. With stumbling legs and an empty stomach, he uses the sun and shadows to hold a steady southeast course. By dusk he has reached the limit of what he can manage. The episode closes on exhaustion and onward movement, not recovery of the cache or renewed contact with Terra.

Narrative Significance

The withdrawal reverses the forest’s function in Mowry’s immediate circumstances. The cave had been a cache and point of contact; once its concealment seems compromised, remaining near it could expose him to capture. The Cave warning ring’s silence, followed by a sound too faint to identify with certainty, makes judgment under incomplete information the scene’s central problem. Mowry acts on the risk rather than waiting for proof, and that caution saves him from walking directly toward the suspected watchers while forcing him to surrender his supplies and connection to Terra.

His departure also narrows the terms of survival. The money cannot replace the lost cache, and the prospect that the forest itself may become a trap makes simply continuing in the same direction urgent. The movement southeast, maintained by sun and shadow as his strength fails, carries the action beyond the abandoned hideout without yet revealing where it will lead.