Chapter III: Part 3

"I think they would have left it, anyway," remarked the doctor, grinning at the expressions of unbelief on the two faces.

Leo walked over to his brother's sleeping bag and took the kit box from the pack. "You know best, doc. In that case, I'm going to have a look, and find out if there's anything useful that Art forgot to mention--Art, you dope!"

"What's wrong now?" asked the technician, without moving.

"The welder and the stroboscope you spoke of--they're gone! And you said the guards must have decided the stuff was harmless. What do we do now?"

"The welder and stroboscope are in my pockets, and have been since last night. You thought of the stuff's being taken, didn't you? And did you _ever_ think of anything without my beating you to it? You worry about your own department; I can take care of mine, I hope." The last phrase was stimulated by an amused glance from the doctor.

* * * * *

They strolled out into the mixed crowd of humans and pentapods in the corridor, and Arthur went over to the kitchen. He appeared to have taken on permanently the job of cook's helper. Little located the quartermaster, and began discussing the day's possibilities. They seemed to be few. Most of the crew were specialists of one sort or another, experts in the fields of knowledge and activity necessary to fly and fight an interstellar cruiser; but one and all were hampered by lack of materials and tools. The only way to get these appeared to be theft, at which the crew of the _Gomeisa_ were not specialists. The only advice Little could give was that the men should do their best to smuggle in materials, to the exclusion of other occupations, and any one who had a workable idea should let the others know what he needed to work it. Not very helpful, since everybody already had that idea. It looked as though time would pass rather boringly.

It did. The men wandered more or less freely about the roof and the corridors of the building below, and occasionally went out to the supply piles for material they wanted. To Magill's surprise, but not to Little's, they were allowed to take even pieces of scientific apparatus without interference.

"I don't get it," said the quartermaster when a man reported bringing in a portable atomic melting furnace. "Anyone could see that that was a dangerous tool in the hands of a prisoner. Why do they let us get away with it?"

"To me," answered Little, "that is the least puzzling factor. The treatment we are getting shows that there can be only one reason for our capture--to learn from us. Naturally, we must be allowed access to tools and scientific equipment. Then they watch our efforts to escape, and help themselves to the results of our labor. What is so puzzling about that?"

Magill was silent for several minutes. "Put that way," he said at last, "it's obvious. I don't know why I didn't think of it before. That, I suppose, is why you said they weren't a conceited race--they go to such lengths to take the knowledge of others. But what happens if they're a little slow in taking a weapon away from us?"

"Apparently they are prepared to take that risk. They have succeeded so far with the Vegans, and they have all our standard weapons, you'll note. That ability of theirs to guess the purpose of our actions is our chief bugbear. It's unusual; most of the time it's almost impossible for two races meeting for the first time to understand even each other's standard gestures, let alone natural, unstereotyped face and body motions. But do your best with that in mind."

Little did not say that, with the aid of the information given by the Vegans, he had been able to deduce the reason for the almost telepathic guessing ability of the pentapods; and he did not mention the plan that he and the Dennis brothers were trying to put into operation. If Magill went ahead with ideas of his own, it would probably occupy much of the attention of their guards. Not that Little wanted it _all_ occupied.

* * * * *

The reports of the men who had wandered through the building agreed with the statements of the Vegans--most places were permitted, below ground was not, some rooms were locked, and some were open but the men had been kept out. One room, on the top floor almost directly below the prison quarters, appeared to be a communications office--which was a natural situation, if the roof had originally been used as a landing platform. The purpose of most of the others was not clear. Little did some wandering himself, and personally checked most of the information.

That evening the Vegans ate with the men; their own supplies had given out long before, of course, and they had been living on food supplied by the pentapods. It was evidently harmless, but far from enjoyable, according to the Vegans. Arthur Dennis served the food to them at their doorway, and brought the mess kits back to the kitchen after the meal. The guards usually withdrew some distance while the men were eating; the odors evidently did not appeal to them. Consequently, there was none of the creatures in the kitchen when Arthur brought back the kit. His self-assigned position as cook's helper was becoming constantly more useful, he reflected.

Days in prison tend to be rather boring. Nights are better because one can sleep and forget the boredom for a while; but from this night on Arthur Dennis knew he would sleep very little, though he planned to trade his sleeping bag for one several sizes larger and retire completely into it. He decided to develop the habit of keeping his face partly covered by the canvas flap, and have his companions emulate him to make the action seem more natural. He was jubilant when the others came to the room.

"I have an icon tube, doc," he said from the depths of the sleeping bag. "That's what worried me most. I can build the second-order converter from the stuff I already had, and I can probably dig up enough from the other boys to make the tube connections. It's lucky they let us keep the hand lights. I don't know how I'd put this stuff together in the dark."

"How did you get the tube?" asked Little. "I didn't see you go downstairs all day, and I don't think many of the men knew about the guards' having let a good deal of apparatus by without trouble, so they wouldn't have done it for you."

Arthur grinned in the darkness. "Since I didn't have the Vegan technique we mentioned, I bet one of the Vegans fifty Union credits it couldn't be done--thus implying my doubt of his story of smuggling up a neutrino unit. He slipped it into his mess kit this evening after the meal, and I got it in the kitchen. He was a little touchy about my rudeness, but I apologized this evening and he's cooled off. I pay the bet if and when we reach a Union planet and can get some money." The technician ceased speaking, and the flap fell again across the opening of the bag.

Silence fell throughout the room, broken by the even breathing of two people and the occasional almost inaudible footfalls of the guard outside. Once or twice a shadow fell across the doorway as one of the creatures looked in, but it defeated its own purpose by blocking the light, and saw nothing. Dennis was careful, anyway, and allowed no motion to show through the padded canvas of the sleeping bag.

He was not interrupted that night, and worked for two or three hours before placing the partly completed unit in his kit and going to sleep.

* * * * *

The next morning it occurred to Little that the Vegans might have some idea of the probable length of stay of the ship. After the morning meal he squatted in front of the doorway of their quarters and questioned the creatures.

"They usually remain about ten days," was the answer. "But it is impossible to tell for sure. This is the first time prisoners have been brought since we came. We didn't notice how long they stayed on our arrival--we were too worried about other things."

"How long do they remain away, usually?"

"There is no 'usually' about it; the duration is absolutely unpredictable as far as we can see. Sometimes the ship is gone for only a day, sometimes for several weeks. It is evidently not a patrol cruiser with a regular beat."

Little thanked the creature and left, to ponder the effect of the new facts on his plans. He returned almost at once, to ask another question:

"Does the garrison of the fort appear to expect the ship at any time before its actual arrival?"

"Not obviously, if at all," was the answer.

Little nodded, satisfied. He sought out the Dennis brothers. Leo was in their sleeping room, trying to manufacture a photometer from the lenses of a pair of dark goggles an atomic engineer had found in his pocket. The doctor located Arthur and brought him back to the room, and asked if either one knew anything about geletane.

"Not much," answered Leo. "I gathered that it was more than an ordinary anæsthetic when I heard you had lived through an exposure to space while under its influence."

"Right," nodded Little. "It produces, to put it crudely, suspended animation. It is adsorbed, apparently, on all the cell surfaces in the body, foreign bacteria included, and seals them from chemical influence. One would expect that to produce death, since the destruction of the gas film could not start the vital processes again; but the patient always revives. I could put my finger on ten different theses in the New York Medical Library, each suggesting a different mechanism and none completely satisfactory. The film, when it breaks, seems to do so everywhere at once, and there is an abnormal amount of carbon dioxide in the blood immediately thereafter; but the whole process is not thoroughly understood.

"It seems, however, that the cell walls themselves tend to cause the breakdown of the film; and if a person exposed to the gas is exercising violently, that action is increased to a point where he is _not affected at all_. If he holds his breath, and otherwise suspends body activity, it gets him almost instantly. The gas, as you can see, has an all-or-none nature. I wanted you to understand this, because it is possible we may have to use the gas in the near future. Think it over." The brothers kept their faces nearly expressionless, but it was perceptible that they thought the matter over with some pleasure. Arthur, slightly the more imaginative of the two, immediately assumed that the gassing was to take place when the communicator was finished, so that they would have a chance to use it.

* * * * *

With this pleasant prospect in mind, Arthur worked even longer that night. The converter was completed, and he began to construct a support for the tube and its connections before he was forced to sleep. Again, his work apparently went undetected by the ever-prowling guards. His hopes showed so clearly on his face the next morning that his brother kicked him firmly and ungently in the shins as a reminder of the unbelievable expression-comprehension of the pentapods.

He reported to Little that the device would probably be completed that night. The doctor nodded and said:

"Good work, Art. We probably had another week before the ship left, but this is better than I expected. As soon as Leo gets his photometer done and finds our distance from S Doradus, things should start to pop; and that should be fairly soon." In this statement Little was half right; things started happening quite soon, but they did not wait for the navigator's mate to complete his tasks.

The doctor found Leo seated on one of the steps which lined the outer wall. He was examining closely an object, consisting chiefly of several small fragments of darkened glass, which proved to be his photometer; and like his brother, he was obviously in good humor.

"All done, doc," he said on sighting Little. "I can measure tonight--calibrate this thing on stars I can estimate, and then do the beacon. It's lucky I already know its absolute magnitude. What do you think are the chances of that gadget of Art's reaching a United receiver?"

Little smiled without speaking, and shrugged his shoulders. His opinion was that the question was unimportant, but it would not do to say so. He might be misunderstood. He fully believed that they would be caught the moment they attempted to start broadcasting. Without committing himself, he admonished Leo not to lose the photometer, and went in search of Magill.

To that officer he spoke earnestly for several minutes, making several requests which were granted only after persuasion. One of them had to do with the disposal of kitchen waste, and for once the doctor's interest was not in sanitation.

The rest of the day passed in as boring a fashion as had the two preceding.

* * * * *

Evening found the three conspirators in their room, planning the night's activities. Arthur, of course, would remain to "sleep." They found difficulty in deciding whether Little should remain with him, or accompany Leo on his astronomical expedition. If he went without an obvious purpose, the guards might wonder why he was the only curious sightseer and why Arthur didn't go, too; if he remained, they might wonder why he behaved differently from the previous occasion, and investigate the sleepers. Even the insight Little had gained into their thought processes could throw no light on this question.

Finally, he accompanied Leo, carrying the latter's pencil and pad to provide himself with an excuse. As on the previous occasion, none of the guards followed them through the door. They took up their former station by the wall and seated themselves on the steps until S Doradus should rise. The moon was only a little past first quarter, and the beacon would not rise tonight until some two hours after the eclipse, so they had a wait of nearly four hours. They had chosen to come out early, to avoid falling asleep and missing their chance.

For the first time since their arrival on the planet, there were clouds in the sky. These provided matter for conversation and anxiety for nearly three hours as they completely covered the heavens on two occasions; but by the time the waning moon was sinking low in the east they had disappeared. The remaining time before observation could be started was passed in silence.

As the glow on the eastern horizon warned of the mighty star's advent, Leo went to work. Each of the fragments of glass he had obtained from the engineer's goggles was tested in turn, a star viewed through the darkened glass being compared with another seen directly. Little noted the results on the pad, though there was little need. The lenses had originally been very evenly darkened, and as nearly as Leo could estimate, a single thickness of the glass cut about three and five-tenths magnitudes from the brightness of an object.

When the beacon rose, his only task was to find the number of layers necessary to reduce its apparent brightness to that of a star lying in the range where his own judgment was good. The method obviously gave room for error, which increased with each additional thickness used, but it was better than guessing; and anyway, as Leo remarked, since S Doradus is an irregular variable, the best instruments in Civilization would still have left them with a probable error of over half a magnitude.

He measured and computed. "Art was almost right, at that," he remarked finally. "'Near S Doradus' would almost be enough. I get an apparent magnitude of minus fourteen, which means a distance of just under one parsec." He took a fresh sheet of paper from the pad and wrote rapidly. "There," he said, handing it to Little, "is the complete specification of our position, to two decimal places--I can't guess closer. It also includes the type of this planet and sun in standard terms, and a rough idea of our latitude on the planet. If you broadcast that and anyone hears you, they'll find us."

"And he can go right ahead and broadcast it, as soon as the rubbernecks are out of the way," broke in a new voice. "The gadget's done. I haven't tested it, naturally, but it can't help working. Say the word, doc."

* * * * *

Little shook his head. "Not tonight. We must arrange some way to keep the broadcast from being too obvious. Come on to bed and we'll talk as we go. It would be too bad to slip up now."

They arose and walked slowly toward the lighted doorway.

"It seems to me that we only need to gas the guards in the immediate neighborhood, and lock ourselves into the quarters with them outside. There are no outside catches on the main doors, and I could seal the elevator panel with the welder--I didn't use it for the broadcaster, and it should stand the overload long enough."

They passed into the corridor. "That might work," mused the doctor. "There is only the one elevator, and no other entrances to the roof, from below, anyway. But we'd want as many hours as we could get, and I should think they could burn out the elevator door in a few minutes."

They entered the room in which they slept. "That could be prevented by simply leaving that door open when the elevator was up and going into action at that time," contributed Leo as they pulled off their boots. "Then they couldn't get at either the elevator or its door."

"How about the other men?" asked Little. "It will be difficult to tell them all about the geletane, and how to avoid its effects. What will--"

"Stop worrying about it," interrupted Arthur. He had lain down with the pack for a pillow, moved it to a more comfortable spot, noticed the ease with which it moved and, with a horrible suspicion in his mind, looked into the kit box inside. "The communicator is gone."

Possibly the guards in the corridor and on the roof were laughing, if their unhuman cerebral processes had ever evolved an emotion akin to humor. Certainly, they were pleased with themselves.

"You loon," growled Leo. "Why did you have to celebrate finishing the thing by tearing outside to tell us? It would have been simpler just to step outside our door and hand it to a guard."

The night had not passed too peacefully, in spite of Little's advice to save recriminations until morning. Relations between the twins were slightly strained. The sunlight coming through the window revealed only too clearly on Leo's face that expression of smug, "_I_ wouldn't do such a thing" superiority that tends to drive repentant sinners to homicide.

"The meeting will please come to order," interrupted the doctor. "Leo, lay off Arthur. If it will make you any happier, Art, I'll tell you that if neither of you boys had spilled the beans in a day or two, I should have done so myself--carefully, of course. It was better for it to happen naturally. Now sit around, and wear a disgusted expression for the benefit of the guards if you like, and listen. This will take some time.

"In the first place, I suppose you've realized by now that we were captured simply for observation purposes; the pentapods hoped to learn about our weapons and science from our efforts to escape. They have, we must admit, been rather successful. Our activities have probably been evident to them from the first, but they waited until the communicator was completed before taking it, naturally. That habit of theirs struck me when the Vegans first described the way in which their plans were never interfered with until nearly mature.

"There was also the question of the surprising ease with which they were able to divine our feeling and intentions. It took me longer to discover the reason for that; but information supplied by the Vegans again provided the key.

"Their language is not verbal. None of us has yet heard them utter a vocal sound. We couldn't understand how they communicated, but to the Vegans it was so evident as to be unworthy of comment--their captor's language was of the same type as their own, visual rather than audible, a sign language in which the thousands of mobile spines with which their bodies are covered replaced the two antennae of a Vegan. It was so complex that the Vegans couldn't begin to learn it, but the method was obvious to them.

"That, to me, gave a nearly complete picture not only of their language, but of their thought; not only of the way they exchanged ideas, but of the very nature of those ideas.

"You have heard, no doubt, that thoughts may be considered as unuttered words. Of course, we do think in visual images, too, but _logical reasoning_, in human minds at least, takes the form of an unuttered conversation with oneself. Think through the proof of a theorem in grade-school geometry, if you don't believe it. With creatures like the Vegans, an analogous process takes place; they think in terms of the visible symbols of their language. The language, as you know, is slow--takes much longer to get ideas across. Also, it takes longer for a Vegan to comprehend something, though they certainly can't be called stupid.

"The same thing should happen, and does happen, with our captors. They think and talk immeasurably _faster_ than we do; and their thoughts are not in arbitrary word or picture symbols, but in attitudes. Watching them, I have come to the conclusion that they don't have a language as we understand it at all; the motions and patterns of the spines, which convey thought from one to another, are as unconscious and natural as expressions on our faces. The difference being that their 'faces' cover most of their bodies, and have a far greater capacity for expression. The result is that they have as easy a time learning to interpret expressions and bodily attitudes of other creatures, as we would have learning a simple verbal tongue. What the psychologists call attitude--or expression, to us--is the key to their whole mental activity. Until we understood that, we had no chance of using their own methods to defeat them, or even of understanding the methods.

* * * * *

"When Albee and the others made that break, you noticed that the pentapods wasted no time in pursuing a man who was even slightly out of reach; they were able to reason with extreme rapidity even in a situation like that, and realized that they couldn't catch him. A man would have tried, at least.

"Like everything else, this high-speed communication has its disadvantages. These creatures could never have invented the telephone, any more than the Vegans did: and they'd have had the same difficulty with gadgets such as the telegraph. I don't know anything about their written language, but it must be ideographic and contain, unless I underestimate their capacity for bringing order out of chaos, a perfectly appalling number of symbols. Who could make up a dot-and-dash code for that? The Orientals of Earth had the same trouble. That would interfere with the 'evolution' of communication devices.

"Their long-distance communication, therefore, must be purely visual transmission. We have seen the television screens in their office downstairs--ten feet square, enough to picture any of the creatures full length. I'm sure that they can't broadcast their vision for two reasons: the Vegans say the ship always returns unexpectedly, and preparations are never made a few hours in advance of its arrival--as they would be if they could broadcast news of their approach. Also, there is no sign anywhere on this building of a beam type second-order projector, or even the loop of a general field broadcaster such as Art was making. The images are transmitted by wire, and only inside this building. That was the reason, Art, that I insisted on your making a visual transmitter. They would have no desire to copy a telephone unit. They have it now; they'll have a full-size visual before that ship leaves; and their communications room is right below here, and should contain emergency accumulators in case the regular power goes.

"When the ship leaves, we wait a day. Then we collect the kitchen refuse, which Denham is accumulating, and pile it into the elevator to take outside--Leo, get that happy expression off your face--making the load big enough so that none of the guards can ride with us, though they don't usually these days anyway. Just before we go, the stove will break down, and Denham will come kicking about it. Arthur will go back, tinker with the stove, remove the geletane tank now clamped to it and replace it with another, and toss the 'used' tank in with the rest of the waste. The elevator will descend one floor, and we will emerge with the tank open. We will _run_ toward the office, which is just down the hall, in order to avert the effects of the geletane by activity; we will hold handkerchiefs over our faces to let the guards know we have gas, and hold their breaths. Two of us will enter the communication office, while the third will remain outside to destroy the door control. He can spend the rest of his time welding the door shut, until that welder gives out.

"The guards and operators inside should be under the influence of the gas by then, and will be thrown out before the welding starts. The two of us who are inside will keep exercising until the ventilators clear the air in the room; then we can use the vision transmitter to our heart's content, until the starfish can bring up heavy tools and burn through the door. There are a dozen United bases within five hundred parsecs, even I know; and five minutes should be ample to contact one of them and give our situation.

"Art, did you really think I hoped to get anywhere with that pint-sized thing you built? The pentapods have us here so that we can build equipment for them; I decided that turn about was fair play. I only hope those infernally quick minds of theirs don't grasp the fact that two can play at one game. In case they should, I think we had better start working with Magill on whatever plan he has evolved; that will keep us occupied, reduce the chance of our betraying our secret, and may prove a valuable second string to the bow if our plan falls through. Let's have breakfast."

* * * * *

Little had spoken lightly of "working in" with Magill on whatever plan of escape that worthy might have evolved; at breakfast he discovered that no less than four lines of attack were being developed simultaneously. The quartermaster was hoping that one of them would go undiscovered long enough to reach a climax. He had not divided the men into separate groups for each job; the idea was to confuse the guards by having everybody work on all the plans at once. Confusion had certainly resulted, though none of the pentapods showed the symptoms. Little, first making sure that his own private plan would not be affected by any of the others, plunged joyfully into the conflicting tasks of (1) finding and using one or more of the aircraft which Magill was positive were stored beneath the roof; (2) getting an armed party of human beings into the interstellar flier of the pentapods; (3) carrying out the original Vegan plan of flooding the building with ultraviolet light without at the same time forcing out the men; and (4) locating an arsenal of the pentapods and simply clearing a section of the building by brute force. Magill intended to use whichever of these plans first attained practicability.

Four days were spent in this fashion. Work at least prevented them from being as boring as the preceding three, though little or no progress was made. On the morning of the fifth day, however, just after the morning meal, an event occurred which opened a fifth line of procedure, and almost caused Magill to abandon the others.

One of the men had gone out onto the roof; and the others were attracted by his cry. Little, following the others to the edge of the roof, looked over; and was rewarded with a clear view of nothing at all. The line of pentapods which had been loading supplies into the vast cruiser was not to be seen, and the vessel's ports were closed. The men watched silently and expectantly, reasonably sure of what was to happen.

Perhaps ten minutes passed without a word being spoken; then, without sound or ceremony, the tremendous cylinder of metal drifted lightly upward. The men followed it for a short distance with their eyes; they might have watched longer, if their attention had not been distracted by an object revealed by the cruiser's departure.

Just beyond the depression in the soil left by the great ship there appeared a second, much smaller, silvery metal torpedo; and a howl of surprise burst from almost every human throat on the rooftop. It was the _Gomeisa_, her ports open, apparently unharmed, and--apparently deserted.

For several seconds after that involuntary expression of astonishment there was dead silence; then Magill spoke.

"This puts a new light on the situation. Don't do anything rash until we decide just how this affects our position; our plans will certainly need modification. I'll be in the market for ideas all morning; we'll have a general discussion meeting after dinner." He turned away from the edge and walked back toward the doorway.

* * * * *

Denham had long since been coached in his part; he played it without a hitch. The load of refuse and the tank of geletane were tossed into the elevator; the three men followed. No guards entered; since the departure of their ship they had concentrated on guarding the lower doors rather than preventing the prisoners from wandering about the fort. Little slid the door of the cage closed and touched the button next to the top, and Arthur took the welder from his pocket.

Slow as it was, the car took but a few seconds to reach the next level. It stopped; Little looked at his companions and slid open the door, at the same instant opening the valve of his gas tank. The three dashed into the corridor and toward the office, handkerchiefs pressed over their mouths and noses.

Two pentapods stood at the open door of the communication room. They swept instantly toward the approaching men, but must have conversed with others inside the room even in that time, for three more emerged after them.

Fast as the men were running, the gas diffused ahead of them; and the rearmost guards, who were moving more slowly than the others were paradoxically, the first to go down under the invisible attack. The others heard them fall, deduced the cause, presumably held their breath--and dropped as though shot. The men hurtled into the room, Little still leading, and found it empty. Evidently the communication officers had joined the guards and, confident of their ability to overcome three human beings, had not even sounded an alarm.

Leo Dennis leaped toward a mass of equipment that was all too plainly of recent installation; Little reversed his motion, snatched the welder from Arthur's hand, and darted back through the door.

"I'll look after this end," he said, "and saturate the air in the corridor while I'm at it. I'm more used to gas and can probably avoid its effects longer than you, Art." He slid the metal portal shut with a clang, tossed the still-open gas cylinder across the hall, and set to work with the welder. He jumped up and down, kicking, dancing, and waving his free arm as he worked; but the hand holding the torch remained steady.

Reluctantly, the metal of door and frame fused and flowed under the heat. The tiny lever that had actuated the opening mechanism dripped away. Slowly a glowing line of red marked the edge of the door and extended around it, a line that did not cease its slow growth as a dozen guards raced around a corner and collapsed as one the moment they paused to take in the situation. One, at least, must have been far enough behind to signal to others; seconds later, another group, clad in transparent, baggy air suits, sped into sight. At almost the same instant the little torch expired.

Little straightened, dropping the instrument, and saw the approaching guards. He turned to run toward the elevator, and saw another group rapidly approaching from that direction. Knowing the futility of the attempt, he tried to dodge past them; one swerved, reached, and an instant later he was pinned motionless as he had been once before in the first break for freedom. But he was still in the region of geletane-impregnated air.

* * * * *

Dr. Little opened his eyes with that peculiar feeling of having done the same thing before. This time memory returned almost instantly; he struggled to his feet, helped by the men clustered around him. He was on the roof of the fort where a stiff breeze had cleared the last of the gas from his lungs and cell walls. No guards were in evidence.

"How did it go?" he asked, seeing the grinning features of the Dennis brothers beside him. "Did you get through?"

"We did. It took them nearly an hour to get heavy tools and cut in--after all, we had control of their local 'telephone' central. They must have called their own ship back at once; it came in ten minutes ago, and they're rushing stuff aboard. I think they're going to abandon this place before help arrives for us. The Ardomese I talked to promised a squadron in fifteen hours.

"I wish that starfish ship had been farther away--we might have been able to take some prisoners of our own. But I'm afraid they'll have time to clear out."

"You're not annoyed, are you?" asked Little. "After all, they didn't hurt you fellows when they found you in the communication room. I think they're rather good sports, myself. After all, they've been risking all along the chance that we might do just what we did; they haven't hurt anyone; and the _Gomeisa_ is not seriously damaged."

"Nevertheless, they committed an act of war against the Union," cut in Magill, "and they have stolen a lot of valuable information. The _Gomeisa_ carried stuff that could make them dangerous enemies."

"They have had plenty of time to duplicate that armament, and unquestionably have done so," returned Little, "but they seem to have no intention of staying and using it on our ships. I think their curiosity was purely academic; perhaps this was all a game to them. In any case, I can't make myself feel anger toward them. I'm curious, myself, and personally I rather like the creatures. You can make yourself do the same, Keys; the whole thing is only a question of attitude." The doctor traded knowing winks with the Dennis brothers.