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Both were wearing harnesses supporting sets of small gas tanks, with tubing running inconspicuously to the corners of their mouths; they were used to an oxygen partial pressure about a third greater than human normal. They were hairless, but something about their skins reflected a sheen similar to that of wet sealskin.
    They were stretched in an indescribably relaxed attitude on the floor, with their heads high enough to see the screens clearly. When the door slid open and the crewmen entered, one of them came to his feet with a flowing motion and, introductions completed, followed the man out of the compartment. Raeker noticed that he walked on all ten limbs, even those whose webs were modified to permit prehension, though the Vindemiatrix' centrifugal "gravity" could hardly have made it necessary. Well, most men use both legs on the moon, for that matter, though hopping on one is perfectly possible. Raeker dismissed the matter from his mind, and turned to the remaining Drommian - though he always reserved some of his attention for the screens. "You wanted to know about our local agents," he began. "There's not very much to tell, in one way. The big difficulty was getting contact with the surface at all. The robot down there now represents a tremendous achievement of engineering; the environment is close to the critical temperature of water, with an atmospheric pressure near eight hundred times that of Earth. Since even quartz dissolves fairly readily under those conditions, it took quite a while to design machines which could hold up. We finally did it; that one has been down a little over sixteen of our years. I'm a biologist and can't help you much with the technical details; if you happen to care, there are people here who can.
    "We sent the machine down, spent nearly a year exploring, and finally found some apparently intelligent natives. They turned out to be egg-layers, and we managed to get hold of some of the eggs. Our agents down there are the ones who hatched; - we've been educating them ever since. Now, just as we start doing some real exploring with them, this has to happen." He gestured toward the screen, where the huge Swift had paused in his examination of the robot and seemed to be listening; perhaps Nick was having some luck in his selling job. "If you could make a machine last so long in that environment, I should think you could build something which would let you go down in person," said the Drommian.
    Raeker smiled wryly. "You're quite right, and that's what makes the present situation even more annoying. We have such a machine just about ready to go down; in a few days we expected to be able to cooperate directly with our people below."
    "Really? I should think that would have taken a long time to design and build."
    "It has. The big problem was not getting down; we managed that all right with parachutes for the robot. The trouble is getting away again."
    "Why should that be particularly difficult? The surface gravity, as I understand it, is less than that of my own world, and even the potential gradient ought to be somewhat smaller. Any booster unit ought to clear you nicely."
    "It would if it worked. Unfortunately, the booster that will unload its exhaust against eight hundred atmospheres hasn't been built yet. They melt down - they don't blow up because the pressure's too high." The Drommian looked a trifle startled for a moment, then nodded in a remarkably human manner. "Of course. I should have thought. I remember how much more effective rockets are on your own planet than ours. But how have you solved this? Some radically new type of reactor?"
    "Nothing new; everything in the device is centuries old. Basically, it's a ship used long ago for deep-ocean exploration on my own world - a bathyscaphe, we called it. For practical purposes, it's a dirigible balloon. I could describe it, but you'd do better to - "
    "Teacher!" A voice which even Aminadabarlee of Dromm could recognize as Nick's erupted from