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it—from such a position. Looking down on things really helped; you could get a remarkably complete picture of so much ground at once. It was like a map; and Barlennan had never before regarded a map as a picture of country seen from above.
    An almost intoxicating sense of triumph filled him as the crawler approached the rocket and stopped. The Mesklinite waved his pincers almost gaily at the emerging McLellan visible in the reflected glare of the tank’s lights, and was disproportionately pleased when the man waved back. The tank immediately turned to the left and headed for the beach where the Bree lay; Mack, remembering that Barlennan was unprotected, thoughtfully waited until it was nearly a mile away before lifting his own machine into the air. The sight of it, drifting slowly upward, apparently without support, threatened for just an instant to revive the old fear; but Barlennan fought the sensation grimly down and deliberately watched the rocket until it faded from view in the light of the lowering sun.
    Lackland had been watching too; but when the last glint of metal had disappeared, he lost no further time in driving the tank the short remaining distance to where the Bree lay. He stopped a hundred yards from the vessel, but he was quite close enough for the shocked creatures on the decks to see their commander perched on the vehicle’s roof. It would have been less disconcerting had Lackland approached bearing Barlennan’s head on a pole.
    Even Dondragmer, the most intelligent and levelheaded of the Bree’s complement—not excepting his captain—was paralyzed for long moments; and his first motion was with eyes only, taking the form of a wistful glance toward the flame-dust tanks and “shakers” on the outer rafts. Fortunately for Barlennan, the crawler was not downwind; for the temperature was, as usual, below the
melting point of the chlorine in the tanks. Had the wind permitted, the mate would have sent a cloud of fire about the vehicle without ever thinking that his captain might be alive.
    A faint rumble of anger began to arise from the assembled crew as the door of the crawler opened and Lackland’s armored figure emerged. Their halftrading, half-piratical way of life had left among them only those most willing to fight without hesitation at the slightest hint of menace to one of their number; the cowards had dropped away long since, and the individualists had died. The only thing that saved Lackland’s life as he emerged into their view was habit—the conditioning that prevented their making the hundred-yard leap that would have cost the weakest of them the barest flick of his body muscles. Crawling as they had done all their lives, they flowed from the rafts like a red and black waterfall and spread over the beach toward the alien machine. Lackland saw them coming, of course, but so completely misunderstood their motivation that he did not even hurry as he reached up to the crawler’s roof, picked up Barlennan, and set him on the ground. Then he reached back into the vehicle and brought out the radios he had promised, setting them on the sand beside the commander; and by then it had dawned on the crew that their captain was alive and apparently unharmed. The avalanche stopped in confusion, milling in an undecided fashion midway between ship and tank; and a cacophony of voices ranging from deep bass to the highest notes the radio speaker could reproduce gabbled in Lackland’s suit phones. Though he had, as Barlennan had intimated, done his best to attach meaning to some of the native conversation he had previously heard, the man understood not a single word from the crew. It was just as well for his peace of mind; he had long been aware that even armor able to withstand Mesklin’s eight-atmosphere surface pressure would mean little or nothing to Mesklinite pincers.
    Barlennan stopped the babble with a hoot that Lackland could probably have heard directly through the armor, if its reproduction by