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stay out of sight.”
    “But you’ll be riding on that thing? Sir, what has happened to you? I know I can tell myself that a fall of a few feet really means little here at the Rim, but I could never bring myself to invite such a fall deliberately; and I don’t see how anyone else could. I couldn’t even picture myself up on top of that thing.”
    “You were most of a body length up a mast not too long ago, if I remember aright,” returned Barlennan dryly, “or was it someone else I saw checking upper lashings without unshipping the stick?”
    “That was different—I had one end on the deck,” Dondragmer replied a trifle uncomfortably.
    “Your head still had a long way to fall. I’ve seen others of you doing that sort of thing too. If you remember, I had something to say about it when we first sailed into this region.”
    “Yes, sir, you did. Are those orders still in force, considering—” The mate paused again, but what he wanted to say was even plainer than before. Barlennan thought quickly and hard.
    “We’ll forget the order,” he said slowly. “The reasons I gave for such things being dangerous are sound enough, but if any of you get in trouble for forgetting when we’re back in high-weight it’s your own fault. Use your own judgment on such matters from now on. Does anyone want to come with me now?”
    Words and gestures combined in a chorus of emphatic negatives, with Dondragmer just a shade slower than the rest. Barlennan would have grinned had he possessed the physical equipment.
    “Get ready for that hunt—I’ll be listening to you,” he dismissed his audience. They streamed obediently back toward the Bree, and their captain turned to give a suitably censored account of the conversation to Lackland. He was a little preoccupied, for the conversation just completed had given rise to several brand-new ideas in his mind; but they could be worked out when he had more leisure. Just now he wanted another ride on the tank roof.

4: BREAKDOWN
    The bay on the southern shore of which the Bree was beached was a tiny estuary some twenty miles long and two in width at its mouth. It opened from the southern shore of a larger gulf of generally similar shape some two hundred fifty miles long, which in turn was an offshoot of a broad sea which extended an indefinite distance into the northern hemisphere—it merged indistinguishably with the permanently frozen polar cap. All three bodies of liquid extended roughly east and west, the smaller ones being separated from the larger on their northern sides by relatively narrow peninsulas. The ship’s position was better chosen than Barlennan had known, being protected from the northern storms by both peninsulas. Eighteen miles to the west, however, the protection of the nearer and lower of these points ceased; and Barlennan and Lackland could appreciate what even that narrow neck had saved them. The captain was once more ensconced on the tank, this time with a radio clamped beside him.
    To their right was the sea, spreading to the distant horizon beyond the point that guarded the bay. Behind them the beach was similar to that on which the ship lay, a gently sloping strip of sand dotted with the black, rope-branched vegetation that covered so much of Mesklin. Ahead of them, however, the growths vanished almost completely. Here the slope was even flatter and the belt of sand grew ever broader as the eye traveled along it. It was not completely bare, though even the deep-rooted plants were lacking; but scattered here and there on the wave-channeled expanse were dark, motionless relies of the recent storm.
    Some were vast, tangled masses of seaweed, or of growths which could claim that name with little strain on the imagination; others were the bodies of marine animals, and some of these were even vaster. Lackland was a trifle startled—not at the size of the creatures, since they presumably were supported in life by the liquid in which they floated, but at the