en, a few seconds before Captain Pinkham groaned and
opened his eyes.

The alien regarded him with its habitual expression of overpowering
slyness. "Why did you nearly die?" it asked. "Was it something I did?"

When Pink could trust himself to speak without gibbering--it was
horrifying to see half his room filled by this bronze-yellow balloon of
evidently solid flesh--he said, "Naturally it was something you did, you
big ape. You turned off our air."

"Air?" It compressed its lips. "Ah, I remember air. A substance needed
on Earth for life. We never understood it."

"Don't you breathe?" asked Pink. "Don't you take any element into your
system and mix it with your blood and then--oh, you haven't any blood."
He paused. "But don't you need _any_ outside element to sustain life?"

"No. Nor do we eat."

"But you are organic life?"

"Of course. A life which you cannot understand, I see. A life impervious
to anything beyond it, indestructible and eternal."

_I think you're lying_, said Pink to himself. Nothing in the universe is
indestructible ... or at any rate, unalterable. Everything has its
Achilles heel, even the atom.

* * * * *

The monster spoke, half to itself. "That, the locked switch was the air,
then. I thought it was the air-lock." It laughed. Pink thought it had a
pretty primitive sense of humor. "Not the air-lock, but the air."

"You wanted to let your friends into the ship," accused Pink. The beast
nodded. "Didn't you know that opening the air-locks without sealing off
their compression rooms would kill all the humans aboard?"

"No," it said. "I want you alive. Some of you. To teach us the working
of this rocket."

"Spaceship," corrected Pink without thinking. Then, "Why do you want the
ship?"

Its eyes glowed fire at him. "To return to Earth," it hissed. "To return
to our own planet!"

"_Your_ planet!"

"As much as yours, mortal." It leaned forward, obscuring practically all
the room for him. "Show me how to open the air-locks," it said.

"In a swine's eye."

"With safety to yourself, naturally," it said impatiently, "Come, show
me."

"Find the machinery yourself. Experiment. Knock us all off. You'll be
stuck out here with a ship you can't operate."

It plucked him off the foam-couch and hurled him against the wall,
jarring him in every bone. "Show me how," it roared. "Thou zed, thou
cream-faced loon--" Shakespeare? wondered Pink--"show me the controls!"