ll smoke this wreck," he decided, "while
it's still smokable. We'll save the rest of them--I'm afraid it'll be
a long time between smokes. Well, let's confer!"

"This will have to be a one-sided conference. I don't imagine that any
of my ideas will prove particularly helpful. You talk and I'll listen.

"You can't tell what ideas may be useful--chip in any time you feel the
urge. Here's the dope, as I see it. They're highly intelligent creatures
and are in all probability neither Martians nor Venerians. If any of
them had any such stuff as that, some of us would have known about it
and, besides, I don't believe they would have used it in just that way.
Mercury is not habitable, at least for organic beings; and we have never
seen any sign of any other kind of inhabitants who could work with
metals and rays. They're probably from Jupiter, although possibly from
further away. I say Jupiter, because I would think, judging from the
small size of the ship, that it may still be in the experimental stage,
so that they probably didn't come from any further away than Jupiter.
Then, too, if they were very numerous, somebody would have sighted one
before. I'd give my left leg and four fingers for one good look at the
inside of that ship."

"Why didn't you take it, then? You never even looked toward it, after
that one first glimpse."

"I'll say I didn't--the reason being that they may have automatic
detectors, and as I have suggested before, our system of vision is so
crude that its use could be detected with a clothesline or a basket
full of scrap iron. But to resume: Their aim is to capture, not destroy,
since they haven't killed anybody except the one crew that attacked
them. Apparently they want to study us or something. However, they don't
intend that any of us shall get away, nor even send out a word of what
has happened to us. Therefore it looks as though our best bet is to hide
now, and try to sneak away on them after a while--direct methods won't
work. Right?"

"You sound lucid. Is there any possibility of getting back, though, if
we got anywhere near Jupiter? It's so far away!"

"It's a long stretch from Jupiter to any of the planets where we have
power-plants, all right--particularly now, when Mars and Tellus are
subtending an angle of something more than ninety degrees at the sun,
and Venus is between the two, while Jupiter is clear across the sun from
all three of them. Even when Jupiter is in mean opposition to Ma