s quickly a second time.

"We're supposed to be an exploration team," Ekstrohm said quickly.
"Let's get down to business. Why do you suppose these alien creatures
fake death?"

[Illustration]

Nogol shrugged his wiry shoulders. "Playing dead is easier than
fighting."

"More likely it's a method of fighting," Ryan suggested. "They play dead
until they see an opening. Then--_ripppp_."

"I think they're trying to hide some secret," Ekstrohm said.

"What secret?" Ryan demanded.

"I don't know," he answered. "Maybe I'd better--sleep on it."

III

Ryan observed his two crewmen confidently the next morning. "I did some
thinking last night."

_Great_, Ekstrohm thought. _For that you should get a Hazardous Duty
bonus._

"This business is pretty simple," the captain went on, "these pigs
simply play possum. They go into a state of suspended animation, when
faced by a strange situation. Xenophobia! I don't see there's much more
to it."

"Well, if you don't see that there's more to it, Ryan--" Nogol began
complacently.

"Wait a minute," Ekstrohm interjected. "That's a good theory. It may
even be the correct one, but where's your _proof_?"

"Look, Stormy, we don't have to have proof. Hell, we don't even have to
have theories. We're explorers. We just make reports of primary evidence
and let the scientists back home in the System figure them out."

"I want this thing cleared up, Ryan. Yesterday, you were accusing
me of being some kind of psycho who was lousing up the expedition
out of pure--pure--" he searched for a term currently in use in
mentology--"_demonia_. Maybe the boys back home will think the
same thing. I want to be cleared."

"I guess you were cleared last night, Stormy boy," Nogol put in. "We saw
one of the 'dead' pigs get up and walk away."

"_That didn't clear me_," Ekstrohm said.

The other two looked like they had caught him cleaning wax out of his
ear in public.

"No," Ekstrohm went on. "We still have no proof of what caused the
suspended animation of the pigs. Whatever caused it before caused it
last night. You thought of accusing me, but you didn't think it through
about how I could have disposed of the bodies. Or, after you found out
about the pseudo-death, how I might have caused _that_. If I had some
drug or something to cause it the first time, I could have a smaller
dose, or a slowly dissolving capsule for delayed effect."

The two men stared at him, their eyes beginning to narrow