ck floor.

Baird shouted, and rushed toward the lock. He seized the inner handle and
tried to force open the door again, so that no one inside it could emerge
into the emptiness without. He failed. He wrenched frantically at the
control of the outer door. It suddenly swung freely. The outer door had
been put on manual. It could be and was being opened from inside.

"Tell the skipper," raged Baird. "Taine's taking something out!" He tore
open a pressure-suit cupboard in the wall beside the lock door. "He'll
make the Plumies think it's a return-gift for the generator!" He eeled
into the pressure suit and zipped it up to his neck. "The man's crazy! He
thinks we can take their ship and stay alive for a while! Dammit, our air
would ruin half their equipment! Tell the skipper to send help!"

He wrenched at the door again, jamming down his helmet with one hand. And
this time the control worked. Taine, most probably, had forgotten that
the inner control was disengaged only when the manual was actively in
use. Diane raced away, panting. Baird swore bitterly at the slowness of
the outer door's closing. He was tearing at the inner door long before it
could be opened. He flung himself in and dragged it shut, and struck the
emergency air-release which bled the air lock into space for speed of
operation. He thrust out the outer door and plunged through.

His momentum carried him almost too far. He fell, and only the magnetic
soles of his shoes enabled him to check himself. He was in that singular
valley between the two ships, where their hulls were impregnably welded
fast. Round-hulled Plumie ship, and ganoid-shaped _Niccola_, they stuck
immovably together as if they had been that way since time began. Where
the sky appeared above Baird's head, the stars moved in stately
procession across the valley roof.

He heard a metallic rapping through the fabric of his space armor. Then
sunlight glittered, and the valley filled with a fierce glare, and a man
in a human spacesuit stood on the _Niccola's_ plating, opposite the
Plumie air lock. He held a bulky object under his arm. With his other
gauntlet he rapped again.

"You fool!" shouted Baird. "Stop that! We couldn't use their ship,
anyhow!"

His space phone had turned on with the air supply. Taine's voice snarled:

"_We'll try! You keep back! They are not human!_"

But Baird ran toward him. The sensation of running upon magnetic-soled
shoes was unearthly: it was like trying to run