p; so long
as he was above them, all was well, but by the time the weak gravity
permitted him to land, they were waiting for him. He tried zig-zagging.
Good! It worked. He eluded them up to the mouth of the cave, then
jumped for the door of his ship's outer airlock.

* * * * *

Nat placed the girl in his bunk, removed the cumbersome spacesuit. Her
eyes blinked faintly, then sprang open. But they did not see him; they
were staring straight ahead. Her mouth opened and shut weakly as though
she were speaking, but no sound issued from it. He brought her water,
but when he returned she had fallen asleep. He returned to the kitchen
to prepare some food.

"You're still running around in that pillow case," he remarked to
Digger as he extracted the spacehound from it. "Attend me, now. We know
why and how those people disappeared. It would take the Space Patrol
ship at least a month to arrive here; I don't intend to perch on the
back of this devil as long as that. And if we leave, old thing, it'll
just lure other chivalrous fools to very unpleasant ends.

"And we've got to get this kid back to civilization. She needs a
doctor's care, preferably a doctor with two arms."

Digger's vibrations were one of general approval.

"We could poison it," he went on. "Only I'm not a chemist; even if I
knew the compounds contained in that reeking stomach I wouldn't know
what would destroy them. Might blow it up, but we haven't enough
explosive.

"No, we'll have to get down into the thing's insides again. In fact--"
He paused suddenly, mouth open. "Congratulate me, Digger! I have it!"

The smell of burning vegetables cut short his soliloquy. He fed the
starved, half-blind girl, then left her sleeping exhaustedly as he
squirmed into his suit.

No sooner had he entered the mouth of the cave than a half-dozen of the
singing sensory organs rolled quickly, yet not angrily, toward him. The
beast was apparently optimistic, for the globes sang in their most
soothing, seductive tones. They tried to herd him into the first cave
on the right, but he had remembered the _squeaker_; they could not
distract him.

Effortlessly he leaped over them toward the mouth of the cave on the
left. That was where the spaceships lay, pointing in all directions
like a carelessly-dropped handful of rice.

All the ships were in running order. Good; had there been one vessel he
could not move, then all was lost. The fuel in