lidated pistol," Loughran said. "I'd
laid my shotgun down and walked away from it--"

"Twelve hundred foot-seconds," Ayesha said. "Bow-wave as well as
muzzle-blast."

"You think the report was what did it?" Fayon asked.

"You want to bet it didn't?" she countered.

Nobody did.

* * * * *

Mom was sulky. She didn't like what Dave Questell's men were doing
to the nice-noise-place. Ayesha and Lillian consoled her by taking
her into the soundproofed room and playing the recording of the
pump-noise for her. Sonny couldn't care less, one way or another;
he spent the afternoon teaching Mark Howell what the marks on paper
meant. It took a lot of signs and play-acting. He had learned about
thirty ideographs; by combining them and drawing little pictures,
he could express a number of simple ideas. There was, of course,
a limit to how many of those things anybody could learn and
remember--look how long it took an Old Terran Chinese scribe
to learn his profession--but it was the beginning of a method
of communication.

Questell got the pump house mounded over. Ayesha came out and tried
a sound-meter, and also Mom, on it while the pump was running.
Neither reacted.

A good many Svants were watching the work. They began to demonstrate
angrily. A couple tried to interfere and were knocked down with
rifle butts. The Lord Mayor and his Board of Aldermen came out with
the big horn and harangued them at length, and finally got them
to go back to the fields. As nearly as anybody could tell, he was
friendly to and co-operative with the Terrans. The snooper over
the village reported excitement in the plaza.

Bennet Fayon had taken an airjeep to the other camp immediately
after lunch. He was back by 1500, accompanied by Loughran. They
carried a cloth-wrapped package into Fayon's dissecting-room.
At cocktail time, Paul Meillard had to go and get them.

"Sorry," Fayon said, joining the group. "Didn't notice how late it
was getting. We're still doing a post on this svant-bat; that's what
Charley's calling it, till we get the native name.

"The immediate cause of death was spasmodic contraction of every
muscle in the thing's body; some of them were partly relaxed before
we could get to work on it, but not completely. Every bone that
isn't broken is dislocated; a good many both. There is not the
slightest trace of external injury. Everything was done by its own
muscles." He looked around. "I hope nobo