nd Izak--stay
at the door with those guns. Dead sure you can still use 'em?... You,
Ruba, come here to the controls. You say you once flew space-craft."

Ruba's broad, coarse hand ruffled the bushy hair that grew on his almost
browless head. "Once," he agreed dolefully. "Now I--many thing I don't
remember." His face, flat-nosed and blubber-lipped, grew bleak and
plaintive as he gazed upon instruments he once had mastered.

"You'll remember," Parr assured him vehemently. "I never flew anything
but a short-shot pleasure cruiser, but I'm beginning to dope things out.
We'll help each other, Ruba. Don't you want to get away from here, go
home?"

"Home!" breathed Ruba, and the ears of the others--pointed, some of
those ears, and all of them hairy--pricked up visibly at that word.

"Well, there you are," Parr said encouragingly. "Sweat your brains, lad.
We've got until dawn. Then away we go."

"You will never manage," slurred the skipper from the corner where the
Martian captives, bound securely, sprawled under custody of a beast-man
with a lever bar for a club. "Thesse animalss have not mental powerr--"

"Shut up, or I'll let that guard tap you," Parr warned him. "They had
mental power enough to fool you all over the shop. Come on, Ruba. Isn't
this the rocket gauge? Please remember how it operates!"

The capture of the ship had been easy, so easy. The guard had been well
kept only until the skipper and his party had gone out of sight toward
the human village. Nobody ever expected trouble from beast-men, and the
watch on board had not dreamed of a rush until they were down and
secure. But this--the rationalization of intricate space-machinery--was
by contrast a doleful obstacle. "Please remember," Parr pleaded with
Ruba again.

And so for hours. And at last, prodded and cajoled and bullied, the
degenerated intelligence of Ruba had partially responded. His clumsy
paws, once so skilful, coaxed the mechanism into life. The blasts
emitted preliminary belches. The whole fabric of the ship quivered, like
a sleeper slowly wakening.

"Can you get her nose up, Ruba?" Parr found himself able to inquire at
last.

"Huh, boss," spoke Ling from his watch at the door. "Come. I see white
thing."

Parr hurried across to look.

The white thing was a tattered shirt, held aloft on a stick. From the
direction of the village came several figures, Martian and Terrestrial.
Parr recognized the bearer of the flag of truce--it was Varina