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the algae putting out oxygen.
So the question is: Which do we need more, oxygen or power? Or
 Now then," Shar said thoughtfully, "I would guess that there's water over
there in the canyon, if we can reach it. I'll go below again and arrange"
Lavon gasped.
"What's the matter?"
Silently, Lavon pointed, his heart pounding.
The entire dome of indigo above them was spangled with tiny, in-
credibly brilliant lights. There were hundreds of them, and more and more were
becoming visible as the darkness deepened. And far away, over the ultimate
edge of the rocks, was a dim red globe, crescented with ghostly silver. Near
the zenith was another such body, much smaller, and silvered all over...
Under the two moons of Hydrot, and under the eternal stars, the two-inch
wooden spaceship and its microscopic cargo toiled down the slope toward
the drying little rivulet.
The ship rested on the Bottom of the canyon for the rest of the night. The
great square doors were unsealed and thrown open to admit the raw, irradiated,
life-giving water from outside - and the wriggling bacteria which were fresh
food.
No other creatures approached them, either out of curiosity or for hunting,
while they slept, although Lavon had posted guards at the doors just in case.
Evidently, even up here on the very floor of space, highly organized creatures
were quiescent at night.
But when the first flush of light filtered through the water, trou-
ble threatened.
First of all, there was the bug-eyed monster. The thing was green and had two
snapping claws, either one of which could have broken the ship in two like a
spirogyra strand. Its eyes were black and globular, on the ends of short
columns, and its long feelers were thicker through than a plant bole. It
passed in a kicking fury of motion, however, never noticing the ship at all.
"The Bottom's sloping," Lavon said, looking ahead intently.
"The walls of the canyon are retreating, and the water's becoming rather
silty. Let the stars wait, Shar; we're coming toward the en-
trance of our new world."
Shar subsided moodily. His vision of space apparently had dis-
turbed him, perhaps seriously. He took little notice of the great thing that
was happening, but instead huddled worriedly over his own expanding
speculations. Lavon felt the old gap between their minds widening once more.
Now the Bottom was tilting upward again. Lavon had no experi-
ence with delta-formation, for no rivulets left his own world, and the
phenomenon worried him. But his worries were swept away in won-
der as the ship topped the rise and nosed over.
Ahead, the Bottom sloped away again, indefinitely, into glim-
mering depths. A proper sky was over them once more, and Lavon could see small
rafts of plankton floating placidly beneath it. Almost at once, too, he saw
several of the smaller kinds of Protos, a few of which were already
approaching the ship
Then the girl came darting out of the depths, her features blurred and
distorted with distance and terror. At first she did not seem to see the ship
at all. She came twisting and turning lithely through the water, obviously
hoping only to throw herself over the mound of the delta and into the savage
streamlet beyond.
Lavon was stunned. Not that there were men here - he had hoped for that, had
even known somehow that men were every-
where in the universe - but at the girl's single-minded flight toward suicide.
"What"
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Then a dim buzzing began to grow in his ears, and he under-
stood.
"Sharl Than! Stravoll" he bawled. "Break out crossbows and spears! Knock out
all the windows!" He lifted a foot and kicked
and jerking b ack over h er shoulder, t oward where the b uzzing snarled
louder and louder in the dimness.
"Don't stop!" Lavon shouted. "This way, this way! We're friends!
We'll help!"
Three great semi-transparent trumpets of smooth flesh bored over the rise, the
many thick cilia of their coronas whirring greedily.
Dicrans, arrogant in their flexible armor, quarreling thickly among themselves
as they moved, with the few blurred, pre-symbolic noises which made up their
own language.
Carefully, Lavon wound the crossbow, brought it to his shoulder, and fired.
The bolt sang away through the water. It lost momentum rapidly, and was caught
by a stray current which brought it closer to the girl than to the Eater at
which Lavon had aimed.
He bit his lip, lowered the weapon, wound it up again. It did not pay to
underestimate the range; he would have to wait. Another bolt, cutting through
the water from a side port, made him issue orders to cease firing "until," he
added, "you can see their eyespots."
The irruption of the rotifers decided the girl. The motionless wooden monster
was of course strange to her, but it had not yet menaced her - and she must
have known what it would be like to have three Dicrans over her, each trying
to grab from the others the largest share. She threw herself towards the
bull'seye port. The three Eaters screamed with fury and greed and bored in
after her.
She probably would not have made it, had not the dull vision of the lead
Dicran made out the wooden shape of the ship at the last instant. The Dicran
backed off, buzzing, and the other two sheered away to avoid colliding with
her. After that they had another argu-
ment, though they could hardly have formulated what it was that they were
fighting about; they were incapable of exchanging any thought much more
complicated than the equivalent of "Yaah,"
"Drop dead," and "You're another."
While they were still snarling at each other, Lavon pierced the
waiting while she took in the cabin, Lavon, Shar, the other pilots, the
senescent Para.
At last she said: "Are you the gods from beyond the sky?"
"We're from beyond the sky, all right," Lavon said. "But we're not gods. We're
human beings, just like you. Are there many humans here?"
The girl seemed to assess the situation very rapidly, savage though she was.
Lavon had the odd and impossible impression that he should recognize her: a
tall, deceptively relaxed, tawny woman, not after all quite like this one . .
. a woman from another world, to be sure, but still . . .
She tucked the knife back into her bright, matted hairaha, Lavon thought
confusedly, there's a trick I may need to remember and shook her head.
"We are few. The Eaters are everywhere. Soon they will have the last of us."
Her fatalism was so complete that she actually did not seem to care.
"And you've never cooperated against them? Or asked the Protos to help?"
"The Protos?" She shrugged. "They are as helpless as we are against the
Eaters, most of them. We have no weapons that kill at a distance, like yours.
And it's too late now for such weapons to do any good. We are too few, the
Eaters too many."
Labon shook his head emphatically. "You've had one weapon that counts, all
along. Against it, numbers mean nothing. We'll show you how we've used it. You
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