heard Moya panting down the brow of the hill.

"Keep away!" I shouted. "Get back to the ship!"

Moya bent over me; he had opened the hood of the bug suit, and his face was grave.

"What's the trouble, Callum?"

"Can't you take orders?"

He shook his head. I pointed to the leg. He looked swiftly at the broken skin.

"How does it feel?"

"That's the trouble; it doesn't."

He grabbed my arm, put it over his shoulder, and got me on my feet.

We made good time, considering.

"Too bad you're such a shrimp," I said.

"I can take you on any time."

Shuttler IV was closest, parked on a shelf fifty yards below the top of the hill, but Moya was heading to miss it.

"I programmed for auto, just in case, and the generators are up to power. We waste time to save time. That way I can give you some help on the ascent."

The generator part was fine; the rest wasn't.

It started to rain again, just before we reached 250's shuttler.

I put my face up to it.

Moya got me through the lock and onto an acceleration couch. Then he headed for the panel. I was beginning to feel a desperate weakness, but my head was still clear.

"Wait a minute," I said. "What's your gee tolerance?"

"High, but—"

"So strap me and raise this couch to vertical. Then override the auto and take us up fast."

He blinked.

"Listen," I said. "This feels like a neuro-toxin. Remember snake-bite aid? Well, the numbness is up to my groin now. No place for a tourniquet. And nothing here for freezing."

It was strange going up. I blacked out almost immediately, but Moya took it flat and apparently stayed alert all the way.

"Space!" I managed to gasp finally. "Any more of that sort of thing and I'd have ended up stupid."

Then there was utter confusion.

I came to full awareness under the luminescence of the infirmary's overhead. I was naked on the padding of the table. I could see a respirator off to my right, and a suction octopus near it. The medic was just stowing an auto-heart. But for a different tingling in my leg and an all-is-lost sensation south of my diaphragm, I felt reasonably sound.

The medic approached. I hadn't gotten a very good impression of the lean, blond youngster on the trip out, but now he seemed Hippocrates, Luke, Lister, Salk, O'Grady, and Yakamura all rolled into one.

He weakened it by asking the classic redundancy.

"How do you feel?"

I elbowed up for a look at the leg. There was a series of little welts the length of it, masked by forceheal.

"Where did you learn your trade?" I asked. "In a production expediter's office?"

He grinned.

"It took more than three hours, Mr. Callum. Suction, flushing, full transfusion. You've got some good blood in you now."

I lay back and let him talk.

"There'll be nerve damage, probably. Regeneration should take care of most of it, but you might need transplants. You were lucky. First, that whatever nipped you barely broke the skin. Second, that the skipper was there to help. And third, that you had the sense to block the spread of the toxin by gee forces."

"Yeah. Remind me to thank Moya—immediately after I write him up for leaving his station."

The medic looked pleased.

"Well, now, the way I got it—and I believe the recorder will bear me out—is that you requested a witness. You left it up to the skipper to make the selection."

He cleared his throat.

"And, by the way, Moya said he'd look in on you after a bit. The thing to do now is rest."

I sat up again.

"Where're my clothes?"

The kid commenced noises of disapproval.

"Damnation! I'm not going anywhere. I just want to look over that pant's leg."

Came the dawn.

"What'd you say Moya was doing?"

"Oh, I expect he's busy up forward."

The trouble was that he looked me straight in the eye. It takes practice to lie convincingly. And the Space Academy doesn't list the Art of Prevarication among its curricula.

"That misbegotten little son of an Aztec! He went back down, didn't he?"

I tried to jackknife off the table.

The medic flexed his muscles and said: "I can't take the responsibility—"

"When are you people going to get it through your stubborn heads that the responsibility for this whole shebang is mine and mine alone?"

Two more of the crew showed up. Under other circumstances, I might have enjoyed tangling with them. I know tricks that even the inventors of karate overlooked.

"All right," I gasped. "But give me the dope. He's not alone, is he? Are you in contact?"

It developed that Moya had returned to the site of the disaster immediately upon learning that I was out of danger. He'd taken a crewman. He was also equipped with my chart of the area complete with locales of the remains. The last word had been that the two had grounded and that the weather front was dissipating. He'd been gone about two hours.

"They both had bug suits," the medic offered.

"Great," I said. "Just splendid. Suppose there's a creature down there that can go through plastic like—"

For the first time the three lost their smug expressions.

"We destroyed your clothes," the medic said sheepishly. "We figured—"

I railed at them for a couple of minutes, but it was mostly unfair. Moya's decision could be justified, too.

They rustled up a uniform and helped me to Astrogation. The remaining crewman was at the comm. The freeze was beginning to wear off, and my leg burned.

I alternated between berating myself and trying to think up an adequate explanation for the possible death or injury of two men ostensibly under my control.

After several hours of sweat-agony, Moya's voice came over the horn. He sounded tired.

"We've done it. You'll be happy to know that we gave them an official burial."

I could picture the little Mexican, standing beside the long mound, head bowed, with the Specter probably staring over his shoulder, going methodically through the complete Memorial Service, ending with: And the whole galaxy is the sepulcher of illustrious men.

"It's not much of a place, but the sun is shining now. Expect us shortly."

"Are you sure you're all right?"

I was propped on my elbows on the bunk in my cubicle, nursing the jangle in my leg. Maybe it was that—but I was as confused as a mouse in a psych maze.

"Why wouldn't I be?" Moya said.

"And you wore the suits all the time?"

"Affirmative. If you'd done the same—"

The medic showed with lab analyses.

"There wasn't much of that stuff in you," he said. "And I can't break it down. Too complex. You used the cobra venom analogy—Well, this makes that look as simple as mother's milk."

He held up the stained pieces of uniform. Moya had kept his wits about him.

"A combination of weather, soil, et cetera," the medic said. "Completely innocuous."

"About the toxin," I said. "Given time, could you work up an antivenin?"

"Probably. But I'd need plenty. Both time and toxin." He looked at me. "Oh, I see what you're getting at." He became professionally parochial.

"In other words—" I said.

He snapped his fingers.

"You know how it hit you."

The confusion persisted, so I allowed the medic to use a pressure hypo.

Hours later, I felt better—physically.

On the vid screen, the magnified surface of the insular mass seemed almost to beckon. Sireni, I thought.

Little remained of the weather front. Over the area of the plain and the rolling hills were meager wisps of clouds. Darkness again was creeping across the face of E-T.

"That storm didn't amount to much," Moya said.

Storm, I thought. Rain.

"I know what I'd do," Moya continued. "I'd radiate and have done with it."

The medic dissented on clinical-curiosity grounds.

"I can't reconcile things yet," I