me. All I knew was that you were going to be murdered for doing a
perfectly harmless--"

"She's right," said Joe Silver. "We ought to have told her."

"Shut up," said Pinkham savagely. "Any more of that and I'll figure
she's corrupted you or addled your brains, and I'll toss you into the
brig, Silver."

"You try it you pigsqueak," shouted Silver, who measured half an inch
over Pink's six-foot-three. "Captain or not, this is a grade A emergency
and we're all needed. I'll pull the Mars Convention on you if you try to
shut me up."

"He's right," said Daley to the captain. "Mars Convention says that in a
grade A emergency any officer above Second Watch is equal to the captain
or commander, Pink." Then he turned to Silver, grinned, and lashing out
with a hand the size of a spaniel, caught his under-lieutenant on the
ear. It knocked Silver sprawling. "That's for slanging at your
superiors," he said quietly. "And the Mars Convention says I can do
_that_."

Silver got up and blinked. He seemed dazed and for the first time in his
space life, uncertain of himself. He looked at the others and recognized
himself as a minority here. "Okay," he said, "okay, I'm outvoted. But I
say the girl is only suspect, by no means convicted of anything but
ignorance of the plan."

Kinkare, unable to speak through his bandaged mouth, nodded strongly.
Circe glared defiance at Pinkham. "Next time, for God's sake tell me
what you have in mind," she said. "Not that I'd let you sacrifice poor
Jerry, anyway."

"Women," said Jerry. "Women on a ship. Jonahs. Sentimental imbeciles."

"I'll knock your teeth down your scrawny throat," began Joe Silver, and
"Quiet!" roared Pinkham. "We're quarreling like kids. What's to be done
now!"

"I was saying it taught us a few things," said Daley. "Let's figure them
out. The thing's evidently not telepathic. It can't run a spaceship, or
it wouldn't have been so worked up over the ruin of the soda fountain,
which must have looked pretty vital to its inexperienced eyes. It's
definitely tangible, for it picked Jerry up."

"It also murdered eleven men," said Pink. "That's tangible enough too."

"It's damned intelligent, for it must have spotted Jerry on the
intercom, which means it was working it. It also speaks a very funny
breed of English. 'Whoreson knave,' for example. Nobody here ever called
anyone that."

"Whoreson knave is Shakespearean," said Jerry.

"And, to finish what I've deduced, the monster