ou answer--make lip talk your words! Say bad sickness
here--need help. Code man dead--you talk in his place. I listen. You say
wrong, you die--you die a long time. Hurt bad all that time----"

Clear enough. So he had been able to buy a little time! But how soon
before the incoming ship would call? The Throgs seemed to expect it.
Shann licked his blistered lips. He was sure that the Throg officer
meant exactly what he said in that last grisly threat. Only, would
anyone--Throg or human--live very long in this camp if Shann got his
warning through? The transport would have been accompanied on the big
jump by a patrol cruiser, especially now with Throgs littering deep
space the way they were in this sector. Let Shann alert the ship, and
the cruiser would know; swift punitive action would be visited on the
camp. Throgs could begin to make their helpless prisoner regret his
rashness; then all of them would be blotted out together, prisoner and
captors alike, when the cruiser came in.

If that was his last chance, he'd play it that way. The Throgs would
kill him anyhow, he hadn't the least doubt of that. They kept no
long-term Terran prisoners and never had. And at least he could take
this nest of devil beetles along with him. Not that the thought did
anything to dampen the fear which made him weak and dizzy. Shann Lantee
might be tough enough to fight his way out of the Dumps, but to stand up
and defy Throgs face-to-face like a video hero was something else. He
knew that he could not do any spectacular act; if he could hold out to
the end without cracking he would be satisfied.

Two more Throgs entered the dome. They stalked to the far end of the
table which held the com equipment, and frequently pausing to consult a
Terran work tape set in a reader, they made adjustments to the spotter
beam broadcaster. They worked slowly but competently, testing each
circuit. Preparing to draw in the Terran transport, holding the large
ship until they had it helpless on the ground. The Terran began to
wonder how they proposed to take the ship over once they did have it on
planet.

Transports were armed for ground fighting. Although they rode in on a
beam broadcast from a camp, they were prepared for unpleasant surprises
on a planet's surface; such were certainly not unknown in the history of
Survey. Which meant that the Throgs had in turn some assault weapon they
believed superior, for they radiated confidence now. But could they
handle