tools, you know."

* * * * *

"It's not quite as bad as all that," said one of the other men, who had
been briefly introduced to Stanton as Fred Meyer. "After all, he had our
technology to draw upon. If he'd been wrecked on Earth two or three
centuries ago, he wouldn't have been able to do a thing."

"Granted," the colonel said agreeably, "but it's quite obvious that there
are parts of our technology that are just as alien to him as parts of his
are to us. Remember how he went to all the trouble of building a pentode
vacuum tube for a job that could have been done by transistors. His
knowledge of solid-state physics seems to be about a century and a half
behind ours."

"Not completely, Colonel," Meyer said. "That gimmick he built last
year--the one that blinded those people in Bagdad--had five perfect
emeralds in it, connected in series with silver wire."

"That's true. Our technologies seem to overlap in some areas, but in
others there's total alienness."

"Which one would you say was ahead of the other?" Stanton asked.

"Hard to say," said Colonel Mannheim, "but I'd put my money on his
technology as encompassing more than ours--at least insofar as the
physical sciences are concerned."

"I agree," said Meyer, "he's got things in that little nest of his that--"
He stopped and shook his head slowly, as though he couldn't find words.

"I'll say this," Bart Stanton said musingly, "our friend, the Nipe, has
plenty of guts. And patience." He smiled a little and then amended his
statement. "From our own point of view, that is."

Colonel Mannheim's face took on a quizzical expression. "How do you mean?
I was about to agree with you until you tacked that last phrase on. What
does point of view have to do with it?"

"Everything, I should say," Stanton said. "It all depends on the equipment
an individual has. A man who rushes into a burning building to save a
life, wearing nothing but street clothes, has courage. A man who does the
same thing when he's wearing a nullotherm suit is an unknown quantity.
There is no way of knowing, from that action alone, whether he has courage
or not."

Meyer looked a little dazed. "Pardon me if I seem thick, Mr. Stanton,
but.... Are you saying that the Nipe's technological equipment is better
than ours?"

"Not at all. I'm talking about his personal equipment." He turned again to
the colonel. "Colonel Mannheim, do you think it would require any personal