Baird ceased to be shaky. Instead, he was ashamed.

The skipper growled inarticulately. He looked at the Plumie, again
standing in the golden ship's air lock.

"_We'll go back, Mr. Baird. What you've done won't save our lives, and
nobody will ever know you did it. But I think well of you. Come along!_"

This was at 11 hours 5 minutes ship time.

* * * * *

A good half hour later the skipper's voice bellowed from the speakers all
over the _Niccola_. His heavy-jowled features stared doggedly out of
screens wherever men were on duty or at ease.

"_Hear this!_" he said forbiddingly. "_We have checked our course and
speed. We have verified that there is no possible jury-rig for our
engines that could get us into any sort of orbit, let alone land us on
the only planet in this system with air we could breathe. It is
officially certain that in thirteen days nine hours from now, the _Niccola_
will be so close to the sun that her hull will melt down. Which will be
no loss to us because we'll be dead then, still going on into the sun to
be vaporized with the ship. There is nothing to be done about it. We can
do nothing to save our own lives!_"

He glared out of each and every one of the screens, wherever there were
men to see him.

"_But_," he rumbled, "_the Plumies can get away if we help them. They
have no cutting torches. We have. We can cut their ship free. They can
repair their drive--but it's most likely that it'll operate perfectly
when they're a mile from the _Niccola's_ magnetic field. They can't help
us. But we can help them. And sooner or later some Plumie ship is going
to encounter some other human ship. If we cut these Plumies loose,
they'll report what we did. When they meet other men, they'll be cagey
because they'll remember Taine. But they'll know they can make friends,
because we did them a favor when we'd nothing to gain by it. I can offer
no reward. But I ask for volunteers to go outside and cut the Plumie ship
loose, so the Plumies can go home in safety instead of on into the sun
with us!_"

He glared, and cut off the image.

Diane held tightly to Baird's hand, in the radar room. He said evenly:

"There'll be volunteers. The Plumies are pretty sporting
characters--putting up a fight with an unarmed ship, and so on. If there
aren't enough other volunteers, the skipper and I will cut them free by
ourselves."

Diane said, dry-throated:

"I'll help. So I can be with y