oved. It closed, and then dropped open again. The
search for the Plumies had been made because it looked like they had to
be fought. But Baird had just pointed out some extremely commonsense
items which changed the situation entirely. And there was evidence that
the Plumies saw the situation the new way. The skipper felt such enormous
relief that his manner changed. He displayed what was almost effusive
cordiality--for the skipper. He cleared his throat.

"_Hm-m-m. Hah! Very good, Mr. Baird_," he said formidably. "_And of
course with time and air and metals we can rebuild our drive. For that
matter, we could rebuild the _Niccola_! I'll notify the ship's company, Mr.
Baird. Very good!_" He moved to use another microphone. Then he checked
himself. "_Your expression is odd, Mr. Baird. Did you wish to say
something more?_"

"Y-yes, sir," said Baird. He held Diane's hand fast. "It'll be months
before we get back to port, sir. And it's normally against regulations,
but under the circumstances ... would you mind ... as skipper ...
marrying Lieutenant Holt and me?"

The skipper snorted. Then he said almost--almost--amiably;

"Hm-m-m. You've both done very well, Mr. Baird. Yes. Come to the
navigation room and we'll get it over with. Say--ten minutes from now."

Baird grinned at Diane. Her eyes shone a little.

This was at 04 hours 10 minutes ship time. It was exactly twelve hours
since the alarm-bell rang.

THE END

[Transcriber's note:

The following typographical errors have been corrected:
"congenial" to "congenital"
"Mircowaves" to "Microwaves"
"undoutbedly" to "undoubtedly" (twice)
"seemd" to "seemed"
"Lieutenant Hold" to "Lieutenant Holt"
]

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Aliens, by Murray Leinster

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ALIENS ***

***** This file should be named 24104.txt or 24104.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/1/0/24104/

Produced by Greg Weeks, Bruce Albrecht, Louise Pryor and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net

Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.

Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
permission and without payin