Lucky said, "I don't know if you can hear or under stand me, Lou…"

Evans paid no regard. With one last contortion of his body, he flung himself and Lucky into the air, breaking Lucky's hold.

Lucky rolled as he hit the floor and came lithely to his feet. He caught Evans's arm as the latter rose and swung it over his shoulder. A heave and Evans came crashing down on his back. He lay still.

"Bigman!" said Lucky, breathing quickly and brushing back his hair with a quick motion of his hand.

"Here I am," said the little fellow, grinning and swinging Turner's blaster lightly. "I was all set, just in case."

"All right. Put that blaster away, Bigman, and look Lou over. Make sure there are no bones broken. Then tie him up."

Lucky was at the controls now, and with infinite caution he backed the Hilda off the remnants of the carcass of the giant patch he had killed hours before.

Lucky's gamble had worked. He had hoped that the V-frogs with their preoccupation with mentalities would have no real conception of the physical size of the patch, that with their lack of experience of subsea travel, they would not realize the significance of the slight off-course route Bigman had taken. The whole gamble had been in the quick phrase which Lucky had spoken to Bigman as the latter had turned the ship back to the city under the threat of Evans's blaster.

"Afoul of the patch," he had said.

Again the Hilda's course changed. Its nose lifted upward.

Evans, bound to his bunk, stared with weary shame-facedness at Lucky. "Sorry."

"We understand, Lou. Don't brood about it," said Lucky lightly. "But we can't let you go for a while. You see that, don't you?"

"Sure. Space, put more knots 6n me. I deserve it. Believe me, Lucky, most of it I don't even remember."

"Look, you better get some sleep, fella," and Lucky's fist punched Evans lightly hi the shoulder. "We'll wake you when we hit surface, if we have to."

To Bigman, a few minutes later, he said quietly, "Round up every blaster on the ship, Bigman, every weapon of every sort. Look through stores, the bunk lockers, everywhere."

"What are you going to do?"

"Dump them," said Lucky succinctly.

"What?"

"You heard me. You might go under. Or I might. If we do, I don't want anything with which we can expect a repetition of what has just happened. Against the V-frogs, physical weapons are useless, anyway."

One by one, two blasters, plus the electric whips from each sea suit, passed through the trash ejector. The ejector's hinged opening stood flush with the wall just next to the first-aid cupboard, and through it the weapons were puffed through one-way valves into the sea. "It makes me feel naked," muttered Bigman, staring out through the port as though to catch sight of the vanished weapons. A dim phosphorescent streak flashed across, marking the passing of an arrow fish. That was all.

The water pressure needle dropped slowly. They had been twenty-eight hundred feet under to begin with. They were less than two thousand now.

Bigman continued peering intently out the port. Lucky glanced at him. "What are you looking for?" "I thought," said Bigman, "it would get lighter as we got up toward the top."

"I doubt it," said Lucky. "The seaweed blankets the surface tightly. It will stay black till we break through." "Think we might meet up with a trawler, Lucky?" "I hope not."

They were fifteen hundred feet under now. Bigman said with an effort at lightness, a visible attempt to change the current of his own thoughts, "Say, Lucky, how come there's so much carbon dioxide in the air on Venus? I mean, with all these plants? Plants are supposed to turn carbon dioxide into oxygen, aren't they?"

"On Earth they are. However, if I remember my course in xenobotany, Venusian plant life has a trick all its own. Earth plants liberate their oxygen into the air; Venusian plants store theirs as high-oxygen compounds in their tissues." He talked absently as though he himself was also using speech as a guard against too-deep thinking. "That's why no Venusian animal breathes. They get all the oxygen they need in their food."

"What do you know?" said Bigman in astonishment.

"In fact, their food probably has too much oxygen for them, or they wouldn't be so fond of low-oxygen food, like the axle grease you fed the V-frog. At least, that's my theory."

They were only eight hundred feet from the surface now.

Lucky said, "Good navigation, by the way. I mean the way you rammed the patch, Bigman."

"It's nothing," said Bigman, but he flushed with pleasure at the approval in Lucky's words.

He looked at the pressure dial. It was five hundred feet to the surface.

Silence fell.

And then there came a grating and scraping sound from overhead, a sudden interruption in their smooth climb, a laboring of their engines, and then a quick lightening of the view outside the porthole, together with an eye-blinking vision of cloudy sky and rolling water surface oozing up between shreds and fibers of weed. The water was pockmarked with tiny splashings.

"It's raining," said Lucky. "And now, I'm afraid, we'll have to sit tight and wait till the V-frogs come for us."

Bigman said blankly, "Well-well… Here they

are!"

For moving into view just outside the porthole, staring solemnly into the ship out of dark, liquid eyes, its long legs folded tightly down and its dexterous toes clasping a seaweed stem in a firm grip, was a V-frog!

13. Minds Meet

The Hilda rode high in the tossing waters of the Venusian ocean. The splatter of strong, steady rain drummed its sound upon the outer hull in what was almost an Earthlike rhythm. To Bigman, with his Martian background, rain and ocean were alien, but to Lucky it brought memories of home.

Bigman said, "Look at the V-frog, Lucky. Look at it!"

"I see it," said Lucky calmly.

Bigman swept the glass with his sleeve and then found himself with his nose pressing against it for a better look.

Suddenly he thought, Hey, I better not get too close.

He sprang back, then deliberately put the little finger of each hand into the corners of his mouth and drew them apart. Sticking his tongue out, he crossed his eyes and wiggled his fingers.

The V-frog stared at him solemnly. It had not budged a muscle since it had first been sighted. It merely swayed solemnly with the wind. It did not seem to mind, or even to be aware of, the water that splashed about it and upon it.

Bigman contorted his face even more horribly and went "A-a-gh" at the creature.

Lucky's voice sounded over his shoulder. "What are you doing, Bigman?"

Bigman jumped, took his hands away, and let his face spring back into its own pixy-ish appearance. He said, grinning, "I was just showing that V-frog what I thought of it."

"And it was just showing you what it thought of you!"

Bigman's heart skipped a beat. He heard the clear disapproval in Lucky's voice. In such a crisis, at a time of such danger, he, Bigman, was making faces like a fool. Shame came over him.

He quavered, "I don't know what got into me, Lucky."

"They did," said Lucky, harshly. "Understand that. The V-frogs are feeling you out for weak points. However they can do it, they'll crawl into your mind, and once there they may remain past your ability to force them to leave. So don't follow any impulse until you've thought it out."

"Yes, Lucky," muttered Bigman.

"Now, what next?" Lucky looked about the ship. Evans was sleeping, tossing fitfully and breathing with difficulty. Lucky's eyes rested on him for a bare moment, then turned away.

Bigman said almost timidly, "Lucky?"

"Well."

"Aren't you going to call the space station?"