four small window openings. Overhead, they curved together to form a high arch that was the peak of the tower. Besides table and bench, the room contained a clay water jug a yard high, a wooden bucket, a battered copper cooking pot, and a pile of coarse straw upon which lay the two gray shirts the spacers had discarded in the heat. In the center of the floor was a wooden trap door which Taranto eyed speculatively.

He reminded himself that he must suppress his longing to smash the next Syssokan head that appeared in the opening.

"It's getting near time," he remarked after a few minutes.

Meyers peered at the patches of sky revealed by the windows. They were losing the glare of Syssokan daylight. There had been a wisp or two of cloud earlier, but these had either blown over or faded into the deepening gray of the sky.

"Listen at the door!" ordered Taranto, impatient at having to remind the other.

He rose, wiped perspiration from his face with the palms of both hands, and rubbed them in turn on the thighs of his gray pants. He was inches shorter than Meyers, and twenty pounds or more lighter, but his bare shoulders bulged powerfully. A little fat softened the lines of his belly without concealing the existence of an underlying layer of solid muscle. He moved with a heavy, padding gait, like a large carnivore whose natural grace is revealed only at top speed.

Meyers watched him resentfully.

Why couldn't I have made it to one of the other emergency rockets? he asked himself. Imagine a bunch of crazy savages that say even landing here is a crime!

He supposed that Taranto would have pointed to the sizable city where they were held if he had heard the Syssokans called savages. Meyers thought the trouble with Taranto was that he was too physical, too much of a dumb flunky who spoiled Meyers' efforts to talk them out of trouble.

I had a better break coming, he thought.

He wished he had been in a rocket with one of the ship's officers who might have known about Syssoka. They would have gone into an orbit about the planet's star and put out a call for help to the nearest Terran base or ship. As it was, they might be given up for lost even if the other rockets were picked up. The course they had been on before the explosion had been designed to pass this system by a good margin.

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