The other one, which had been scrambling up the ladder to the ship's airlock, drew its popgun and joined the first.

"They're from someplace called Earth," Pud said. "In the V-LM-12Xva Sector of this Galaxy, as nearly as I can make out. They're an Exploration Team, sent out by their planet to gather data on the nature of the physical universe." He paused to consult the third memory bank of his fifth brain, where he had impressed the content of the creature's mind. "They've had space travel for about two hundred of their years. I translate that as about eleven of ours." He consulted again. "Highly materialistic. Externally focused. Very limited sensorium. An infant race, chasing everything that moves, round and round through their little three-dimensional universe. They've a long way to go."

"What are they doing here?"

"Hm." Pud consulted again. "A routine exploration flight brought them to this system ... and an almost unbelievable coincidence has served to delay them here. They dropped their meteor-screens for just a moment—at just the wrong moment. A large meteor came along, entered the ship, and destroyed both their atmosphere-manufacturing equipment and the large pressure tank of atmosphere which they kept as reserve in case the equipment should fail." He paused. "Mixture of hydrogen and oxygen ... they can't live without it. At any rate, the ship was evacuated, and they barely had time to get into the ... mm, spacesuits, they call them ... which they now wear. The accident left them with no atmosphere whatever, except the small amount in the tanks of those suits. That will be exhausted in a short time ... I gather that if this planet hadn't been here, they'd have been goners. As it stands, they plan to charge their spare suit-tanks, which weren't harmed, with the air of this planet, and then return to their Earth, subsisting on the tanked air, by hyperspatial drive...." Again Pud paused. "Hm. Well, now! I'd overlooked that. So they have hyperspatial drive, at least ... and after only two hundred years of space travel! Hm. Perhaps they are worth a closer look...."

Pud lowered his heads over the two little aliens, who were moving warily, popguns drawn, away from the ship.

"Pud," Gop said nervously.

"What?"

"One of them is crawling toward the time-warp."

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