Nixon could see other differences now. The female was curved, broad at the hips, but every tiny line of the male figure was stiffly angular. It gave Tork, and the Gorts even more so, a mechanical look—the planes of the face were all tiny rectangles, as though hewn on metal....

"We need you," Tork said at last. "Our scientists need one of the Earth-giants."

"Need me? What for?" Nixon demanded.

"That you shall see," Tork said. He added evasively, "There is so much about your world that you can tell us."

"There will be no harm come to you," Nona said suddenly. "My father, he is leader of the Orites in all things of science. It was he who built our first spaceship."

"I am assistant to him," Tork put in.

"And then they built this giant ship, to bring a giant to our world," Nona added, "and my father, he is working now on something else—something that will be so good for all us Orites—"

"That we can explain later, not now," Tork said hastily.

Whatever it was, Nixon couldn't make them say any more about it. The trip now stretched on while around him, down on the floor, the miniature interior was busy with the routine of the voyage. Beneath him, he understood now, were the mechanism rooms, the air renewers, pressure equalizers, temperature controls, and the gravity engines—whatever they were. Perhaps, if he had been an Earth scientist, Tork would have tried to find the English words to explain them. But Tork did not, and Allen Nixon wasn't curious. To him it was enough that this strange thing was a fact.

His mind was busy with thoughts of how to escape from these weird little captors. Certainly he had no desire to be taken to this strange world. Tork's queer glance at Nona had seemed somehow to have a gruesome implication. If only he could get Tork within his fingers—

After a time Nixon slept. He was hungry and thirsty when he awoke. Down on the floor the Gorts were busy with their routine tasks. They were getting used to the monstrous prisoner now. None seemed to notice that he had opened his eyes. Then he saw Tork, in the little enclosure beyond Nixon's feet, where the cylindrical interior narrowed. It seemed to be the bow of the spaceship. A bullseye port was there, with a vista of the stars. There was a foot-high bank like an instrument panel, with rows of tiny dials hardly bigger 

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