was only a minor problem, for there was always someone who could translate when he was unable to understand. There were as many occupations and trades as there were faces. Some wore a look of guilt that faded slowly, and some still held confusion darkly in their eyes. But in all there was the slow-fuse of a new hope.

Each, Clyde Ellery found, had gone through much the same experience as he had. Each of them represented the science of his community, whatever its stage, ranging from Kano Mbabane, a witch doctor, to Ellery who was a nuclear physicist.

As the ship flashed silently on its journey, the men explored. The hull was of a metal unknown on Earth. They were able to groove deep scratches in its surface with an ordinary penknife, but within two minutes the scratch would vanish. It felt almost soft to the touch, but was obviously of great strength. They began to understand its purpose, if not its structure, when a section of the wall suddenly bulged inward more than a foot, then slowly smoothed out.

"Good heavens," exclaimed Courtland Stokes, as they stared at the retreating bulge, "that must have been a small meteorite! Imagine the uses of a metal with the strength to resist such a force. Why if we'd had this metal—"

He broke off, but the thought was there. This was a metal which might have resisted even the atom bomb.

Two of the men translated his remarks into the other languages.

"Djen shi dje yang dy mo?" Wang Chin asked dryly.

There was no need to translate the comment. They all understood the ironic tones. Stokes' thought had reminded them that if they and their kind had used atomic energy for the benefit of the world there would have been no need for a defense against it. They turned to other things within the ship in order to forget the thought.

Light for the interior of the ship came from shoulder-high recesses around the wall. They looked into them, expecting an improved lighting system, surprised at finding only small steady-burning flames. The flames seemed to be coming from the center of a small green plant. One of the men stretched a hand toward a small flame only to withdraw it quickly with an exclamation of pain. The heat was intense for several inches around the flame, but then it dissipated quickly.

The remainder of the ship was just as strange. The seating arrangements around the interior of the ship seemed to be made of broad thick leaves, somehow fused together, yet still 

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