"That's right," he said. "I don't have to look. I know what's wrong. And I know what I'm going to do about it. There's a living intelligence trapped in that space-thing as you and I might be trapped. I can set it free with two of our motor jacks. If you've got one inkling of what it means to be ignored when you're caught like that, you'll help me. If not, I'm taking two jacks out the airlock and you can fire the motors and take off and be damned to you."

Between the two big men the tension built and strained and broke. Jeff let out a ragged sigh.

"All right," he said. "I'm with you."

"Good," said the older man, and there was new life in his voice. "Get your suit on. I'll explain as we dress."

"The trouble with our friend there is that he's fallen over. I see you don't understand, Jeff. Well, this ship of ours lands on her belly. We've got booster rockets all over the hull to correct our landing angle. But ships weren't always that way. They used to have to sit down on their tail. There's no furrow where that ship landed, only a circular blasted spot, so it figures. Maybe some of his mechanism went wrong at the last minute.

"At any rate, I'm betting that if we get him upright again, he can take care of himself from there on out. So you and I are going to go out there with a couple of jacks and see if we can't jack him back up into position."

The sand was thick and heavy. The walk over to the other ship was tedious, with the heavy jacks weighing them down. They reached the alien hull, paused a moment to get their breath and then attached the magnetic grapples to the skin of the ship at two points on opposite sides of the hull and roughly a fourth of the way up from the rocket tubes.

It was hard to anchor the jacks in the soft sand. They finally found it necessary to dig them in some three or four feet to a layer of rock that underlay the sand. Then, when everything was ready, they took their stations, each at a jack, and Pete called to Jeff on the helmet set.

"All ready? Start your motor."

Jeff reached down and flicked a switch. The tiny, powerful jack motor began to spin, and the jack base settled more solidly against its rocky bed. When he was sure that it would not slip, he left it, and went around the rockets to stand by his father.

His face was grey.

"Well," said 

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