thing, I, an unarmed man in a strange world, have succeeded in killing one of your buddies, wounding you, and making off with your helicopter. I've succeeded in escaping to a place where it may be difficult—if possible at all—to find us. Third, I've established the fact that you are not carrying any means of communicating to the real world on this 'copter."

"Oh, brilliant," said the pilot.

"It was," nodded Dave. "You see, we're a bunch of mechanical geniuses, which you've always admitted. So I postulate some sort of mechanical linkage through these devil's crystals of yours. A pencil, perhaps, with the barrel in one world and the magazine in the other world, coupled between them with a bushing made of a crystal. Maybe a radio set with bushings in the dials, and a crystal between the this-world diaphragm and the real-world electrical element. But if we were carrying anything of that nature I'd have felt resistance as we passed down through this forest. So—?"

"Why don't you kill me and forget it all?" asked the pilot.

"I am compassionate, sympathetic. A lover of mine enemy. When smitten upon one cheek, I turn the other cheek for a second wallop. Since you've had only one wallop, I'm keeping you alive so you can get that busted wing back in shape for the second smiting. But you see," added Dave as he saw a wave of pain pass over the pilot, "the book doesn't fill in the gap between the smiting of the first cheek and the offering of the second. Elsewhere in the same book—and a long way in front of that—you find references to the taking of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. You and your gang of hotshots have been responsible for the deaths of a lot of fine men, killed with no warning.

"So," finished Dave, hard-voiced, "maybe you'd like to learn what goes on when a mild-mannered gent like myself gets mad?"

Dave reached across the pilot's body, grasped the wounded arm and joggled it sharply. The pilot cried out in pain and beads of sweat popped out on his face.

"Talk, damn you!" Dave twisted the arm again.

"Where are you running this game from?"

No answer—and another twist of the arm.

"How do you blow up the crystals?"

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