The outside microphone picked up his voice. The airlock opened. It was full of the lead-cadmium plates that had been put around the fuel-tanks when radioactive fuel had been tried on an experimental cruise. There was barely room for the two crew-members, in atmosphere-suits, who began to unload it.

"We make shield," said Joe curtly. "Stop weapon here."

The men began to lay the slightly curved leaden plates to cover a fairly large space. Ychan waddled over and felt one. It was solid metal, three inches thick and two feet by four feet in size.

The men laid a floor twenty feet square. They laid a second layer. Then they began to build a platform in the center, seemingly solid, of plates stacked up for thickness.

They made a platform eight by twelve feet and six feet high, using antigrav handlers to lift the unwieldy pieces of metal. The airlock was filled again with the stuff for them to use. They used all that had been in the ship.

Ganymedians arrived by scores and hundreds. They watched with expressionless eyes until they understood what the men were doing. Then they lost interest. But they came back to attentiveness when the airlock opened a third time and two grinning men came out with atmosphere-suits on themselves, but a tiny canine space-suit on Rickey. The dog's suit was of hand-formed glassite and he was plainly visible inside it.

The grinning of the men, to the Ganymedians, meant rage at the murder point. And Rickey was hopelessly uncomfortable in his space-suit. He loathed it. He looked imploringly up at the men and licked out his tongue, and grinned sheepishly, dog-fashion—which meant rage on his part too, to Ychan and his fellows. Rickey's space-suit had been made with infinite care, but he did not like it.

"This," said Joe, scowling, "is dog. Dog is bad. Killed four men. He dies."

The humorless, factual men of the small planet could not possibly imagine anyone having a pet animal. And they saw no reason to doubt the deadliness of a small animal. Their own swamp-bears were even smaller than Rickey, but they were deadly.

The bloated figures regarded Rickey as he was dragged to the elaborately constructed platform of lead-cadmium plates. It was lucky that they had heard only one imaginative tale about him. If anybody had told them about the time when he allegedly barked in space-code to warn the skipper when 

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