"If it does come." Thela Draper's lips quivered. "I want...." "Will you shut up! I'm taking charge. You're a spoiled empty-head even if you are atomic-plated. I'm not dumb even if I do dance for a living in dives you'd blast clear of. "Someday Ina Haan's name will be in all the lights of Mars and Terra." Jay Forsix shook his head numbly from side to side as he heard the women talking. Strange thoughts and sensations were crowding into his brain. His hand went up to the bulky helmet that was designed to keep his synthetic body under the control of humans. He gasped. The battery compartment was empty, its cover gaping. No wonder his uncontrolled senses were so active and his brain alive. "Gone," he said to Ina Haan. He recognized her as the dominating character of the group. Ina pulled out a trim platinum-washed expoder and leveled it at the animat. But her finger did not depress the little stud that would send the explosive needles of biaton into his body. "Maybe an animat is dangerous without his controls," she mused aloud, "and then again.... We'll see. I can always kill it later." "Thank you, Ina Haan," Jay Forsix said clumsily. Ina's dark eyes widened. It was rarely that a robot spoke without being addressed, and then it used the term Master or Lady. "Get to work," she commanded, "salvaging food and clothing." The animat nodded. He turned toward the battered port. Ina was studying the serial plate on Jay's helmet. "Take the others along, J46," she said. "You are in charge of them." Jay's heart pounded proudly. The human one had confidence in him. Never, in all the six weeks of his short existence, had men spoken a kindly word to him. To them he had been a stupid machine to be worked out in the radioactive mines of distant worlds. "Yes ... Ina Haan," he said. "Onin Tufor," he ordered slowly, "Zee Fivotu, come...." The animats rose from their mindless squatting and shuffled after him into the _Sun Maiden's_ scrambled interior.... * * * * * Jay and the tall shambling animat called Onin Tufor were gathering the small, brown-husked fruit of the balloon-like _kreth_ that grew on the slopes above the space ship. The fruit grew at the base of the swollen hollow globe, and on its stubby branches. In the days since their landing the two girls and the animats had learned to eat, if not like, the edible berries and fruits of the eternally clouded world. And they had made two comparatively unharmed cabins snug and only slightly damp by sealing them with tough sheets of kreth. "Would you boost me up?" asked Jay. Onin stared at him stupidly. He answered nothing but commands. Jay swore, a habit acquired from the dark-haired human, and twisted open the battery case of the animat. He wrenched out the batteries and sent them hurtling into a nearby thicket of nik-nik. "Ina Haan says we have good brains," he told Onin, "if we do not have them deadened by the control cases."