Quite suddenly, this horde was charging across the burn, converging on the shining cylinder towering above them, aiming for the platform still resting on the ground. "What's he waiting for?" Pritchard heard the whisper above the rising thunder about them, knew he was meant to hear it. He jabbed home the button and the rising floor pressed their feet. He stepped over to the squawkie and spoke into its 'phragm. "Chief on, Savage. Hold your fire. We're clear." Turning to the men on the now rapidly rising platform, he said, "No shooting." Soberly, they all gazed down at the horde sweeping up below, swirling about, bumping into the fins and one another. Their silence, other than the noise of their thousands of feet and hooves, was oppressive and menacing. A few of the leaping ones soared up at the platform, wriggling in mid-air and pawing, but it had gone too high and they fell back. Then Pritchard glanced up. His hand started for his snapper. Toward them through the air came a cloud of flying things--great leathery-winged birds, smaller, faster, feathered ones--rising on a line of flight that would carry them above the platform to a point of interception, claws distended, beaks open and eager. Thin and remote, a two-toned whistle sounded. Sounded again. The converging flocks wheeled, fluttered and fell away, gliding off toward the jungle. Far below, the milling horde flung up a varied array of heads, and then began to move, a drift that became a surge, trotting and hopping away across the burn. "Phew!" said someone behind Pritchard. "That girl really has an army." McManus sat up, shaking his head and staring at the smooth shining hull of the _Apollo_ swinging down to them. He felt his jaw and squinted up at Pritchard. "Quarters for you," the tall saturnine man said softly. * * * * * Late that evening Pritchard was in the chart room talking with Captain Savage. The _Apollo's_ ventilation system had been in operation for over thirty hours now and the blowers had sucked out the last vestige of mechanically purified air, with its taint of ozone, metal and oil. It was pleasant to rock gently in the gimbal chairs and sniff the lush night air of Thisbe II. Aloft, in the nose, the watch was idly working out a game of kru, that old Martian solitaire involving domino-like counters. The autoscanner hooked to the magnar was ready to clang at the first blip on the screens. Below, in the wardrooms, the cadet hunters were amusing themselves with a runoff of the day's cam-rec spool ("Get this line about the synthetabs!" ... guffaws of laughter). Midway down the curving tail section Tom McManus sulked in his quarters, fingering the bruise on his jaw. "So we'll pick up in the morning, hey?" mused the captain. His was a squat, ape-like body, surmounted by a long, goat's face and a grizzled skull.