"It's getting near time," he remarked after a few minutes. Meyers peered at the patches of sky revealed by the windows. They were losing the glare of Syssokan daylight. There had been a wisp or two of cloud earlier, but these had either blown over or faded into the deepening gray of the sky. "Listen at the door!" ordered Taranto, impatient at having to remind the other. He rose, wiped perspiration from his face with the palms of both hands, and rubbed them in turn on the thighs of his gray pants. He was inches shorter than Meyers, and twenty pounds or more lighter, but his bare shoulders bulged powerfully. A little fat softened the lines of his belly without concealing the existence of an underlying layer of solid muscle. He moved with a heavy, padding gait, like a large carnivore whose natural grace is revealed only at top speed. Meyers watched him resentfully. _Why couldn't I have made it to one of the other emergency rockets?_ he asked himself. _Imagine a bunch of crazy savages that say even landing here is a crime!_ He supposed that Taranto would have pointed to the sizable city where they were held if he had heard the Syssokans called savages. Meyers thought the trouble with Taranto was that he was too physical, too much of a dumb flunky who spoiled Meyers' efforts to talk them out of trouble. _I had a better break coming_, he thought. He wished he had been in a rocket with one of the ship's officers who might have known about Syssoka. They would have gone into an orbit about the planet's star and put out a call for help to the nearest Terran base or ship. As it was, they might be given up for lost even if the other rockets were picked up. The course they had been on before the explosion had been designed to pass this system by a good margin. Taranto, he recalled, had thought them lucky to have picked up the planet on the little escape ship's instruments. Taranto, decided Meyers, thought he was a hot pilot because he had been a few years in space. He had not looked so good bending the rocket across that ridge of rock out in the desert. They should have taken a chance on coming down in the city here. They had just about straightened themselves out after that landing when they had seen the party of Syssokans on the way. It had not taken them long to reach the wreck. They could even speak Terran, and no pidgin-Terran either. Then it turned out that they did not like spacers of any race landing without permission. There had been a war with the next star system; and the laws now said there should be only one alien of any race permitted to reside on Syssoka except for brief visits by licensed spaceships. "What's the matter with our government?" muttered Meyers. "What?" asked Taranto, turning from one of the windows. "I said what's the matter with the Terran Government? Why don't they pitch a couple of bombs down here, an' show these skinny nuts who's running the galaxy? Who are they to call us aliens?"