They hustled him to a house where several old women were shaking and back-slapping a boy of three or four. The kid's mother, one of the few redheads in the colony, was wailing at a pitch that made Verrill shiver. A beetle-browed young man with a wiry beard squatted on the floor, looking helpless. All he did was repeat, "Get Kwangtan!" And no one paid him any heed at all. At the sight of Verrill, one of the old women laid the child on a sheepskin spread on the floor. The child's face was gray. His lips were bluish. His eyes bugged out. He wheezed agonizingly. It made Verrill's skin twitch, just to see the little fellow's losing battle for breath. He was slowly choking. With all voices suddenly stilled at Verrill's approach, the sound became all the more ominous. In his utter perplexity and dismay, Verrill hoped that what he heard was the death-rattle which would relieve him of the task about to be forced upon him. The absence of Kwangtan, the holy man, told him the story: that wise fellow was not going to lose any prestige by tackling something he could not handle. "What's wrong?" Verrill asked, with a show of assurance. "You're a doctor," the kid's father snarled. "Do something." "He swallowed an apricot seed," the child's redhaired mother said. "It's stuck, we can't shake it out, he's choking. Get it out, you blinking fool!" The kid's father drew and cocked his pistol. The dry click chilled Verrill to the heart. He remembered an old story of an emergency operation at a trading-post. The yarn had given the Venusians quite a thrill. Ardelan stalked in. He nodded his approval of the man who had a pistol trained on the doctor. "Stranger, do not make any mistakes. Kwangtan has warned us." Verrill had a raft of Venusian specifics for just about every known ailment; he had counted, however, on nothing of the sort which now confronted him--had looked forward simply to giving the savages pills, and swabbing them with antiseptics. As he knelt, he fumbled helplessly with the instruments in the case. "Do this right," Ardelan said. "Or he shoots." Verrill loaded a hypo with a local anaesthetic. The glint of metal, and the sudden end of the child's gagging as the injection stilled his struggles, nearly cost Verrill his life. Ardelan's big hand knocked the pistol out of line as it blazed, and the slug scorched Verrill's cheek and pounded a chunk out of the wall. "He's not dead," the chief said, "Not yet." A splash of antiseptic. Then, nerving himself, Verrill made a slit in the throat. There was not much blood. He got the apricot seed free. With haggling jabs, he took a couple of stitches. He taped and bandaged. Then, shoulders sagging, he settled back, trying to keep from toppling to the floor. The kid's lips were no longer bluish. He was breathing freely. At last he blinked, cried out, and reached for his throat. "He's brought him back to life!" the redhead cried, and snatched up the boy. * * * * *