A handful of Butrads, men from New Crayton by their arms and clothing, tramped wearily nearer. Masson counted them--thirty-three men. As he watched one of them dropped suddenly, an arrow in his back. Then for the first time did he see the misty shapes of the pursuers of this exhausted band. They raced forward, hundreds of them, the naked froglike savages of the lower river villages. Another of the hunted men dropped and Masson jerked the gun from Gilroy's hands and trained it on the horde of charging Butrads. He fired. The sound of the shot, rather than the bullet, arrested the enemy advance momentarily. From the harried little knot of men a faint cheer lifted and their pace quickened. A moment later Gilroy swung open the thick narrow gate and was helping the first of them through. Masson lobbed a grenade far out toward the island Frogs and they shrank yet farther away. "Did our best." That was Reppart sobbing out his story. "Three hundred of us ... rest of them decided to live easy back on the island.... Maybe they wasn't too dumb either.... "Anyhow the Frogs hit us at the first waterfall.... Finished off most of the women and children there.... We fought them all along the river ... rest of the women died there.... Eighty of us reached the plateau." "And thirty of you are left," finished Masson soberly. His round eyes blazed hot. "Fifty of us to conquer a watery jungle world. Fifty men against a planet." He shook a knotted gray fist at the hostile natives. "There'll be no more contact with New Crayton," he said. "We cannot risk more of our manpower in futile warfare if we are to build a worthy civilization for our children. This crater must be our world for many years." One of the men laughed bitterly, and then great racking sobs shook his stocky gray body. "Children!" he cried. "All our children lie out there, unborn. Among us all there is only your woman." Glade Masson swept his arm out toward the seething mob of the Butrads. "There are your children," he said. "The natives have daughters and sisters. Their blood is that of our own bodies. They will bear us children. We and our children will conquer and rule the water wastes of Venus." He paused for a long moment. "To survive," he said flatly, "we must fight with all means at our command. We must steal, we must kill, and we must work. If we do not steal the females of the Butrads, Earth's culture and wisdom will shortly vanish. If we do not kill we will be killed." The round dark eyes of the listening Earthmen brightened with new hope. Croaking sounds of approval issued from their ugly slashes of mouth. And hopeless sloping shoulders straightened. * * * * * So it was that they raided the villages of the Frogs again and again. The females of the surrounding uplands proved to be intelligent, and shortly most of them were happy in the safety and comfort of the building town of the Earthmen.