There was something suspiciously like a sob from beyond the door. "No!" Tabak said in a muffled voice. "Of course not!" Jupiter felt suddenly very foolish. Without another word, he turned on his heel, strode from the passage. * * * * * Two days later the web-birds came--tiny black specks wheeling around and around in the sky like vultures drawn by carrion. Jupiter stood in the control blister and scowled up at them. He was worried about Reiloc and the cave girl who should have returned yesterday. Maybe he'd better not wait any longer. He was turning away to call Tabak, when a wild clamor broke loose from stem to stern of the Mizar as the alarm bell began to ring. Jupiter's head jerked up! The black specks were plummeting Yogol-wards, diving like kingfishers. Then he saw Lete break from the encircling jungle, sprint for the ship. The cave girl was alone. There was no sign of Reiloc anywhere. Jupiter yelled down the tube to Tabak: "Open the port! Quick!" He heard her gasp as he sprang for the keys that brought the needle gun into play. It was a precision weapon, a fine, invisible ray of disruptive force. As the first of the web-birds dropped arrow-like into range, the ray touched it. The creature exploded like a fountain of spray. He got two more before the startled birds sheered off. Snapping on the outside amplifiers, he yelled: "Lete!" His voice boomed through the loudspeaker--a giant's voice that stopped the cave girl dead in her tracks. "Lete! What's wrong?" She stared upward in fright at the gleaming bullet-shaped monster. "Quick, girl, speak up!" "The Anolyn," she said in a small voice. "What about them?" "The Anolyn have sent a great army of Nehogans. Our men have seen them, less than a day's march from here." "Get in the ship!" Jupiter commanded. Lete began to tremble, but she was too frightened to disobey. She climbed meekly through the port. With a hollow "clang!" it shut behind her. * * * * * Jupiter blasted the starship off the ground with the jets. He couldn't use the inertialess stellar drive inside Yogol's gravitational field and the Mizar rocked sickeningly as it hurtled above the surface under rocket propulsion. Lete cowered in the shock absorber where Jupiter had buckled her down against her will. Her yellow eyes were glazed. She was like a wild animal in a trap. Tabak was pale, but she stared eagerly through the transparent rind of the blister. Jupiter shot her an approving glance. He'd never realized how blue the Caligan girl's eyes were--cerulean blue, alive, dancing like a little girl's with a new doll. "Take the scanner," he said gruffly. "You should know how it operates." "May I? I'll be ever so careful." She found it unhesitatingly, turned it on. The surface of Yogol sprang on the screen in three dimensional reality. Tabak gasped. "I'm almost afraid I might fall into it!" Then she stiffened. "There they are! There! Look, Jupiter!"