Then with a horrified start he remembered the giant who had been atop his ship. Washington Daley had been delegated to deal with it--and Pink had forgotten, had not even glanced back to see how his lieutenant was making out! He whirled neglecting caution, and fell on his face. Luckily he came down like a big bulky feather, and caught himself and bounced up again, a rubber ball of a man on this alien world Oasis. He was just in time to see the giant, bending forward over the front of the ship, begin to blur and stream downward toward the tiny figure of the human who stood below him. In a moment he resembled a cloud of tobacco-smoke, drawn into the gray container in Daley's hand. He vanished entirely, Daley clapped on the sealing lid, and gave a triumphant wave to his captain. Pink blew out a breath of gratitude and remorse; he'd have to be on his toes from now on, really vibrant with watchfulness. Laxity in one thing could lose this weird battle. Strung out in a straggling line of erratically progressing units, the men of Earth headed for the caves. In a time so short as to be faintly ridiculous, they were moving up the mountainside. The gaping holes _were_ caves, and obviously deep ones. Pink stood at the entrance of one for a moment, checking on the number of his men; then he waved a hand over his head, and entered the great den. Behind him came another figure, one whose slimness told him it was probably Jerry. Their chest lamps lit up the interior, which was as gray, knobby, and featureless as the outside world. Pink held his Colt .44 in his right hand, one of the bottles in his left. The technicians of the _Elephant's Child_ had worked like drudges over those bottles.... Every bottle of liquor aboard had been requisitioned. The liquid had been poured into plastic containers; only a few spoonfuls had been left in each bottle. Then lead, melted down and beaten into sheets, was wrapped around each bottle, forming a thin and chinkless layer over all the glass but the lip; and the lead was painted with tough plastikoid paint, which covered it with a film one-twentieth of an inch thick. Caps of lead were made for the bottles. At the end of a couple of hours, they had sixty-six bottles, glass inside, lead covered, and topped off with plastikoid which would conceal the presence of lead from any known test short of X-ray. Each of the eleven men carried six of these bottles, then, actually lead containers, but apparently plastikoid; the lead stoppers were concealed in joerg-hide bags. If the giant who had been beaten in the spaceship was a criterion, the enemy would not recognize the presence of lead until it actually touched them--and then, thought Pink, with a quick prayer, it would be too late for them. Beaming the radio to a distance of ten feet, he said, "Hey, Jerry, want to lay a bet on who bags the first brute?"