The humanoid was still in the grip of the paralytic when they took him into the examination chamber and strapped him to the table. Narant judged the alien a little taller, give or take a few inches, than a normal human being. His interest began to perk up. It always did when he could study another creature that had learned to conquer space. For perhaps the first time in three months, thoughts of Melda were over-shadowed by the immediate prospect of exploring the mysteries of an alien mind. As the attendant came back out of the chamber, Narant secured the door. "How many of them?" he asked. The attendant shook his head in evident amazement. "Four. I don't know how they do it, but that ship had only a four man crew." "Impossible," Narant exclaimed. "That's all there are," the man insisted. "We've covered the whole ship." "But how could they...?" "The engineers are working on that now. I heard one of them remark about the great number of automatic controls, but even so ... isn't that one for the book?" That, Narant agreed, was one for the book. Four men. The space vessels he knew usually held scores of crewmen and specialists to handle the manifold emergencies that arose in flight. His imagination soaring, Narant turned rapidly to begin his experiments. He started the automatic recorder that would code his findings on a thin strip of tape and then, more excited than usual, began the examination. Inside the chamber, a giant multi-faceted crystal began to rotate slowly in the gimbals which held it suspended from the ceiling. Sharp individual beams of light swept over the face of the alien being on the table. One by one, the lights flickered over him and passed on, each one probing, measuring, comparing with universal norms, and then recording its findings on both dial and tape. Long before the five-hour examination was over, the hopes of Technicist 9th Class Narant far transcended any he had experienced in the past three months. The aliens had almost human potential. They were fun-loving, kindly, clannish. Their resourcefulness _and their ingenuity_ were literally unsurpassed. But then the most amazing fact of all revealed itself: The time-lapse since this race had been entirely primitive was fantastically short. In one brief--almost abrupt--transition, they had gone from jungle to the conquest of space. The mind, the racial background and the obvious achievements of these creatures presented such a picture of rapid advancement as to stagger the imagination. Once he had transmitted the coded tapes to Central Scientific, Narant sought out the anthropometrist. His lingering doubts vanished when the two compared findings. Everything inside the spaceship had been designed expressly for these strange creatures with the five fingers and the prehensile hands and arms.